Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] (24 page)

Wearing 22nd Century NASA jetpacks, a squad of armed werewolves rose into view, went stiff and dropped dead. So much for hecklers.

Getting tough, Katrina switched tactics. Maintaining a shimmering shield with her left hand, the Russian leveled her right arm and a massive power beam erupted from her fingers. Hungrily, the Disintegrate conjure tried to consume the red staff of the enemy mage; to burn, boil, or bore its way in. But her foe grabbed the Seal of the Scion about his neck and the staff stiffly resisted. A stream of vitriolic gold splashed against the immaterial barrier of shimmering blue. The sky was awash in lethal vibrations of the silent battle.

The entire hotel shuddered under the iridescent by-products of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object in a dazzling pyrotechnic display. I glanced at my bare wrist.

Staring at the opponent mage, Jessica made a fist about her amulet, but nothing happened. The psi shield was stronger than ever inside their headquarters.

"We have to leave before more defenders arrive,” I ordered. “If Katrina wins, she'll rejoin us. If not, then we don't want to be anywhere near Bug Boy unprotected. And we still have a rescue to accomplish."

The team made grumpy faces. Sure, it made tactical sense, but was damn unsettling. Desert a comrade in a fight, was the world worth this? Well, maybe Chicago, at least. Defeat would mean the end of decent pizza.

Reaching for my Bureau sunglasses, I cursed, remembering they were gone. Nearby, Father Donaher was using a pair of folding binoculars to scan the different hovering floors. With only naked vision, I couldn't see any numbers, or anything which resembled a convention hall.

"Well?” I asked.

He shrugged.

Chaos was pandemic, explosions, sword clangs and blinding coronas of energy came from the mages. The tarantula was dead, but Katrina was dripping in sweat and the haughty werewolf mage seemed amused.

Touching her forehead to summon telepathic power, Jessica hesitated, then pointed towards the floor covered with jungle.

Swell. “Routine four,” I declared. Separate and converge was our only hope. Maybe a few of us would get through to reach the floor and find the moon rock. I only hoped it was the correct one.

Making the sign of the cross, Father Donaher said a quick prayer before we activated our Fly bracelets and took off, leaving our pal to fight alone.

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Human missiles, we streaked through the sky.

As the battling wizards disappeared behind us, we separated and took diverging routes towards Jungleland. From this new perspective, it was easy to discern that the other hotel sections were orbiting the tropical rainforest.

Several machine guns chatted at me from a chunk of building covered with ice and snow. Already at max speed, I did a few Immelmanns and banked away to befuddle their aim. Then a rocket whooshed by me. Yipes! Whether it was a LAW, Armbrust, HAFLA, Carl Gustave, or a SRAW, I had no idea. Trouble comes in many shapes. But it was definitely not a Rapier or Amsterdam, because I lived to tell the tale.

Another rocket flashed by, then an arbalest arrow, followed by more machine gun fire, this time with tracer bullets. Fast, I did a Hammerstall to build speed and barreled straight in towards my goal. Speed was my best defense now.

The target floor loomed before me, rapidly increasing in size. A full tropical jungle overflowed the hotel piece, vines and creepers hanging over the edge. Just floating in the air like that, it resembled an Amazonian plateau, without the plat.

Swelling in dimensions, the greenery became individual trees, the growth cleared into bushes with leaves and I crashed in going head over heels.
Roll, Alvarez, roll
! It'll cushion the impact! But it didn't help when you hit a tree. Wow, that stings!

Extricating myself from the brambles, I found my bottle of Healing potion and took a swig. The pain diminished. Ah. Now, where was the gang?

Over here! Ten meters towards the volcano
.

The what? Oh there it is. Wow.

Hurrying, I found them in a small clearing of bare ground, with a matching set of chairs and sofa surrounded by lush vegetation.

Already hard at work, George had a long stick that he was frantically trying to sharpen a point on with a jagged rock. Nimble fingers busy, Father Donaher was tying his ceremonial purple sash around three stones to fashion a crude bola. Jessica was plucking leaves off a vine already knotted into a garrote. Way to go, Tunafish! We were down, but not out.

Removing my shoes, I knelt and filled a sock with dirt. Called a tap, cosh, persuader, blackjack, sap, whatever, was one of the oldest weapons created by humans, but it was still here because it worked so well. Totally silent and reusable, a sap hit like a sledgehammer and could kill in trained hands. Mine.

Testing a swing on a palm, my flesh stung from the mild impact. Cracking open a skull and pulverizing the brain should slow down even the strongest werewolf. Hopefully.

"Okay, standard search pattern,” I said. “But this time we stay together. Double coverage. Me and Jess, George and Mike."

"Hold,” Jessica whispered urgently. “There's something out there."

We moved into a defensive posture. Straining vision, I could dimly perceive a misshapen thing moving through the jungle circling our position. We could clearly hear the steady tap of multiple feet.

"What is it?” George asked, peering against the darkness of the trees.

"Another tarantula?” Father Donaher guessed, starting to swing his bola. The stones clicked once and soft as the noise was, the creature instantly scuttled forward in our direction.

"Manticore!” Jessica shouted, as the monster burst from the foliage.

The silver-blue illumination from the magical sky highlighted its bloated hairy body. Ugly bugger. Part-spider, part-scorpion and part-cockroach, the very name of the demonic insect meant death in several dimensions.

As it came near, George heaved his makeshift spear and missed. Mike threw the bola and hit, but with no effect. Before the rest of us could move, a stream of brackish liquid squirted from the mouth of the monster and hit George in the face. With a hideous gargle, the man fell, clawing at his smoking flesh.

The manticore vomited a second stream of death at me. I ducked as Donaher leapt upon the back of the beast and buried his cross into its mottled hump like a dagger! Poison blood squirted across the glowing crucifix and ignited as Mike dove for the bushes. In a juicy crackle, the mutant bug burst into flames. Bleeding fire, it charged into the bushes. A moment later we heard its death scream fading into the distance. Downward.

But congratulations for the victory were put on hold as we sprinted to our wounded friend. Biting his tongue not to scream, George clawed feebly for his canteen. Pushing the hands aside, I poured a full bottle of Healing potion on the soldier's face. There was a violent hiss and he relaxed. As the fumes dispersed and his countenance became visible, we tried not to gasp in horror.

Looking worse than a week old corpse with a hangover, George's face was a ghastly greenish yellow, the flesh puckered into ravines of gnarled skin. But even worse, his eyes were featureless orbs of solid white.

"Will I live?” he croaked.

As a friend, I had no other choice but to give it to him straight. “Yes. But you're blind."

He took the bitter news stolidly. “Healing potion?"

"Tried already."

Gingerly with fingertips, the man probed his face. “How bad is it?” George asked in a small voice.

"Oh, I've seen worse,” I lied. “Makes you look sort of like Tommy Lee Jones on a bad hair day."

He flinched. “Never play poker with me, Ed. That terrible, eh?"

Trapped, I told him the cold truth.

A little awkwardly, the soldier stood. “Come on, we still got a world to save, bud."

Stout fellow. With Donaher on guard, Jessica was already busy. Holding a forked branch by the ends, she walked around in circles searching for a secret door, hidden entrance. Maybe even the elevator. That would be nice.

Fat chance, bucko
. She stopped. “We dig here."

Using our hands, we scooped aside the loose soil until we reached concrete. Guided into place, George slammed the steel reinforced heel of his Army boots onto the material and after a few tries it started to crack. Pieces came loose and, bending low, we pried them aside. Below was a hotel corridor.

"I'm staying here,” George said, crawling to the nearby bushes and pulling branches loose. “I'll cover the hole and try to sidetrack any werewolves."

Blind and armed with a stick? Damn what a man. I would add the name George Renault to the heroes roll call of Horatio, Audie Murphy, and Ken Saunders. Probably for the last time, George and I shook his hands, Jess gave him a hug and we dropped down inside.

We found ourselves near a curtained window at the end of a hallway lined with doors. The carpet was decorated with party favors and every door had a dining tray loaded with plates and liquor bottles, plus, women's underwear hung from the doorknobs. These occult conventions must be pretty wild.

There were no numbers, each door had a brass plate and was named after a President. Yep, this was the convention floor. I tried a knob and found it unlocked. Peeking inside I saw the ocean. Donaher cracked a door and confronted a desert plain. Jess peered at the Alps as a goat wandered by.

We closed the doors. How many dimensions and places was this poor befuddled building occupying at the same instant?

On the wall, a clock dramatically ticked.

As the doors would lead us nowhere, in a triangle formation we skirted forward in the corridor, ready for attack. This deep in the enemy citadel, anything could happen.

Turning a corner, we encountered an elderly woman with white hair and a cane.

"You!” the gnarled oldster and Jess gasped in unison.

My wife grabbed the amulet around her neck as the elderly woman extended a fist adorned with a huge signet ring. Motionless, they stood there locked in silent battle. It was only specks at first, then glowing sparks started swirling about the two telepaths, and soon they were encased in a vortex of static discharges from the awful load of mental energies unleashed.

Father Donaher started to reach for them and I stopped him.

"Don't,” I warned. “It'd kill you in a microsecond."

Frowning deeply, Mike touched the empty shotgun holster on his belt. A single 12 gauge round would have ended the matter, and I would have given anything for the big priest to have a load for his weapon.

"Come on,” I said and forced myself to take that first step away from my wife.

Two floors away we ran straight into a pair of werewolves. They were in flak jackets and carrying M-16 machine guns.

Moving fast, we stepped close to the monsters. Now standing behind the muzzle, the guns could no longer harm us. It was apparently a trick the Scion agents had never heard of, as their jaws unhinged. In grim satisfaction, I swung my cosh and Mike smacked the other in the face with his armored Bible. Bones crunched in stereo.

Reeling backwards, the wolves stumbled to the floor. We pounded them again for a while until they stopped moving. Quick as lawyers, we stripped them of everything valuable; flak jackets, pistols and ammo clips. They even had one grenade apiece. How nice! True, they were old World War II pineapples loaded with blasting powder and gelignite, but serviceable nonetheless.

Sprawled on the carpet, the werewolves were already starting to moan back into life. It takes more than a simple beating to kill a were. But hey, no problem, Bureau 13 agents are most obliging.

Dragging the bodies around a corner, we jammed them into a closet. Then Donaher and I each stuffed our sole grenade into the mouth of the respective victim, pulled the pins, slammed the door and ran. Thunder and flame filled the hallway in our wake, but we kept going. Let's see how quickly they heal with no heads.

As we raced along the corridors, I checked the load on a clip. U.S. Army issue regulation 5.56mm perfectly imbalanced tumblers. Nasty bullets that enter a shoulder and ricochet around chewing the major organs into mincemeat and then exit from the opposite hip. I had been hoping for phosphorus tracer rounds, hardball AP rounds, or mercury-tipped explosive bullets. But I might as well wish for blessed silver while I was at it. Still, they were better than trying to beat a zombie to death with a club sandwich. I did that once. It takes hours.

At the elevator bank, a sign on an easel announced the times and locations of numerous convention functions. There was no listing for the moon rock.

With a musical ding the central elevator doors parted to display a score of werewolves with fire axes and pistols.

"Pinocchio!” I screamed, aiming the M-16 at the wall above the cage. Donaher added the firepower of his M-16 and we spent an entire clip chewing a hole in the wall.
Crack
!

After the initial shock of seeing us, and the gunfight with nobody, the grinning and drooling werewolves started towards us. Then with a sharp crack, the weakened elevator cable snapped and down they plummeted.

"Blast, this only bought us a minute at best. The safety brakes will stop them from crashing in only a few stories,” Donaher grumped, peering into the dark shaft.

"Only there aren't any more stories,” I reminded.

Suddenly, a bright light bathed his face as the cage left the shaft and dropped through empty air, building speed on its way to a rude visit to Mother Earth as their screams faded into the distance.

Good enough. As the doors automatically closed, we returned to business.

"Okay, now where?” I asked, glancing around.

"NASA doesn't allow you to charge admission to see the rock,” the priest said thoughtfully, flexing his big hands, “so it must be in main public area."

"But immediately near your ticket booth to entice folks inside to see more marvels,” I added.

"Main conference room?"

Shouldering my assault rifle, I nodded agreement. There was a map of the floor on the wall. We smashed the glass and peeled it off the frame. Hmm, big hotel.