Scarlet Dream (24 page)

Elsewhere in the large hangarlike room, Grant was
dealing with the last of his own foes, protecting his team's ace-in-the-hole—Papa Hurbon—until he could finish his binding spell.

With two swift swipes of his sword, Kane dispatched the final two undead men and they fell to the floor as one, their guts curling out across the decking, their heads rolling away from their twitching bodies.

“Your party's over, Lilitu,” Kane said as he wiped the grime from his face. “Time to pay the band and go home.”

Twelve feet away, standing at the doorway that led from the hangar at the back of the room, Ezili Coeur Noir narrowed her sick yellow eyes and let out a hiss, sounding more like a snake than a person. “Tomorrow's parties are canceled, flesh puppet,” she told Kane. “All tomorrow's parties end today.”

And then Kane was running at the emaciated form of the queen of all things dead, and that terrible flower of carnage was shrieking as she called on her supernatural powers to destroy this apelike foe who challenged her projected reign of death.

Brigid Baptiste hurried from the elevator and out into the sub-basement corridor, her boots splashing in the eighteen inches of water that now covered the floor.

She was in a service corridor with white-painted walls, the emergency lighting above fizzing and buzzing as it flickered on and off. In a moment she had reached the end of the corridor, and she burst through the fire door and into the main artery of the redoubt. She was back in the corridor with the red stripe running across its bottom third. Two of the walking corpses stood there, turning at the sound of the heavy door as it crashed against the wall on its hinges.

“Dammit,” Brigid swore, “I just don't have the time for this.”

The zombies—a woman and a man—groaned angrily as they spied Brigid hurrying toward them.

Brigid swung the metal bar in a high arc, and it struck across the undead woman's face, knocking her back into the white-and-red wall with bone-jarring certainty.

As the female corpse-thing fell backward, the man lunged for Brigid, and she drove him away with the heel of her hand, smacking it against his breastbone as if pushing a button on an old-fashioned game show.

“Come on,” Brigid muttered as she brought the metal bar back into play. “Give a girl a break already.”

The undead man either didn't hear or, more likely, didn't care.

 

T
WO FLOORS ABOVE
, Grant turned to Papa Hurbon at the vehicle elevator that only came as low as the hangar.

“You should probably get out of here,” Grant said.

Hurbon looked at him sadly, the strange rag poppet still clutched in his hands. “You don't need my help?” he asked.

“Your help's great,” Grant said, “but if we can't contain this psycho bitch then you're going to be the first to die. You've done a lot for us—I can't have that on my conscience.” Grant's hand reached around as he said this last and he pressed the ascend stud on the elevator control board.

“You took away that beautiful dream world,” Hurbon lamented as Grant stepped from the large elevator and its jawlike doors began to close. “I could have lived there and been happy, you know?”

Grant nodded once, respectfully. “Sorry, but it had to be done. You know that.”

Hurbon nodded as the doors closed between them and the elevator began its shuddering ascent to the surface. “I know,” he replied, even though Grant could no longer hear him, “it's all about sacrifice. Just have to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.” And then Hurbon began to laugh.

 

T
HE
KU-BHA-SAH
SWORD
slashed through the air, cutting through the falling droplets of water as Kane forced his deathlike foe to retreat from the redoubt's hangar area and into the corridor beyond. Ezili Coeur Noir held her forearms up to deflect the sword, and sparks kicked out with each strike. To her surprise, her colossal powers seemed diminished, and the striking sword almost seemed to hurt.

“What can you possibly hope to achieve, thing of flesh?”
Ezili Coeur Noir snarled contemptuously. “Do you think you have a chance to stop me now?”

“See this water all around us?” Kane asked as he raised the sword to a ready position once more. The sprinklers were still raining down on them both. “This is your plan being washed away. The Red Weed you intended to unleash—the catalyst agent doesn't work in water. We've diluted your whole evil plan out of existence.”

Ezili Coeur Noir smiled tentatively, as if it was a joke. “Impossible,” she retorted.

“Hey, you read the file,” Kane said. “You tell me.”

The ex-Mag had backed the coal-skinned, skeletal figure to the end of the corridor by then, and she stood with her back to the elevator. Ezili Coeur Noir balled her hands into fists, a howl of utter frustration coming from her throat as she lunged for Kane. The ex-Mag leaped into the air, his clothes heavy with water, and plunged the tip of the
ku-bha-sah
into the grim figure of Ezili Coeur Noir even as she tried to bat him aside.

Kane landed in a splash of water, watching as the fractured Annunaki goddess-turned-voodoo-
loa
collapsed against the sealed elevator doors, the sword poking from her chest. She wasn't dead—Kane could tell that immediately—but she seemed almost asleep, as if struck by some incredible weariness. She was no longer struggling. Whatever Papa Hurbon had done to charge the sword had worked; its supernatural nature had stopped the queen of all things dead.

Warily, Kane stepped up to the elevator and pressed the call button. From behind him there came footsteps splashing through the water that formed a layer across the floor.

“Hurbon's safe and all the dead are
really
dead,” Grant
explained as he joined his old Magistrate partner. “You need a hand?”

Kane glanced over his shoulder, acknowledging his partner with a lopsided grin. “I think I've got this one,” he said as the elevator doors opened and, leaning against them, the static form of Ezili Coeur Noir tumbled backward into the cage, the sword poking up from between her breasts.

Grant looked mystified for a moment, stunned that his partner had succeeded in stopping the self-styled queen of all things dead.

Seeing the bemused look in his partner's eyes, Kane shrugged. “Hell of a sword,” he explained.

Together Kane, Grant and the sagging body of Ezili Coeur Noir took the elevator to the lower level where the mat-trans and the cold-fusion reactor were located.

 

B
RIGID
B
APTISTE DROVE
the metal bar—end first—into the final remaining zombie, parting his ribs and leaving him struggling there on the floor like a crushed bug. She had smashed the other one to pulp, and while her remains still twitched, she no longer posed any threat to Brigid.

Ignoring the struggling corpse, Brigid hurried on down the red-striped corridor and back into the room where they had initially arrived. In the corner of the low-lit room, beside the armaglass walls of the mat-trans chamber, Brigid saw the reactor waiting for her like a promise. Even as she approached it she saw the operation light blink from green to amber—Donald Bry's security glitch had come into effect right on time. She had two minutes and eight seconds to remove the access panel and get the corpselike form of Ezili Coeur Noir inside.

When Grant and Kane entered the room just forty seconds later, struggling with the lifeless body of Ezili Coeur
Noir, they found Brigid kneeling on the floor by the reactor. A clutch of screws was arrayed around her where she had removed the physical lock from the security panel door, the magnetized lock having switched off with the false data spike.

“Quickly,” Brigid said, her hands reaching for her pockets.

Kane and Grant dragged the deadweight that was Ezili Coeur Noir to the reactor's access hatch where a small, reinforced window could be used to peer within. At the same time, Brigid Baptiste produced the two plaits of hair that Papa Hurbon had ritualistically weaved.

“How much time do we have?” Kane asked.

“We just passed the fifty-second mark,” Brigid said, consulting her wrist chron. “So about seventy-five seconds.”

“Open it,” Kane instructed, and Brigid pulled open the access panel. As she did so, the sound of the cold-fusion reactor filled the room. No longer muffled by the layers of metal that surrounded it, the reactor sounded like an aircraft taking off, and Kane and the others could feel static electricity playing in their hair. As if they hadn't realized before now, the feeling confirmed just how dangerous this was—opening an operational reactor core as it continued to generate energy. Brigid leaned close, tossing the two plaits of hair inside where they skidded across the metal plating of the interior.

But the burst of static in the air had another effect. Suddenly Ezili Coeur Noir was moving again, wrenching the sword from its resting place in her chest.

“And now you will all take your places in my private choir.” She shrieked as she tossed Kane and Grant from her.

Kane smashed against the side of the reactor, while
Grant was slammed over one of the desks that had been used two centuries earlier to monitor the prototype mat-trans. Semiconscious, Kane's head sunk down and suddenly his head was underwater.

Brigid leaped back as Ezili Coeur Noir took a stride toward her, the movement of her insectile leg something hideous.

“Once inaugurated you shall sing the songs of the dead,” Ezili Coeur Noir assured Brigid as she took another ominous step toward the red-haired former archivist, “until your vocal cords burn out like stars in the sky.”

The queen of all things dead was so close that Brigid could smell the fetid stench of her foul breath. Kane was still lying facedown in the water beside the reactor, delirious, a trail of bubbles coming from his mouth.

Brigid pulled her TP-9 from the holster and, as Ezili Coeur Noir took another menacing step toward her, snapped off a quick burst, ordering the sickening creature to keep back.

Grant meanwhile found himself lying on the far side of the aisle of observation desks, his head fuzzy from the reeling blow he had just taken. He looked up, blinking to clear his vision, and saw the emaciated goddess standing in front of the reactor, looming over Brigid, who drilled another burst of fire into the monster's dead chest. He didn't need to think, just needed to act.

Grant's boots splashed in the shallow water as he launched himself, leaping over the desk in front of him and careening toward the black-skinned figure of Ezili Coeur Noir. He tucked in his head and shoulder-slammed the abominable creature, driving her like a battering ram through the open access panel of the reactor.

Then Grant was inside the reactor, too, where the noise was so loud that he couldn't even process it, just heard
it like white noise. Ezili Coeur Noir crashed against the metal-plate floor of the reactor, her skeletal body sprawled in front of Grant as he struggled to his feet.

“Grant!” Brigid called from outside. “Get out! Get out now!”

Grant didn't need telling twice. He was already running, leaping over the fallen body of Ezili Coeur Noir even as she made a grab for him.

Grant barreled through the open access hatch, rolling over himself in his haste. Behind him, Brigid Baptiste slammed the door closed, sealing the reactor even as the amber warning light switched back to green. In that second, the automated electromagnetic lock came back to life, and the reactor was sealed for good.

Grant turned back, clutching at his shoulder where he had struck the deathlike woman, feeling the ache of the blow. “Singing lessons will have to wait, bitch,” he snarled as the reactor hummed behind the metal walls.

Atoms collided as the fusion reactor powered up, its core creating energy from hydrolysis. Lying beside the reactor, Ezili Coeur Noir, the unliving remnant of Lilitu, struggled to her feet. The reactor sounded unspeakably loud this close to her insect-bitten ear, and she hissed at it, swearing the way a cat swears.

The reactor was charging up, its core spinning faster as the fusion process went into overdrive, the external security system intact once more.

To Ezili Coeur Noir, however, it wasn't a reactor but a cell. Just another place from which she must escape.

Outside the reactor, Brigid hurried over to where Kane lay, pulling him from the water by his hair. Kane took a gasping breath, his eyes unfocused for a moment as he tried to work out what had happened.

“You're okay,” Brigid said to assure him.

Kane made to reply, but instead blurted a mouthful of water over Brigid Baptiste.

Through the window into the reactor Kane saw Ezili Coeur Noir push herself unsteadily to her feet, her putrid yellow eyes fixed on the door that Grant had leaped through just ten seconds earlier.

In silence, Ezili Coeur Noir reached out for the door and shoved against it, trying to make it open. It was locked, she realized, but that did not matter to her. Outside, when she had found the redoubt, she had used a whole zombie army to dig out the door and break inside. Here, with just a single metal door barring her way, its surface painted a clean white, she would be out in a moment.

Ezili Coeur Noir—the First Body of the crashed escape pod—placed her hand solidly on the door, laying her palm flat. Then she called upon the corrupted chalice of rebirth, felt its leakage as it sang its song of death in the air. The paint on the door blistered then flaked away, leaving the shining metal of the door itself revealed.

Just outside the reactor, Kane watched as Ezili Coeur Noir pressed against the door, the paint on the outside peeling away under the power of her deathlike touch. “She's coming through. We have to do something.”

“Wait,” Brigid said. “That's all we have left to do now.”

Inside the reactor, Ezili Coeur Noir pressed her hand against the metal, and the outer surface began to oxidize, rusted chunks flaking away in a shower of copper-colored petals. Behind her, the reactor kicked into full fusion mode, and the queen of all things dead merely smiled, feeling its power shrugging against her back with all the irrelevance of a wave striking the shore. In a moment she would be free. In a moment she would recruit these terrible apes into her new choir of death.

Another chunk of the door fell away in a shower of
rust, revealing the thick, inner core of the double-layer door. Ezili Coeur Noir's hand brushed it and a streak of rust showed there, twinkling like a seam of gold. She pushed her finger into the soft line of rust, her ragged nail poking through it and into the center of the reinforced door, the halfway point.

And suddenly—nothing. Ezili Coeur Noir pressed against the door, but it stood there, immobile, sturdy as it had always been. She looked at her hands, looked back at the door, and she saw the call of the dead things fading from her vision. On the floor of the reactor, two tiny trinkets were being smashed together by the nuclear reaction: a plait of hair as white as snow and a ring through which was threaded a weave of hair as black as night. As the atom collider crashed the things around it together, fusing them to create new energy, Ezili Coeur Noir found herself buffeted by the trinkets and, at some spiritual level, the things that they represented.