Immortal Twilight (23 page)

Grant dislodged the cockpit bubble and pulled himself up from the pilot’s couch. A moment later he was striding across the shimmering bronze wing amid the bloody chaos, strapping Shizuka’s
katana
to his waist before he leaped to the ground.

Up above, the airship loomed like a brewing storm, waiting to rain down death on the unsuspecting population.

Chapter 25

The ville was arranged in a giant circle, with the highest building at the center. That building was the cathedral, a towering strut of stone with multiple entrances and a single red window placed close to the top like a second setting sun. With its open-door policy to outlanders—travelers who roamed the unclaimed lands between villes—Luilekkerville was full of three thousand people, the radial pattern of streets jammed to overflowing with people who had been wondering just what the airship was doing when Hugh’s mental attack had begun. Now they had been turned into three thousand unwilling participants in Hugh’s deadly art project, attacking one another in a nightmarish fight to the death; massacre in the name of art.

Kane, Brigid and Grant fought through the deranged crowds, working in tandem to split up groups and keep would-be killers away from one another. Kane and Grant were both ex-magistrates who had been trained since birth to handle such situations, and they dispersed the crowds using a combination of fear tactics and some well-placed shots from their Sin Eater pistols. They shot to wound, not to kill, taking the legs out from the more dangerous types who were running about causing mayhem, disarming those who had obtained firearms for the ruckus.

Brigid, too, acted to disperse the crowd, paying particular attention to protecting some of the more vulnerable members such as children and pregnant women. Luilekkerville was a “young ville,” and while its population encompassed people of all ages the vast majority were under forty, drawn by the promise of religious salvation. Brigid’s combat prowess kept her lithe on her feet, and more than once it allowed her to avoid a potentially lethal attack by one of the mind-controlled mob.

“We need to get these people away from here,” Kane instructed, glancing up at the airship looming high above them.

Brigid shook her head. “It’s impossible,” she said. “Better we stick to the original plan and remove the Dorians from this place and into the containment facility at Cerberus.”

Kane sidestepped as a blood-soaked figure came hurrying from the feverish mob around the cathedral, swinging a gold collection plate at his head. The man overshot, stumbling as his swing ended not in Kane’s skull but in empty air. Brigid slid her foot back in the sand and tripped the man, sending him sailing away before striking a nearby wall with some force. She and Kane watched in satisfaction as the figure slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Grant joined the two of them a moment later, admiring their handiwork with a smile. “Nice,” he said. “But if we stay down here much longer we’re liable to get a mental bolt that’ll send us as nutty as the locals.”

“Good point,” Brigid agreed. “From the way Reba explained it, the Dorians work their mental attack on individual minds, moving rapidly from one to the other and back again. We’ve probably missed the initial attack by dint of being late arrivals, but that can’t last forever. Sooner or later we’ll be noticed—after which, it’ll be every Cerberus man for himself, so to speak.”

Kane glanced up at the airship thoughtfully, then at the cathedral tower where it almost nudged against it. If they could find a way up there, they might be able to board it and defuse that bomb—and the whole terrible situation with it. “Okay,” he said, “here’s how it’s going to go down. We’re getting nowhere fighting our way to exhaustion with the locals down here. We need to stop the Dorians at the source. So, we go with our original plan—grab them and hold them long enough to send them to a cell at Cerberus.”

Grant looked at Kane querulously. “How do you suggest we do that? We get close and they’re liable to trigger that A-bomb.”

“Baptiste sets up the interphaser,” Kane explained. “There’s a parallax point somewhere around here, right, Baptiste?”

Brigid nodded. “To the south of the ville.”

“Great, then Grant and I will handle the airship and bring you the immortal troublemakers,” Kane told her.

“How?”

“Just get moving,” Kane told her, “and let me worry about the how.”

With a casual salute, Brigid turned and began wading back into the crowd, making her way slowly south down the panic-strewed streets.

Left behind, Grant looked at Kane with expectation. “Well?” he asked.

With detached professionalism, Kane popped a new clip into his Sin Eater. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I went to church,” he said with an air of casualness. “What say you and me go pay our respects.”

Grant eyed the towering cathedral and smiled, sliding a new clip into his own weapon. “Yeah, I’m starting to feel some religious fervour in my soul, too, now you mention it.”

Together, the two men entered the church, striding into a grand nave crammed with fighting maniacs.

* * *

B
RIGID
RAN
ALONE
through the war-torn streets. It felt like some nightmarish Mardi Gras, people running all about her with masks on. Only, those masks were their own pained expressions, some of them tempered with streaks of blood about the eyes, the mouth.

Brigid reared back in disgust as a woman came stumbling toward her with one arm outstretched as if she were blind. The woman’s face was a patchwork of ripped skin, and she continued to run a razor blade over her features, gouging great chunks of herself away, slice by bloody slice.

Brigid hugged the wall as the blood-faced woman passed, reaching out and plucking the razor from her hand. The woman turned in surprise, unleashing a terrible shriek that sounded more like an animal in pain than anything that had ever been human. Brigid drove a straight-legged kick into the woman’s kneecap, snapping her leg and dropping her to the ground. She slung the razor in a drain as she strode away, hurrying onward to the south gate of the ville.

The victims would start to fail soon, Brigid suspected. That was what had happened in Hope when the woman Antonia had tried to control people, because the pressure on the human brain was too great. And when that did start to happen, if Kane and Grant were too slow in removing the threat of the Dorian mind attack, then the whole ville would die from brain hemorrhages, vicious little war game or not.

* * *

S
HINGLES
COVERED
THE
CHURCH
outside and in, creating a rough effect as if it had been eroded by time rather than constructed by man. There were great carvings in the wall and over the four compass-point doorways, each of them creating a man-shaped figure that stretched out across the floor in a huge shadow, a trick of the light. Not that the congregation noticed it right now. They were too busy fighting one another, moving between the pews like sharks scenting blood.

Kane and Grant fought through at least two dozen incensed “worshippers,” each one turned mad by the mental bolts emanating from the airship high above. The crazies were vicious and relentless, but they were also disorganized and so caught up in the mental push to war that they walked into just about anything the two ex-magistrates set up. It took three minutes to clear a path through to the bell tower where the colossal red window loomed down on the ville like a bloody eye.

Finally, Kane and Grant stood at the staircase that looped around on itself, swirling up toward the bell. Above, the bell glistened like a drop of blood where red light streamed through the window. Kane led the way, blaster in hand, certain that there would be a roof access somewhere up there. Grant followed, Sin Eater ready, Shizuka’s sheathed
katana
slapping against the side of his leg as he climbed the steps.

“Let’s finish this,” Grant told Kane as they began their ascent.

Chapter 26

The airship was low enough...
maybe.
Right then, as he stood on the cathedral roof staring at it, Kane didn’t much care. All he knew was it was his only chance, so he had to take it. The airship was still thirty feet above the edge of the roof itself but it had trailing guy ropes hanging from its belly. One of those ropes whipped through the air just beyond the lip of the rooftop. Kane watched for a moment as it swung back and forth like a live snake.

Beside Kane, Grant clambered onto the rooftop, his eyes fixing on the swinging rope. “You think we can do this?” he asked.

In reply, Kane merely brushed a finger against the side of his nose in the 1 percent salute. Whatever the odds were, it was time they overcame them and put this thing to rest.

Kane took two steps back until he was at the farthest edge of the cathedral rooftop, high above the smoking streets of Luilekkerville. “Give me some space,” he warned.

Grant watched as Kane sprang forward like a runner leaping off the blocks. He sprinted across the rooftop where the scarlet window peered down at the chaotic mess that was Luilekkerville, building his speed before leaping out into the ether.

Kane’s feet kicked off as they left the tiles of the cathedral roof, thrusting him into the air high over the street, his arms poised forward to grab that flailing rope. It swayed tantalizingly ahead of him, a frayed knot swinging to and fro at its end. And then he had it, left and right hands grasping the dirty rope simultaneously, cinching around it and holding tight as he started to slip down its swinging length.

Behind Kane on the rooftop, Grant held his breath as he watched his partner slip down the dangling rope. “Come on, Kane,” he muttered, “hang on.”

Whether Kane had heard Grant or not, he somehow held on, slowing his descent as wisps of smoke burned from the rope and his hands. With a lurch, he brought himself to a halt. Without pausing, Kane began climbing up the rope the long thirty feet that stood between him and the observation gondola of the strange aircraft.

Kane was in the prime of physical fitness. Cinching his legs in place, working hand over hand, it took him a minute to ascend the rope, dangling high over the towering buildings of the ville. The wind billowed loudly up there, high above the ground, every huff and puff trying to derail him from his rapid ascent. He slowed as he reached the highest point of the rope. He saw now that it did not link to the bottom of the observation pod—instead, it was snagged on one of those porcupine spines that jutted out in all directions from the body of the airship. The spine poked upward and out at a ten-o’clock angle to the round cross section of the balloon itself, constructed of a framework of metal with a sharp end, twenty feet from the balloon’s skin. The spines were connected to a frame that sat snugly around the airship like a cage, great metal protrusions presumably designed to keep an attacker at bay.

Kane yanked himself up onto the jutting spine, working his chest onto the narrow bar and heaving himself up so that he clung there. The bar was three feet across, enough for Kane to rest his chest against as he caught his breath. Down below, on the roof of the cathedral, he saw Grant sprinting over the tiles before launching himself out into nothingness, reaching for the rope. Kane saw Grant snag the rope and swing far out over the streets. The additional weight sent the airship swaying just a little in place, like a boat at anchor bobbing on the sea.

Kane waited, peering at the observation box where the silhouetted shapes of the Dorians could be seen at the open windows. He counted two of them, their profiles and hair giving away that they were the women. The men had to be on there, too, Kane told himself. To come this far and lose the chance to snag the whole group would be too much.

As Grant reached the bottom of the protrusion where Kane was hanging, Kane began to shimmy along it, drawing himself closer to the metal gondola.

* * *

T
HERE
WERE
PEOPLE
groaning all around her. Brigid ran, zipping through the blood-strewed streets like a racehorse. The interphaser rocked to and fro in her backpack, its weight driving her on as she slipped around a corner, darting down another street toward the south gate in the ville walls. The gate was open—Luilekkerville had instituted an open-door policy ever since it had been rebuilt as a haven for the Worshippers of Stone.

There were people to the left and right of her, corpses littering the street in clumps, the agonized moans of the wounded prominent as she hurried past. Brigid ignored them, leaping over the fallen figure of a local magistrate, his head caved in on one side in a blood-colored bruise.

A figure stepped out from a doorway and made a grab for Brigid, but she danced out of the way, twirling in a graceful three-step before continuing on along the path to the ville’s exit.

Another form, this one a woman in middle age sporting a bloody wound on her forehead and swinging a meat cleaver through the air like a kid with a kite, leaped for Brigid, slashing at her face with the steel blade. Brigid dodged back, dropping away as the cleaver swished through empty air where she had been a microsecond earlier.

The woman tried again, bringing the cleaver around in a downward swing that seemed destined for Brigid’s shoulder. Brigid brought her arm out of the vicious blade’s path in a blur of black leather, using her elbow to stab out at her attacker’s solar plexus. The bloodstained woman tottered back with a gasp of painfully expelled air, dropping the cleaver with a clatter.

Brigid hurried on as the woman sagged to the ground, no time to waste. Kicking her legs out in distance-humbling strides, Brigid shot through the open gate, meeting the gravel path beyond in a shush of boot soles on stone, red hair whipping out behind her like a streak of flame.

There were two people just beyond the gates, an elderly man and woman, their hands clawed around one another’s throats. Brigid lunged forward, striking the old man’s elbow with the heel of her hand, snapping bone in an instant. The man sagged backward with a yelp of pain, breaking his grip around his partner’s throat. The elderly woman let go as the man slipped out of her hold. She looked bewildered, as if waking from some terrible dream.

Brigid hurtled on like a rocket.

The path had been layered with loose gravel chips for just a dozen yards, a sort of “welcome carpet” to the ville. After that it turned rapidly to dirt, sloppy pools of mud slurping in indentations along its uneven surface.

Brigid sneaked a glance behind her to eyeball the airship where it waited, poised above the cathedral like some terrible cloud. It didn’t seem to be moving; not yet. She hoped there was still time.

* * *

K
ANE
WAS
ALMOST
at the gondola, a long box with windows that hung beneath the balloon of the airship, swaying slightly with the breeze. The wind felt stronger out here, whistling in his ears like crashing waves, thrusting against his body as he clambered along the metal needle. Close up, he could see that the pod was constructed of flimsy material, very thin sheet metal riveted together, doubtless to minimize the weight. There was a good chance he could break through it with a couple of solid kicks. It seemed like an option, anyway.

He could hear their voices now, bubbling over the sounds of the whistling wind, braying and laughing at the chaos they had generated.

“Let’s end this,” Kane muttered as he reached for the wall of the observation pod and pulled himself toward it.

Behind him, Grant had just reached the metal spoke where the rope swung, and he pulled himself onto it, bringing his legs up until he was squatting in a crouch. He looked around for a few seconds, judging the best way to get to the passenger bubble of the strange craft. “I’m going to go around,” he told Kane over the Commtact, “and grab the pilot.”

Kane turned back and caught Grant’s eye, engaging his Commtact at the same time. “You want me to wait?” he asked.

“Negative,” Grant replied, reaching up for another spine that stood out several feet above him. “Get in there now—don’t lose the element of surprise. I’ll meet you inside.”

Kane grabbed the nearest upright bar lining the open windows of the observation pod. Then he pulled himself in, swinging his legs up and over the lip, smashing through the wall in a colossal crash of rending metal sheet. Rivets pinged everywhere as the delicate wall of the observation pod split in two with Kane landing amid the mayhem.

As one, the eerily handsome Dorians in the observation area turned, three in all, jaws open in surprise that was rapidly turning to anger.

Kane didn’t stop for a second. Already, he was throwing the flash-bangs he had palmed from a belt pouch. He ducked away, turning his head as the flash-bangs went off in a carom of light and noise.

* * *

G
RANT
,
MEANWHILE
,
was making his way around to the fore of the airship, utilizing the strange structure of spiny protrusions to move across the hull. He turned his head as the flash-bangs exploded inside the passenger bulb, blinking back the aftereffects of that bright shock of light.

“Little warning next time, partner,” Grant growled into his Commtact. But he figured that Kane was too busy to worry about such niceties right now. Best to keep moving and get to the front section of the air clipper.

* * *

A
LITTLE
BEYOND
Luilekkerville’s walls, Brigid was almost at a ridge, her arms pumping back and forth, her legs pounding, feet striking the path in relentless blows. There was a line of trees up ahead, great redwoods that climbed into the air like the part-buried fingers of some ancient Titan. She knew that the parallax point was there—somewhere.

Brigid looked behind her again as she trotted along the path, slowing down for a moment to see what was happening above the ville. The airship still hadn’t moved, but she watched in surprise as something appeared to explode within it. When no fire took hold, she felt relief and a touch of pride, realizing that either Kane or Grant must have set off another flash-bang to disorient their enemies.

Brigid renewed her pace, veered away from the path and started to ascend the ridge.

* * *

“S
URRENDER
,” K
ANE
ORDERED
,
raising his voice over the ringing in his own ears, “and we can end this thing now.”

The Dorian women shrieked as they rubbed at their eyes, blindly bumbling around the deck. “What did he do to us?” Antonia hissed.

“I can’t see,” Cecily spit, batting against a metal wall. “Antonia? Hugh? Are you there?”

Kane, too, was suffering from the aftereffects of the flash-bang. While he had known when it would ignite, he had not had time to do anything more than turn his head, which meant that now his ears were ringing and there were luminous green patches affecting his vision. Didn’t matter—Kane just had to do this quick, before these psychopaths dropped that nuke.

Kane heard Cecily shout as he charged across the deck, his feet striking a crashing tattoo on the wooden boards. “We’re being boarded,” she screeched. “We’ve been compromised, Hugh.”

A moment later Kane was standing before Antonia where she continued to reel from his initial attack, and he barreled into her, driving shoulder-first into her midriff, using all his weight and momentum to shove her even harder against the flimsy metal shell of the observation pod.

Five feet away, the brunette was blinking rapidly to clear her eyes, sweeping at the air with her lace fan, so swift that it appeared to be a golden brushstroke hovering in the air, repeating her warning about the ship being boarded. Still moving, Kane brought the Sin Eater up as he dropped to one knee, keeping the weapon level so that he fired into Cecily’s gut. She had not expected that, and Kane watched as the bullets impacted on the satin midline of her dress, shredding the material and scattering threads across the observation deck.

In his throne, Hugh Danner was concentrating on his grand art design—aka the citizens of Luilekkerville—as they slipped from his mental grasp. Some were still linked with him in the slip-nudge way of his telepathy, but most seemed to have been either too badly wounded or too hopelessly distracted to be brought back into line. The telepathy was not a natural thing. Antonia had discovered it quite by accident about a hundred years before, while she was trying to explain a dream she had had about the end of the world at the hands of the sailors of the Argo. She had been in the theater, speaking with Cecily at the time, when Cecily had begun to see the very things that Antonia was describing, right there, dancing in her head like animated paintings. At first she had put it down to her prodigiously well-exercised imagination, but when she had started describing Antonia’s dream
to her
they had realized that something very strange was happening.

At first, the two women had assumed—quite understandably—that their closeness had somehow engendered the link, and that it was unique to them. They had spent an insufferable two weeks regaling one another with secret thoughts and imaginings, Antonia thrusting each new image into her friend’s mind. The bond had been especially useful during their bedroom sessions, Hugh recalled, as they experimented with drilling sexual desires into one another’s heads with the resulting accuracy of William Tell’s arrow.

It took a little longer before any of them realized that they had achieved a kind of telepathy, and that the bond was not limited to the two females in the group but rather could be employed by all of them. It seemed that the telepathic control was a by-product of their incredible intelligence, an intelligence that had only grown and matured as they had waited in their underground world, Persephone-like, hidden from the eyes of mortals. Poor Harold, of course, had come off rather the worse for Antonia’s experimental probing, and Algernon had never really shown much flair, but still the Dorian-class humans had discovered a new ability far beyond their creator’s original plans.