Bloodsong Ch. 05

"None. I'm taking Webber too, though, so I'll need to grab him. And then wait until Blakely gets back to me."

"What is he doing?"

"Finding me a hacker with suicidal tendencies."

Santos sighed in a 'I knew it was going to be something like that and was still dumb enough to ask' way that Valerie hadn't realized how much she'd missed. The St. Louis section was a young one, and she didn't spend enough time there for the people she was nominally in charge of to feel comfortable calling her insane to her face. Santos had been at that level since the day they'd met.

"Obviously that would be it. LADIES. GENTS." He turned to address everyone, and all but her small entourage jumped. "This is Valerie Redmont, leader of another chapter of the paramilitary alien fighting squad I just debriefed you about. Yes, she needs a shower, but don't we all. No, don't ask what happened to her other hand . . ."

Blakely came by as Santos finished introductions and dredged up a few weak snatches of laughter from the assembly. He came accompanied by a red-faced young man with tousled brown hair, who, by appearance and demeanor, instantly put Valerie in mind of an overeager golden retriever.

"Redmont, Horton, Horton, Redmont. He's a . . . I'm drawing a blank. Tech thing. Anyhow, he hacks."

"Mike, please," the other enthused, which, never in darkness. In the last twenty-five years Valerie hadn't been on a first name basis with anyone male, unless they were ostensibly not attracted to women or someone she would like dead. Surnames meant distance. Distance lessened their risk of getting murdered by a possessive psychopath with no sense of boundaries. Horton it was. "I'm a software developer. Thank you so much for this opportunity!"

Valerie shot Blakely a politely inquiring glance. He threw up his hands.

"I swear I stressed the suicide mission aspect!"

"Did you do it enough, though? Did you mention that there is a chance larger than zero that he'll have his flesh flayed off his bones by stone getting spat around? That he'll get interred in fire whilst still living?"

"Fuck's sake, Redmont, take morale out back and shoot it, why don't you?" Santos snapped. True enough, that was not the thing to say in front of a group of people whom he had just exerted himself trying to infuse with a seed of optimism. The man did do a double take when he turned to glower at her and saw Horton for the first time, the other busy beaming, a stiff, plastic smile on his lips. Santos appeared as unsettled by the sight as Valerie felt. "Jesus, kid. Are you even legal?"

"I'm going to grab Webber," she cut in, while Horton shrugged helplessly. Santos gave her another pointed look, like he'd just remembered that he'd forgotten to ask what she needed Webber for and couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to rectify the oversight. Valerie shook her head. "You don't want to know. It's perverse."

He waved her off with a resigned sigh.

"I don't know about this."

"It'll be fine."

"I can do the face, but my Barashnik is rusty and I'm sure I didn't get the song right."

"It sounds oily enough to pass. Just speak English with a New York-ish accent, drop f-bombs every two words, swear by Astara and keep your hands in your pockets, and you'll be golden. You're impersonating Sir Always-Getting-Captured, no one will question this."

"The shoes, though! What if someone notices—"

"They'll assume I'm just that spiteful. Or that I have a thing for feet. Webber, gods above, relax."

"I knew it was a mistake to come out of retirement."

"You are what now, one hundred and fifty? That's too young to retire either way."

"I don't know my life expectancy!"

"Honestly, who does?" Valerie pushed an automatic door, which slid open without complaint. She tensed at the sight of a camera, then eased once she'd appraised it and made sure it neither blinked nor swiveled around its center point. She nevertheless pushed Webber onwards with an arm wrapped around his neck. A precaution, in case the device wasn't as dead as it appeared. All cameras they'd encountered along the way had been, but there was no such thing as being too careful.

The power outage had simplified everything. Until two hallways ago, she'd moved ahead of the others, scouting for staff. There'd been a few Ki-laar. A handful of Caheans, more of a challenge yet ultimately dispatched. They were a tough species, scoring as high as Cyniheans in strength. No tentacles, however, and no healing factor, and they were big, which made them slow.

Valerie had replaced her empty blaster with a charged one taken off one of the corpses. She hadn't bothered to get their clothes, hoping that the rest of the group would help itself in her stead. They needed full body armor more than she did, and although Webber now wore what she'd stolen from Nick, at least she still had her underwear.

She hadn't broken pace when the notes of one blood song echoed forth, figuring that she could manage a single Tsikalayan staff member without resorting to the decoy strategy. Only when the song was joined by another did she double back to confer with the others and get Webber. The men, she'd discovered, had followed in her footsteps and ransacked the dead she'd left strew along the way. Finding them dressed came as a relief. She was desensitized to nudity for the most part, but in a place like the Mayfly, it served as a shorthand for vulnerability.

"You look like you're about to throw up," she whispered, rounding the corner. Just another corridor. The songs rang louder, almost causing her to miss a third that joined them. Not Jack's, thankfully, nor Nick's. The latter would have been catastrophic. Webber was already having a hard time keeping it together. Good thing that she hadn't entertained the thought of letting him tackle the Ring. "Not a criticism, it's in character. Just unnecessary. We only need to distract them long enough for the others to sneak up. One minute. You can manage that."

"Ngh," Webber said back.

Valerie shook her head, schooled her features into something more foreboding and pushed her fake hostage ahead. Webber swore, either because he shared her feelings about the sight that met them or because he was trying to be sufficiently Nick-like.

Her exceptionally sneaky song mustn't have given the enemy more than a few moments of warning, but they had mined them for all they were worth. A network of tentacles knotted together from ceiling to floor so that the way was blocked by coral streaked with black. Axis and Rem, although the rest of Rem must be standing on the other side of the obstruction. The third, softer song didn't come from anyone Valerie could see.

"Redmont," Axis, who had never been her favorite member of the goon squad but was on his way to earning the title of most irritating, greeted. The toothsome grin he'd broken into slid off his face when he saw Webber-in-disguise, replaced by disbelief. "Are you shitting me! Can't you go ten godsdamned minutes without getting captured?!"

"It's not my fault!" Webber complained, in the wrong New York accent, but whinily enough that the slip went unnoticed. Valerie clamped a hand over his mouth to save them from having to be so lucky twice.

It was all she had time to do before a third person dropped behind her.

Tentacles exploded, backwards, else they'd have taken her face off at such close quarters. Instead, they sealed the other end of the corridor. Valerie retreated from the wall of limbs, placing herself closer to Axis. There was no helping it; either she found a midway point between the two men, or remained within Kalidriapolos' reach.

"Nice," she drawled, glancing at the hole in the ceiling. Not only had they gotten one over her, but they'd ripped a page from her playbook to do it. "Now get out of the way before I tear off his head."

Webber looked appropriately terrified. Axis regarded them both, lips pressed together.

"Cicerny, I like you, and all." Something about his tone was off. Heavy, for what words were spoken. That ought to have been her first warning. "I'm not doing this a second time today, though. Byron hasn't been answering his phone since he came down, and who knows where the boss has gotten himself to. She's going to kill every man and creature on staff if we don't do something, so look, I'm sorry, I am, but right now—"

Shit, shit, shit, no.

"—it's either you or all of us," Axis concluded, whipping out a pistol.

What would happen flashed before Valerie's eyes like a premonition.

She was turning before she could think, before it occurred to her to wonder why Axis wouldn't go for the blaster, knowing as he did that she was immune to regular silver. She placed herself so that she'd shield Webber. She felt the barely there sting of one two three four hits to the chest, going so fast that they slipped through her ribs with little notice, pain registering as an afterthought.

"What the . . ." Axis, for some reason, looked horrified. Then he gathered his wits and did grab the blaster. Valerie scraped up the presence of mind to duck and take Webber alongside her. He slumped over her back, his hands grabbing at her shoulders, sliding down her arms when he lost his hold on her, air leaving him in a huge shudder.

Valerie turned to stop him from falling and shivered.

No. Oh, no. That blood on him was much too purple to be hers.

Magic thick in the air, the recoil preceding another discharge. Axis aimed again, no longer full of horror but dawning understanding. Nick's features melted off Webber's face while he pressed a shaking hand against the wounds. The bullets had gone clean through her, Valerie noted. Coldly, because once she started seeing the world tinted red around the corners, the part of her where feelings lived checked out. They had gone clean through her, because they'd been meant to go clean through Nick and fly onward.

The point of that? She'd let it matter later.

Blue flares in the corner of her eye, target ahead. She stretched her mouth in the opposite of a smile, bones switching places and better teeth coming in. Blue flares everywhere, now. Behind Axis, Rem screamed in alarm. She had no eyes for him. She lived in the space wherein all things soft about her were subsumed by a fury that burned like dry ice.

Someone called her name — Barrera? Pierce? There was such an abundance of sound and the roaring in her head was deafening, so whoever it was, Valerie ignored them. Axis was upon her or she upon him, the difference a matter of semantics. She wasn't sure which of them was shouting 'Diediedie!' the loudest.

He slammed her headfirst into the wall. She reeled back and kicked him in the crotch.

"Man, get out of there! Fall back! Axis!" Valerie only dimly registered Rem's screaming. "I can't aim if you're rolling in the way of — darkness take it!" And those were his last words, for a moment later a blast coming from the opposite side, and which narrowly missed Valerie herself, sent him to the floor, where he writhed, wreathed in blue flames, until all motion ceased.

Axis yelled something indiscernible and looked twice as hateful, a feat in itself. He wrestled her to the tiles. The nozzle of the blaster pressed against her forehead. His lip curled, and although his expression was more one of relief than of smugness, there was smugness there. Was there ever.

"My condolences to whichever god gets to guide you, you vile bitch!"

And then he was, abruptly, gone. Just gone, up into the air, one moment about to do her in, the next dangling from a tentacle he'd slung like a grappling hook through the hole in the ceiling. He got himself out of the way a fraction of a second before a landslide of blasts scorched the place where his feet had hung and his head would have been if he hadn't moved.

Valerie stared at the blue fire passing overhead and sighed, the crimson edges receding from her sight. That had been too close.

"Redmont. You okay?"

"Fine. Help Webber." She drew herself to a sitting position and surveyed the destruction first, the bodies last. Scorch marks on every wall; it was sheer dumb luck that she hadn't been hit. Axis had disappeared onto the floor above, Rem was one hundred percent a goner, and Kalidriapolos, who'd been taken out without her noticing, lay on the ground too, stunned but still breathing.

As always, following the adrenaline kick of going berserk, there came the slump. She stumbled towards Pierce and Fulton, who were convincing as much of Webber's blood as they could to stay where it belonged. Valerie slipped a hand in between their arms to retrieve the vial of paxpernia she'd left in his breast pocket.

Webber tried to say something. Three mouths shushed him.

"Hang in there, Webbs."

"Hang in there three more minutes at least," Valerie urged, remembering how long it had taken for those she had blasted on stun during the alley standoff to rise. It felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. She turned to the two younger Front members, who had self-assigned themselves to corpse robbing duty. "You — sorry, I forgot your names, you with brown hair and your friend with the nose! Leave the weapons for Santos' group, they need to be armed more than we need the extras. That pistol over there, though. Hand it here."

The brown-haired Front member tossed it over. She emptied the cylinder on her palm, picked one piece of ammunition apart and swore aloud.

"What's that?" The question came from Horton, who had stuck to the sidelines and only now wandered in.

"Full metal jacket bullets. Steel encasement, red silver core." Which meant nothing to the human asking, but caused Valerie to suppress a shudder. Weapons like this were forbidden on Barashi and any world on which Tsikalayans had a say. If it had been her standing behind Webber, if she'd left those things lodged inside her longer than a minute, if one of them had caught on a rib or worse, gotten stuck inside her skull . . .

Kalidriapolos made a sound, stopping her from musing on how close she'd come to death.

She walked over, while he caught wind of his position and made as if no noise had been produced. False alarm, no one at home yet. Nonsense she had neither time nor patience for.

She delivered a sharp kick to his ribs, settled over him and attempted to pry his mouth open. Predictably but annoyingly, he responded by trying to strangle her. She socked him and squashed his windpipe with her forearm, feeling the absence of her other hand dearly.

"Don't blast him!" she warned, since it looked as if Pembroke had been about to try. Commendable instincts, wrong moment. Webber couldn't wait for Kalidriapolos to come around a second time. "Take this, dump it down his throat once I open — oh, screw you too, fuckwad!" It was a chore to get the Tsikalayan under control and make him swallow the paxpernia even with another pair of hands helping, but between her putting her all in holding him down and Pembroke kicking him in the mouth a few times, they managed.

"What do you—" Kalidriapolos sputtered, once she let up enough for him to speak. "—want?"

"So very glad you asked." Valerie detached him from the ground and pushed him towards the corner where Fulton and Pierce fussed over an increasingly greener Webber. "Do something good for someone for once in your miserable existence and heal him. Properly."

"What in darkness is that thing?" She stopped short of giving him a concussion, remembering belatedly that with the paxpernia, punching Kalidriapolos in the head might kill him before she'd exhausted his use. She had no compunctions about twisting his arm, however, when he followed up with, "Why would I do that?"

"It's how you get to keep your limbs attached." When that wasn't enough to persuade him, Valerie twisted harder and clawed deep into his wrist. "Don't get me started on all the ways I could kill you. It's a long list, and I don't have the time, he doesn't have the time, and you are running out of it fast. Heal him."

She kept the business end of the blaster pointed at his nape while he worked. Waited until the bullets were out, the flesh sealed, the whiff of magic faded from the air. Waited until Webber no longer looked like he might expire between breaths. Waited for the pale shade of a smile to manifest on his features as they rippled and rearranged themselves.

Then she waited for him and the others to stop staring once she'd discharged the blaster in Kalidriapolos' neck.

Pierce raised a wary hand.

". . . was that set to stun?"

"No." She saw him and Barrera exchanging looks and shrugged. "I only said I wouldn't dismember him. I never promised I'd let him live."

"Couldn't we have used those skills of his later?"

"He's security, not a weak-kneed accountant, or whatever it is Nicolai actually does. If we'd taken him and ran into more trouble, he'd have wrung someone's neck in the time it takes to spit." And I'm done giving this rabid bunch of animals chances they can exploit, went unsaid. "Are you good to go, Webber?"

"Will do." There was still no color to his smile, but he'd gotten up and remained standing, so Valerie elected to believe him.

"Then let's keep moving. I want two of you watching the ceiling from here on out." They weren't close to through with the Tsikalayan staff members, and she wouldn't bet on Axis not coming back for a rematch. A sufficient number of Caheans or even Ki-laar dropping in on them unexpectedly could likewise present a danger.

They had set out without a destination, only the goal of neutralizing as many enemies and collecting as many weapons as they could, but as they distanced themselves from the holding room, the words Santos had spoken in his container returned to her, thrashing around her brain with unprecedented viciousness.

They had nowhere concrete to be. They might as well head south.

Barrera led, being a veteran of many a Mayfly break in and, unlike her, in possession of a sixth sense that let him tell where on the floor they found themselves. Talking didn't happen except between Horton, who asked a headache-inducing amount of questions, and Webber, who'd taken on the thankless job of answering him. Valerie had been paying them crumbs of attention, until 'Are the tentacle monster aliens related to Cthulhu?' made her decide that for her own sanity, she was better off deaf to anything coming from that direction.

"I think . . ." Barrera halted, studying a row of doors spreading out before them. He counted under his breath before pointing. "That one, unless I'm misremembering."

"Alright. I'll go in first. Follow only if I call you, shout if you need me."

What greeted Valerie on the other side was a white room and the appearance of silence.

She ambled past the tables, the torture paraphernalia on the walls confirming that yes, it was like every training room she had ever seen. Having been in a hundred of them, what became unsettling about these spaces was their sameness. Somewhere on Barashi there was bound to exist an IKEA equivalent where trade bosses went, pointed at room set displays and ordered 'fifty just like that one, but in the company's colors'.

Listening closer, it wasn't truly silent in there. There was an odd schlep schlep schlep sound ongoing, almost but not fully blending in with the quiet. Valerie couldn't determine what produced it, except that the liquid quality it possessed differed from that of blood dripping or gushing. It came from another section, accessible by a curtain covered entrance.

She faltered when she realized that although what she heard still didn't sound like blood, she could smell a coppery tang in the air. If she didn't pull the curtain aside now, she'd talk herself out of doing it.