Demon Squad 6 The Best of Enemies (17 page)

More comfortable on my feet, I dropped inside the fence and landed, doing my best to be quiet. I managed it pretty well, but decided not to risk patting myself on the back to avoid injuring my arm. It might not have been a Wright Brother’s moment for anyone else, but I was pretty damn proud of myself.

I tucked that feeling away for later and let my senses loose. Nothing rang against them, which made me kind of nervous. The plant was the perfect place for an ambush or trap, but I wasn’t sure it was either. Why the hell would Hobbs leave a light on for me? It wasn’t like he worked for Motel 6, far as I knew. I couldn’t
scent
any were-critters or vamps hanging about, and while humans didn’t give off much of a ping, there didn’t seem to be any of those around, either. The place was deserted.

Then who turned the light on? That was gonna bug the fuck out of me.

I started off toward the light post with constant pulses of my senses ranging out and my ears and eyes on full alert. There wasn’t anything to find, though. Crickets chirped in the background and the occasional bird cried out, but as far as I could tell, the place was desolate. I crept through the quiet plant, slipping under a wall of old transformers secured on poles. A quiet hum ran through them, the faint echoes of energy setting the hair on my arms to standing. I ran my hand across the casings as I walked past and could feel the current they were carrying.

It was pretty suspicious that there was power flooding through the plant seeing how it was only intended for backup during emergencies. As far as I knew, the plant was only run in order to maintain its functional integrity. This clearly wasn’t about that since someone would have to be there to make sure the system operated properly. Leaving it to run on its own was counterproductive to that goal.

What did Hobbs have up his sleeve?

I circled under the humming electronics, on my way toward the lone lamp post, when I saw a mass of cabling running down from the clustered transformers. Half a dozen cables wormed together into a single rubberized sheath, which was easily the size of a horror movie anaconda. The gathered lines were as thick as my chest and ran from beneath the electrical hardware, trailing out in the direction of the lamp post. My eyes followed its course and saw the light shined right over top of the cabling as it sprawled further through the plant and out of sight behind a mass of small buildings.

Hobbs had left a path for me to follow whether he’d meant to or not. He might as well have painted a big arrow on the concrete that said: “This Way to the Insidious Plot.” Though, I had to give him credit. If I hadn’t thought to get a bird’s eye view of Old Town, I would never have seen the light that lured me there. He couldn’t possibly have planned for that, which meant the cable and the running power might not have anything at all to do with him or his plan. Shit, for all I knew, this could have been one of Baalth’s schemes that’d been running before Mihheer helped him get extra crispy.

Either way, I wasn’t gonna learn what it was by standing around presuming. I left my senses running and chased after the power cable, which turned out to be pretty easy. No one had bothered to hide the thing or put any effort into disguising it. The cable ran across the ground in plain sight, circling through maze of utility buildings until it ran up a ramp and went inside the largest of the buildings, which looked more like a warehouse. The aluminum door was rolled up about halfway, nothing but darkness visible beyond its maw. It didn’t inspire confidence. But if anything, I’m braver than I am smart.

I went inside.

Five feet…ten feet…fifteen…and still nothing jumped me. It must have been a record, or something.

The warehouse was filled to the rafters with spools of wire and cabling and packaged transformers and all sorts of wilted cardboard boxes that showed faded logos and equipment names I had no clue about; electric gizmowhatsistats or some shit. It was all French to me with a hint of
duh
. The layers of dust on it all assured me no one had been in there for a while except that there was a path of stirred up gray that ran alongside the big cable I was following. The dust had been wiped away sufficiently to keep me from recognizing footprints, but there was no mistaking someone, or several someones, had laid the cable recently, sticking close to its length as they had. That shot my idea that Baalth might have been involved somehow. No dust had settled back yet. Baalth was cold and stiff long before any of this had been done.

I followed the cable through the warehouse, surprised that my senses remained silent. Nothing lurked in the big empty space, only the sound of my impatient steps and the tiniest of hums from the current running through the cable made any noise. It was disquieting, and it seemed as if the cable would run on forever. Just when I’d about given up on finding the end, the smell hit me.

It was like a Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber song, wrapped up in a Milli Vanilli backbeat with lots and lots of poo extract. Or a sewer. Pretty much the same thing. Both left me a little nauseated.

The cable turned a corner around a wall of wood pallets and aluminum crating, where it dropped through a massive hole that had been dug through the concrete floor. It snaked between two sheared off pieces of rebar and dropped into darkness. The stench of Teen Spirit wafted thickly out of the hole, and I heard the quiet trickle of running water below. A quick glance over the edge confirmed my worst fear—well, it wasn’t Snooki lying in there naked, so maybe it wasn’t my
worst
fear. It was, however, a gooey and wet sewer tunnel.

I sighed, not sure if I was up for a
Shawshank Redemption
moment. How many miles of shit would you crawl through for a Klondike bar?

Fortunately, I had magic at my disposal. No sense that anything was lurking below—outside of resurrected corn kernels and billions of sperm who’d lost the lottery of life—I willed my power to flow up over me like a pair of hip waders and jumped down. A wet and disturbingly slushy
splash
greeted me. The
water
came up to my knees, but the cabling had been pulled so tight that several inches of it hung above the surface, making it easy to follow, if not pleasant. The smell was much worse down there than it had been above.

Wanting to get out of the muck, but cognizant of errant splashes, I sloshed through the steel tunnel as quickly as I could. There were no lights on in it, not that I’d expected any, but I could see well enough. The water was a dark black, but the surface had a silvery sheen that looked like the reflection of the moon as I stirred it up. It was beautiful in a crappy kind of way.

The sewer tunnel went on and on. Fortunately, somewhere along the way, my nose burned out and the stink became almost bearable. It was a small mercy considering my magical waders were collecting all sorts of fragrant hitchhikers, which reminded me of a
South Park
episode.

Finally, a short set of steps appeared, the cable running up them, over a short—and mercifully dry—platform before leading upward alongside a rusted metal ladder set into the wall. I inched over and peered upward, but as had been a trend, the new tunnel was dark but I could have sworn I saw the dull flicker of a light near its end. Once more I amped up my senses, only the vague sense of magical energy ringing back against them. It was so dim, so cold, I was certain it wasn’t a person. There’s an obvious difference between living energy and non-sentient. It was also so low wattage as to possibly be an afterimage, of sorts, magical energy having been used nearby recently enough to have left a trace sense behind.

Whatever it was, there was no sense of threat to it, which kind of left me deflated. I’d wandered through miles of murky shit-water in the hopes of finding something—anything—and all I was picking up was trace magic. It was rather disappointing.

I tested the ladder to make sure it’d hold me, and climbed up it, readying my power just in case. A steel door, kind of like those on a submarine met me at the top, the cabling running through a hole carved in the cement to the side of it. My senses told me nothing lurked on the other side, so I spun the wheel and pushed. Brightness poured out.

In the dark for so long, it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, but even after they had, there was no decrease in brilliance. I climbed into the room to find it was made out of silver. Small, mystical lamps were embedded at the ceiling, the walls reflecting the hell out of them until every surface glowed with illumination. That had been the energy I’d sensed, but it still didn’t explain the room.

Almost circular in design, the walls sloped around, curving upward toward the ceiling where the lamps were, a five foot wide flat surface defining the roof. The floor was larger than that by a good twenty feet, but even it was made out of silver, or something that looked damn close to it. The door at my feet had been coated on the top, as had the door at the far end of the room, which was pretty much the same submarine-type portal as the first. The hum of the cable echoed through the room, and I could feel its energies running beneath my feet as I went over to the other door, my hair standing on end. My brain spun in my skull. Why the hell would anyone make a room out of silver? Right above a sewer even. The shit didn’t make any sense.

As I went to let myself out, the door at my back slammed shut. I spun, ready to let loose a magical blast and saw the wheel spin tight. I was alone in the room. The echo of the door reverberated through the place, the dull hum growing rapidly in the background. My brain gears slammed into drive. I’d walked right into a trap. Even though I’d expected it the entire time, the lack of magical threat lulled me into stupidity.

The thought of teleporting popped into my brain, but I still wasn’t confident in activating the power so I chose to do it my way. Energy welled up at my hands, and I aimed them at the portal, the buzz of bees growing as though I’d stuck my head in the hive. The noise must have shaken some sense loose because just as I released my energy, I recognized what the sound was: electricity.

Right then I realized the power hadn’t been cut, only redirected.

That was my last thought as hundreds of thousands of volts ripped through my body.

Seventeen

I awoke with a start, my face slamming into something I couldn’t see above me. Stars danced in my eyes, my brain, and pretty much everywhere else. I drowned in them, brilliant dots of light whirling around me.

Then came the pain.

Lightning bolts of crispy agony ran the length of my body, my toes curling as jolt after jolt raged through my nervous system. Muscles stiffened, straining to the point of tearing, my teeth clenched so tight I could taste blood. I thrashed under the discharge of energy as if I was being molested with a Taser. Somewhere in the fog of my mind I realized I was enclosed in something, every point of my body colliding with something solid as I spazzed and twisted about, the strangely distant
thump
of my container sounding with every movement.

“Relax, Frank,” I heard a voice say from somewhere nearby, though I didn’t recognize it, the sound distorted to all hell. “It’s a side effect of the electrical discharge. It’ll pass in a few minutes.”

That wasn’t much of a comfort as every nerve in my body twitched like overloaded capacitors. They felt ready to explode. My blood boiled in my veins, a hi-ball shot of crank mixed with bleach, which kicked my headache into the stratosphere. I could tell I was screaming but I couldn’t hear myself, my throat ripped raw. Every swallow tasted of razor blades and copper. Electricity charred every inch of me as I squirmed against the excruciating pain. Then as quick as I’d felt it, it was gone.

My ears whined as though I’d been front row-center at a Motorhead concert, my skull pounded into a bowl of squishy bone and brain matter. Even my asshole hurt from puckering. If there’d been a piece of coal up my rectum, I would have shit diamonds.

Slowly I felt my body begin to settle, the spasmodic twitches easing as my muscles were released from the current that had speared through me. I can’t say I felt all that great, but even a liberal salting feels good after the sandpaper massage stops. It’s all relative. Right then, anything would have felt better.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I peeled my eyelids open to look up at who’d spoken, faint recognition stirring this time. The person swayed and blurred. It was like looking through a waterfall. Colors—bright and decadent—swirled before my eyes as my gaze drifted upward, a halo of black with red tips slipping into view. A few quick blinks cleared some of the tears away, my hands unable to reach my face, and a person slowly came together before me.

“Veronica?” I raised my head to get a better look and bonked against a sheet of what appeared to be glass. “What the…” My forehead
squeed
against the glass as I rolled my head to the side to get a better look. The weird squiggles on the outside of the partition confused my eyes, and I noticed they encircled me as far around as I could see. I was in a box of some kind.

“How you doing, Frank?” she asked, staring down at me.

The last thing I remembered was riding the lightning but I couldn’t recall being at a Metallica concert. Damn, I hadn’t been this drunk in a long time. I stared at Veronica, bumping my face against the glass again. Why was I in this thing?

“Where am I?” It wasn’t the most brilliant of questions, but it was all I could squeeze out, the highway between my mind and my tongue experiencing one hell of a pile up.

Veronica smiled. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

“You’re at Gailbraith.” She ran a pale hand across the glass facing, my gaze unconsciously following her fingers.

I caught an orange-black shape out of the corner of my eye and turned to look. Rala stood there at the bottom of my—whatever it was—her chin drooping. Though it was hard to tell through the glass, she looked gaunt, her cheeks sunken, her shoulders even more narrow than they had been before. She was a twig with stubby little legs, but she looked as if a stiff wind could blow her away. Somewhere in the primal recesses of the thing I call my brain, the embers of a memory sparked alive.