Division Zero: Thrall (57 page)

“Hey, wait. Help me get his coat.”

“I gotta find my son.” Kirsten kept running.

“Wait! We can’t run outside naked. There’s robes.” Miranda scurried to one of the metal cabinets.

“I’ve already lost too much time.” Kirsten ran for the exit.

“Hey, there’s a picture of you over here.”

Kirsten stopped with a hand on the doorknob. Curiosity, or perhaps a need to understand what happened to her, muted her haste. She jogged over to Miranda. On the altar, beneath where the mask had been, a sheet of plasfilm bearing a photo of her lay beneath an ancient wooden bowl that contained several strands of blonde hair as well as ashes of something burnt. To the right, an old book was open to a drawing of an ouroboros, surrounded by writing she could not decipher. The fancy box was empty; Konstantin had his knife as well.

Son of a bitch.
She swiped the hairs out of the bowl. Her hair.

Miranda pulled the cabinet open, revealing several black silk robes on hangers. The door behind them slammed into the wall. Kirsten whirled as a man in a black suit and blood-red shirt ran through it, heading right for them. He raised a stunrod, but never made it close enough to use it.

Kirsten’s eyes glowed pure white. A stream of erratic images and thoughts crashed into the charging giant’s brain and shut it down. He went from full run to sliding on his chin in the span of an eye blink. One hand slid to the side of his head, lacking even the coordination necessary to put his hand on his face. Kirsten ran to the stunrod, stooping to pick it up and thrusting it into his neck in one fluid motion.

The large man convulsed, and went still.

Miranda’s face emerged from black silk as she let the one-piece robe fall around her. She grabbed another one. “Kirsten, here.”

Before she could turn to catch it, the large man’s body swelled. His suit split open down the back seconds before a gory explosion of blood splattered into the ceiling and all over Kirsten. Miranda screamed, dropped the extra robe, and jumped into the cabinet. Dark vapors coalesced upward from the cavernous hollow in the corpse, forming into a chitinous humanoid figure that resembled a skeleton with a crown of short horns.

Glowing red vapor welled out of its eye sockets; dry crunching ran down its spine as limbs solidified and it set its shoulders. Kirsten squinted up at the eight-foot demon and folded her arms.

“I don’t suppose you’d give me a minute to put something on before we start this?”

The polyphonic voice reverberated through the basement. “I shall rend the flesh from your bones and drink the essence of your suffer―”

“Didn’t think so.” A flick of her arm sent the lash outward, cutting the demonic ramble short.

The tip scored a light grey burn across the black, leathery ribcage. It stumbled away, unable to hide the surprise at feeling so much pain. The demon snarled, yellow-green fumes leaking through its teeth.

“Not the easy meal you were expecting?” Kirsten circled to the right, keeping the lash moving.
No wonder it’s scared, I must look like a Seraphim to it right now. All I’m missing are the wing ribbon things.

It reached to the side and swiped hard to the left. A crate flew into the air, crashing into Kirsten’s crossed arms and knocking her onto the table. Her sweaty skin slid right over it, and she fell off the far side. Stunned from pain, she curled up on the cold floor and plucked a few large splinters out of her forearm. The demon laughed and loosed a low, throaty growl at Miranda, who had just brought the pistol to bear.

She screamed again and yanked the wardrobe doors shut. Kirsten grabbed the top of the table and pulled herself standing, leaning on it for a few seconds until her legs decided to work again. The creature spun on her, palm extended. Another coffin-sized crate leapt into the air. This one was empty and it flew much faster and higher than the creature expected, exploding against the ceiling. Kirsten ducked the shower of soybean shells and wood fragments, and charged. She made a shoving gesture with her left hand, attacking the abyssal’s paranormal essence.

A contest of strength, tipped in her favor by a memory of Evan’s face, flung the dark spirit into the wall with enough force to crack cinderblocks. It bounced to the floor, rolling onto its chest with the scrape of shell on stone. Kirsten stood over it; the coiling lash grew to a length of almost fifteen feet. The shimmering blue-white light added to her illusion of feeling like a Seraphim.

One black-clawed hand sprang forth and grabbed her leg. With a contemptuous sneer, she pulled the lash around and through the rising demon. The tendril coiled around its chest, wrapping it and lifting it off the ground. She raised her arm and snapped it, flinging the enormous skeleton first into the ceiling, then the ground.
The entire damn house is going to hear this.
She took a step back, grabbed the lash with both hands, and spun in a motion that hurled the demon across the room and smashed a new hole in the cinderblocks. It floundered, arms scratching at the ground to pull itself upright as the slap of bare feet running on concrete drowned beneath her angry roar. A surge of psionic power brought her weapon to a blinding glow. The creature’s eyes widened as she jumped into a final strike that reduced the abyssal into a cloud of smoke. Kirsten backed up, covered in sweat, blood, and dust, gasping for breath as the inky smear drew into itself with a great rush of inhaling wind.

Miranda peered through the doors, her face lit by a narrow strip of light. “A-are you an angel?”

Kirsten let the lash dissipate into streams of fading light and walked over. “No, I’m just borrowing the uniform.” She picked up the robe and stuck her head through, letting the cloth fall around her body. “I think I saw one once.” She hiked it up and ran to the door. “Come on, I’m leaving.”

Miranda recovered the pistol and followed. “Sorry I didn’t help you with that… thing. You want the gun? You’re the cop.”

“Don’t be. The gun wouldn’t have done a damn thing but piss it off. You better keep it so you’re not helpless; I have a weapon.”

She stomped across the basement, as much as one can stomp with no boots, and slapped the door control by where she had entered. Two security guards in the man-cave went for weapons at the sight of her. Kirsten held her arms out and knocked the one on the right to the ground with a mind blast. Miranda shot the other one. Kirsten caught herself subconsciously gesturing like the sorceress from the Monwyn world with each blast and blushed.
Must be the robe.
The noise of Miranda firing at another man dispelled her fleeting amusement. He dove left, triggering twice as he fell. Miranda hit the ground screaming. Kirsten thrust her arm at him, rising onto her toes as she channeled another mind blast; the attack left him limp and drooling. That time, she almost chanted
Invocatus Penumbratus.

“You hit?”

“No, but I just about pissed myself,” said Miranda. “I think a bullet nipped my hair. I just steal stuff; I don’t shoot people.”

Kirsten ran up the spiral stairway, paralyzed by the sight at the top―gold dragon doorknobs.
Evan saw gold dragons devouring me…
She glanced down into the basement, the dragon’s “belly.” She shivered, her eyes started to water, but she got angry. Kirsten shoved the elaborate doors open and strode into the corridor. Security guard after security guard emerged from side rooms, falling one after the next to a series of mind blasts. A few bullets whizzed overhead.

Barefoot, in a black robe, waving her arms around and ‘slaying’ foes with magic. The scene felt like some twisted cosplay LARP based on Xiana, the Black Sorceress―only Kirsten’s “magic” wouldn’t make them get back up as skeletons. Some of Xiana’s lines from the vid echoed in her head, but she choked on them―too worried about Evan to speak. The more she thought about that fantasy world, the more she
needed
to have him next to her on the couch, watching one.

Miranda followed close, aiming her gun at each man, but not firing as they went down. “Are they dead?”

“No, but when they wake up, they’ll probably spend a few hours wishing they were.”
Just like I will in the morning.
The women fought their way through the mansion to Konstantin’s bedroom. Kirsten slumped into the wall with a hand on the side of her head.
Oh, yeah. It hurts.

Finding the doors locked, Kirsten leaned back and kicked. They rattled. “Ugh, this is so much easier with heavy boots.” She threw herself into it and bounced away. Another kick stunned her foot and left her hopping. “Give me a hand?”

Miranda nodded and backed up.

Both women rushed it, breaking through and stumbling to a halt a short distance later. The stink of burned hair hung in the room. Her purse, and the E-90, sat at the center of his desk as if dropped in a hurry. She reclaimed her weapon, refusing to look at the bed, and kissed the NetMini when she found it in her purse, turned off.

“What stinks?”

Kirsten tapped the NetMini, willing it to boot up faster. “Some idiot tried to fire my service weapon.”

Miranda’s face gave away she knew all about police trigger interlocks. “Ouch.”

“It’s no worse than a stunrod to a grown man.”

Chimes came from the NetMini.

“Siri, send a call for backup right away. Try to call Nila or Evan too.”

“Why did you turn me off, Kirsten? You know I don’t like it when you turn me off.”

She pointed the E-90 at her NetMini. “I wasn’t the one who turned you off.”

“Calling now.”

“Girl,” said Miranda. “Time for a new phone. That one’s got attitude.”

Kirsten rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me started.”

“So, umm. Thanks for getting me outta there. I’m gonna get lost before the place is swarming with blue and whites.”

“You’ve got probably eighteen shots left in that thing. We don’t know how many men he’s got on his security team. Are you wanted right now?”

“I don’t think so.” Miranda gnawed on her knuckle. “I didn’t want to risk it… What’s the point of getting away from one cage just to wind up in another?”

“The police won’t sacrifice you to demons.”

“Good point.” Miranda plopped down on the end of the bed.

hattering teeth seemed as loud as thunder as Kirsten paced in a circle. Men shouted downstairs, barking orders to search the grounds and ensure no one got out. From the sound of it, Kirsten felt better about just staying in the bedroom.
They think we went outside already.
She shivered each time her foot hit the rug, each time the sheer silk robe brushed over her body. Each time she glanced toward Miranda seated on the foot of the bed, she cringed. Kirsten tried biting her nails, but the sight of the redness around her wrists just made her angrier.

Rage and shame got into a fencing match over what Konstantin did to her. The worst part of it was he made her want him to. Mercifully, much of what happened came back muted by the effect of his mental influence. Blurry bits and pieces of the previous few weeks fast disintegrated into a haze of amnesia. With each passing minute, it seemed less and less real.
I should be happy he charmed me. Maybe when it wears off I won’t even remember how rough his hands are.
She gurgled.