Control Point (35 page)

Human flesh poured out of the wall beside them in a wave, piling into a mass that stretched across the catwalk and spilled into the water, growing and growing.

It seemed the Selfer could crawl through walls after all.

She had lost all human form. The flesh was completely protean, an amorphous mass of pink skin, flexing and pulsing. It was dotted here and there with eyes, fingernails, knobs of bone and hair. A mouth opened in the mass and began to burble something before it was smothered over by the gathering folds of flesh.

Rampart jumped forward, extending his arms. Britton
could feel his current race forward, interlacing with the Selfer’s flow…

…and shunted aside. Rampart stumbled backward, his own tide swamped by the Selfer’s magic, far too strong for him to roll back.

“Oh, shi—” he began, then the Rending magic grasped the top of his head and folded his skull in on itself, compressing his head down into the trunk of his body with a thick, slurping sound. Rampart, headless, swayed on his feet for a moment before collapsing to the tunnel floor.

Downer’s elemental leapt on the Selfer, tearing chunks from the growing mound. Two others sprang from the water to join it. The Selfer quivered under the blows, then simply flowed over them. The elementals vanished beneath the gathering mass, splashes of dirty water leaking out from between the folds.

Gunfire echoed in the tight space, making Britton’s ears ring. The Selfer’s mass nearly blocked the passageway behind them, impossible to miss. The NYPD officers knelt, pouring on the fire, bullets ripping through the mound of flesh, sinking into it with hissing thuds. The Selfer shook under the onslaught and slouched forward, rolling over herself, reaching out toward them.

And then, a brief and hideous silence broken by the sharp clicks of magazine releases as the cops reloaded. “Ohshitohshitohshit,” one whined.

A bone spur, long as a spear, shot from the mass, catching him through the throat. Another cop simply detonated, spraying them all with the gobbets of meat he had suddenly become. “Get the hell out of here!” the captain shouted, grabbing one of his men by the drag handle on his body armor and hauling him backward.

Downer stepped up, gesturing at the water again. “This isn’t going to do it! I need something more to work with!” Britton opened a gate and sent it sliding past the retreating cops. The blob didn’t even make an effort to dodge, the lurching flesh barreling directly into it. The gate sliced it neatly in half, the edges peeling back to reveal a stack of gristle and organs that followed no anatomical pattern that Britton knew of. It fountained blood, shaking as if in rage, halting.

And then the flesh simply flowed over itself, growing back
together and moving forward. A curtain of biting insects swarmed over its surface, magicked along by Richards. Britton thought he glimpsed slithering shapes in the water biting at the Selfer, snakes or rats. It hardly slowed. Another two cops went down, bent into shapes that made Britton nauseous.

We’re outclassed,
Britton thought.
Time to get out of here.

But then Downer let out a wet shriek and collapsed, her pelvis and legs twisted into a bloody corkscrew. She twitched, screaming. Therese knelt at her side, eyes closed, magic pouring out over Downer’s mangled body, rolling back the damage.

“Some of it’s dead!” Truelove yelled, his own current reaching out. The Selfer froze, shivering. Deep within the recesses, flesh piled upon flesh, layers of it had turned gangrenous, necrotic strips marbling the lumbering whole. They spread, biting, squirming, the body attacking itself, dead and alive struggling to control the motion of the mass. “It won’t hold her forever, Keystone!” Truelove shouted. “Do something!”

Do what?
Cutting and shooting the thing wasn’t going to help. The Selfer’s body had been so completely transformed, he wasn’t even sure if there were vital organs anymore. They’d have to burn it. Maybe that was why it was down where fire would never go? But he had no fire. Coven Four was without a Pyromancer.

The cops retreated past them, still futilely pouring bullets into the mound of flesh. The Selfer leisurely reached out with her magic, twisting them into screaming corpses, one by one.

Britton threw open a gate and barreled through into the SASS schoolhouse. He’d wagered right. Class was back in session, and he scattered desks and tables as he charged Pyre. “Jesus, Britton! What the hell do you think you’re…” Salamander began before taking in Britton’s battle dress and the scene beyond the shimmering gate and lapsing into silence. Britton grabbed the young Pyromancer’s lapels. “Fire! Through that gate! Right now!”

“What?” Pyre squeaked. “No! I can’t…”

Britton raised a hand and clipped him across the face. “Now, you fucker! Right fucking now! Downer!”

“I’ve got it!” she mumbled weakly, her legs untangling beneath Therese’s ministrations, flesh coalescing, bones straight-ening.

Pyre’s head rocked to the side and snapped back, his eyes narrowing. Britton ducked as the flame erupted from his chest, pushing over his shoulder and through the gate. It passed into the sewer and over Downer, who screamed with the effort of shaping it. Britton followed, shutting the portal behind him, not looking to see the reaction in the SASS.

Downer’s work was done by the time his boots hit the catwalk. Five elementals had sprung from the blaze, hunched humanoids with flat heads on flickering shoulders. They leapt across the water, pounding the Selfer with burning fists, igniting patches of greasy skin with every blow. The Selfer screamed in earnest, pain howling from a dozen mouths opening for that express purpose, the teeth glowing and popping like gunshots as the elementals covered it. The corridor was quickly choked with greasy smoke. The stink of cooking meat sent the remaining cops to their knees, retching through their balaclavas.

Britton could feel the current of the Selfer’s magic turn inward, focusing on reconstructing her own flesh. He glimpsed the bubbles of healing flesh through the smoke. The elementals strained, their bodies stretching as they spread their fire across her.

Britton glanced at Downer, the blood unpooling around her, leeching back into her knitting skin. Therese nodded at him. “I’ve got this!”

Britton lurched forward, grabbing one of the cops by his shoulder and hauling him upright. He slapped the bottom of his gun, sending the barrel up to smack his chin. The cop turned to Britton, his eyes wide. Britton shook him, pointing at the Selfer’s burning bulk. “Pour it on! Now! We don’t get another chance!”

The cop shook himself, raised his weapon, and pulled the trigger. The echo of gunfire competed with the roar of the flames. It galvanized the remaining cops, who turned and knelt, adding their own fire to the din. The bullets passed through the flame bodies of the elementals, ripping into the Selfer’s solid flesh as it shrank beneath the flames. A low moaning erupted from the smoke, which began to overtake the corridor, until Britton could see no flesh at all. Britton pushed his flow deep into the thick wall of smoke and opened a gate. He couldn’t see it beyond the tiniest flickering line in the
smoke, and from that he worked it up and down, moving it like a cleaver, chopping into whatever remained of the burning bulk of the Selfer.

Her current waned. The smoke began to dissipate, the burning brighter. The conflagration shrank as the elementals consumed what fuel remained, smaller, smaller, until at last a misshapen lump smoked in the center of the shallow water, immobile, stinking.

There was no indication at all that it had ever been human.

Britton felt the magic current gone and rushed to Downer’s side. The girl was sitting up, gingerly moving her legs. “Sarah! Are you okay?”

Downer nodded, her lower lip trembling, eyes going wet. “Oh God, it hurt so bad…” She looked at Therese, who leaned forward, gathering the girl into an embrace.

“No,” Downer said, breaking free, sniffing up her tears. “I’m fine. I should secure the area.” She got to her feet, shaky and wobbling, and limped off, heading toward nothing in particular. The elementals winked out, dispersing into the remaining tendrils of smoke.

Therese made to follow her, but Britton stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t.”

Therese looked at him and nodded. “I know. It’s just that, for a moment there, she was her own age.”

Britton nodded back. “Magic makes you grow up fast. Nobody can fix that.”

Britton turned to Rampart’s corpse, then back to Therese. “There’s nothing you can—”

“Nothing,” she cut him off. “He’s dead.”

“He saved me when I first got to the Source. Saw me through a firefight and got me to the FOB.”

Therese nodded. “It was his job, Oscar. He knew what he signed up for.”

The NYPD captain moved among his remaining men, blubbering. Of the twenty ESU officers who had set out, four remained. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered, his eyes raw and red-rimmed, from the smoke or the tears Britton couldn’t tell. He knelt by one of his men, scarcely more than a pile of cloth and flesh scraps. He reached out a trembling hand, jerked it back, reached it out again.

“What the fuh, fuh…” he huffed, turning his dazed expression toward Britton. “What the fuck did you do? What happened to my men?”

Britton shook his head, heading toward what remained of the Selfer’s corpse.

“Where are you going?” the NYPD captain shrieked, waving his gun. “What about my men?”

“Sir,” one of the remaining cops said, reaching out.

“Get the fuck off me!” The captain slapped his hand away. “You!” he shouted at Britton, raising his weapon.

“He’s off his rock,” Britton said. “Somebody secure him.”

“Got it,” Richards said, gesturing. An outcropping of natural rock rose out of the water, flowing like liquid concrete into a fist around the captain’s torso, holding him fast. “Fuck off me!” the captain shrieked. “The fuck off me! Sergeant Torres! Shoot that man!”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Britton said, but the cops didn’t appear to need the warning. They were busy clustering around their captain, talking in soothing voices.

Britton turned back to his task. “To the captain’s original question,” Richards said, “where are you going?”

“Hayes wants tissue samples, right?” He slopped down into the water beside the hulk of smoldering flesh. Up close, Britton could make out the remains of severed vessels, half-formed organs. He conjured a small gate and cut out a brick-sized sample, thick flesh marbled through with half-formed remnants of Lord knew what. There was at least one cooked eye and something that Britton swore was a flexed elbow. The stench was overpowering.

He climbed back onto the catwalk and opened a gate back on Trailer B-6. “Downer!” he called down the catwalk. “Can you walk?”

The Elementalist turned, took a few steps, shaky but surer than before. “I’m fine,” she said.

“All right, everyone back through. Tell ’em the job’s done and to get a cleanup crew down here. I’ll give a report to Fitzy.”

Richards and Truelove stepped right through without any hesitation, responding to the natural tone of command in Britton’s voice. Therese hesitated at the threshold. “What about you?”

Britton hefted the chunk of meat. “Tissue sample. I’ll be
along once I deliver it. Promise. Thanks for everything, Therese.”

Therese nodded and stepped through, but Downer paused, facing him, eyes narrowed. “Who the hell put you in charge? Fitzy’s the Coven Commander.” Britton could see the whirl of emotions competing across her face, scarcely under control even with the Dampener’s help.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “You were very brave, Sarah. Hell, you pretty much saved us all. I’ll make sure Fitzy knows it. I’m proud to serve with you.”

Britton could tell it wasn’t what she had expected, but her face was stone otherwise. After a long silence, she turned and walked through the gate. Beyond the static shimmer, Britton could see medics and Goblin orderlies fussing over the team. Certain that they were safe, he shut the gate and opened a new one, stepped through.

The cold hunched his shoulders, and he wrinkled his nose at the chemical-preservative smell. Behind him, the plastic curtain rippled, gently ruffled by the currents of the giant chiller in the center of the room. All around him, corpses lay on tables in various states of dissection, a macabre review of the bestiaries he had marveled at as a child. The fauna of the Source spread out before him: giant eagles, horned lions, small dragons, double-headed serpents. Here was a leopard with a human face, its tail hacked off, the flesh avulsed to reveal the articulation of the bones. There was a unicorn of storybook legend, the skin around the horn flayed back to show the attachment to the skull. Colored dye had been injected into the major veins running beneath the surface.

And Goblins, everywhere Goblins. The desecration of their corpses shouted the central message of the Special Projects tent: just another animal. Source fauna.

Britton’s lip curled at the sight. He had to get out of there. He cast about, looking for a flat surface on which to leave the tissue sample. The only flat surface proved to be a folding aluminum writing desk strewn with files. He placed the meat on the clearest portion. A stack of files had toppled over sometime ago, spreading each one out in a stepped path, the titles stamped in antiquated font theatrically stereotypical for the military.
AMPHISBAENA
, read one,
SPITTING SERPENT
. Another
read
UNICORN, HORNED EQUINE
. Britton began to leaf through them, eyebrows rising at the identities of the corpses laid out around him.

Then he froze.

SCYLLA
, one read.
HUMAN NEGRAMANCER
. Someone had written
UNCOOPERATIVERECAL
across the front in red marker. Britton took a glance over his shoulder, then peeled back the cover and began to read.