Doc Sidhe (38 page)

Adonis he left alone. Adonis carried nothing that called to him, no weapon that begged for his attention.

More grenades went off behind him. Men cried out. Doc swept across the hangar, touching the men writhing on the floor; he reached the men standing at the elevators and granted his loving touch to their grenades. Then he floated on to the far stairwell, smiling at the music made by the men behind as their weapons erupted in smoke and pain.

More men on those far stairs, firing down at someone else.

It was getting harder to grant the wishes of the implements of war. Each one he touched took a little out of him. He could barely see his surroundings and knew there was not much more of him to give. Still he swept down the stairs, speaking approving words to the tools of destruction, giving them the power to act. Behind, there were more explosions and cries.

He travelled down a long stretch in which no weapons clamored for his attention. Then he met a new group of men.

He recognized the first of them. Athelstane of the Novimagos Guard. The lieutenant's weapons, too, begged for his attention, but Doc looked in vain for grenades. It was hard to think, so hard—and then his vision swam and he could see no more.

"Doc, Gaby, is there any word on those additional troops?" Harris felt like an idiot, talking to an unoccupied corner of the room. Not that he hadn't done it before, dozens of time, in college stage productions and rehearsals—but Ladislas and Welthy, guarding the door, kept smirking at him.

Harris reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the device there. Doc's device, the new one. Until this morning he'd been carrying a device that masked his signal, the telltale energies that marked him as a grimworlder. This recent replacement did just the opposite: magnified those signals so that anyone with a tracer would read him not as a single grimworlder but as a whole pack of them.

He left it on. Until Doc pronounced the building clear of enemies, Harris got to be the decoy for Duncan Blackletter.

An interesting role. He wondered if he'd get to see the old man again. He wondered what he'd do to the sick son of a bitch.

Then Ladislas' expression changed to one of surprise. Harris followed the man's gaze.

There, on the talk-box, Duncan Blackletter smiled benignly out at him.

Harris set the device down. "I don't have time for you, Duncan."

"Nor I for you. But I'm delighted to find you are all together." Duncan turned to the clay man. "Joseph, I really have to insist that you kill Doc and Goodsir Greene here, and any other grimworlders you find. Except Goodlady Donohue. I do need to study her before I have you kill her, too. Oh, yes, and smash everyone who tries to stop you."

Joseph flexed his fingers. "I will smash you instead."

"Oh, I forgot. By your making, by your name, I command you to remember your master!"

Joseph shouted and staggered back. Letters of the old script of Cretanis appeared on his forehead. Smoke rose from him as the letters seared themselves into his flesh.

Harris scrambled across bodies and grabbed up his autogun. He fired at Duncan's face, taking the talk-box to pieces with a stream of lead.

He looked at Joseph.

The clay man was upright again. The letters were charred black on his forehead. He looked stricken. He turned to Harris, his eyes full of dismay.

"Oh, Harris," he said. "I am so very sorry."

He advanced, his hands outstretched.

Harris backed away from Joseph. "Please don't do this."

"I have no choice." Joseph's voice was full of pain. "Kill me, Harris,
please
. Because I have to kill you."

Harris bumped up against a table and was suddenly halted. He scrambled sideways to elude Joseph's grab. He brought up the barrel of his autogun but couldn't bring himself to fire.

He heard a familiar jackhammer roar and the flesh of Joseph's side erupted with craters.

Joseph nodded and turned toward his attacker. "Yes, Welthy. Do that again. Only much, much more." His face twisted with sadness. "Forgive me. I have to smash you now." He grabbed the corner of a lab table and hefted it as easily as if it were a cardboard box; a fortune in scientific equipment slid off to crash on the floor.

He spun the table through the air. Welthy tried to jump aside, but the corner of the tabletop caught her in the gut. It smashed her into the wall behind. A moment's agony crossed her features and she fell like a broken thing.

"Ladislas, get out of here!" Harris shouted. "Don't attack him! Joseph, I'm going to run now."

"Then I will go to Gaby and take her. I have to, and I know where she is. Stay instead and kill me."

Harris aimed and fired. He struggled to keep the gun in line as he poured ammunition into the body of his friend.

Joseph staggered. His chest deformed with the damage he took. He kept coming.

Harris heard the higher-pitched crack of a pistol shot. A crater sprouted in Joseph's forehead. But the flesh there reformed instantly, the burned letters unchanged.

Joseph grabbed another table and flung it at Ladislas. The table took the man in the chest, hurling him back into the wall. Harris saw Ladislas' brief look of surprise give way to blankness.

Harris fired again. Joseph's shoulder flowed like wax under the impacts. Then Harris' autogun ran dry.

Joseph's face twisted in sympathy. "You did very well," he said.

Alastair and Ish jumped as the stairwell above them erupted in smoke and shouts. Suddenly there were continuous muffled explosions above them, but no gunfire being directed against them. They held their position, peering into the thickening cloud above, then began to retreat as it started to flow down the stairs toward them.

They descended two stories and reached Doc's conjurer's circle. Doc sat slumped, and Noriko, half-frantic, slapped his cheeks, pried an eye open to peer at it. "He is unconscious," she told Alastair. "Help him."

He joined her. "You help Ish." Noriko rose, wordless, and left him.

Alastair gave Doc a quick look. He didn't need to; he knew the problem from many times before. Devisement-induced exhaustion and collapse. He reached in his pocket for the small kit of medical essentials he carried when his bag was inconvenient.

Noriko saw Adonis emerge from the wall of smoke above. The creature descended toward them, carefully navigating each step with absurd delicacy dictated by its great size and awkward build.

Ixyail swore loudly in Castilian, words Noriko didn't understand, and opened fire with the Klapper. Her long, continuous burst tore through Adonis, meeting little resistance, tearing away bloody hunks of red-black meat. Adonis, not inconvenienced, kept coming.

Noriko drew her blade and sailed up past Ish. She stopped just short of Adonis and, lightning-fast, slashed at the arm it reached toward her. A section of cloth and meat fell away and hit the stairs with a disgusting plop.

No, not meat. In her peripheral vision, Noriko saw the stuff separate into a hundred distinct worms that crawled off in different directions.

Adonis' counterstrike was slow, clumsy, inviting her to step in and gut him. She stepped in.

It was a feint. Its off-hand slashed at her face. Warned by Harris' experience with the creature, she went under the blow, stepped past Adonis so close that she brushed against its side, and spun against its unprotected back.

Her blade took Adonis in the side of the neck. It bit through flesh the consistency of rotted grapes, snapped something harder within, and emerged from the far side.

Adonis clutched its head . . . and lifted it clear of its body. It collapsed in a puddle of clothes and squirming sludge.

Noriko stepped daintily back and watched as the mess that had been Adonis spread across the stairs. Soon there was nothing but three manweights of worms crawling away from empty clothes and oversized human bones.

Ish stared up at her. "Thank you," she said. "Next time I will know always to bring a sword to a gunfight."

Down at the landing, Doc shook off Alastair's restraining hand and got unsteadily to his feet. Ish turned to look. "Are you well? What now?"

Doc leaned against the wall. "We cover these stairs and wait for Athelstane's men to get to us with gas masks." His voice was weary; it looked as though he were having trouble focusing. "Then I want to see where those men came from."

Gunfire woke Fergus. He looked around.

Blackletter's gunmen lay in the corridor, dead or unconscious. The gunfire came from the laboratory. Fergus rose and looked in through the laboratory door.

Joseph, the clay man, looked liked a pincushion of the gods, so mottled was his skin with the craters and divots of gunfire. No longer could he be mistaken for a man even at this range. He chased Harris around the ruined lab, inconsiderately stepping on bound men as his path took him across them.

He carried a four-foot club, the leg of a lab table. He swung it, a fast, brutal attack. Harris struck the table leg with his hand, snapping it in the middle, sending half its length spinning across the room, but he continued to back away from his attacker.

Fergus forced his mind into some sort of working order. The old man had said Joseph was still his. This proved it. And with the evidence before him, Fergus doubted that any amount of gunfire would be enough to stop Joseph.

He turned to one of the grimworlders he'd killed and opened the man's backpack. Inside were several of the items and weapons he'd seen during his long night of questioning. And there was the one he wanted, the bomb-in-a-bag they called a satchel charge.

He pulled out the haversack full of explosives and drew the man's knife from its sheath. His fingertips tingled. It had to be made of steel. Stupid grimworlders.

He flipped open the sack and stared at the loops of cord fastened to its side. His mind was suddenly a blank. All night he'd surreptitiously watched as Costigan and Dominguez instructed Blackletter's men on the use of this equipment, and now he couldn't remember what they did to light the fuse.

Joseph tried to keep himself from thinking as he backed Harris up into one of the heavy metal barricades. If he thought, he might come up with tactics to use against his enemy. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to be stupid. To give Harris whatever advantage he could. Harris rolled back over the barricade and came up to his feet before Joseph could take advantage of his moment of awkwardness.

But Joseph kicked the barricade, throwing it and Harris to the floor with brutal force. He wished he hadn't thought of doing that.

He felt a sting in his back. He turned.

Fergus Bootblack stood there. His hands were empty. So was his face; there was no emotion there to prick at Joseph's guilt, to increase his sorrow.

"I have to smash you now, Fergus."

The mechanic just shrugged.

Joseph swatted him. He felt Fergus' upper arm break under the blow. The mechanic flew sideways, landing beside the door to the hall.

Joseph turned again. He pulled the metal barricade off Harris. The man's eyes were open but unfocused. Joseph picked him up and held him nearly at arm's length, as if the man were a steering wheel.

Joseph could feel the knife still protruding from his back. It felt heavier than it should. Something hung from it. No matter. "Harris," he said. "Wake up. I have to kill you now."

Harris came awake with the sickening realization that these would be his last moments on Earth.

Joseph held him almost gently. "I am going to break your neck," the giant said. "That way it will be over fast."

Harris kicked him in the head. Joseph's features deformed and then stretched back to normal.

Harris had the sudden impression of fire blooming behind Joseph. Then he was traveling backwards, the giant still clutching him. He saw clouds overhead and knew that he was falling.

He felt a sudden blow and the world spun away from him.

Duncan hissed in sudden vexation. Now his hangar unit was no longer answering him—unless cursing and moaning counted.

He'd failed. In part, at least; he'd wasted men. But it would still be a success if Joseph were able to kill Harris Greene, Gaby Donohue and the other grimworlders present.

He switched the talk-box dial. Captain Walbert's lean, bearded face came into view. "Captain!"

"Sir?"

"We're done. Take us away."

"Yes, sir."

Duncan saw relief in the captain's face. He switched off and frowned. The captain just did not show the proper enthusiasm. He'd actually had the nerve to protest hovering here and inviting retaliation from the Monarch Building. Of course it was dangerous—the
Storm Cloud
was a flying bomb. So was any hydrogen-filled liftship. But this job required nerve and toughness, which Walbert did not appear to possess. He'd have to be replaced.

Doc loosed the cables holding the rotorkite rotors in place while Noriko climbed into the cockpit. Ish gathered the rappelling ropes and drew them out of the way, but they were already beginning to withdraw from the hangar. Rain fell on them all through the open roof door.

Overhead was a vast gray expanse hovering below the cloud layer. It was a liftship—a huge vessel, easily two hundred paces from end to end, with the name
Storm Cloud
painted along its side. The ship slowly drifted eastward; in a few moments it would be clear enough for the rotorkite to lift off. Not far above the liftship was the solid mass of clouds Doc had studied earlier.

Doc understood the clouds now. They were not an attack; they'd been a screen for the liftship's approach. He chided himself; he'd been prepared for another airplane fly-by and rocket launch, but not for a liftship invasion.

He popped open one of the rotorkite's gullwing doors and climbed in, then dogged his door shut. Noriko spun up the rotors. Doc ignored the noise as Ish pounded on his door from outside.

"Checklist?" Noriko asked.

"No. Just take her up."

Harris became aware of a dull roar as his hearing and consciousness returned. His chest felt constricted. He opened his eyes.