Ibenus (Valducan series) (16 page)

"Pull `em on," Allan ordered as they turned again into the narrow street.

Gerhard pulled the mask over his head. The snug fabric trapped his breath, making it hot and humid against his face.

They rolled to a stop. Orlovski and Luc opened their doors in unison and hurried out. Adrenaline shot through Gerhard's veins, the weight instantly gone. Clutching Umatri, he scooted onto the brick street. Cool nighttime air blew across his bare arms and through the eye slit in the suffocating mask. He moved toward the green wooden door, scrawled with black spray-paint. A padlock hung from one side above a chipped scar where a previous one had been torn off.

"Be safe," Victoria said to Allan as she moved into the front seat.

"We will," Allan said. "Just listen to the scanner. Sam, circle around and plug the alley so no one else can come through."

"You got it, boss."

Allan shut the van door and hurried to where the hunters waited. The van rolled away, tires thumping over the uneven bricks. He drew his khopesh and a flashlight and gave a nod.

Luc slammed his mace into the door. The wood cracked loudly and came undone, bursting inside like confetti. Before the splinters had finished falling, Allan snapped on his light and was through the door, Orlovski on his heels.

"Go!" Luc whispered and Gerhard stepped through, fumbling for his light.

A narrow hall stretched before them, its stained floor made of white hexagonal tiles not much larger than a euro coin. Doors on either side stood open and dark. Brown smears ran down the stairway to the right, almost blending in to the layers of grime and graffiti. At the end of the hall, a paper-thin sliver of light peeked around the door to the rear courtyard, leaning in its frame as if it wasn't broken from the hinges. A wet, musty and fetid reek permuted through the stretchy mask.

They moved toward the first doorway, the plan to clear out the first floor before moving up.

Gerhard yelped as Umatri moved beneath his grip.

"Allan," Luc said, staring down at the keris. The blade slithered like a live and angry snake. Barbs bristled and smoothed along the waving steel and it bent toward the furthest doorway.

Terror and exhilaration stole Gerhard's breath as he watched the steel dance. Umatri was alive. He wasn't crazy.
An angel. I knew it
. But if Umatri was real…

As if on cue, a baby's coo sounded from the dark opening where Umatri pointed. Gerhard shivered, an icy terror coursing through his veins.

The hunters wheeled to face it.

A second coo came from up the stairs beside Gerhard, accompanied by a scuttling patter. Umatri's blade bent upwards. Gerhard lifted his gaze to see a white, chubby-cheeked doll face peek over the edge. Pincers unfolded out from its bristle-filled maw as a baby's laughter issued from that hard, unmoving mouth.

Gerhard screamed.

Infantile wails erupted from the neighboring room. Someone shouted but Gerhard didn't know who.

The doll-faced insect sprang. Its size rivaled a cat. Gerhard stumbled back into Luc. It landed against Gerhard's vest, the hooked feet grabbing hold. He shrieked and fell on his ass. The open pincers moved toward his face and it was still giggling that innocent laugh. Pulling his head away, he instinctively slapped at it, training forgotten and the blow ineffective. Umatri whipped down and struck like a scorpion's tail. The point skewered through the side of its head, bending somewhere inside its body and coming out its back. Its legs quivered, one still tangled in the fabric of his vest. Gerhard flung the insectile thing as hard as he could and it hit the wall with a solid
thump
, splattering inky blood before it tumbled to the floor.

He yelped as a hand grabbed him by the loop at the back of his vest.

Luc pulled him to his feet. "Get back!" He maneuvered Gerhard against the wall, one giant arm protectively across his chest. "You did good."

Umatri wriggled and danced, steam rising from the black ichor coating the blade. Gerhard's eyes followed the movement to where Allan and Orlovski hacked at more of the screaming bugs. Allan swung, vanished, reappeared over a meter from where he’d been and chopped one of the creatures in half. One flew from the darkness at him but Orlovski lunged forward, his kukri a silver blur. The doll-like head separated from the body with a spray of black goo.

"Is everyone all right?" Victoria's voice cried through the radio bud.

"Fine," Orlovski snapped.

"Bit busy here," Allan said. "No chatter."

Their lights cut white beams through the thickening steam that hissed from the withering dead things. Gerhard coughed at unholy stench of rotted meat filling the air, growing fouler with each breath. His arm still across Gerhard, and eyes up at the stairs, Luc scooted them toward the other hunters. Torn and filthy clothes littered the empty apartment, splattered with rusty brown stains. Four of the dead insects lay around them, their pale shells dissolving to slimy black meat.

More baby wails erupted from the walls and other rooms. Umatri flicked to the left as a large shape, the color of lacquered bone and striped in candy red, scrambled through the top of a bathroom doorway, plaster raining from the ceiling beneath its claws.

"Allan," Orlovski barked as he swung to face it.

The creature dropped to the ground and rose. Four arms extended from its segmented carapace. Two were slender and short, ending in three-pronged claws. Above them, the two longer and barbed arms tapered into scythe-like blades. Antennae twitched atop its wedge-shaped head, its mouth a boiling array of clicking mandibles.

Three more of the wailing insects scuttled through the door behind it and sprang. Orlovski spun, whipping his kukri knife and cleaving the right legs off one as it flew. At the same time, Allan leaped and swung Ibenus. He blinked, appearing to the side of the giant insect. The creature spun to face him, its bladed arms a blurred arc. Allan dropped, hacking the khopesh toward the floor. He vanished before the blade hit and reappeared mid-air before the monster, the down-swinging blade splitting its head with a sickly crunch. He landed, stumbling a little, as the monster collapsed.

Ghostly blue fire plumed from the bleeding wound, casting long shadows across the room. Dark steam erupted from the remaining baby-faced bugs as they dropped, legs drawing up and shells melting.

Gerhard gaped, wide-eyed as the blue fire spread over the beastly corpse and flickered along Allan's bronze blade.
Oh God, it's all true
. This was real. Demons. His head swam. They'd told him. Umatri had told him but he hadn't wanted to believe.

"The hell is this?" Orlovski shone his light into the dark bathroom.

The beam refracted off of a milky texture caking the rear wall, spreading out like thick webs to the tub. A cluster of irregular chambers, the largest approximately the same size as a one-liter thermos, honeycombed along the bottom. The structure crackled and sagged before Gerhard's eyes, dissolving like a wax sculpture in a kiln.

"We saw this in Manchester," Allan said. "Some kind of nest."

Disgusted, but unable to turn away, Gerhard watched a section peel from the tiled wall and plop to the floor, evaporating.

"There's more," Luc rumbled, his voice distant.

Gerhard blinked. Umatri was still slithering, this time pointing upward where more baby cries were sounding, drawing closer with the clicking of claws on tile.

"Back from the stairs," Allan ordered. Orlovski charged toward them but Allan was faster in getting out of the room.

They were still too late.

Four of the wailing bugs scuttled over the edges of the stairway, through the white iron railing. One moved across the ceiling. Gerhard thrust Umatri at one scrambling across the tiles, but the bug leaped back and to the side. Luc swung his mace down like a cricket bat. Ooze and bits of shell exploded in a mist. The creature sailed into the far wall with a hard
thock
, sticking in place as a pulpy mass of crab-like legs.

"Back," Luc barked, pushing Gerhard's chest with his huge hand.

Wrestling the dual urges to run for his life, or the growing, alien need to kill these horrors, Gerhard hesitated. Umatri danced and withed, his desire clear.

Luc bashed at another, punching a hole into the wall. It scurried around and hopped onto his leg and darted onto the back of Luc's vest.

Yelping, the big man twisted to reach it before it could bite. Gerhard moved toward it, Umatri raised, but suddenly Allan was there before him. The Englishman slapped the bug off with the flat of his sword and chopped off two of its legs as it tried to run.

"Gerhard," Orlovski shouted, "get back!" He swung his kukri at a closing bug, not close enough to hit it, but just keep it away.

"But—"

"Back!" Eyes still on the circling bug, he pulled Gerhard's shoulder. "Turgen will have our ass if you engage!"

A huge shape swung over the stair rail. The creature stood nearly two meters, stripes of greenish yellow ran across its bony armored plates. The mantismere hissed and spat. Its armored mandibles opened wide enough to fit both of Gerhard's fists. It raised its bladed arms and thrust them forward and down like a thresher. Luc lurched back, barely dodging the attack, but collided with Allan in the narrow hall as Allan finished off the bug he'd already maimed.

The mantismere lunged and raised its blades again in one quick motion. Unable to retreat, Luc closed the distance, his mace blurring in an arc. The deadly points vaporized as the mace smashed through them. Shrieking, the demon leapt backward, dark blood pouring from the broken ends.

Fresh crying sounded from behind. Gerhard wheeled as two more bugs came through an open door. He stabbed at one, the blade seriating as it moved. The screamer scuttled to the side but Umatri lashed out, bending toward it and taking a chunk from the creature's flank. The other bug raced up the nearby wall as Gerhard skewered the wounded bug with a second thrust. Wailing that horrible scream, the impaled creature's leg's flailed, its claws raking the filthy tiles. Then they curled inward and the shell blackened and melted outward from the death wound.

Blue light erupted behind him, filling the halls. Gerhard glanced back to see Luc standing above the flaming mantismere, its side completely caved in and greasy, flaming guts splattered on the neighboring wall. The screamer running across the ceiling fell at its master's demise, leaving a trail of reeking steam like a falling meteor.

The last infant wail ceased as Orlovski chopped the bug on the nearby wall, splattering he and Gerhard with some of its foul ichor.

"It didn't die with the master," Orlovski said, turning to the hunters.

"Then there's one demon left." Allan looked up the stairs, then nodded to Gerhard. "What's through there? Basement?"

Braving a peek, Gerhard looked through the darkened door where the two bugs had come. Having first mistaken it for a closet, he now saw the narrow brick steps leading down into blackness. "Yes."

"Rest of this floor clear?"

Still panting, Luc nodded. Blue fire flickered along Velnepo's flanged head. "Yeah."

"Okay. You and Gerhard stay down here. Watch that basement and don't let anything escape. Orlovski and I will clear the upper floors." He glanced at the flaming monster at the big man's feet. "Move that body away from the door so no one can see it."

Allan and Orlovski headed up the step, leaving Gerhard painfully aware of the dark basement doorway beside him. Umatri's undulations had ceased, but that didn't calm him. What if there was a third monster? Maybe a fourth?

"Give me a hand," Luc said.

Not wanting to take his eyes from the doorway, Gerhard slowly made his way past the steaming mounds. His eyes watered at the stench that evoked memories from his thirteenth summer. A rat had died in the wall beside his bed, unreachable, and the stink of its decay accompanying him to sleep every night for a week, despite all the scented candles and room spray his mother had tried to mask it.

"Check your corner," Allan said through the radio.

"Clear," Orlovski replied. Footsteps creaked above as the knights moved along the second floor.

Gerhard stopped beside the burning monster. Blue flames flickered and danced over its entire length, brighter above the eyes, mouth, and gruesome wound. The steady flow of air coming through the smashed front door, and around the leaning back one, neither stoked or diminished the fire in any way. There was no smoke and no heat. While he'd been told about it, the non-fire disturbed him more than he'd anticipated.

Luc slipped Velnepo into his belt ring and bent before the creature's long-toed feet. "Grab it under the shoulders. We'll move it to the back room with the other."

Gerhard swallowed. Even with the gloves on he didn't want to touch it. Luc gave a sharp, commanding nod. Gerhard slid Umatri back into his sheath and, clenching his jaw, bent, reached through the dancing flames, and slipped his fingers beneath the dead thing's chitinous arms. He wondered if Umatri could even penetrate the hard shell.

Awkwardly they moved the corpse back up the hall, its hemorrhaged guts threatening to spill from the gruesome wound. A faint tingling worked along Gerhard's arms, making the hairs stand on end. He shivered, as if he could somehow shake the sensation off.

"I hate the way it feels, too," Luc mumbled, his voice so low Gerhard mostly heard it through the radio.

"It's in your head," Allan muttered through the radio. "Second floor clear. Heading up to three."

Together Gerhard and Luc moved the burning corpse into the rear room and dropped it to the floor. The sharp, insectile features on the first slain demon had softened since he'd last seen it. Its black eyes had shrunk and moved closer together, its nostrils rising up into a nose between them. The sides of its face had flattened, appearing more like cheeks. Burning blood and brains oozed out from its cloven skull. Luc drew his mace and led Gerhard back out into the hall to watch the exits and basement door. The radio buzzed as the other two hunters scoured the upstairs, searching every corner.

Three minutes later they came back down, having found nothing but trash and empty rooms.