Divine Fire (16 page)

Not waiting to see if the creature eventually dropped the gun it carried, Damien brought his hands down hard, snapping both collar bones.

Still no reaction. He had half expected this, but confronting the actual fact of a soldier who did not respond to pain like a normal human being was alarming. The very unnaturalness of it raised the small hairs at his nape.

What the hell had Dippel created?

Annoyed and further alarmed when the creature began to turn and lift its gun, Damien jumped back, pulling out his pistol.

A part of him was amused to note that his subconscious was actually indignant at this creature’s reactions. Why weren’t they afraid of him? When you came at a man out of the dark, there should be something in your foe’s eyes. If not surprise, then anxiety, fear or calculation. But these creatures never reacted. Their facial muscles, even their pupils, remained fixed. Their blink reflexes didn’t work normally either.

“Well, hell,” he said. “So we do it the hard way.”

Not waiting for the thing to complete its turn, Damien brought his gun up and put the first round through its temple. The second and third shots went through the eyes.

The thing was blind then and had no brain left, but it still didn’t drop its gun. Disbelieving, Damien lowered his own weapon a few inches and systematically emptied the clip into the creature’s knees and hips. Then he moved back up to the neck, attempting decapitation.

The pistol was finally empty. Near silence and the smell of gunpowder filled the room.

Damien noted with detached interest that neardecapitation caused total blood loss from the head in a matter of seconds, and it didn’t matter if it was done with an ax or a gun. The body bled out rather more slowly once the heart stopped, but still the creature should have stopped moving almost immediately. The shuffling feet were unnerving—like a chicken that kept running after it was dead.

What was it trying to do without its head?

Slightly intimidated, Damien turned and left quickly, listening for sounds of pursuit. And they were there, close by. Another wave of zombie soldiers had exited the elevator. He’d have to take another route to the roof, leading them away from his planned path, or he risked guiding them up the stairs and to Brice.

Some legends said that zombies would die if their creator did. That would be handy. If he could kill Dippel, maybe all these walking dead would go away. He’d have to find the doctor, though, and shove the bastard into the great beyond. It was too much to hope that Dippel would suddenly succumb to guilt over what he was doing and obligingly swallow hemlock or jump off the building.

In fact, the doctor would most likely be hiding behind his creatures, playing general and waiting to see what the shots were all about.

Damien had to find Brice and get her out of here before Dippel got to her. She must not see the doctor. She would be repulsed, and might wonder about her lover and what he could become over time.

Once she was safe, he would come back and deal with the others, Damien promised himself. These soldiers were strong and programmed to kill, but they weren’t particularly smart or fast. But Dippel was. Or he had once been. Very, very fast. Very, very smart. Very, very stubborn. And more than a little bit insane, even when Damien first met him. It wasn’t a happy combination in an enemy that one knew would have to be killed.

Shots. From the staircase in the library.

That was good and that was bad. It was good if it was Damien, or if it was the guards shooting at bad guys and killing them. It was bad if it was Damien and guards shooting at bad guys and
not
killing them. Or if the bad guys were shooting at Damien.

What should she do? Go back inside and see who was winning?

And get your head blown off? Get out of sight, stupid. Wait. And don’t leave easy tracks for the monsters to follow if they come out here.

The only shelter large enough to hide in was provided by the gargoyles. And there was only one way to get to them and not leave prints in the snow.

“Damn.”

The wind was moaning an eerie obbligato that raised the small hairs on the back of Brice’s neck. It helped take her mind off the feeling of suffocation that was growing in her chest as the warm air was slowly bled from her lungs and was replaced with ice.

Though she didn’t like it, she took her own advice about leaving obvious tracks in the snow. Brice climbed up the iron trellis and then carefully stepped from ornamental girder to ornamental girder. Finally reaching the west side of the building, she grabbed a thick iron chain that was anchored between the building and the gargoyle’s studded collar. She wrapped her legs around it and made like a human caterpillar, inching out to where more gargoyles stood guard. There would be shelter of sorts there, and she would be hidden from the windows. Maybe no one would guess she was there.

Dangling upside-down was hard, but she could stare at the distant moon instead of the distant sidewalks below. It helped slightly with her growing vertigo.

Her destination was the center gargoyle, a veritable leviathan of metal among the decorative monsters. She reached it easily enough and it was certainly huge, with a lot of iron protrusions to grab on to. Yet somehow the space between hip and scaly knee didn’t look large enough when one was making an eight-foot drop from a swaying chain.

More shots. More wind. Another flash of lightning. Brice tried not to flinch.

Neck craned downward as she checked her position one last time, and feeling especially heavy with the load of cold fear in her belly, she let go with her legs and extended her body as far as it would go. Though less than three feet stood between her and the monstrous shelter, it seemed a distance of yards—even miles.

Hands screaming with pain and going numb, she finally let go. Brice landed with a teeth-rattling jar, missing her intended handhold on the creature’s chest plate, but managed not to scream or fall off.

Mission accomplished.

Sobbing once, she curled up in the gargoyle’s lap and peered under its scaly arm back at the door she had come through—when? How long had she been outside? She was having trouble judging the passage of time.

The wind moaned. Brice got colder.

There hadn’t been any shots for a while. And she was cold, so very, very cold. Could she get up now?

Her brain began a babbling litany.
Where was Damien? He’d said he was coming right back. He was a crack shot. And maybe he had guards to help him. Everything was fine. Fine! But where was he?

Hearing a stealthy rustle behind her, she whipped around in the opposite direction and peered down at the ledge.

It was a mistake.

The view of the street below was terrifying and, unfortunately, vertigo-inducing. One peep over the side had bile clawing up from her stomach and trying to escape her mouth. Heights didn’t usually bother her, but knowing that those tiny lights in the distance were actually automobiles served to remind her of how small and fragile, and how high up, she was. There should have been streetlights to fill out the lighting, but darkness had flooded that part of the city. She was sure Damien was right. This wasn’t something brought about by a careless power operator somewhere; Dippel had planned his attack carefully.

Moaning softly, Brice retreated as far from the edge as she could, clinging tighter to the leering gargoyle, not minding his teeth pressed to her breast so long as he kept her safe from the ground and the eerie westering moon, which said mockingly as it peeked through the clouds that she was still on the wrong side of sunrise, in the place where evil held sway.

The lightning also marched closer and closer, though Brice kept her eyes and ears closed to it. She didn’t want to think about having to leave the gargoyle yet. Or trying to negotiate an iron fire escape—supposing she could find one—with lightning striking around her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please help me now.”

“My pleasure, but stop suckling that beast and give me your hand,” Damien whispered back impatiently, as though her being on the roof wasn’t at least partly his fault and his appearance wasn’t a miracle.

Brice’s eyes popped open. Her mouth did too.

She could see from the disturbed snow that Damien had walked out along the low wall that circled the roof, apparently unbothered by the narrowness of the path or the distance from the ground. He stood, bent slightly and was holding a hand out to her. He added; “Unless fear has truly lent you wings and you want to try flying out of here—then by all means, stay there until you are ready.”

“You’re really here,” she gasped, relief making her dangerously weak. She reached out with half-frozen fingers that looked blue in the light of the moon. “Y-y-you’re really here. I didn’t see you come out the door. After those gunshots I was so afraid!”

“I used a window and came up the side of the building. It seemed prudent after all that shooting.”

“I-I-I still can’t b-believe you’re really here,” she said again, brain and body partly frozen into stupidity along with its semi-rigidity.

“We won’t be here long if you don’t stop messing about. Another lightning storm is headed right for us. This place is going to turn into the world’s biggest electric chair, and I won’t be in any shape to help you if I get hit.” Unable to stop herself, Brice looked at Damien’s lap. He laughed shortly. “Yes, the beast rises. It’s a sure sign that the pyrotechnics are about to begin. Unfortunately, that isn’t the only thing that happens to me when I get near the stuff.”

Brice swallowed and finally took his hand. As ever, it was warm to the touch.

Her tongue and brain finally unstuck themselves.

“H-h-how many of them are there? More than t-two? And where are the guards? Have they gone for h-h-help?” she asked as he led her along the ledge. Brice looked at Damien and not the street below. Yet, even with this fierce concentration, she could feel the bile rising at the back of her throat. She figured that if she survived the night, she would probably have a new phobia to live with. She didn’t understand how Damien managed. He made the trek along the narrow rail as if he were doing nothing more dangerous than pushing a broom down a sidewalk. And he was doing it backwards.

“Three creatures are dead, at least two are living. And Dippel is somewhere nearby, you can bet on it.”

“Th-the guards?” she asked again.

“The guards have been murdered—shot down in cold blood.” His voice was calm, but she sensed his barely controlled rage.

“I s-saw Dippel. I’m sure it was him,” Brice said, then started to shiver so violently that she had to stop talking. Emotional sinews were feeling the strain of overuse as much and more than the ones connected to her bones. The cold wasn’t helping her either. She paused a long moment to get her balance. “H-h-he’s a monster, just like the others. Only w-worse.”

“Yes,” Damien agreed calmly, stopping at the corner of the roof. The wind eddied around them. “But then, he always was.”

“Wh-where’s the fire escape?” Brice asked, her teeth beginning to chatter hard enough to cause pain. “I t-t-tried but I couldn’t find it.”

“There isn’t one on this floor. At least not a conventional one. We are going down this drainpipe. Don’t worry, I’ve done it before. It’s a piece of cake.”

Her jaw would have dropped again, but it was clenched tight against the cold.

“You’re j-joking.”

“No.”

“D-D-Damien,” she said, her voice annoyingly helpless. “I can’t.”

Damien swore, executed a sharp pivot and took a step toward her. He pulled her close and then gave her a brief kiss. The heat of his body, pressed full-length against her, drove the worst of the cold away. Unfortunately, it had an immediate effect on his body too.

“My poor love.” He released her abruptly and moved back to the corner. “No, this isn’t a jest—if only it were. I’ll go first. There are brackets every three feet. Use them as hand and footholds,” he instructed, kneeling down and then sliding off the edge feet first. “And whatever you do, don’t look down. It isn’t far to the next floor, and I’ve already cracked a window open. Just stare straight ahead and it will all be over soon.”

“I-I-I’m not really the hero type, you know,” Brice told him in a small voice. “I don’t like being d-daring. In fact, I’m a c-coward.”

“Sometimes heroism is a choice. But sometimes it isn’t.” He looked into her eyes, feeding her strength with his mind as he had given her warmth with his body. “Either way, there are consequences to taking an active part in something. The good news is that they usually aren’t as unpleasant as the kind that come with failure and cowardice.”

It was one hell of a moment for a lecture. But he was right. She thought about how Mark had died and what it had been like to be trapped, truly helpless. The only thing holding her back was her own fear. Damien wouldn’t ask her to do anything beyond her physical capabilities.

“I—I don’t want to do this,” Brice said, but she was already beginning to kneel. She did it very slowly. The wind was shoving at her, playful now that they were on the west side of the building, but it could get serious at any moment.

Damien’s head disappeared, but his voice was clear enough. “No sane person would. But you’ll do it anyway because it’s better than waiting for Dippel to come out and get you.”

She decided that he had a really good point. She turned as Damien had done and cautiously lowered her body over the side. His hand was there immediately, guiding her foot to the first brace on the drainpipe.

“H-h-he’s evil—like a demon. They all are…b-b-bloated and unnatural. I didn’t understand that. Not until I saw the eyes. It was like looking into hell.” Brice gasped as snow slid under her shirt and pressed against her belly and breasts.

“But only a lesser demon. Dippel is evil, but he isn’t quite His Infernal Majesty. We can manage him. And the rest are basically just stupid zombies.”

“Who h-h-have guns.”

“For all the good it’s done them. I’ve already killed three.”

Brice was glad that one of them thought this would be easy. Personally, she was certain that it was all getting beyond her.