Dark War (22 page)

  "I think those keepers could make better use of their lances," Devona said, and without waiting for a reply, she dashed toward the closest of the Frankenstein monsters.

  "What's she going to do?" Shamika asked.

  "Something ridiculously brave and incredibly foolish," I said with admiration. I turned to Varney. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

  He gave me a look that said he should be trying to come up with some excuse to act, but then he obviously decided to hell with it. His expression changed, and I watched as Varney the slightly airheaded hippy cameraman once more became a cool, determined man of action. He raced after Devona, and I followed at the best speed I was capable of. Shamika kept pace with me, but I didn't worry about her. Maybe she would summon a few hundred chiranha to show Titanus what it was like to be someone's dinner.

  Devona reached a keeper and snatched the energy lance out of his hand. The Frankenstein monster might've towered over my love, but she's a hell of lot stronger than she looks, and she'd had the additional advantage of taking the keeper by surprise. She flipped the lance into a throwing position, aimed, and hurled it at Titanus' open mouth. The metal rod streaked toward the dinosaur, its tip glowing a baleful red, and struck the roof of his mouth with a crackling blast of released energy. Titanus, unsurprisingly, was less than thrilled with this development, and he opened his mouth wide and let out an ear-splitting cry that was half roar, half scream.

  The moment the lance struck Titanus, Varney leaped into the air and transformed into a whirling black vortex of shadow that flew toward the dinosaur like a miniature dark tornado. I'd never seen Varney assume his travel form before, and I was impressed as he flew swiftly up to Titanus' mouth, wrapped his shadowy substance around Tavi, pulled him free of the dinosaur's teeth, and carried him back down to us, keeping the lyke aloft by spinning beneath him to create a cushion of air. Once Varney deposited Tavi gently on the ground, the vampire reassumed his normal shape, and Devona and I grabbed hold of Tavi under his arms and together carried him a dozen yards to get him out of further harm's way. Varney and Shamika followed, and we laid him down gently once again and examined him.

  It wasn't pretty. The lower half of his body from mid-abdomen down was gone, and bits of viscera dangled from his open body cavity, though there was little blood. His shapeshifter healing ability had already cut off most of the bleeding, and it was struggling to grow new skin to close off the huge gaping wound where his abdomen had been. It was slow going, though. Tavi's injuries were incredibly extensive, even for a lyke, and repairing them was pushing his system to its limits.

  Devona placed a pair of fingers against the artery in Tavi's neck. "His pulse is faint and erratic, but at least his heart's still beating."

  As if her words had roused him, Tavi's eyes flickered open and a long sigh escaped his lips. He began speaking then, pausing now and then to catch his breath. As he spoke, his wildform slowly gave way to his human guise.

  "I… tracked Papa Chatha's scent to the… dinosaur's enclosure, and–" He broke off coughing, and bloody spittle flecked his mouth. "– the trail dead-ended there. I… called you, Matt, and as I was talking, somehow… the enclosure's force field deactivated, and… the dinosaur got free. I was… so shocked that I just stood there." He looked down at what remained of his body and gave us a weak smile. "And as you can see, the beast was… rather hungry."

  Devona gently touched Tavi's cheek. "Don't try to talk anymore. We need to get you to the Fever House." 

  Given enough time, Tavi might have been able to regenerate the lower half of his body on his own, but the doctors at the Fever House could speed up that process considerably, and help make him a damn sight more comfortable while he healed. 

  "Lazlo's still waiting for us outside," I said.

  "I'll carry him." Varney stepped forward and bent down to pick up Tavi, but as he did I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't the keepers and Titanus. The tanglethorn held the dinosaur fast and the keepers kept harrying him with their energy lances, and though the dinosaur still roared his fury to the world, his exertions were beginning to lessen as the fight left him. It was only a matter of time before the keepers managed to subdue him and force him back into his enclosure. The movement I saw was much smaller and low to the ground. I had the sense of small black shapes moving silently along the paths around us, though when I turned my head to look at them, I saw nothing.

  I knew it wasn't my imagination, though, for Shamika was turning her head back and forth, as if her eyes were tracking something that mine couldn't quite catch, and in a soft, frightened voice she said, "This is bad. This is very bad." 

  I started to ask her what was wrong, but I was cut off by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie.

  Tavi drew in a wheezing breath, and then said, "That's exactly what it sounded like… when the dinosaur got free."

  The keepers broke off their battle with Titanus and looked around, startled and – I was more than a little disturbed to see – scared. The keepers had been produced by Victor Baron in his Foundry, and while he endows his creations with free will so they aren't merely the equivalent of organic machines, they do share certain qualities: strength, a strong constitution, and an almost complete lack of fear. So if the keepers were frightened by the sound of alarms going off throughout the Grotesquerie, I knew we were in some truly deep shit. 

  We felt it first – vibrations beneath our feet as if an earthquake was happening, followed by assorted roars, bellows, growls, and shrieks, a horrifying symphony of rage, malice and bloodlust. All around us gigantic creatures shambled forth from their enclosures, freed from their captivity to once again run rampant and wreak destruction on whatever was unfortunate enough to be in their path. Which in this case was us.

  "We need to leave," Devona said in a small voice. "Now."

  I wasn't about to argue with her, but we also needed to get Tavi to the Fever House, and I feared that carrying him would only slow us down. And since we couldn't leave him, that meant we needed to make him easier to carry. I reached into one of my pockets and pulled out a shrunken head. I held the withered thing up to my face and gave it a hard shake.

  Its eyes sprang open and it glared at me. "This better be important. I was dreaming that I was trapped on a tropical island with the head of a supermodel." Its lips were stitched together with black thread, but the loops were loose enough so it could speak. I'd picked up the head when I stopped the Goremeister from killing the Wizard of Odd, and this was the first time I'd had the chance to put his talents to use.

  "I don't have time to banter with you, Livingstone," I said. "We're in trouble, and I need to you do that voodoo you do so well."

  Livingstone sighed, which was rather impressive considering he didn't have any lungs. "A guy gets carried around in a pocket all day, then is rudely yanked out of a great dream, and it's straight to work without so much as a 'Hi, nice to see you, how are you doing?'" He sighed again. "All right, just point me in the right direction."

  Varney hadn't picked up Tavi yet, so I turned Livingstone around to face the injured lyke. Twin beams of dark light shot out of the head's eyes and struck Tavi on the chest. The lyke shuddered and then rapidly began dwindling in size. You see, Livingstone isn't just a shrunken head: he's a
shrinking
head, too. Within seconds, Tavi had been reduced to the size of an action figure – or in his current condition, half an action figure – and I knelt down and scooped him up with my free hand. 

  "Sorry about this," I said. "It may not be the most dignified ride you've ever taken." I didn't need to apologize, though, for Tavi had lapsed back into unconsciousness. I tucked him in a pocket, did the same with Livingstone, who grumbled that he'd received better treatment at the hands of the witch doctor who'd shrunken him in the first place, and then I stood.

  "Ready to run?" Devona asked me, as giant monsters of all sorts lumbered toward us.

  "Like the wind," I answered, and the four of us turned and began running toward the exit.

 
 

 
 

We had a couple things going in our favor. Compared to most of the escaped creatures, we were small, which meant we didn't easily draw their attention, and they were more interested in attacking each other than they were in going after the tiny things scampering past them. Plus, the keepers began fanning out through the facility, attempting to subdue the monsters with their energy lances, further distracting them, although considering that the keepers usually ended up getting stomped, chomped, or zapped with radioactive energy blasts of one sort or another, it would've been better for them if they'd had the sense to flee with us. 

  We maneuvered through a forest of segmented legs as a giant spider and a praying mantis fought to turn each other into dinner. Too bad I didn't have a few thousands cans of Raid stashed in my pockets. 

  "Is this another attack by Talaith?" Varney asked as we ran.

  "Maybe," I replied. "If the monsters break out of the Grotesquerie and rampage through the Sprawl, they'll cause more destruction than a hundred armies." Good thing Varvara had gathered her demon soldiers. If the Grotesquerie's perimeter security failed, she was going to need every warrior she could muster to try to contain the giant monsters. 

  Next we encountered a giant Gila monster easily the size of Titanus blocking the path. The lizard's forked tongue flicked the air, and its beady black eyes fixed on us as we approached. The creature was slower than many of its gigantic brethren, and Devona and Varney had no trouble avoiding its snapping jaws as they ran past. But Shamika slowed as she drew near the lizard, almost as if she wished to give it a closer look, and the creature opened its maw and lunged toward her. Gila monsters are venomous, and if this beast managed to bite Shamika, it could well prove fatal to her.

  I was behind Shamika, so I put my hand between her shoulder blades and shoved. She stumbled forward just as the lizard's jaws snapped shut on the space where her head had been only an instant before. Angered at losing its prey, the Gila monster hissed and thrashed its head, unfortunately slamming into me. I felt no pain from the impact, but the force sent me flying backward, and I lost concentration and along with it, cohesion. My body parts became disconnected, and while my clothing kept most of them more or less together, when I hit the ground my head and hands popped off.

  The Gila monster gazed down at me, and its leathery dragon-like tongue flicked the air once more. I had no idea if the beast was a carrion-eater, but the last thing I wanted was to end up sharing the same fate as the lower half of Tavi's body. I concentrated, and my two hands flipped over and began scuttling toward my head. They backed up to the stump of my neck, and tendrils of skin reached out from all three parts to fasten them together, and an instant later, I was an ambulatory head resting atop a pair of hands. Feeling absurdly like a zombie spider, I crawled toward my body and rummaged around in one of my jacket pockets as best I could.

  The Gila monster lumbered forward and lowered its head toward me as I searched for something that might allow me to fend the beast off. I wasn't just worried about myself. Tavi was in one of my pockets, and if the Gila monster devoured my body, the lyke – what was left of him, anyway – would get eaten too. As it approached, the lizard opened its maw and dripped thick saliva onto the ground, and carrion-eater or not, it looked like the beast was going to have itself a zombie snack. I was fairly confident my head and hands could scuttle out of the way in time, but there was nothing I could do for the rest of me. I hoped my undead body would give the damned thing heartburn.

  Devona leaped on top of the Gila monster's back and crawled along its pebbly neck with inhuman speed and grace until she reached its head. She leaned down over its left eye, gripped its pebbly hide with one hand to steady herself, made a fist with the other hand, and rammed it into the beast's shiny black orb. The eye popped like a liquid-filled balloon, and the Gila monster threw back its head and cried out in pain. It thrashed back and forth, trying to dislodge Devona, but she held on with superhuman strength and tenacity.

  "That's my husband you're trying to eat!" she said through gritted teeth, and jammed her arm into the lizard's eye socket all the way to her shoulder and groped around inside, trying to get hold of the beast's tiny brain.

  I reached out psychically to her.
Have I told you
lately that you're magnificent?

  
Tell me a few months from now, when I'm big as a
house and feeling like I swallowed a couple bowling balls.
 

  An instant later, Varney jumped onto the Gila monster's head – an impressive feat considering that the creature was still thrashing and bucking. Varney reached into his own eye, the cybernetic one that Varvara had ruined, and drew forth a thin cable. He continued pulling until he'd exposed several feet, and then he bit the rubber coating off the end and plunged the exposed wires into the Gila monster's other eye. Crackling electricity discharged, and the beast's cries of agony became shrill. Devona continued rooting around in the lizard's skull, and she finally found what she'd been searching for. She smiled grimly, yanked her arm free of the socket in a spray of dark blood, and threw a handful of giant lizard brain onto the path. The Gila monster shuddered, stiffened, and then collapsed to the ground, even deader than I was.

  Devona jumped off the Gila monster's carcass and rubbed her hand and arm along its rough hide to scrape off the worst of the goo coating her. Varney also climbed off and fed his cable back into its eye socket.