Powers (32 page)

He stared at it. He tried to make sense of the Gothic spiky scroll-letters, not really designed for carving into stone, but not in any Germanic language he knew, ancient or modern. Then he shifted gears and it clicked into place. Italian.
Old
Italian. Fafnir’s little joke.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
He translated, out loud, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

He blinked and woke up to the fact that he had just about literally banged his nose on the door.

“No bunker. No defenses.”

Mel stood leaning on the staff of the
naginata,
studying him studying the door and inscription. She nodded.

“No
outside
defenses. Your old drinking-buddy isn’t worried about riff-raff coming through, and apparently figures that nobody can get at this side without his knowledge and consent.”

Albert thought about that, slow as molasses in Svalbard. “Lord Fafnir’s lands. The district governor or whatever Mother called him, the guy that sent those trackers, he doesn’t have power here. And the bugs and the mutated malaria or whatever keep all the tourists out.”

Mel ran her fingers over the wood of the door. “Illusion. No barking guards, this time. Not worried about scaring off street-people. I wonder what’s
really
here, hiding behind this face . . . ” A pause. “Not locked. Not even latched. Just like the other one.” She looked back at him. “Might be a good idea to click the safety off that shotgun.”

In one smooth flow of motion, she kicked the door wide and vanished through it. He followed. He didn’t have much choice. He wondered if he should have dug out a flashlight or something before heading into a cave.

No. Inside matched the other gateway hall—sunlit courtyard surrounded by galleries. To hell with impossibility, those tons of stone overhead. Instead of a fountain, the courtyard held a . . . cactus? Eight feet tall, maybe, and fat. Not spiky—furry brownish green, the kind of tiny barbed spines that practically leapt out at you and burrowed into your flesh and left you with an inflamed rash that lasted weeks. He’d met those spines before.

And then the cactus opened its eyes. A ring of eyes—blue-green with black cat-slit pupils, he could see four of them on this side and the edges of more around each side. Lumps formed on the fur and extruded into tentacles.

Forbidden.

Not a voice, a statement hanging in the air, inside his head. The cactus, the Thing, could write in his mind. In Gothic lettering.

Tentacles with claws, he’d seen those on octopi and squid, demons from the deep, catch prey and drag it to the crushing beak. They lashed out at Mel. She wasn’t there, wasn’t where they sought, so they stretched toward Albert and he fired the shotgun from the hip, first round birdshot blasting the eyes, second and third buckshot cutting through the tentacles closest to him, avoiding the blur that was Mel dancing in and out with the
naginata
spinning like a propeller in a deadly baton-twirl of keen hungry steel. Chopped tentacle-bits flew away from her, green blood spurted into the air, but more and more buds formed from the body and the cut ends.

Hydra.

Cut off a head, two replaced it.

Albert clicked on an empty chamber and dropped the shotgun. Emptied two magazines from the pistol, the hollow-point bullets opening gaping holes in the central trunk of the hydra. Holes that lasted seconds only, before closing as if they’d never been. Useless.

Herakles had used a torch. Seared the hydra’s wounds to prevent regeneration. No torches. Hell, they’d need a flamethrower or napalm for this one, anyway. Too damn fast.

Albert shrugged the pack off, broke the buckles holding the flap, no time for stupid buckles. Rummaged into it. Pain seared across his face as one of the tentacles whipped past and then dropped to the floor as Mel slashed it off halfway.

Salt. Heavy bag of kosher salt. He tore it open, grabbed a handful of the coarse crystals, threw them at the closing wound of the tentacle stump.

The hydra screamed, no sound, pain in
his
head, white across
his
eyes. When Albert could see again, that stump still oozed green, no healing, no regeneration.

More salt, more wounds, he waded into the nest of snakes as Mel cut and cut and cut, now slicing at the body rather than the tentacles, fillets of cactus, of hydra, and each time she cut he flung salt and the green blood oozed. Uncut tentacles grabbed at him. She slashed them as she jerked back and forth herself—the hydra found her by touch, no eyes now, and she had to cut her own body free. Then, a whipping downward slash as she dropped to one knee, the central trunk fell in two halves and Albert dumped salt on both.

Both shuddered and screamed, a scream in his head that faded and dopplered down as if the hydra fled.

Silence.

Green blood oozed.

The rest of it didn’t move.

He still had a handful of salt. He stood with it in his palm, waiting for some part of the hydra to twitch, to stir. Nothing.

Not much structure he could see on the cut halves, tubes for circulation or whatever, layers of fiber. Muscles? Growth rings? The green slime covered anything else. He couldn’t even tell if it was plant or animal or some mix of both.

To hell with that. He sank to his knees and then his butt on his heels, barely able to stay upright that much. He sucked in a breath, another. Dumped the salt back into the almost-empty bag in his left hand.

Still breathing.

Mel leaned on the shaft of the
naginata,
staring down at green-spattered paving stone. Red blood dripped from her cheek where one of the whipping tentacles had caught her, caught even
her.
Again, more red on the back of her right hand. If that had broken her hold on the shaft . . .

Fire burned in both of his own cheeks, his own forehead. He felt warm blood oozing down. That must have lashed across his eye-sockets. Just a touch deeper—blinding him—he couldn’t have seen to throw.

The hydra had known how to fight. Not just flailing, it had gone for targets. It had thought. It knew weak spots, like those fireflies in the tunnel.

Mel stirred and looked up. Blinked back into focus. Studied Albert, across the carnage. Took a deep breath.

She stepped across bits of hydra and pools of ichor to him, reached out, and offered him a hand up. He checked with his knees—would they hold him up if he accepted?

Provisional agreement. He stood, swaying. “Those words outside. Fafnir would have used runes, not silly Gothic lettering. He’d have quoted the Elder Edda or some such thing, not Dante. That was Mother’s joke.”

He looked around at the carnage staining the stone flooring. “Probably this, too. Fafnir loves a good party. He wasn’t tricking us with that offer of roast boar and beer. Wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t keep any guard at all on his own personal gate.”

Mel waved at the slime and chunks of . . . flesh? “What the fuck
was
that thing? Never seen or heard of anything like it.”

Albert shook his head. “Some kind of non-Greek hydra. Maybe it came out of the lost myths and mists of ancient Sa’aba, along with Mother. Or maybe she just invented it out of ectoplasm. Whatever. I hope it
stays
dead.”

He switched his attention from the hydra, it seemed to offer no
present
danger, and looked her over. That
had
been her clean uniform. Red blood and green, chunks of hydra, rips from the clawed tentacles, what looked like powder burns, near-misses from his frenzied shooting. Well, she shouldn’t jump around so much in a fight, dammit.

Or maybe she was fast enough to dodge bullets.

Judging by her expression, he didn’t look any better. She reached out and ran a finger though the pain on his left cheek. Pulled back a bloody finger, his blood, and licked it.

“There. I have drunk your blood. We’re free of that.”

What the hell is she up to?

“My words, you idiot. When I didn’t know who or
what
you were. When I hadn’t seen our fight through your eyes. Self-defense.”

First time I’ve ever heard of an Afghan tribeswoman, tribesman, letting go of a blood feud. The feud is life and more than life. Give it up and you give up your honor.

As Snorri Sturluson tells us in the Old Norse of the
Prose Edda,
“When pigs fly.”

Adrenaline ebbed into picking up the pieces. She wiped the blade of her
naginata
but didn’t sheathe it, her eyes searching the galleries and doors and clear blue sky overhead for any further threat. Now that he had time, nothing trying to kill him
Right Now,
he could look around.

Near as he could tell, this place was a twin to the one that had moved them into the firefly tunnel—one “door” in, twenty-seven wooden “doors” out from the same four floors of stucco galleries rising to a red tile roof around the courtyard, pierced marble screenwork railings, marble stairs in the same corner, four single “windows” to the front.

Only difference was the cactus/hydra instead of a fountain, in the center of the flagstone courtyard. He wondered what that fountain had really been. And why they hadn’t triggered its attack. Perhaps because Mother had been there already, lurking? She’d turned it off, or it had recognized her?

He found the empty magazines for the pistol and reloaded them from the backpack. Did the same for the shotgun. Neither of the guns seemed to have suffered a scratch, for all that he’d tossed each aside on what
looked
like worn flagstone pavement.

Which made him study the flat stone between the two halves of hydra leaking green goo. A line scored the stone, mark of the blade from her final slash. He’d winced when the sparks flew, but he couldn’t fault her intent. Cut that damned thing clear through—no ifs, ands, or buts. And then maybe nuke the corpse, to be sure.

He took the
naginata
from her and checked the blade. No visible damage. He ran his fingertip along the flat of the blade, feeling the soul of the steel. No way he was going to test the edge. He knew better.

The blade told him it was fine, the bindings tight and shaft undamaged. He stared at the line scored into the stone, at the blade, at her. Knelt, and ran his fingertips across the groove in the stone and felt it sharp and fresh under the slimy ichor. He shrugged.

“Illusions.”

The hydra’s body had shrunk from when he first saw it—both shorter and less thick, probably bulk lost from extruding those tentacles. Even so, his blade had cut about three inches beyond its own length in splitting the thing. He’d wrought better than he knew. Or Mel had stretched its cut with
mana
from her Kali avatar.

He stood and handed the
naginata
back to her. Added, “Is any part of this
real?
”

She echoed his shrug and then went back to sentry duty. “The pain. The exhaustion. The hunger. The deep aching thirst for a cold beer.”

And the need for a hot bath.
He wiped his fingers on his pants to get rid of the slime—God knew the pants were filthy enough already. Would it dissolve cloth? Dissolve the washing machine, assuming they ever saw one again?

He nodded at the bastard improvised weapon in her hands. “You used that well. I never intended it to stand battle.”

She focused on the bare blade, a frown narrowing her eyes, questioning. “I think it used me as much as I used it. You forge strange weapons, old god. It seems alive. It knows what I want it to do.”

He checked the bits of hydra again. Still not moving. The salt pulled water out of the tissue, making it shrivel, and ooze, spreading puddles of musty sewage stink like a flooded cellar after pumping out. But he damn well wasn’t going to waste energy on cleaning it up.

Not their problem. For all he knew, it would either vanish or regenerate as soon as they left. Just as long as it didn’t try to do
anything
while they were here.

He turned and tucked the pack cover back in place, couldn’t buckle it since the buckles lay scattered in bits on the paving stones. He wondered if he could break them without the adrenaline boost of something trying to kill him—that kind of plastic was strong. Anyway, he hoisted the pack onto his shoulders and grunted at the weight.

“Well, we’ve paid blood for this hill. Let’s see if it was worth the price. Wouldn’t put it past Mother to make us fight our way into a blind alley, then fight our way out again. Her brain works like that.”

Speaking of their line of retreat . . . the door waited behind them, closed. No way they’d shut it behind themselves, kicking it open and then fighting the hydra. He edged up to it, palms sweating, and eased it back with his left hand while holding the shotgun braced on his hip with his right. The open door yawned at him, offering them the gravel path, spring-green water meadow bordered by aspens, trout stream, sunshine. Fafnir’s Idyll, just like they’d left it. He ducked his head out, checking either side. Worn stone cliff. Including a hundred feet or more straight up overhead, where the inside courtyard opened to blue sky.

No sense. No sense at all. He closed the door again.

While he had been doing that, she’d moved over to the nearest of the ground floor doors and checked it. Now she was leaning her forehead against the middle one, the one she’d said led back to her hills in the previous incarnation of the gates. Her slumped shoulders said this one didn’t smell the same, didn’t tell the same tale to her winds. She mourned the loss. Funny, he’d learned to read her body language that well.

Hair prickled on his arms. Mother had said that the doors changed. Did this place offer them any way home? Whatever “home” might be?

Over to the front wall, he looked out the window there. A view into a dark forest glade with a shadowy stream in the depths, fairly wide, black spruce and fir like they’d found on the far side of the ridge they’d crossed.
Schwarzwald.
Through probably a mile of stone.

He climbed the marble stair—as far as he could see the
exact
same stair they’d climbed back in the “real” world—and checked his “Finland” door. He didn’t recognize the smells behind it. But the middle door on the far side spoke to him, smelled familiar, except it wasn’t raining on the other side this time. More birch, less spruce and fir than the Black Forest. Different tang to the damp earthy dead leaves and needles. Opened it and got the same gray nothing that troubled his stomach. He tried poking his cane through the space that wasn’t a space, thumped it on what felt like dirt and maybe roots, and got it back again. He ran his fingers down the shaft—dry to the touch, not particularly cold. It had picked up a bit of spruce gum and a seed scale on the tip.