Brutal Asset, page 25
A sonic blast shook the cave, the collapsed wall of rock separating Tanya and the others from us blasting inward from the force of her voice. The energy inherent in the sculpted cone of sonic force completely obliterated a basketball sized tunnel of rock. Ahraman turned his massive head in her direction and I made my move – the one I had so carefully set up. I first extended the mono edge up the full length of my right arm, immediately slicing all the fingers of his left hand completely off. Then I Pulled on the embedded silver dart, yanking it free from the limestone pillar with my aura, the heavy spike flying in a spinning blur across the room and impaling the back of his head. He froze, paralyzed by the rod of deadly metal, and I used my last reserves of aura to force his demonic essence up and out, calling to Kirby at the same time. The shadow hawk entered the cavern with a battle cry that even got Fenrir’s attention, the huge claws grabbing the thrashing, struggling black-tar Hellbourne and hauling it back to the depths of hell. The massive greasy demonic shape in Kirby’s claws put up an enormous fight, but the shadow raptor beat wings like car hoods and pulled it out of our realm. Another piercing sonic blast shattered more of the collapsed tunnel wall and then Tanya was there, throwing the hulking, furred corpse off of me with one hand, her other sword-holding hand lopping off the Beast’s head for good measure.
Freed from the body of the Spawn’s leader, I glanced over at the god fight in time to see Okwari’s trap-like jaws slam shut on Fenrir’s lifted throat and crush down with awful, final pressure. The ancient wolf’s death rattle shook the cavern, then the body settled to the stone floor. I hobbled over to my bear, feeling my ribs still knitting themselves back together.
Okwari was lying on the ground, breathing like some enormous bellows. Fenrir’s body shimmered for a moment, then green and red motes of light began to rise up out of his dead form. They came faster and faster, his body shrinking as more Christmas colored lights flickered away. I could feel Tanya’s amazement, which told me she saw them too. More vampires were through the tunnel she had bored with just her voice, moving through the broken rock to check things out.
Okwari’s jaws relaxed their grip on Fenrir’s throat, his lava red eyes cooling to their normal deep brown. He watched me, closely but other than that he didn’t move. Tanya’s hand gesture caught my eye and she silently pointed to the huge pool of blood underneath him where Fenrir’s hind claws had ripped his stomach to shreds. An image of him in his prime, roaring out a victory bellow, popped into my head. “Yeah, you kicked ass, buddy,” I said, gently rubbing the pickle barrel sized head.
Another image pushed into my head, but with less energy than the first. This one was of Okwari and me sitting in Owls Head Park in Brooklyn, watching kids on the playground. The image was vivid enough that you could feel the warmth of the sun, smell the fallen leaves and even taste the crisp air of fall. It was a memory of one of our afternoons at the park, a year ago when we had first met.
A third, much weaker image came through. It was actually two memories combined; me pulling the demon collar from his throat and him crushing Fedor like toothpaste. Then my giant bear closed his eyes, sighed, and settled, the bellows stopped, the great heart fell silent. Almost immediately, red, green and purple motes lifted from his form in waves, swirling up in a storm of light that vanished into the rocky ceiling above. My vision blurred, but I didn’t release my hold on his head to wipe away the tears, not wanting to let go until the great form evaporated from under my touch.
It only took moments for one and a half tons of spirit bear to disappear, leaving me kneeling on the cavern floor, a ring of silent vampires watching. Tanya tugged me upright, gently leading me out of the darkness. A wave of rage struck me, anger that I couldn’t keep my friend. My fist pounded an unbroken stalagmite, shattering it into dust. Alarmed vampires faded back, but Tanya simply hugged me, then led me into the well lit mine where Lydia was organizing the survivors. The little vampire glanced over at us, then did a double take at whatever she saw on my face. I ignored her and the glances of the other vampires as well, instead letting my feet pull me into the cage cell where the Kodiak was kept. The ex-zoo keeper turned security vampire was resting his hand on the mother bear’s head, much like mine had been on Okwari moments ago. His other arm held a bundle of wet fur about the size of a three month old German Shepard. He looked up at me, then back at the bear.
“She just died….she gave birth to this one..then died,” he said. “Should I kill it?” he asked, motioning with the arm holding the outsized bear cub. “It’s got to be some sort of abomination, right? I mean look at it…it’s way too big.. and somehow its birth killed its own mother,” he said, holding his other hand up, razor sharp fingernails ready to slit the baby bear’s throat at my word. Just the same, I could see his reluctance written on his face.
“NO!” I screamed, on him in a blur before his hand could move. He looked at my face, frightened by what he saw, but I simply removed the newborn from his arm and moved away. Suddenly sorry that my crazy outburst had scared him, I tried to explain. “A lot of mothers have died giving birth. Doesn’t mean they want their babies killed in revenge,” I said. “I think we need to keep this one…I’ll take him.”
He glanced away from me to the door. My Tanya sense told me she was standing there, waving him out of the room, Lydia by her side.
I stood and turned, unable to explain my impulse to save the bear cub, but she simply handed me a security team jacket that she already had in her hands. Who she took it from or how she knew I needed it were questions my bond couldn’t answer. The razor sharp perceptions that we had each had during combat had faded back to the normal link that binds us.
I wrapped the cub in the jacket and we headed out of the mine.
Chapter 34
Parts of the trip home to New York are a blur, parts are crystal clear. From the mine to the Rig and back to the airbase is mostly a jumble of images, as I was withdrawn deep inside. The loss of Okwari hit me really hard. I was conscious of Tanya always near me, I was aware that Lydia was watching me with a concerned look as I fed the bear cub. The zookeeper vamp, whose name was Mike, had concocted a formula of sorts from stuff he found in the Rig’s galley kitchen with Mary Alice’s help.
The cub, a male, took to the mixture of Pedialyte, human baby formula and condensed milk with a vengeance, rapidly draining the Rig’s supply. Mary Alice had answered the questioning look I gave her when she pulled out the small case of baby formula. “After those kids in New Mexico, I decided we better be ready for even younger ones,” she said with a defensive shrug.
Boarding the Coven jet was a clear moment, as we found Elder Senka waiting for us inside, along with Nika.
Senka looked like her normal soccer mom self, albeit a hot one, till she spoke with her cultured British accent. Her hair smelled of shampoo, which was my only clue that she had taken a shower recently. That was when I learned she had taken a second team of Darkkin to the lair of the Mexican vampires who had sided with the Spawn. That portion of the Coven had ceased to exist about the same time we were clearing out the mine. Senka got us seated in the passenger area, had hot tea (some fancy variety) brought in for the vampires and a protein shake for me. I had eaten on the Rig, the Darkkin had fed on packed blood, so none of us were hungry, except the cub which I could swear was just about growing in my arms. His eyes, when they opened several hours after birth, were dark brown. He was black furred on his back and head, his underside almost a wheat color. Senka watched him and me while I recounted the fight in the cavern with Ahraman, Fenrir and Okwari. I told it in a flat voice, just keeping to the facts, but she started to ask questions, things about what I felt at each point, impressions I had. My goal was to tell the story without emotion, but her questions didn’t allow for that and I couldn’t stop the tears that formed when I spoke of Okwari’s death. I did, however, crush the arm rest of my seat with my right hand while I struggled to avoid the wave of emotion I felt.
“How do you know he’s dead?” Lydia asked in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “I mean, he always disappears, right?”
“This was different. His heart stopped, his breathing stopped, then his body just evaporated into little specks of light. Before, when he disappeared, it was always in a sudden swirl of air, almost instant,” I explained. Oddly, explaining the difference helped me rein in my emotions. Tanya was pressed up against my left side, holding my left hand, but not saying much.
Senka pursed her lips in thought, then spoke speculatively. “So, the angel told you Okwari was forbidden from visiting anymore, but he came to protect you from the wolf, Fenrir,” she mused.”The real Fenrir! He sacrificed himself for you, at least in some form. I don’t know if an elder god can actually die, but he is, apparently, gone.”
I was frozen solid at her words, faced with her statement of his sacrifice. In my arms, the cub squirmed, but I didn’t look down. Lydia gasped, and when I looked her way, her eyes were locked on the cub. “Ah, Chris?” she said, nodding at the bundle in my arms. I glanced down and found a black and tan dog pup in my arms. Maybe a wolf pup. Its markings were identical to the bear cub, and its eyes were the same, but it was a canine, not a bear.
“It changed!” Lydia said. “I was watching it feed, and it just sorta shimmered and changed!”
I didn’t know what to say, the pup was feeding from the bottle, making the same grunting noises the cub had and it had the same dark brown eyes when it looked at me. I set him on the floor in the open space between the row of seats that Tanya and I were in and the facing row that Senka and the others were in.
His legs were shaky at first, he wobbled and teetered, but mastered the walking part in very short order. He toddled over to my legs and tried to climb up me, but I just watched him, trying to solve the puzzle. “What are you boy? You some kind of were bearwolf?”
He looked at me like he was trying to understand, then abruptly sat down and started to scratch and bite at the fur on his haunch, but seemed to be missing the spot that bothered him. Suddenly, he flickered, kinda of blurred and then cleared back up only now he was back to cub form. Immediately he used his clawed paws to scratch the offending itch, the result apparently satisfactory as he then returned to climbing my pant legs. Needle claws helped his ascent and he was back in my lap in no time, circling once then curling up and falling asleep.
I looked up at the others, their incredulous expressions matching my own, although Senka’s changed to thoughtful after a moment. She pushed the intercom button on her armrest and spoke. “Vel, attend me please,” she said.
A few moments later a pretty dark-haired woman of middle years appeared, dressed in a dark, ankle length dress and multi-colored blouse. Her feet were bare and she carried a folder in her right hand. Her hair was done in elaborate braids and a whole gift shop worth of necklaces adorned her chest and throat. An iPod was stuffed in the pocket of her blouse and the earbuds hung around her neck amid the nest of necklaces. She nodded to Tanya, Nika and Lydia, ignored me and spoke directly to Senka. I couldn’t understand a word she said. I was gonna guess Slovak, which apparently everyone else spoke, as they all nodded at her words. She opened the folder which contained photos that I immediately recognized as coming from the mine. Tanya lifted her lips to my left ear and whispered a translation. “She has looked at symbols in the pentagram photos and believes it is some type of perverse fertility spell.”
Senka looked up at us, then smiled. “Forgive me Christian. It feels, at times, like you’ve been with us forever. I forgot that you haven’t met most of my staff. Chris Gordon, this is Veleslava Majtas. Vel, this is Tatiana’s Chosen.”
She looked at me and nodded, her face not showing any sign that the introduction meant anything to her at all. I nodded back, then looked back at Senka, who hid an amused smile.
“Veleslava has served me her whole life, as did her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother. She is, perhaps, one of the finest witches on the planet,” Senka explained. .
The witch’s eyes flashed in irritation at the word ‘perhaps’ and I caught another smile on Senka’s face. It’s really easy to forget how old Senka is – she looks maybe twenty-nine or thirty, but her life spans over twelve centuries.
“The ceremony was most likely used to make the mother bear conceive the wolf-bear pup,” the elder vampire continued, with a head nod to the cub.
“But what was the father….Fenrir?” Lydia asked, before I could.
“Most likely. Chris, have you looked at the cub’s aura?” Senka asked. She could see auras the way I did, it was one of her abilities.
I hadn’t even thought to do so, and feeling foolish at my lack of common sense, I went ahead and looked the cub over with my Sight. His aura was mainly green, with some red and some purple. Slightly more purple than red. I had no idea what that meant, except that the only beings I had ever encountered with those three colors were Okwari, Fenrir and a pack of Hellhounds.
“Well, offhand I gotta say you’re probably right about the Fenrir father issue,” I said.
“Chris, Fenrir was a monster….in every sense of the word. If he grows up to be a danger, he’ll have to be destroyed,” Senka warned me, pointing to the cub.
I had a huge upsurge of protectiveness at the thought of anyone hurting the cub, strong enough that both Tanya and I went rock still. Senka held my angry gaze evenly, until her witch started speaking in heavily accented English. “The creature has a soul!” she said, in disbelief, her eyes locked on the cub. Senka turned to her with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“The structure of the ceremony had a crumb..er..piece of it that blocked any soul from entering the fetus,” Vel said, stumbling over words. “It looks, from these glyphs and symbols like they were attempting to conceive a new form of creature, but one that was a case… a shell.”
“So they could install a demon inside it!” I blurted as fast as the thought occurred to me.
The witch nodded at me. “Yes, but the little beast has a soul, and it is not a demon,” she said, frowning. We all looked at the cub, asleep in my lap.
“What will you call him?” Nika asked me.
The name popped into my head instantly. “Awasos!” I said.
They all looked at me, waiting for an explanation. “It’s Abenaki. Means ‘bear’,” I said.
“Wow! You are some kinda creative with the whole naming thing, Gordon,” Lydia said, sarcastically. “Okwari – bear, Awasos – bear,” she said, turning to look at Tanya. “He’s good looking, sister mine, but not so very bright, know what I mean?”
It looked like she was all done going easy on my feelings.
“I think it fits!” Tanya said right back at her. Senka gave a sharp nod. “It does at that.”
“All I know, is if he eats as much as he has been, I’m gonna have to get a job!”
Tanya looked at me in question. “Well, the Loki’s Spawn are gone, so it’s time to find some employment,” I said.
“Hmmm, funny you should say that Chris!” Senka said, causing everyone to look her way. “I am making some changes and might have just the thing for you,” she said. At our expectant looks she smiled and went on. “Galina will take over New York again and it’s time Tanya got some field experience visiting and auditing the other North American covens.”
I could feel Tanya’s excitement, this obviously meant something to her, but I was lost.
“Chris, Darkkin are nothing if not ambitious. It goes with the predatory nature. Left unwatched the competition between various regions quickly gets out of hand. That’s the role the Elders play, reining in the more aggressive ones before it becomes open warfare. So, I’m sending Tanya out to visit each region and if necessary, troubleshoot any problems. She’ll need someone to watch her back.”
“Senka, I would do that anyway – for free!” I said.
“I know Chris, but every Coven Rover team consists of at least two people, and both are paying jobs,” she said.
“ Unless you want someone else to go with Tanya?” Lydia smirked.
I gave her a level stare and then turned back to Senka. “Of course I’m going.”
She gave a little nod then continued. “This isn’t going into a backcountry bar and wasting everything in sight. It requires diplomacy, tact and intelligence….backed up with the abilty to clean house if need be,” she cautioned. “Which, I understand the pair of you take to a whole new level?”
Tanya and I looked at each other then nodded.
“Now, let’s run through the mine details,” the oldest living creature in North America said.
So we each recounted the details of the raid, again, pausing to answer her questions. The part that involved the old Navajo witch got both her attention and her personal witch’s.
