King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (20 page)

The place stank of lake water and rot, the smell so heavy that for the first few minutes it was difficult even to breathe, but then it gradually faded as my nose got used to the stench. The floor beneath our feet was covered with a thick layer of silt that helped to deaden the sound of our boots as we moved deeper into the building. Those of us who could see better tried to help the others avoid the worst of the debris that had been left scattered about the corridor when the lake waters had receded.

Spencer led us down a series of interconnected corridors, across the gymnasium, and through the women’s locker room. On the far side of the showers, a short corridor ended in a set of double doors that hung loosely on their frames, with just enough room between them to allow a man to slip through.

As soon as the doors were in sight, Spencer brought up his hand in a signal to halt and settled into a crouch. The rest of us followed his lead.

“The pool’s just on the other side of those doors,” Spencer told us. “You’ve only got about ten feet of tile before you reach the edge, so watch yourself when we get inside. The Sorrows are clustered in the deep end of the pool on the far side of the room.”

Gallagher pointed to Dmitri and me. “I want the two of you to take the right-hand side of the pool. Spencer and his team will take the left, while I’ll cover the shallow end to keep any of them from trying to get out.”

“What’s the play?” Dmitri asked, and Gallagher’s response was eloquent in its simplicity.

“Kill them before they kill you.”

Right.

I held my gun a little tighter, took a deep breath, and motioned to Dmitri to lead on. Time was a wastin’.

We crept forward until we reached the doors and then slowly eased through the opening one at a time.

A row of windows ran along the opposite wall just below ceiling height, but since it was long past sunset the little bit of ambient light that was seeping through the dirty glass wasn’t enough to cause me any difficulty with my sight. I glanced around the room, taking in the scattered lounge chairs along the edge of the pool and the tangled pile of lane ropes off in one corner but knew we could get around both obstacles without difficulty.

I glanced at Dmitri, got a short nod in return, and, summoning my courage, took a few steps forward.

The pool stretched out before us in a long rectangle, but we still weren’t close enough yet to see into its depths. My hands were slick with sweat where they were clamped tight around the stock of my gun, and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I walked with extra care, afraid the slightest sound would give us away. If we could get the drop on them, we had a far better chance of coming out of this alive …

I caught motion to my left and a glance showed me Spencer and his men moving into position on the opposite side of the pool. I wasted a second wondering what the place would look like through the night-vision goggles they all wore and then pushed the thought aside, knowing I had better concentrate if I didn’t want to end up another soulless victim.

As we moved forward the last few feet, the bottom of the pool finally came into view.

It was a snake pit.

The Sorrows lay together in a huddled mass at the lowest section of the deep end, twisted and curled about one another so it was hard to see where one ended and another began. They were moving, the dark flesh of one sliding over or against another’s, and I was reminded of a shark’s need to keep moving through the waters of the ocean lest it suffocate and die; their motion had the same frenzied yet purposeful sense to it.

Not one of them noticed our approach; none of them so much as looked up as the eight of us got into position. Ahead of me, Dmitri braced himself with one foot against the lip of the pool and pointed his weapon downward at the creatures moving below him, ready to cut loose as soon as the signal was given. Along the other side, Spencer and his men were waiting for Gallagher’s signal and readying their own power.

That’s when everything went to hell.

30

HUNT

Gallagher had been gathering his power since we’d first entered the building and he raised his hands, getting ready to send a blistering wave of mystical energy down at the mass of Sorrows at the bottom of the pool.

Spencer and his men followed suit.

I turned my face away and squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting the sudden light to hinder my vision.

I’d seen Denise unleash her power in our confrontation with the doppelganger, but she’d be the first to admit that her abilities didn’t run in an offensive vein. Gallagher’s certainly did, and, even without seeing it, I could feel the intensity of the blast that was poured into that pool from the mages surrounding it. The backs of my eyelids lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks show, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything, anything at all.

When I opened my eyes I stared down into the depths of the pool, expecting to see nothing but the charred remains of the Sorrows we’d targeted.

I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

The Sorrows were swarming up the sides of the pool in every direction, the magick having washed over them without any obvious effect!

My mind froze at the sight.

We had a minute, maybe less, before they’d be upon us.

How the hell did they survive that?

I might have stood there and stared, waiting like a sheep to be disemboweled by slashing claws, if one of the wardens hadn’t pulled the trigger on his weapon.

Bullets flew and the sound of the shots filled the room, echoing in the enclosed space, snapping me from my reverie.

As the first of the Sorrows raced up the side of the pool in front of me, I raised the barrel of my weapon, prayed like hell that I’d hit something, and squeezed the trigger.

The gun jerked in my hands. My aim must have been true, for I saw the Sorrow for just a split second as it was flung over backward. That was all I saw, however, for the brilliant flare of the muzzle flash pushed back the darkness and stole my sight.

I stumbled backward, unable to see anything for several seconds except the whiteout in my head. Gunfire erupted on all sides, the sound echoing in the enclosed space, hammering at my ears and destroying my usual means of orienting myself, leaving me to stumble about, afraid that I’d either fall victim to one of the Sorrows or stumble into someone’s line of fire and get killed by our own people.

Interspersed with the gunfire I could hear the shrieking of the Sorrows and the roar of an enraged bear, which told me that Dmitri had gotten into the fight.

Something grabbed my ankle and yanked me off my feet. Unable to see, I hit the ground hard, smacking my head against the deck surrounding the pool. Claws dug into my calf and began to drag me backward.

Shaking my head to clear it, I activated my ghostsight.

The white fog I’d been enveloped in fell away, revealing the snarling face of the Sorrow that had hold of my leg and was hauling me back toward the edge of the swimming pool.

I’d retained hold of the gun in my hand and I didn’t hesitate to make use of it. A quick burst struck the Sorrow square in the chest.

It jittered with the impact of the bullets, shrieking in rage, and dropped out of sight.

In the brief reprieve, I looked around. Given that just about every living thing in the room was supernatural in nature, I could see them all with my ghostsight. Dmitri had shifted and he stood a few feet away from me, driving back wave after wave of Sorrows as they threatened to overwhelm us. Across the pool, Spencer and his men were fighting hand to hand with the creatures and losing. Two men were down, surrounded by Sorrows, their life force being stolen even as I watched. Gallagher was still on his feet, blood trailing from a wound on the side of his head and a trio of Sorrows trying to corner him against one wall where they could all come at him at once.

Clearly, we were losing.

I scrambled to my feet just in time to see the Sorrow I’d shot start scaling the side of the pool for a second time. It wasn’t that I’d missed; I hadn’t. The bullets just weren’t effective against the Sorrows. The kinetic energy in the strikes was knocking them down, but it wasn’t killing them. Not even close.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to realize that we were in trouble, for just at that moment Gallagher started yelling, “Fall back! Fall back!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned and headed back in the direction we’d come, stumbling along with the others, keeping my gaze on the aura of the man in front of me so that I’d have a means of finding my way out.

The Sorrows harassed us through the halls but fell back as we neared the exit, letting us escape into the night air without further confrontation.

We stumbled to the vehicles, practically fell inside them, and got out of there as quickly as we could.

The raid had been a complete bust and, when the butcher’s bill was taken, cost us two good men.

31

HUNT

It took time to recover mentally from the failed attack. In the aftermath, we struggled to keep despair from overwhelming us. No one could have anticipated that the Sorrows would be resistant to magick, never mind modern firearms, and given what we’d faced as a result, we’d done well to escape with the loss of only two men.

But it was still a failure, a miserable failure at that, and we were hard-pressed not to succumb to the feeling that we were not only outnumbered but outmatched as well. It wasn’t just what we knew that could get us killed; it was what we didn’t know.

Those who’d made it out alive were all sporting injuries of varying degrees of seriousness. Denise and the rest of the medical volunteers had their hands full getting us back into fighting shape and even with the accelerated healing Denise could deliver through her Art, we still needed rest.

Forty-eight hours later, Dmitri, Denise, Gallagher, and I gathered together in the kitchen to consider our next move.

“We’ve got three problems facing us,” Gallagher said, by way of opening the meeting. “One, locate the other nests. Two, figure out a way to counter their ability to hide from sight, and three, come up with a way to hurt these things.”

There wasn’t any disagreement; Gallagher had hit the nail on the head.

He went on. “In the wake of our failure, I’ve had people searching round the clock through the books in the Council library, searching for additional references to the Sorrows. About an hour ago, we got lucky.

“It was a tiny reference, but it suggested that Sorrows have the same weakness that many other enchanted creatures do, and that’s iron.”

He paused, debating what he was going to say, it seemed, and then went on. “I have to apologize. Another half hour of searching might have brought this to our attention and we could have avoided the fiasco of the other night.”

Denise reassured him that he’d done the best he could and he seemed satisfied with that. I, on the other hand, wasn’t as inclined to let him off so easily.

“So how do we know that there isn’t more information over there? Shouldn’t we wait to act before we’ve gone through it all?”

I knew he was shaking his head even as he said, “That would take too long. The number of attacks is growing daily and if we wait too long they will surpass our ability to respond to them. I’ve still got people looking, but we’re going to have to act now with what we’ve got.”

I was tempted to remind him that doing so was what had gotten us all nearly killed, but in the end I held my tongue. He didn’t need me to remind him of his failure. I’m sure he’d be hearing the screams of his men for the rest of his life.

Now was not the time for divisiveness.

Denise spoke up. “Why don’t we each take an issue? I’ll continue with my scrying efforts. Simon, why don’t you see if you can do anything about the visual problem, and Jeremiah and Dmitri can handle the weapons issue?”

With that, the meeting broke up.

Quite frankly, I didn’t have any idea where to begin with the task we’d been given, but not Dmitri. No sooner had we received our marching orders than he was headed for the front door, tugging me along in his wake.

I waited until we were in the truck and on our way before asking the obvious question. “Where are we going?”

“Garden District.”

I might not have been all that familiar with the Big Easy, but that, at least, was a name I recognized. It conjured up images of what I’d seen on my earlier wanderings: antebellum homes surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens, where old and new money intermingled in full view of the tourists staring with longing through the windows of the historic streetcar running down the middle of St. Charles Avenue.

“Why, might I ask?”

“Why what?”

“Why are we going to the Garden District?”

He laughed.

“Cuz that’s where the armory is,” he said.

32

HUNT

Dmitri explained that the previous Lord Marshal, the man he’d personally worked for before leaving the city, Charles Winston, had lived deep in the heart of the Garden District. The original mansion had been built in the late 1860s, but after assuming control of the estate, Winston had torn out the wine cellar and replaced it with a custom-built armory. According to Dmitri, it was stuffed to the rafters with the latest and greatest in modern weaponry.

Even better, Dmitri knew where to find the spare key.

It didn’t take us long to cross the city and arrive at the Winston estate. Dmitri explained that the former Lord Marshal had lived alone, so we weren’t worried about running into anyone and having to explain our presence; as representatives of the current Lord Marshal, we had every right to be there.

Since he could see in the dark nearly as well as I could, Dmitri left the lights off once we were inside, allowing me to move around without his help or the use of my cane. There wasn’t time for sightseeing though; he moved through the ground floor like man on a mission, leading me into the kitchen and then down a flight of stairs to the lower level.