Death Cry, page 22
She swung the staff again, and it sang as it cut through the air. Kane sidestepped, moving just beyond the reach of the swing. Then, as the staff continued through its arc, Kane’s left hand darted out and grabbed it, stopping it with a sudden jolt. Still holding the other end of the long shaft, the woman staggered and let out an annoyed grunt between gritted teeth. Kane raised the Sin Eater toward her as he clung to the near end of the staff, muscles flexing as he pulled the girl to him.
CLOUD SINGER SAW the muzzle of the gun rising toward her face, and she let go of the staff and lunged backward, kicking out as she flew through the air. Her heel knocked the gun aside but no shots were fired; her opponent was holding back.
“Do you think we are playing?” she asked him as she landed in a crouch. “You had an opportunity to shoot me and yet you let it slip through your fingers.”
“Yeah,” the tall, lean man replied, tossing her fighting staff aside. It clattered against one of the bunk beds as he continued speaking. “I could have shot your partner, too, but I’m trying to give you a chance to reconsider things before I wind up having to kill you.”
“You’re a fool, Cerberus man,” Cloud Singer spit as she activated her implant once more and stepped into the Dreaming for the space of a single breath. She sprinted across the open plain, noting that the other Cerberus man, the one with the dark mustache, was just getting up off the shale-covered ground behind her. Then the implant at the base of her neck fired once more, and she was back in the bunk room, seven steps from where she had been two seconds earlier, behind Kane, wrapping her left arm around his throat.
“WHAT TH—” Kane cried as the woman’s arm tightened around his throat. Where had she come from? A moment ago she had been standing in front of him and yet now she was behind him, putting pressure on his windpipe in a seemingly impossible surprise attack.
As she held him, Kane felt her pivot and suddenly her knee was slamming repeatedly into his side, knocking him off balance, trying to use his own weight to snap his neck. He keeled over, crashed on one knee, and he clawed at her grasp with his left hand.
With his other hand, the one holding the Sin Eater, Kane pointed behind him, trying to locate her. Her arm darted out, knocking the weapon aside as he pulled the trigger. With a loud recoil, the bullet went wide of its target.
Gritting his teeth, Kane tried to roll forward, pulling the girl’s arm away from him with as much strength as he could muster. Suddenly she let go and he lost his balance and slumped toward the ground, skidding on one knee. Kane’s head met the hard floor with a brutal impact, jarring the left side of his face beside the cut he had received from the boomerang. For a moment, dark spots raced across his vision, and he blinked them away as he got up, swinging the Sin Eater back at the woman.
Or, at least, where she had been.
Once again, she was gone, leaving just Kane and her partner’s unconscious form in a room full of skeletons.
BRIGID BAPTISTE STUDIED the soldiers’ patrol patterns as she waited just beyond the doorway to the colossal room that contained the Death Cry. Nine soldiers, another eight scientists and their assistants, with no easy way to just sneak in and commandeer the weapon itself.
She looked at the Fedorov rifle in her hands, wondering if a gunfight would be sustainable. She was outnumbered, and the soldiers would never trust her without an affidavit from their leader, General Serge, and they weren’t about to get that. For one thing, Serge was still lying unconscious on the floor of the interrogation room, and for another he was single-minded to the point of insanity. No, she needed another way in, a distraction, an explosion, some trick or other. She looked back at her two allies, the rapidly disintegrating Dr. Djugashvili and Yuri, his handsome young assistant. Yuri looked uncomfortable as he held his own Fedorov rifle, clearly a man unused to fighting.
That’s it, Brigid realized. She cupped her hand and whispered her plan to the young technician.
A minute later, Yuri strode into the vast chamber that housed the Death Cry, hefting the Fedorov and attracting the attention of the nearest sentry.
“What is it, Comrade?” the sentry asked, concerned to see the tech holding a soldier’s weapon.
“It’s General Serge,” Yuri explained breathlessly. “He—he gave me this rifle. The prisoner…”
“What?” the soldier asked. “Slow down, man—you’re not making any sense.”
Yuri made a show of taking a calming breath and Brigid nodded approvingly from her hiding place by the door.
“The redheaded woman, the counterrevolutionary, escaped,” Yuri explained fearfully. “The general and his men are searching every office—” he gestured back to the corridor he had just come from “—and he says that you are to check the other corridor, the whole complex.”
“This is terrible,” the sentry agreed. “How did she escape?”
“She…” Yuri began, shaking his head. “I do not know. I was sent to warn you. You must move quickly while I am to check inside the Death Cry.”
The soldier nodded curtly before calling the other soldiers around and instructing them to follow him into the series of corridors that Brigid had first used to enter the complex, in the opposite direction to her current hiding place with Dr. Djugashvili.
One soldier remained behind, and he spoke reassuringly to Yuri. “I will accompany you into the Death Cry.”
“Thank you, Comrade,” Yuri said as he watched the other sentries rush from the room. Once they had left he turned and jabbed the solid butt of the Fedorov into the man’s gut.
The soldier staggered backward, but Brigid could see that the blow wasn’t hard enough to fell him. She was already running across the lightning-bolt floor of the room, her legs pumping, wielding her own rifle like a club. As the soldier turned, Brigid smashed him across the jaw with the hard metal of the rifle. His head snapped back and he fell to the floor, dazed but still awake.
Brigid saw the soldier open his mouth, the start of his cry for help bursting from his throat, and she kicked him in the throat with the toe of her boot. The words stuck in his throat, and the man spit a painful gurgle as Brigid clubbed him with the Fedorov once again. The rifle slammed into his face, snapping his front teeth and knocking the soldier unconscious.
When she looked up, Brigid saw the look of horror on Yuri’s face. “Keep moving,” she told him, “there’s no time left for subtlety.”
With Dr. Djugashvili leading the way with his rolling, limping walk, the three of them made their way to the scaffolding and up to the entrance of the giant black metal cylinder that Brigid had come to retrieve.
WHEN KANE MANAGED TO get his gun pointed at her, Cloud Singer immediately slipped back into the Dreaming. She stood there now, catching her breath as the wind blew across the empty plain. She smiled as she heard the sweet song of the bull roarer, beyond sight but still audible, the promise of dreamslicing reassuring her.
This field mission was proving more of a challenge than she had expected. Though rudimentary in his strategy, the quick-thinking Cerberus man was a worthy opponent. Each time she returned to face him in the room of skeletons, he had seemingly learned more, analyzed the strategies that she and Rock Streaming were using. The very fact that he had knocked Rock Streaming unconscious was proof of that.
And I’m hiding, she told herself, sudden realization dawning. I’m no longer using the Dreaming as part of my arsenal—I’m here because I’m not confident that I can defeat my foe.
She cursed herself for being a weakling and a fool. Bad Father would brand her if he knew that she felt this way; he would certainly never let her go on a mission again.
She turned, looking around the landscape, and noticed the other one, the dark-skinned man who was built like a bear, creeping up on her, moving silently despite his size. When he saw her looking at him he smiled grimly and leaped forward, his hands reaching for her.
Why hasn’t Rabbit in the Moon finished this one? Cloud Singer wondered as her automatic combat reflex took over and she thrust her pointed toes up into the man’s torso. Now nowhere’s safe, not even the Dreaming.
Grant’s eyes bulged as Cloud Singer’s toes jabbed into his gut, and he felt himself retch, the taste of bile in his mouth.
He looked up, but once again the woman was gone.
AS SHE WATCHED THE OLD MAN flip the vicious yo-yo back to his hand, Domi brought up the barrel of the Detonics pistol and sprayed a volley of bullets toward him. The old man just nodded, winking out of existence as the bullets were about to hit before reappearing in their absence.
Domi spun as she heard her bullets impacting against the far wall and the old man laughing savagely. The teenager looked as if he was throwing a punch at her, but he wasn’t; he was unleashing his yo-yo at her face like a stone, trying to knock her senseless.
The Detonics kicked in Domi’s hand as she fired. Suddenly the young warrior was falling back, his throat erupting in a shower of blood where the bullet had drilled through his Adam’s apple and destroyed his larynx. As he fell the teenager yanked the cord of his spinning yo-yo, and the weight whizzed off into the wall before the cord went slack and it fell to the floor beside him.
Domi was still moving, firing beyond her line of sight as she turned back to face the two older men. The other warrior, the one who had used the compound bow, had reappeared from his brief hiding place in the adjacent room. He had been out of the fight for less than ten seconds, ducking in there to avoid her shots, but it seemed like an eternity.
As Domi aimed her Detonics at them, the older man, the one with the lethal yo-yo, pushed his tongue between pursed lips and made a single whistled note, piercing despite the moaning from the spinning bull roarer. The warrior with the bow nodded in acknowledgment, turned and ran down the corridor, away from his companions and Domi. Targeting his retreating back, Domi fired three shots at the warrior and watched, incredulous, as he appeared to wink out of reality, the bullets passing through the air where he had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Whatever these people are, they’re more than human, Domi thought. That is, assuming that they are human at all. They moved so fast, stepping in and out of reality, it seemed an impossible task to nail them. Still, she had managed to hit the youngster. The key was to keep moving and keep pressing her attack.
She barreled toward the old man as he flicked the yo-yo at her once again, her Detonics Combat Master spitting fire ahead of her.
STANDING IN THE WASTELAND, shale and sand at his feet, Grant shook his head to clear the feeling of nausea that had threatened to overcome him with the woman’s kick. He had no clue where he was, no idea what had happened to the corridor of the facility beneath the Caucasus Mountains. Was this place the Death Cry? Was this where Brigid’s consciousness had ended up when she had concentrated on the mandala?
“Brigid,” he called out, raising his voice above the distant sound of the spinning thing in the old man’s hand. He listened for a few moments, but there was no response.
Suddenly a person stepped onto the empty plain, close to where Grant had first appeared; it was the tattooed warrior, the one with the bow who had somehow brought him there in the first place. Automatically Grant flinched his wrist tendons as he raised his right hand, finger crooked. But the Sin Eater failed to appear.
Grant glanced at his hand incredulously; the nonappearance of his Sin Eater pistol on command was utterly unexpected. But, he concluded, he would have to worry about that later.
As the tattooed warrior dashed across the plain toward Grant, checking over his shoulder to see if anyone was following, Grant darted into action. Head down and arms pumping, Grant ran across the plain on an intercept path with his enemy.
Rabbit in the Moon looked up as he heard the approach of the ex-Mag and the grim smile on his face disappeared, replaced with an expression of irritation, annoyance. The huge man was upon him in a second, his massive right fist driving through the air as Rabbit in the Moon sidestepped out of its path. The warrior was just too slow, and the Cerberus man’s fist slammed into the side of his head, knocking him off his feet and disorienting his vision.
Standing over the warrior, Grant slapped his left palm against the man’s chest and drew back his fist once again. “Where the hell are we?” he snarled.
Rabbit in the Moon rolled his shoulders, shifting his weight and shaking off the pressure of Grant’s hand on his chest. But as he moved, Grant’s fist rocketed toward his jaw, knocking his head so hard he thought it would break his neck.
“Where am I?” Grant demanded again, his narrowed eyes brooking no argument.
Rolling on the tiny, sharp stones of the Dreaming, Rabbit in the Moon spun out of the way as the ex-Mag launched another jackhammer punch. The punch missed him by bare inches, and Grant howled as his knuckles slammed against the hard ground.
Rabbit in the Moon turned, spinning to a standing position, his vision still popping with colored lights from Grant’s first punch. “You’re trapped in the Dreaming, ignorant fool,” he spit as the ex-Mag turned to face him, “and you’ll be here forever.”
“Says you,” Grant snapped as he lunged at the tattooed warrior.
Rabbit in the Moon’s leg muscles tightened like a coiled spring, then released, launching him high in the air. The rules were different there in the Dreaming. The Cerberus man didn’t stand a chance.
Grant watched as his opponent kicked off the ground and flew—literally flew—into the sky high above. His jaw dropped as he watched the man pass through the clouds that hurtled by overhead, and then he gritted his teeth and bunched his fists in preparation. The warrior didn’t move like a man at all; he moved like a force of nature.
“Great trick, you ass,” Grant muttered, “but what goes up must come down.” Grant stood there, watching the skies and waiting as the anger within him bubbled just below the surface.
IN THE UNDERGROUND CORRIDOR, Domi was facing just two opponents now, and both of them were old men. The one who was spinning the noisemaker didn’t even seem to care about her. He was busy concentrating on his spinning task, his other hand resting on a gnarled old walking stick. But the other one, the one who had launched the weighted, razor-edged yo-yo at her, was a definite threat.
As the yo-yo lashed toward her again, Domi dropped to her knees, sliding beneath its arc and arching her back to keep herself low to the floor. The yo-yo whizzed over her head on its return journey along the string as Domi continued to slide across the floor, her momentum driving her onward.
As the old man caught the yo-yo and brought his arm back for another attack, Domi sprung up again and fired two bullets in his direction. The bullets soared through the air, but her aim was wide and they zipped past her target by just two inches.
Amazingly the old guy didn’t even seem to notice, didn’t so much as flinch as the bullets split the air just to the left of his head. It was weird watching him; he moved gracefully despite his age, and his movements seemed unhurried, reminding Domi of a flowing river more than a human being.
She was still firing the Detonics as the old man unleashed the yo-yo at her. Domi shifted her weight as she saw the yo-yo’s approach, but she was fractionally too late. The weight of the yo-yo slammed into her just above her right breast, and she stumbled backward as her feet continued to run forward, flipping herself in an awkward spasm of muscles.
She slapped into the floor, taking a nasty blow to the head as she tumbled over and over. Beneath the thick layer of the parka coat, she could feel a warm, damp patch and she looked down to see that the coat had been torn by one of the buzz saw–like edges of the yo-yo and blood was oozing beneath.
Domi looked up and realized, much to her own surprise, that the altercation had been a lucky one. The old man had lost control of the yo-yo when it slammed into her, and now the string was tangled. Her ruby eyes skipped over to the old warrior himself, and she saw that he was detaching the string from the simple animal-hide rig that held it to his hand. Still flat on her back, Domi raised her pistol, placing her foe dead center of her sights.
“Tough break, old man,” she muttered as her finger squeezed at the trigger.
But her finger never finished the action. The other one, the man who was spinning the bull roarer, slammed the base of his walking cane savagely against her wrist, forcing her to lose her grip on the weapon as her hand slapped against the floor. Adjusting her grip where it had slipped, she turned to her new attacker just in time to see him point the walking stick in her face. The next thing she knew, a cloud of red dust burst out of the cane.
Her face burned as though with a rash or a chemical burn and she screamed, an unbearably long shriek that carried down the length of the corridor.
IN THE DREAMING, Rabbit in the Moon rocketed through the skies, descending back to the ground below. The Cerberus warrior was down there waiting for him and, as he fell, Rabbit in the Moon nocked three arrows in his bow and fired them at the man, one after the other. He laughed as he saw the Cerberus man leap out of their paths.
His instruction had been to go to the door near the end of the corridor, the one where the light originated. When the chalk-skinned girl had begun firing bullets at him he had ducked into the Dreaming as an efficient way to make the journey without getting hurt, not realizing that the Cerberus warrior he had left there might still have some fight in him despite his disorientation. Clearly his opponent was a strong warrior, strong and bullheaded.
Softly, hardly making a sound, Rabbit in the Moon’s feet met the ground and he bent his knees fractionally just to dissipate the last of the flight energy.
As soon as he landed he was spinning, using the tungsten bow like a staff, thrusting the end of it at the Cerberus man’s face.
Grant crouched beneath the swinging bow, instinctively raising his right hand to protect his face. The bow glided by him, but Grant’s attention was suddenly distracted—the Sin Eater was gradually unsheathing from its wrist holster, like a thing moving in slow motion. It had obeyed his instruction after all, but the rules of this world were so different that it was only now starting to find its way into his palm. Maybe it was a time thing, maybe something else. Grant didn’t have the luxury to think about it as the sharp curve of the compound bow swung at him again.
