The six scarred, muscled men that boarded the forward helicopter would have been intimidating even if they hadn’t been nine feet tall. Their leader, a blue-eyed monstrosity who called himself Goro, carried a Dillon Aero M134D-T. The titanium minigun with six rotating barrels had been designed for a helicopter mount. It topped out at three feet long, and the exoskeleton around the bonk's torso that helped him wield it made him look even bigger. That his lower jaw had been replaced with serrated metal didn't help him in the charm department, but it matched up with the body modifications of the others: dorsal blades, steel plates riveted to bone, razor-sharp steel teeth.
Garza had vouched not only for their reliability but also for their tactical acumen. Matt had a hard time buying it. These men—not true men anymore—knew they courted insanity and didn't care. Such short-sighted, for-the-moment self-destruction left Matt cold. He didn't understand that mentality. Even before they bonked, bonks weren't the slightest bit sane.
The mercenaries took off thirty seconds before Matt's group did, thundering over the Mediterranean in a blast of salty prop wash. With only Blossom, Dawkins, and Matt in the passenger compartment, the second chopper had plenty of room despite their equipment. Matt had a bandoleer of grenades, two kilos of C4, a kilo of det cord, an AA-12 with a backup drum of directional explosive rounds, and in his pocket, Monica's cross and an autoinjector loaded with level-six musculoskeletal enhancements. His gut clenched with more than the typical pre-action nerves, and his mind boiled with uncertainty.
They streamed across the black water under the light of a quarter moon, flying by eye less than twenty feet above the waves. The resort town dotted the hills with lights, but at three in the morning there were no crowds, and the cities of the Riviera offered little enough illumination. Recon had confirmed that Brian Frahm had gone to bed at midnight. There were no visible guards.
Matt suppressed the urge to kill Blossom. Enemy or not, they stood a better chance with her, and her motivation burned no weaker than theirs. She and Dawkins had argued over whether or not they had the right location; Brian's presence didn't guarantee Gerstner's. She didn't trust his precognition, and if they attacked the wrong place they'd tip their hand. In the end, she agreed to follow his lead, but her already taciturn personality had turned black.
On cue, nine seconds to touchdown, light blossomed under the stabilizers on the first helicopter. A pair of missiles fell, then streaked forward in a burst of blue and yellow flame, a second pair firing just behind them. They broke the sound barrier just before impact. As the explosions washed the hidden cavern in orange, the helicopters banked to avoid the updraft, and slowed.
The bonks didn't rappel—they leapt. Twenty feet in the air at thirty miles an hour made for an easy jump for the massive men, who rolled on impact and came up running. They fanned out to the sides as the rear chopper rocked, firing missiles of its own. Flame shot out of the tunnel, and they followed the backdraft in, relieving Matt's first worry: the tunnel hadn't collapsed, and the missiles had breached the giant steel door inside.
He watched their progress on his heads-up display, six tiny screens on the right side of his vision, one for each of Garza's bonks. Goro led the charge, his screen a continuous burst of light as the minigun shredded the survivors behind the door. A rocket-propelled grenade streaked out of the tunnel into the water, erupting in a harmless splash of salt and foam.
Matt's chopper hovered next to the second-floor balcony. He took three short steps and leapt. As his foot hit the iron rail he fired a burst into the plate-glass door. He flew through it in a spray of glass, HUD visor tracking for targets. Blossom blurred past him into the next room.
A brunette touched with gray pulled the blanket up around her neck and screamed. Matt pointed at her. "Don't move." Dawkins landed next to Matt and pulled the trigger on his AK-47. Tufts of feathers blasted into the air. The woman twitched and fell silent.
"Fuck!" Matt said, turning on Dawkins, ready to pounce.
In response Dawkins stepped to the bed, shoved an arm under the mattress, and pulled out an H&K assault rifle. "No one gets behind us."
An explosion boomed below them, and the house shuddered. One of the bonk's display had gone dark, and two more struggled in mortal combat against bonks every bit as massive. Something crashed in the next room. A man cried out. Matt stepped around the corner, weapon raised, and lowered it as he took in the scene.
Next to the upturned couch, Blossom held Brian by the hair. She had his body twisted in a cruel parody of boxers-clad Twister, back arched, one hand on the ground to take pressure off of his head. He clutched his right hand to his chest, three fingers bent at odd angles. A machine pistol lay at his feet.
Behind Matt, Dawkins spoke. "Where is she?"
"Fuck you," Brian said through a grimace of pain.
Dawkins approached, an autoinjector in his hand. "No need for theatrics. You tell us where she is, and I don't make you psychic."
A ragged, raw sound erupted from Brian's throat; a laugh. "If you succeed, that won't mean a thing."
Blossom and Matt exchanged glances. Brian's throwaway answer filled Matt with hope he hadn't felt in forever.
Below them, Goro had run out of ammo and used his minigun as a club, crushing men and bonks into oblivion with the titanium barrels. His squad held their own, and on their cameras Matt saw even the helmetless one still stood, battered and bloody and holding a blood-soaked axe. Another rocket streaked from the darkness.
Dawkins sighed, put away the injector, and drew a knife, smiling as the house shuddered again.
"Okay, theatrics then, you coward. You might not age, but you won't regenerate either. To keep you from stalling, every couple of seconds, if we're not making progress, you're going to have one less body part to enjoy in your immortality. I'll start small."
Brian's eyes didn't leave the knife. "Okay." He snuffled as tears sprang to his eyes. "If you promise you won't hurt me. . . .” He swallowed. “I'll . . . I'll show you the machine."
Dawkins nodded at Blossom, who pulled Brian to his feet and let him go. To his credit, he didn't try for the gun.
"Where?" Dawkins said. "And remember, each lie costs you something permanent."
"Basement."
Weapons fire from below accompanied them down the stairs, through a massive kitchen, to a plain white door. Two more HUDs had gone down, but at least one of Garza's bonks kept his feet—their resilience overshadowed that of their equipment. An explosion rocked the building.
"What are we up against?" Matt asked.
Brian shrugged. "There were two dozen augs inside when I went to bed, eight of them bonks." He opened the door. "None of them know this way, though."
Blossom took point down the mortar-and-stone steps, into the darkness. Matt followed, surprised at the thermocline; goose bumps rose on his arms, his breath frosted the air. Despite the cold, everything else seemed normal.
A water heater stood in the corner next to a dingy desalination system. A mop sink, a sump pump, and shelves cluttered with tools dominated the far wall. Brian nodded to a cast-iron wood-burning furnace. "Behind there. Through the wall."
Matt inspected the mortar and stone. It looked solid to his eyes. "How do we get through?"
"Brute force," Brian said.
Matt turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. "Seriously?"
Dawkins grabbed Brian’s broken pinky finger, wrenched it to the side, and severed it with a smooth upward stroke of the knife.
Brian screamed and stumbled back, sweat breaking out on his forehead. "Please! No! It's that or fight your way through down there." Another blast from below punctuated his statement, and mortar dust rained from the walls. Dawkins shoved him to the ground and wiped the knife on the front of Brian's shirt.
"Better wrap your hand. It'd be a real shame if you bled out."
"You idiot," Brian sneered. "There are shaped charges on the far side in case I ever needed to get out in a hurry. I never dreamed having to get in that way."
Matt pulled out the det cord, and Dawkins grabbed his hand. "Save it. It's only a brick wall." While Blossom took a sledge hammer and shattered bricks, Matt grabbed a crowbar from a shelf to pry them out.
Goro's HUD vanished in a flash of white, then went to static. An inhuman roar echoed through the walls. Someone screamed, a high-pitched, desperate wail of hopeless agony.
"I think they made him mad," Dawkins said.
Brian sulked, his right hand oozing red around his left palm. "You said you wouldn't hurt me."
"I apologize for my overreaction," Dawkins deadpanned, as Matt revealed a steel wall behind the brick. "But that's the exact opposite of what I said. Now shut up unless I ask you question." He tossed Brian a handkerchief from a pocket. Brian picked it up from the floor, wiped his eyes, and pressed it to his bleeding stump.
After a few more minutes they'd cleared out what looked like a naval bulkhead, smooth steel panels connected with quarter-sized rivets. Matt looked back at the tool shelf for a suitable cutter, and Blossom punched the sledge through the wall in one fluid motion. The metal shrieked as she pulled it back. Stale fluorescent light spilled through the hole, along with the scent of nitroglycerine, gunpowder, and underneath them, the stink of blood and shit and death.
Gunfire echoed through the hole, and another roar that Matt recognized as Goro's. The last working HUD lay on the floor, unmoving, giving him a view of the carnage. Goro slammed a bonk into the ceiling, then, with the help of his exoskeleton, tore him in half. He turned, his face a bloody streak over an exposed skull, and laughed. Something flashed by on the camera, and Goro's head fell from his shoulders and rolled out of sight. The headless giant just stood there, held up by the exoskeleton, as the fight moved deeper into the basement and out of sight.
Blossom punched another hole near the first, then tore the hammer downward. The wooden handle shattered and the steel head fell to the floor inside. She reached through to her shoulder, picked it up, and used her hands to bash it through the thin strip of metal connecting the holes. Bloody lines where the steel had shredded her arm faded to pink as she worked.
Matt joined her with the crowbar, creating a mad pointillism of ruined steel before tearing through it with brute force. Once they'd done sufficient damage, they tore the metal door back and tossed it to the floor, the shriek and clatter deafening in the confined space.
"For the love of God, Montressor," Dawkins said behind them. "Where to?"
Brian's voice held a touch of petulance. "At the end of the hall. Go all the way down."
Matt grunted and stepped into the tiny corridor. The whispers tittered in anticipation. The claustrophobic, smoky hall led down to a spiral staircase that had to be a hundred years old, the wrought iron steps swaying with every footfall. The sounds of battle grew louder as he descended. Maybe halfway down—he'd counted forty-six steps—he encountered a bulkhead door like they used in World War II-era subs, twisted and mangled on the floor. Through the dark opening came screams of pain and panic, gunfire, and explosions. The iron stench of blood and shit emanated from within. He readied his weapon and crouched next to the entry.
Brian stopped next to him, opened his mouth, looked at Dawkins, and closed it. Then he tried again. "Keep going. She's all the way down."
Matt ducked past the entryway and ran down the rest of the stairs. He reached the bottom and jogged down a long hallway that had to put them under the water. He pushed through the steel door, Blossom at his heels, and blinked in surprise.
A dozen naked bulbs hung from the ceiling, bathing the gigantic, whirring, clockwork monstrosity in a tepid glow. Giant brass cogs whirled, steel gears spun, and pumps forced black fluid through stained stone channels. Glass tubes crackled with lightning, and a warren of hoses snaked into and out of an enormous steel platform.
Atop it, an emaciated cadaver lay surrounded by arcane machinery, the tubes protruding from her body leading to brass canisters emblazoned with swastikas and eagles. Shriveled breasts drooped on exposed ribs too thin to belong to a living being, but they rose and fell with the rhythm of breath. Someone had carved a crude glyph on her forehead, an old bloody scab wrought by crude hands: the Ul. Withered lips couldn't cover the skeletal remains of blackened, rotten teeth. Spiked iron manacles pierced the body's wrists, ankles, and head, holding her arms outstretched and her ankles crossed in a barbaric parody of Christ.
Beneath the platform, throbbing, jade-colored tentacles pushed through cracks in the concrete like the roots of an ancient, gnarled tree. Energy pulsed along these roots, flowing from the table into the ground. Matt kneeled and pulled the C4 from his satchel. Two kilos in a confined space would make a hell of a mess, but he pulled out the det cord just in case.
"Hostiles," Dawkins said. A sulfuric stench filled the air.
Matt raised his head just in time to dive out of the way of a tendril of thorny smoke. His head rang with the realization that the whispers hadn't warned him. He choked up his AA-12 and fired. The microexplosive projectile tore a chunk off of the humanoid mass of green-gray haze even as twisted black thorns sprang from its solidifying body. Gunpowder joined the stink of sulfur.
He fired again as it closed, and it stumbled sideways. Two more rushed him. He cracked one in the head with the butt of the gun, snap kicked the other in the torso. He grunted in surprise as his foot sank in and the ribs became a mouth with gnashing, barbed teeth. He placed the barrel against the thing's chest a foot above his ankle and pulled the trigger. Bone shredded and meat exploded. As it staggered back, he yanked his boot free in a gooey string of mucus-like fluid. Bits of shrapnel and sticky blood steamed on the torn leather, but his foot didn't hurt.
He grunted in pain as his first assailant wrapped his right arm with ropy, tentacle-like appendages, its thorns stabbing into his muscle. He lost his balance on his slippery left foot and fell, the creature collapsing on top of him. Blood filled his vision as barbed teeth raked across his face. He snarled and jammed his fingers into its single, vacant eye. It shifted, giving him enough leverage to throw with his legs, and he slammed it into the wall.
Blossom decapitated it on her way by and stabbed the second assailant a dozen times before Matt had a chance to recover. Despite her speed and regenerates, her shredded Kevlar vest hung in tatters over blood-slicked skin. He sidestepped a punch from another thorn-thing, wrapped his arm around its neck, and twisted. He felt the crunch even as thorns stabbed his arms and chest, then grunted in surprise as it dissipated in a sulfurous fog.
Blossom held her own against two more, and Dawkins fought three. Brian sobbed on his knees, trying to push slimy coils of intestine back through a tear in his abdomen. Matt pulled a grenade from his bandoleer, pulled the pin, and tossed it toward the table.
A smoky form materialized, grabbed the grenade with thorny tentacles full of teeth, and burst as it went off. He threw two more. Each was swallowed by demonic forms without damaging the machine. Dawkins screamed, a guttural, choking yell that cut off in a gurgle. Matt whirled.
His throat a gaping ruin, Dawkins still fought. Blood streamed from severed arteries even as he punched a combat knife straight through the creature that had ravaged his neck. The wound grew teeth and closed on his arm, shredding muscle and bone. The knife fell to the ground. His forearm followed.
Matt fired three rounds from his shotgun. All three creatures exploded in wisps of vapor. Dawkins fell to the floor, the blood gushing from his neck and arm slowing, but maybe not fast enough. Matt turned around to help Blossom, just in time to see another creature vanish as she cut out its heart.
"We can't keep this up," she gasped.
As eight more shapes emerged from the darkness. The whispers chuckled in dark anticipation.
Matt swore. With no time to reload, he grabbed the injector in his pocket, jammed the needle into his thigh.
I'm sorry, Monica. I love you.
He pulled the trigger, flooding his system with eldritch augmentation. He gasped as power like he'd never felt consumed him.
His arms bulged as the first two reached him. He screamed as muscle layered over muscle, as bones stretched and thickened. He grabbed them and slammed his fists together, pulping their heads in a spray of blood and mist. Three more followed, but he rushed forward and knocked them aside even as they wrapped him with thorny tendrils. He screamed as agony wracked his body, not from the attack but from the walls of inhuman strength that twisted through him. The whispers screamed with him as layer upon layer of muscle wrapped thickening bones. He gloried in the slaughter.
He tore at them with his bare hands, rending flesh and snapping bone with every grasp. Tentacles wrapped him; he flexed and shredded them. Thorns pierced his skin, and he laughed at their insignificance. More came—he didn't know how many—and as they advanced he destroyed them. His fists crushed bone through the floor, blasted rib cages apart, shattered heads. He grabbed two forms and slammed them together. They disintegrated. He stepped forward into a cloud of sulfuric, bloody mist, and snarled at the lack of opponents.
He roared in challenge and whirled to find more, but a woman's cry silenced him. He froze in shock and looked down at Blossom as she screamed his name again. Part of him wondered how she'd gotten so small, become a tiny thing half his size. Another part wanted to crush her, squeeze the jelly out of her, slam her into the wall until she burst.
He closed his eyes against the madness and, shuddering, took a knee next to Dawkins's bloody form. The psychotic rage within him quieted but didn't disappear. He took a few more breaths, steadied himself, then got to work.
He pulled a tangle of blasting caps from his pocket with thick, clumsy fingers. Monica's necklace fell to the floor, bent and twisted. He picked up the cross and entwined the chain in his fingers so he wouldn't lose it. He pressed two blasting caps into the C4 and another into the det cord.
A worried glance at Dawkins told Matt he might live. He'd lost an enormous amount of blood, but the gush had dwindled to a trickle, and flesh knitted under new skin. He groped on the floor for his forearm, lifted it, and held it to the stump at his elbow. The screaming voices in Matt's head wanted to kill him anyway. He reached out—
"Matt," Blossom said. She'd reloaded his AA-12 and tossed it to him. He caught it, turned his gaze to follow hers. Six more demons—they had to be demons—materialized around the bed. He sprang to his feet and hoped there weren't many more of the things, even as he grinned in anticipation of the slaughter. If Gerstner couldn't manifest more than a few at a time, they could keep this up for a while.
But not forever.
Gerstner sat up. The shriveled corpse's dry, cracked skin sloughed off, taking the tubes and tentacles with it. The manacles that held it in place fell through its flesh as the withered meat and bone faded to black smoke. Wings of ash and fire unfolded over the machine. The angelic being rose to her feet on a pulsing column of writhing jade light.
Matt shot the column on full auto. The tiny grenades punched into it and disappeared. If they exploded, he couldn't tell. He dropped to the C4 and—
STOP.
The whispers screamed it with one voice, her voice, and Matt stopped. Blossom had frozen in place next to him, her eyes wide with panic. The sound of Dawkins's first gasping breath broke off mid-stream. The root-like tendrils of jade shifted; instead of flowing from her, they pulsed upward from the ground, filling Gerstner's shadow with blinding brilliance, at once a great beauty and a skeletal monster. Silence reigned, except for Brian's mewling, blubbering cries.
KNEEL.
Matt fell to one knee. He clenched his fists but could do nothing more. Blossom kneeled on his right. On his left Dawkins let go of his ruined neck to bow his head in homage. The demons dropped prostrate and groveled without sound.
She stepped from the table, skeletal feet cracking as she approached the crumpled form of Brian Frahm. The jade column writhed around her, at once part of her and something other. She crouched next to Brian, put a clawed finger under his chin, and lifted him. He clambered to his feet, tearful eyes locked on hers, his face an expression of pure adoration. His intestines slithered to the floor in a ropy mass as he let them go.
His voice carried the tiniest hint of breath. "I am yours."
She leaned in and kissed him with lips that weren't there, and he sighed as his body turned to ash. His human form crumbled, but instead of falling to the ground it swirled around her, joined with the majestic glory of her wings. His shriek joined the whispers as they gibbered their love for their mistress, who grew more beautiful with every step.
Matt struggled. In his mind he screamed and raged and cried out, but his massive, rippling body did nothing. He heard something then, a tiny murmur. Dawkins's lips moved, a bare whisper escaping them. Matt recognized the chant that he had used on the egregoroi. He tried to pick out the words, to repeat them even if he couldn't understand them, but his lips did not move.
Gerstner turned and glided over to kneel before Dawkins.
She smiled, lush lips superimposed over a starving skull. Dawkins shuddered as she ran her hand through his hair. The whispers spoke along with her, a single voice consuming Matt's mind and blocking out all else, all his wants and fears subsumed to her power.
"Ah, my Israel, my Jacob." Matt couldn't comprehend the beauty of her voice. "You've brought so many to my fold, would you now play Judas?"
Dawkins's chant grew louder, his voice stronger and more confident, and her anger crackled through her form in wisps of jade lightning. Dawkins sneered, continued his chant, and moved to rise in defiance of her will.
NO.
Her voice reverberated through Matt.
YOUR SINS BETRAY YOU.
She knelt and grabbed Dawkins's head with both hands. He grew louder still, his face stiffening with resolve even as his neck knitted together, but he dropped back to the floor. She silenced his soul with a kiss.
As Dawkins's body crumbled to dust and swirled into her being, Matt prayed. He squeezed Monica's battered cross in his hands and, though he didn't have the words or even the faith, he prayed for the strength to protect her from this demon, not the strength of his inhuman body, but something more.
Gerstner cooed in pleasure and glided to Blossom, brushed her cheek with the back of her fingers. "Would you be my Lydia, and follow my fathers to their deserved glory?"
As Blossom nodded with eyes raised in rapture, Matt's fist squeezed the necklace. A tiny tendril of jade broke from the column that surrounded Gerstner, slithered across the floor and touched his hand. It turned silky white as love poured from it. He felt Monica first, then Akash and Garrett and old police buddies he hadn't seen in a decade, then a torrent he couldn't hope to stop.
The dam broke. Gerstner's victims, countless thousands of souls damned to serve her, junkies and slaves, kings and emperors, human sacrifices and high priests, filled him with divine glory. The jade column surged into him white hot, not with fury but with the triumphant joy of salvation. In that maelstrom he felt the tiny, gasping light of his son entwined with Monica's faded spark.
He couldn't hold on to this power, could never survive it. But for everything he couldn't do for her, everything he couldn't provide for his son, he could at least do this. He picked up the C4 and stood.
Gerstner stumbled back from Blossom, away from him, her lack of grace a stark contrast to her prior confidence. He held out the cross and stepped toward her. It blazed a pure, white light, a tangible epiphany that illuminated the black skeleton within her stolen, ephemeral flesh. White wisps slithered from it to wrap her in gossamer threads. Where they touched the jade tendrils, they burned. The whispers shrieked and snapped, a brittle sundering that sent shudders through the angelic glory before him.
Behind him, Blossom moaned. He didn't know if she could hear him, but he said, "Sakura, run."
"I'm not leaving—"
RUN! The world reverberated with his command.
He took another step, bathing the thorn demons next to the altar in white light. They writhed, turned to shadow, and vanished.
Laughing, Gerstner backed into the table. She shimmered in the light, a woman terrible in her beauty, a black withered skeleton who drank it in. Her bright green eyes blazed into his soul. Her voice rang in his mind, her dark whispers a susurrus drowning in the sonorous clamor of those who had broken free.
"Do you think you can do what the Father could not? What his Son could not? I am Bathsheba, Jezebel, Lilith, Nyx, and you cannot destroy me. Your sad faith holds no power over me."
The jade column blackened, shriveled, devoured the light. The cocoon withered, and Matt stumbled. Blood ran down his ruined face. More gushed from his back, his chest, his leg. He burned in agony as strength leached from his withering muscles, as brittle bones splintered under too much mass. He groaned under the weight of his wounds. The world grew dull. Gone were the infrared and ultraviolet signatures, gone the superhuman strength, the speed. And yet his soul rejoiced as the yoke of the whispers left him.
Gerstner laughed again, cruel malevolence given voice. "All that you are, you owe to me. I own your body, I own your soul. You will serve me."
Matt blinked. He knew the truth.
White tendrils snaked upward, entwined Gerstner's wings of ash, solidified the smoke and bound them to the machine. Silk strands flowed down her throat, into her nostrils, and where they touched the illusion of beauty and power crumbled into dusty, skeletal reality.
"I'm a husband. I am a father. I am a servant, but not yours." He reached out with weak, trembling hands and draped Monica's cross over Gerstner's head. She screamed, a piteous wail devoid of hope for salvation. Matt smiled and shoved the C4 into her unwilling hands even as she gasped out a stream of spiteful gibberish.
"God allowed you to remain after the flood, to tempt but not to take form. You've violated His command so you could take men's souls against their will. But you can't have them. You can't have mine. And you sure as hell can't have hers."
He jammed his thumb down on the trigger. Gerstner screamed, and her rage obliterated him.