House of the Sun (44 page)

And out into the middle of some beetle-head's worst chip-trip. Above me the black clouds roiled like liquid, churned by a hot, dry wind that tugged at my hair and clothing like invisible hands. Shattered rock shifted and rolled under my feet as I tried to keep my balance. The entire volcano seemed to
thrum
with a deep, almost subliminal vibration. My bowels cramped, and it was all I could do not to drek myself. Not from fear—frag, sure I was afraid, but that wasn't it; it was like the sound itself was churning my guts into a pit of diarrhea.

The Merlin had bellied in under the skirts of a hundred-meter-tall cinder cone. Boulders ranging from dishwasher-size to bigger than houses dotted the sloping ground. The shifting light that
was
Project Sunfire was
down
there
—maybe half a klick away, down a steep scree slope, in the blackened and charred bottom of a secondary crater. The great fan of light—the nimbus of glowing air—towered up above me, reflecting off the underside of the rolling clouds. At its base amongst the lifeless points of arc light, I could see figures moving.

Half a klick—that's 500 meters, a long way to make out details. But maybe there was something in the air up here—magical or mundane, I couldn't know—that added clarity. The moving figures were tiny, but still I could make out some features. They were dancing, for one thing, an even dozen of them, stamping and gyrating, as they pranced in a great circle around the center of that unnatural, liquid light. They were fragging near naked, men and women alike wearing nothing but loincloths and headpieces of woven grass on their brows. The
kahunas
of Project Sunfire.

A dozen meters to my right, Pohaku and Kono were standing like statues, staring down at the spectacle in dumbstruck amazement. I started over toward them, picking up my pace when I saw the sergeant approach Pohaku. I made it over there in time to hear the sergeant ask, "What are our orders?"

"Stop
that
," I fragging near yelled, pointing down the slope toward the dance and the light. "I don't care how the frag you do it, but
do
it,
karimasu-ka?"

The sergeant's face became a stone mask, and he turned toward Pohaku, as if I didn't even exist.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back to face me, using my
left
hand, the cyberarm with the enhanced strength. Hardened soldier or not, by God he
turned
. "Listen to me, slot!" I screamed in his face. "Your orders are to
stop
. ..
that!
Orders from the fucking
Ali'i,
do you hear me?" I fumbled in my pocket and hauled out the deputy's badge Ho had given me at our first meeting. "See this?" I bellowed, holding it up so close to his face that his eyes crossed. "From the fucking
Ali'i,
yah? Now,
do
it
!
"

The sergeant did what just about every military type
ever
does if someone screams at him loud enough and with enough confidence. He saluted me, right out of the textbook. He spun on his heel and dog-trotted off, yelling orders in Hawai'ian to his troops.

I could feel the hatred coming off Pohaku in fragging waves, but at the moment I couldn't have cared less about his bruised ego. I turned my back on him and ran over to where Akaku'akanene was staring down into the secondary crater. "What's happening down there?" I demanded. "What the hell are they doing?"

Under the weird witch-light in the air, her face looked like a corpse. "They're weakening the veil," she told me, her voice a ghastly whisper. ''Preparing to draw it back."

"How long? How far along are they?"

"Far," she answered simply.

"Then we'd better be fragging moving, hadn't we?" I started jogging down that scree slope, starting the 500-meter trek to where the Dance was going on.
(What
the
frag
are
you
going
to
do
when
you
get
there?
part of my brain asked.
Shut
the
frag
up!
another part explained politely.) Around me, I could see the troopers heading down the hill, too. Kono and Akaku'akanene were starting down after me. Pohaku was still standing in the shadow of the downed Merlin, frozen in indecision. Well, fuck him if he couldn't take a joke. I ran on, quickly losing ground to the trained and fit troopers.

That's when the spirits hit us again—maybe the same ones that had downed the Merlin, maybe a different bunch. They hurtled down on us from above, like Thor shots—fire, and wind, and water, and Christ-knows-what-else. They hit the troopers first, the young, hardened men and women who'd easily opened the distance between themselves and the wheezing, out-of-shape erstwhile PI who was trying to keep up with them. Some of the soldiers saw the spirits coming, had enough time to get their weapons up and fire them. Most didn't. Not that it made any difference at all. Bursts of tracer fire, grenades, whatever—everything just went straight through the attacking spirits as if they weren't even there. And then the spirits were among the troopers, and the carnage began.

I turned back and screamed over my shoulder, "Akaku'akanene!
Stop
them!"

The bird-boned shaman stopped in her tracks, closed her eyes and began to sing. But it was too late for the troopers. They were all dead, or the next worst thing to it, before she even got the first notes of her croaking song out of her throat. Below me some of the spirits were still disporting themselves with the bodies of their victims—rending them into little pieces, carrying them high into the air and dropping them onto the rocks below, or scouring them with fire and cooking off their ammunition. As I watched, frozen in horror, some of the spirits seemed to notice me and the others for the first time. Breaking off from their diversions with the corpses, they hurtled up the scree slope toward us.

I had my own assault rifle off my shoulder as they came, but I didn't even bother touching the trigger. I was dead when those spirits reached me.

They didn't reach me, of course. They broke off their direct trajectories, soaring up into the sky like planes pulling out of power dives at the last instant before slamming into a previously unseen obstacle. My ears were filled with inhuman screams and howls—the spirits' anger and frustration at being blocked from their prey. Behind me I saw that Kono and Pohaku were moving in nice and close to Akaku'akanene, and I figured that they had the right idea. Whatever the Nene shaman was doing, I didn't want to test its range.

Overhead, the spirits were plunging down from the sky again, but before they could reach us they pulled out of their dives once more. Within seconds, we had a dozen of more of the fragging things swirling and orbiting around us, filling the air with their shrieks. At no point did they come closer than about fifteen meters from Akaku'akanene, and I belatedly realized they were displaying the same sort of approach-avoidance reaction as the spirits I'd seen circling the distant Dance.

"What the frag
are
they?" I asked Akaku'akanene in a husky whisper.

If the
kahuna
hadn't answered me, I'd have understood. Hell, curiosity always took backseat to survival in my book. She didn't open her eyes, but she did stop her song long enough to tell me, "Guardian spirits."

"Storm spirits? Volcano spirits? What?" I pressed.

"Both. Neither.
Guardian
spirits." She went back to her song, and I left her to it.

Now
what the frag was I supposed to do? Akaku'akanene was the only thing keeping the "guardian" spirits off our collective ass. Somehow, I couldn't see her extending that protection to me as I jogged the half klick across the volcanic wasteland to get to the Dancers. (
And
what
the
frag
will
you
do
when
you
get
there?
part of my mind asked.
Shut
the
frag
up!
another part responded.) Likewise, I couldn't see her keeping the shield (or whatever it was) up while she jogged along with me. Maybe she could walk and still keep the spirits at bay . .. but would we be able to get to the Dancers in time?

"Frag!
" I yelled in frustration. "They're
gaurdians,
right? Can't you just tell them to leave us alone?" I gestured wildly in the direction of the Dance. "We're trying to
stop
this thing. I thought that was what
they
wanted too. Don't they get that?"

Akaku'akanene nodded and broke off her song just long enough to say, "Yes. They want to preserve the pattern."

"Then why'd they want to scrag
us
?"

"I don't know." And again she returned to her harsh song. Great. The only thing that could make things worse would be if ...

And, as if in response to my thought, there he was. Quinn Harlech, appearing maybe fifteen meters downslope from me, materializing out of a prismatic shimmer of light. Even at that distance I could feel those lasers he called eyes burning holes in me. His lips twisted in a scornful grin, and he drew breath to make a (doubtless scathing) remark.

Before he could get a single word out, I saw his eyes go wide, and he looked up. He threw up his arms in a sweeping gesture, and the air directly above his head flickered as if with heat lightning.

Not an instant too soon. The guardian spirit that was making a high-speed pass at the elf's cranium slammed into Quinn's magical shield, deflecting off like a basketball hurled at a concrete wall. The elf made another, more casual gesture, and with a despairing shriek the spirit was torn apart as if by invisible claws.

It had taken him less than a second to dispatch the attacking spirit, but that was long enough for the other guardians—the ones swarming around Akaku'akanene's arcane shield—to notice his existence. And, to judge from their actions, to decide that he was more of a threat to their precious pattern than we were. Of the dozen or so spirits swirling around us, all but a couple broke off and bee-lined it for Quinn Harlech.

I heard the elf curse in some fluid, complex tongue. He reached out toward the approaching spirits with a hand twisted into a claw. Half of them burst asunder, spattering the rocks below with the spirit equivalent of guts and gore. (Ectoplasm, maybe ...?) The others, totally undismayed by the geekage of their colleagues, hurtled on, screaming like chipped-up banshees. Quinn frowned. He gestured again, and another half dozen spirits exploded.

That should have put paid to all of them, yet still the air around the elf was filled with ever more screaming, circling spirits. Where the frag were they coming from?

It took me a moment to understand. The elf's presence was siphoning off spirits from the vicinity of the Dance itself. As I watched, a constant stream of gibbering guardians was peeling away from the vicinity of the Dance, flooding over toward Quinn.

He fought well, that beleaguered elf. I don't know how many guardian spirits he blew to ectoplasmic tatters, or turned inside out, or transformed into clouds of ashes or drifting puffs of smoke or rains of frogs. Dozens. But for each one he geeked, two more joined the fray. Within half a minute the guardian spirits were so numerous I couldn't even see the elf anymore.

Finally, from within the tumult of spirits, I heard a sharp, "Frag!" Then came a brilliant flicker of prismatic light, partially occulted by the swarming guardians, and I knew Quinn had made his departure.

Once he was gone, I expected the spirits to turn their attentions back to us.

And, to be honest, I expected to die. There were so many of the fragging things—so many that even Quinn Harlech had decided discretion was the better part of valor. If the elf couldn't take them on, how could Akaku'akanene shield us from them?

But they didn't come. Still they churned through the air, swirling and hurtling around where the elf had stood, as if searching for some trace of him. I looked about me. There were
no
spirits paying any attention to us anymore—none at all. And frag it, there went my last excuse.

Suddenly, I laughed. On the runway back on Oahu, Quinn Harlech had told me he could do things I'd never be able to, hadn't he? Things I'd never succeed without? Well, he'd just proven it, hadn't he? He'd drawn away the spirits that were standing between me and my objective ...

Before I could have second thoughts, I gripped my assault rifle, and I started running down the scree slope toward the Dance below.

26

Running full-tilt down the slope, I suddenly pulled up short as I heard a scream from behind me. I turned.

Pohaku had Akaku'akanene locked in a kind of sleeper hold, her stringy throat gripped in the crook of his left elbow. In his right hand was a small pistol, a hold-out, its muzzle held firmly to the Nene shaman's temple.

"Turn into ice,
haole
," the bodyguard spat.

I froze. Alana Kono had her own gun out, the ruby dot of its laser sight settled firmly on her erstwhile partner's forehead.

"Don't!
" Pohaku snapped at the woman. He glanced pointedly at the hold-out pistol.
"
Two-way trigger,
hoa,
okay? I squeeze, it fires. I release, it fires. Got me?"

Ah, drek. I'd read about guns with that kind of rig. At the time I couldn't understand why anyone would want a two-way trigger. The only possible application I could think of was ... well,
this
. A Mexican standoff where you need the ultimate dead-man trigger. Where regardless of what reflex action you take when you catch a bullet, you
know
your own gun's going to go off. Great.