Tales of the Unquiet Gods (20 page)

The stricken monster flared its noisome appendages in its agony, before dissolving into a tarry goo that stained the robe of the man wearing it. The nameless man collapsed in a heap as the other Iaphneth howled in unholy chorus.

Pat's pulse pounded as he ducked behind another pillar. His bullet had glowed; he'd seen it appear to drift through the close air of the temple. And even though he'd been supremely lucky, he'd known the shot was good as soon as he felt the gun recoil.

On a hunch, Pat pushed out with his gifted spatial sense, nearly to his limits. He was rewarded with knowledge of just where everything in the room was. Aram still stood at the front of the room, and Carla was still chained to the ritual. Melody had moved away from him, still playing her blessed song. The abomination, on the other hand -

Pat's reflexes threw him into a diving roll as the monster's oversized hand smacked the pillar where his head had just been. Roll turned into scramble as the hissing creature followed him in bounding strides, doing its level best to crush him into red paste with its massive fists.

Aram screamed something that threatened to sink Pat's waking mind into the depths of insanity, but slid off the protective shield of Melody's music. Instead, the torches that lit the sanctum died, leaving Pat in an inky blackness, and giving him an uneasy revelation. The transformed horror glowed, a light blue like the skin of a corpse pulled from the water.

Pat gambled and closed his eyes, relying entirely on his gifted spatial sense to guide him. Adrenaline surged as he felt the thing just behind him and closing on its backward curved legs. Pat caught a pillar, and slung himself around it, throwing himself back in the other direction.

He kicked the thing in the leg as he went by. The thing's flesh gave more than he expected, and he almost tripped. He staggered, barely catching himself on another pillar. The monster roared, its hissing voice bell-like. He gained on it, leading him to believe he'd actually hurt the thing.

Aram shouted another command in his god's vile language, and Pat felt the remaining Iaphneth converge on Melody's location. As soon as they got to her, he knew they'd stop her song. Their rescue mission would be done for; the best outcome would be death. At worst, he'd be returned to that living death slavery, confined in the prison of his own mind. He didn't want to contemplate Melody's likely fate.

Pat screamed and sped up, weaving through the twisted columns. He drew deeply on his new senses, getting a feel for where his enemies were. He could almost see just where the monsters' grotesque limbs stretched out toward the spot where Melody hid.

Pat jinked to his left and ran toward the middle of the room. He slid to a halt and snapped his pistol up. At his shout, he sensed the Iaphneth puppets turn to face him. Pat trusted his newfound abilities and said a quick prayer.

His stubby pistol coughed once. Twice. Three time. Again and again once more. The slide locked back on an empty chamber. Five glowing rounds left brilliant tracks in the abyssal darkness, and he knew he'd shot well. He'd always been a good shot, but this verged on the ridiculous. Each shot took off a muscular, fanged pseudopod. Five bodies falling to the floor hit as one. Pat hoped they were still alive.

A hiss sounded in his ear, and the impact of a mighty arm lofted him into the still immobile students. Pat felt something crunch in his side, and waves of pain radiated out from his ribcage. He went down in a muddle of bodies, and lost his grip on his gun. Pat cast about him, but the shock of pain drove away his grasp of the surroundings.

Two softly glowing hands reaching into the mess and easily hefted Pat into the air. The jostling ground bits of broken rib together. Pat gasped, and immediately regretted it. Aram shouted a word and the torches flickered back into fitful life.

Pat's heart dropped. The kids he'd landed on hadn't moved. He had definitely broken at least one rib, and more importantly, lost his gun. And Melody was back there somewhere. In the relatively quiet moment, Pat heard Melody's song, still playing. The now-mournful notes comforted his fears, and actually seemed to sooth the shooting pain in his side.

The eel-headed monstrosity carried Pat over to the ritual circle, where he saw that Carla had passed out. Possibly from the pain of Aram's unspeakable commands, but likely from the sheer, sanity-shredding madness of the whole thing. He didn't blame her at all.

"Come out, girl," Aram sounded like a tired, old man. He'd aged even during the fight; his hair salt-and-pepper and his skin seamed with wrinkles. His thready voice sounded like he'd been gargling sandpaper, and he wheezed. "I have your ersatz hero, and if you do not show yourself, THIS INSTANT," he roared, and then fell into a coughing fit. "I will have my friend here pull him slowly limb from limb."

Melody stepped out from behind a pillar near the back of the sanctuary. Her azure eyes glowed in the torchlight, fairly spitting her hatred. Her fingers continued to weave magic from her penny-whistle.

"Your apostate," Aram spat, bloody saliva flying from his mouth in droplets, "will have to become my new host, I suppose." His mad, despairing eyes stared daggers at Pat and then shifted to Melody. "You will almost certainly qualify as a little mother, my dear."

The abomination holding Pat hissed.

Pat felt enough better from Melody's song that he tried his senses. He pushed, just a bit, looking for his gun. He found it under the tangle of motionless students.

"Ahh, yes. My friend confirms that you're a virgin. He can taste such things in the air, you know. You'll have to wait a moon, but I'm sure we can fit you into our busy schedule. Our Mother will have a use for you." Aram leered at the young songstress. "Assuming of course, you survive the mating ritual."

Melody's face turned ugly, her skin flushing almost wine-red in the torchlight. Pat's still extended senses read the sudden surge of power in her, and his heartbeat sped up. She took her pipe from her mouth, her jaw dropped open, and then she screamed.

Her voice split, and split again, and then again. Pat could clearly hear each of the notes, combining in weird harmonies. His hair stood on end and his bowels shook. All the while his skull rattled with the force of her cry. By rights, the polytonal wave of sound should have shattered his eardrums. From the way Aram and his pet monster staggered, Pat guessed theirs had. The horror dropped Pat to the floor, then raised its head to the ceiling and shrieked.

Pat landed, fortunately on his good side, though it still hurt. As close to the stinking demon creature as he was, he swung a kick at its freakish member. Even without much force behind it, when Pat connected, it proved the thing was male, whatever it was. The beast's jaws snapped convulsively and it crashed to the ground. Its knees impacted the stone floor with an audible crack as Pat rolled out of its path.

Pat scrambled to get to his gun. Each shallow breath was an agony. Melody darted in and grabbed his arm, helping him to his feet. They staggered to the tangled knot of fallen students. Pat paused, sucking breaths just shallow enough to keep from sending jagged spikes into his side.

He'd just spotted his pistol when Aram started shrieking a chant in his unholy tongue. The room turned over, the pillars transforming into groping serpentine arms, reaching for them. This was on top of his sudden inability to form a coherent thought through the torment in his skull. He was distantly aware of Melody holding her head in her hands and screaming.

Suddenly, the torches burned a baleful blue, their flaring light leeching the color from the rest of the room. A pair of mottled black and green tentacles of terrifying proportion erupted out of the pool at the front of the sanctuary. One wrapped around the shrieking Aram-Iaphneth, while the other gripped the eel-headed creature in its powerful length. And then, they dragged their victims screaming into the water, which closed over them without a ripple. The torchlight faded back to normal.

Silence reigned, but for Pat and Melody's shuddering breaths. And then one of the students shifted. And then another. In moments, all of them moved about. Some sat with head in hands. Others stared at each other with wild eyes and vacant expressions.

Pat quickly ferreted his gun out of the mess. Despite the pain, he unscrewed the suppressor, swapped the empty magazine for a full one, and racked the slide. Carefully, he slid both the pistol and the suppressor into his shoulder rig.

His brain didn't seem to be working exactly. The whole experience was utter madness, of course. If it wasn't for the jagged pain in his side, Pat didn't think he'd have believe it actually happened.

One of the students came up to where Pat sat. He appeared to be in his early twenties, with light skin and curly reddish hair. He wore a polo shirt with an NYU symbol. He might well have been a friend of Aram's. Thoughts of the old-young man stabbed at Pat's chest with a very different kind pain than his broken ribs. He'd hoped he could save the kid.

"Uh, excuse me," the new kid said. He ran fingers through his hair. "Do, do you know where we are, Mister? Or how I got here?"

Pat blinked.

"Sure, man. We're under the Times Square subway station, but I have no idea how you got here." He looked for Melody, and snorted. He didn't need to look for her. He closed his eyes and felt for power. She was near the ritual circle, out of sight behind some of the milling kids. "Hey, could you grab a few of your buddies, and help that young lady over there?" Pat waved toward where he sense Melody crouching next to the still-unconscious Carla?

It didn't take much to get the students helping each other out of the temple. With Aram's rather sudden departure, and as Pat had already taken care of the other Iaphneth, nothing was there to stop them. Even the dreadful presence Pat had felt earlier seemed to have abated. Scared away, like as not.

Pat kept his breathing shallow. Without Melody's song, breathing hurt. Hell, sitting still hurt. While he kept his senses trained on the sanctuary room, Melody walked up and sat down near him.

"That is Carla," Melody confirmed. Her voice was nearly gone. Apparently, the super-scream of hers had a price. "She keeps asking where Aram is. Half the time, she's scared, and half the time furious. What should I tell her?"

"Tell her you don't know."

Melody looked at him.

"Do you?" she rasped.

He snorted and winced.

"One clue," he jerked his head in the direction of the dark pool, "but I'm not going in to find out."

Melody gave him a troubled look.

"Um, I looked at the pool. Unless there's a hidden door, it's only about six inches deep."

Pat turned to stare at her. A dozen half-thoughts ran through his head, but none of them came close to the surface.

"Well. That's a thing, isn't it?"

It took very little persuading to get the mess of students organized. Pat got them to carry the unconscious Iaphneth pawns up to the room in the abandoned subway station with the ladder up. A couple of women in the group helped Carla upstairs. Melody refused to go without him, which was a little weird.

Standing - hunched and in pain, but standing - near the ritual circle, Pat looked at the unpleasant fane. This was the same room he'd been held upon capture. The same room in which he'd been possessed by an evil alien intelligence. He was standing on the very spot, as a matter of fact. He saw no sign of the other Iaphneth eggs, though, and that bothered him. Six more of those things had hatched and taken hosts, but that was only six out of easily scores. Where had they gone?

"It's just us left, Patrick." Melody's roughened voice surprised him. She'd come up behind him without his noticing. He'd lost hold of his spatial sense from pain and exhaustion.

He looked around and saw she was right.

"We did good tonight, Melody," he said, and turned to hobble toward the way up. her expression dubious, she nevertheless nodded, then took his arm and drew it across her shoulders in tacit offering. Pat let her take some of his weight with gratitude.

Their walk up the spiral staircase and through the abandoned station was more of a shamble. They accomplished it in silence, each lost in private thoughts. At last, as they neared the ladder room, Melody looked up at Pat. Her drawn face had the same expression of long-held fear he'd seen in those who lived in gang-heavy neighborhoods.

"Patrick, what's really going on?"

He had no clue, but knew they needed to find out.

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Other Titles by David E. Pascoe

Edge of Faith: Baptism By Fire
- When a madman and a giant flaming thing attack James Lawrie’s Marine outpost, the medic and an explosively talented sergeant aren’t supposed to save the day. Life becomes no simpler when Petty Officer Lawrie returns home on leave to find federal agents investigating the disappearance of a young woman from his past. A young woman whose body turns up marked with eerily familiar symbols.

Shadow Hands, a Tale of the Unquiet Gods
- Melody Devreux sees things that shouldn’t be there. Shadows cast by the setting sun reach out for her with abyssal claws. She sleeps with the lights on and never goes out after dark. When the monsters she sees come for her, she must harness the light inside her to prevail.