Deathstalker Return (47 page)

Emma sniffed, and put away her gun. “What do you want with us, Diana Vertue? Your old name and reputation don’t exactly inspire confidence.”

“There will be a gathering of ELFs and uber-espers tonight,” said Diana. “And I’m here to tell you where it’s going to be. All the uber-espers will be there, gathered together in the flesh in one place for the first time in over a century.”

“Someone slap me,” said Nina. “I may faint.”

“Don’t tempt me,” said Emma, not taking her gaze off Diana. It never occurred to either of them to question Diana’s identity, or the truth of what she was saying. Her sense of presence was just too strong. Emma did her best to keep her voice level and businesslike. “Give me the location, Diana Vertue. And I’ll put a bomb under it so big they’ll find pieces of the building on the Rim worlds.”

“Tempting thought,” said Diana. “But unfortunately, quite impractical. Their meeting place is set deep under the House of Parliament. I don’t know if the people would really miss all the members of Parliament, but the old building still has great sentimental appeal.”

“Under the House?”
Emma was honestly outraged. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since long before my time,” said Diana. “The uber-espers have used this very secret location for their little get-togethers for centuries. Discovering its location was what got me killed. They ganged up on me. Ambushed me. I never even sensed it coming. When I died, the shock scattered my memories. The oversoul arrived in time to absorb my consciousness, but it took me many years to recover everything I’d lost. Now I’m all that’s left of the oversoul on Logres, and my abilities are limited by my need to keep a low profile. If the uber-espers even suspect I’m back, they’ll go to ground and you’ll never find them. But I’m going to fix it so you can sneak into the meeting place under the House, and make a record of everything that happens there.”

Nina had one hand up in the air and waving, like a child in class. “Can I
please
ask you just a few little questions first, Diana?”

“If you must.”

Nina had a notepad and pencil at the ready. “So, you’re here. You’re back. Wow! You must have seen a lot of changes. So, what’s your favorite restaurant? Who’s your favorite vid star? Were you really having an affair with Finlay Campbell? And where does your body come from, if you only exist now as a part of the esper mass-mind?”

“A lady doesn’t answer personal questions. And I don’t have time for the rest of that shit. Neither do you, if you want to get to the meeting before it’s over. You have to leave now.”

“Why did King Robert and Queen Constance never make a legend out of you, like they did with the others?” said Emma, if only to show she wasn’t going to be hurried into anything.

“Because they had enough sense not to annoy me,” said Diana Vertue. “They knew I never approved of the whole legends business. But they were King and Queen, and I . . . was busy with my own affairs.”

“Affairs?” said Nina, her ears pricking up.

“Not the kind you’re thinking of, dear. And don’t push for answers that are none of your business, or I’ll hit you with a plague of frogs.”

“Oh, I just love little froggies! They’re so cute!”

“All right, how do you feel about a plague of boils?”

“Can I just ask one last teeny-tiny question?” Nina put on her best winsome expression, and hit her charm button for all it was worth. “I’m sure an awful lot of people would like to know: why didn’t you and the rest of the super-people do something about the Terror, all those years ago? You knew it was coming. Why did you all just go away, and leave it for us to deal with?”

Emma winced, and braced herself for an explosive reaction, even getting ready to grab Nina and haul her out of the line of fire if necessary, but in the end Diana just looked at Nina for a long moment, and then sighed quietly.

“Because . . . we never were super-people, dear. Not really. Just people, with extra abilities. And we were all so very tired, after so many battles, that had cost us so much . . . We just didn’t have it in us to fight another war. Not then. So many good people dead and gone, and we had an Empire to rebuild. So we all went our separate ways, going wherever duty or need drove us . . . And none of us ever really thought the Terror would arrive in our lifetime. If we thought about it at all, I suppose we all assumed that by the time the Terror finally got here, mankind would have evolved into something capable of stopping it. We all had such faith in the Madness Maze, in those days . . . I have to go. I have to be about my business. But first, some gifts.”

Emma and Nina cried out in pain and shock as Diana Vertue thrust information directly into their minds. All in a moment, they knew exactly where to find the meeting place, how best to get there unobserved, and from what vantage point they could best overhear all that was said. It was as though they’d always known it. Emma and Nina slowly dropped their hands from their aching heads, and Emma glared at Diana.

“You might have warned us.”

“Would it have helped? I’ve also placed powerful esp-blocking mechanisms in your heads, for your own protection. Natural ones, not artificial. The uber-espers won’t know you’re there, unless you’re dumb enough to attract attention to yourselves. Best of luck, my dears. You’re going to need it.”

And she was gone, as though she’d never been there. And perhaps she hadn’t. Emma and Nina looked at each other.

“You don’t have to come with me,” said Emma. “This is going to be incredibly dangerous. We make one wrong step, and someone else will be coming home in our bodies.”

“Are you kidding?” Nina looked at the notepad in her hand, then tossed it aside and grabbed her camera again. “We are talking story of the century! This is beyond an exclusive, this is a scoop! This is my own byline, maybe even my own show! In the future they’ll name awards after me. Nina Malapert, demon girl reporter! Now, let’s go, before I start hyperventilating.”

 

 

It took Emma and Nina several hours of surreptitious traveling to work their way through the warren of maintenance tunnels under the House of Parliament, and then down and down through hidden doors and unexpected tunnels to caverns excavated from solid stone, to the meeting place of the uber-espers. The map Diana Vertue had forced into their heads led them deep into the bedrock the Parade of the Endless was built on, through narrow corridors of stone that showed no signs of being worked by mortal hands. A pale diffuse glow filled the still air, from no obvious source. Emma and Nina padded quietly through the tunnels, guns in their hands, constantly on the alert for booby traps or unexpected guards, but they encountered nothing and no one. The uber-espers were confident in their secrets.

The more Emma thought about it, the more sense the location made. The House’s security teams had never been willing to admit espers to their ranks, and MPs with far too much to hide had secretly encouraged the ban. And anyway, only a major-league presence from the oversoul would have been able to detect the uber-espers behind the kind of shields they were capable of projecting. On top of all that, the sheer clutter and bedlam of thoughts and emotions generated by the House every day would easily hide any stray thoughts that might drift up from underground. Emma wasn’t blind to the symbolism either: the official masters of the Empire aboveground, and the unofficial below. Or perhaps the ego above, and the id below. She sniffed unhappily, and moved stealthily on through the relentlessly descending tunnels, with Nina so close behind her she was almost treading on Emma’s heels. The stone walls were closing in as the corridors narrowed, until the stone walls brushed menacingly against their shoulders on both sides.

It was cold now, deathly cold. Their breath fogged on the air before them. There was something up ahead now, something bad. They could both feel it. A sense of something spoiled and awful, and only partly human. Emma and Nina pressed on, trusting Diana’s esp-blockers to protect them. Whether she was Diana Vertue or Jenny Psycho, being dead for over a century didn’t seem to have slowed her down much.

The last tunnel finally came to an end in a rusted metal grille. Emma peered through first, while Nina fought stubbornly to squeeze in beside her, before finally admitting defeat and pressing her camera right against the grille. Beyond and below was a great stone chamber, hundreds of feet in diameter. Stalactites and stalagmites thrust down and up. Emma looked at the camera, and then back at Nina, who nodded quickly and silently breathed the word
Recording.
Emma settled herself in before the grille, ready for a long wait.

She had to admit, it was a great location to eavesdrop from, set right up by the high roof of the cavern. In Emma’s experience, even the most paranoid people rarely looked up—even powerful uber-espers. So as long as the esp-blockers held out . . . Emma took in a sharp breath and pressed her face flat against the rusted metal grille as the first of the uber-espers appeared, teleporting into the great stone chamber. More arrived, forcing reality aside to make room for them. Their combined presence was spiritually disturbing, on an almost primal level. Emma and Nina could feel each other shuddering, as the need to run or scream or vomit hit them in a deep atavistic layer of the mind. The uber-espers were monsters, in every way.

The first to arrive were the Spider Harps: two withered humunculi with opened skulls, their fruiting brains expelled in a great connecting web of pink and gray brain tissues. They’d somehow brought part of their own lair with them—a great expanse of gauzy brain webbing stretched away much farther from their corner of the cavern than should have been possible. The Spider Harps had physically joined two different locations, by the power of their will. They sat still and silent in their chairs, their sunken faces dead and empty, save for their dark malevolent eyes. They held hands, the joined flesh fused together long ago.

The Shatter Freak was the next to arrive. His physical existence had been shattered and scattered across time and space by some old psionic trauma. His patchwork body was composed of different parts from different times, from past and present and future, somehow combined in one constantly shifting construct. The details of his torso, limbs, and extremities were always changing; appearing and disappearing, growing and shrinking as they quickly replaced each other. His various parts clung together as though for comfort, somehow functioning as a whole, as young, old, and in-between pieces passed briefly through the present. The Shatter Freak’s face flickered and twisted as features dropped in and out, from child to ancient, with only the eyes remaining constant, full of rage and pain, sorrow and horror. Part of him was always dying, and always being born.

Emma Steel frowned, as she realized she was understanding things about the uber-espers that she couldn’t have known. It seemed Diana Vertue had left a reservoir of information behind in her head, to be triggered as necessary. Emma didn’t feel at all comfortable about that, but since it made her job easier she just shrugged mentally and went along with it. She concentrated on the monsters below, while in the back of her head someone else’s voice whispered to her of things she needed to know.

In order for the Shatter Freak’s mind to function at all, he had to hold it firmly in the present, concentrating on the now. Memory and planning were both difficult for him, but sometimes future happenings stuck in his head for a moment, making him an oracle of sorts. He was the most powerful telepath ever, and only his fractioned consciousness kept him from accessing and dominating all other minds in his proximity. No one could keep any secrets from him, not even his fellow monsters, but they trusted him because they all knew he couldn’t retain any knowledge for long.

Blue Hellfire looked very much like the Ice Queen of children’s stories: tall and slender, she was wrapped in diaphanous silks, revealing blue-white flesh beneath. Her short, spiky hair was packed with ice, and hoarfrost made whorled patterns on her corpse-pale face. She looked like she’d been buried in the permafrost for centuries and only recently dug up. She was always cold—icy cold—and most especially also in her emotions, because everything that touched her burned. Just her presence was enough to set the world on fire. She left a series of burning footsteps behind her as she strode slowly across the stone floor, and none of the other uber-espers could allow her to get too close. She was the source of the genetic material that the Empress Lionstone’s scientists had used to create the Stevie Blue clones. Blue Hellfire had hoped the research might uncover a way for her to control her own fires, but she had become far too powerful for science to tame. Her face was utterly blank, with no discernable identity or character of her own, and features so androgynous as to be almost generic. She could have been any age, or anyone. She could burn down a city with just a thought or an emotion, but mostly she didn’t care. Sometimes she made people have sex with her, just to watch them burn to death in her arms.

Screaming Silence was gargantuan: a woman of such vast size and substance that she seemed always to take up more than her fair share of space. Easily eight feet tall and almost half as wide, her body was grossly distorted, burying her human characteristics under huge rolls of fat. She was always hungry, in all ways, her various appetites never satisfied no matter how much she indulged them. Her wide face was gaudy with slapped-on colors, her cold eyes burned deep in her face, and her mouth was pursed into an endless rosebud through the constant pressure of her cheeks. She had a great dandelion blossom of gray hair, and wore nothing but lengths of steel chain, wrapped around and around her, the steel links puncturing her flesh here and there to hold the chains in place. She stank of musk and sweat and foulness.

Wherever she was, she sucked all the energy out of a place, and in particular she absorbed sensory perceptions, savoring them like sweets at a banquet. Around her, voices became quiet, scents faded away, colors became shades of gray, mouths became dry and empty, and hands became numb. With a moment’s effort she could leave a city screaming in total sensory deprivation. Or she could broadcast telepathically everything she’d stored—every sense and sensation simultaneously, like a living mindbomb—overwhelming the senses of everyone around her, for miles and miles and miles.