A whole world, p.62
The Oriceran Rich and Famous Collection: Two Complete Oriceran Universe Series, page 62
Stryker didn’t allow him to finish. The Pict launched his attack by spewing a stream of white-hot fire toward the warden. Suddenly three walls shot up from the floor and surrounded Stryker from the sides and back. A nullifier kicked on, and the flames died.
“Another of your nullifying fields,” Stryker spat. “You’re already running out of tricks, Ward. Or should I call you Alesorius? Either way, you should know that your technology has already failed to contain me once.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Stryker.” Ward reached up to adjust his tie. “I always learn from my mistakes.”
Stryker stepped forward, but a dart flew out of the trees and embedded itself in his neck. His eyelids fluttered as he stumbled left and right, bouncing off the walls until he sank to his knees. He slowly slumped forward, and his face slid through the wet grass.
Ward pulled a pack of gum from his pocket. Miri eyed it intently as he took a piece out and stuck it in his mouth.
“A heavy cocktail of sedatives. Enough to kill any ordinary person. Or enough to briefly incapacitate a powerful warrior like yourself, Stryker. We’ve been researching people like you for decades. We have an answer for everything.”
Rundu tried to shadow magic himself into the cell with Stryker, but something went wrong with his portal. He popped out in the air twenty feet above it. The Drow shrieked as he plummeted. He crashed hard into the ground and groaned with pain.
“Oh!” Ward pursed his lips and shook his head. “I forgot to mention that the field tends to corrupt any magical attempts at getting into it, other than my projection spell or an ordinary extra-spatial portal. It’s like I designed it that way on purpose. Perhaps I am the real genius here.”
The warden looked at Henry. His eyebrows lifted and he smiled proudly. “Now, we can get down to business.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As Rundu rolled around in pain beside Stryker, Ward held out a hand and snapped his fingers. A cloaked man appeared from the trees. He was the perfect stereotype of a wizard, with a long, thin nose and a flowing white beard. The wizard held a long, gnarled staff, and when he waved it, a portal ripped itself open halfway between Ward and the cell where Stryker and Rundu lay.
Ward continued. “It was not part of the plan to have all of you here to witness this, but in a way, I’m glad it worked out like this. The glory is greater with more eyes to behold it, for that which is unobserved cannot truly be said to have happened. I’m starting to sound like Alesorius.”
He offered a sheepish smile and shrugged. “It’s hard to keep the personalities separate sometimes. I know how method actors must feel. Anyway, the point is that Stryker’s presence should finally be enough for her to notice us.”
Henry felt a chill up his back. He looked around, expecting to see some foul shadow seeping into the place already. “Kunith. You’re trying to bring her back, and now you’re using Stryker as a lure. You think she resides in the World In Between.”
Ward nodded. “Or some other such parallel place, yes. There may be others that are yet undiscovered.”
“You think if you pile up enough Pictish energy in front of a portal, that will be enough to draw her attention and bring her back into our world?” Henry shook his head. “Kind of a rudimentary plan. And extremely stupid.”
Ward strode closer to the widening portal. It showed a cold place beyond—the rocky slopes of Mount Rainier. Snowflakes and ice blew through, melting in the grass.
“It will work. I have faith. If you think you can stop me, Mr. Neumann, you should know there are hidden snipers throughout the arboretum. If you make any sudden moves, they’ll remove your head from your shoulders, and the bloody mess will be Kunith’s first meal when she arrives.”
Winter laughed loudly, which drew a glare from Ward. “Sorry, my friend, but you’re a moron of the highest order!” the dwarf shouted. “Yes, you have a big fancy research facility here. Yes, you have all your research. But there’s no one more foolish than a man who thinks he knows what he’s doing. What makes you think Kunith will discriminate when it comes to victims?”
Ward sighed. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, Mr. Snow, but I guess I have time. The Romans were able to keep Kunith under control. We are not supposed to control her. We are supposed to serve her. Kunith will see that we are her faithful servants, and she will realize that things have changed. Rather than seeking to own her, humankind will now give itself over freely to its new goddess.”
Ellie scoffed. “Speak for yourself, asswipe. I’m an atheist.”
“Me too!” Trent proudly proclaimed. “Well, I’m agnostic, but still. Kunith can eat shit!”
Ward grinned. “Be sure to tell her that to her face. I think she will find it amusing. You all should heed my warning. Anyone here who does not prostrate themselves before the goddess… Well, let’s just say that all defiant persons will know this as their last day on Earth.”
Sounds more like a threat than a warning, Henry thought.
Miri must have thought the same thing. She dropped onto her hands and knees and began the transformation. Fur erupted from the edges of her robe, and the fabric tore apart as her body expanded.
All of the teens but Ellie shrieked and jumped away.
Ward growled in anger. “I was not told a shifter had entered the facility! What do I pay you people for?”
The bearded wizard spoke up. “Apologies, my lord.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, Seth. The rest of you… Stop her!”
The first shots rang out as Miri sprang forward. She shook off the tattered remnants of the robe and stretched her lithe legs across the grassy floor. The snipers were unable to adjust their aim as fast as she was able to move, and bullets thudded into the ground behind her as she sprinted toward Ward.
One sniper recovered and hit Miri in the back, narrowly missing her spine. She whined with pain, stumbling for a moment and then recovering. She closed in on Ward. He watched her with wide eyes.
“Do something!” he screamed.
A Drow in cultist robes stepped out of the trees and opened a pocket of shadow in front of Miri. The wolf dodged it and skidded to adjust her direction. The Drow gritted his teeth in concentration to open another shadow closer to Ward. The man fled into it and popped out beside Henry.
Rundu lurched free of the nullifier. He was limping and holding his cracked ribs with one hand. With the other, he opened a shadow less than a foot from Ward. Ward couldn’t avoid it and came out again right back where he had been, in the shifter’s path.
“Shit.” He bowed his head in acceptance of death.
The lights died throughout the arboretum, throwing the place into darkness. As Henry’s eyes adjusted to the faint light coming through the portal to Rainier, he made out the silhouettes of Ward and Miri. Ward stepped blindly to the side, dodging Miri’s swinging front paw. He made a run for it and positioned himself behind Seth the wizard.
With her shifter vision, Miri saw all this much better than Henry could. She stopped dead in her tracks, and when Henry’s eyes finished adjusting he realized she was staring at the portal.
No, not at the portal itself or the scene beyond it. She watched the shadow materializing within the strange geometry of the rip in the fabric of reality. Something was bleeding through. It slowly knit itself together into a vaguely human shape. It was more like the shadow of a human, dark and fuzzy around the edges.
The fuzziness disappeared as the entity stepped fully through from its dimension. It was a living silhouette, a humanoid being of stretched and twisted proportions. The arms were too long, and they bent in several places.
“She’s here,” Ward whispered in the utter silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Snowflakes drifted around Kunith’s monstrous shape. The frigid wind howled. Even from where he stood, Henry felt the cold pulling at him and draining the heat from his body.
The Goddess of Midnight lurched across the floor. Her many-jointed limbs curled and flexed strangely. She moved like a human with spider legs. She was fast but ungainly, all speed and ferocity but lacking any sort of grace.
She was heading straight for the unconscious form of Bechtel Stryker.
In two or three seconds, Henry went down several trains of thought. His first instinct was to jump into action and save Stryker, but it wasn’t that simple. First, he had to justify why he would want to rescue the bastard.
Maybe because he would hate to see what Kunith might do. Just because you thought a serial killer should be put to death, it didn’t mean you wanted to watch someone throw the switch to the electric chair.
It wasn’t that. He would gladly watch someone roast Stryker alive. Hell, he’d gladly throw the switch.
So it was something else.
Maybe he wanted to be the one to finish Stryker off.
He grinned in the dim blue wintry light. That’s more like it. You aren’t stealing my kill, Kunith. I don’t care how big, weird, and ugly you are.
Kunith arrived at the enclosure around Stryker. She reached inside it with one spindly arm that had long human fingers at the end of it. Henry sprinted forward and fired a blast from the wind cannon. The artificial gust hit Stryker, and the Pict’s limp body flipped and rolled backward, out of harm’s way.
For now.
If Kunith wanted the man, she would get him. So, the next part was to deal with her.
Piece of cake, right?
“Welp, there he goes,” Benji called. “Maybe we should help him?”
“You can try,” Winter replied. “If you think you’re fast enough.”
Rundu the Drow was already running into the fray. He opened a new shadow portal toward the back of the enclosure, which Stryker rolled into. He spilled out clumsily on the far side of the atrium. The Pict was stirring and coming back to the land of the conscious, but he was still far from being able to defend himself.
Rundu turned to Henry now, smiling. “Thanks, Neumann. Never thought I’d be saying that.”
“Never thought I’d be working toward the same goal with a Prev,” Henry growled.
Rundu was too busy reflecting on this strange turn of fate to realize that Kunith had a new target: him.
It turned out the goddess didn’t care about the Drow. He was just in her way. She ran straight through him, flipping him up into the air like an angry bull nosing a matador out of the way. He sailed twenty feet up, twisted like a cat, and opened a portal to fall into.
Damn, I wanted to watch him go splat.
As though reading his mind, Miri bounded across the room toward where Rundu had flown out. Stryker was lying fifty feet away, alone and fully open for attack.
Kunith seized the opportunity. Her jaw fell open, and her black cavern of a mouth yawned wide enough to bite a man’s head clean off. Instead of the bellowing roar Henry expected, she loosed a faint, dry screech. He could barely hear it, but all of the teens cringed and clapped their hands over their ears to block the high-pitched sound.
I guess getting older has its benefits. Henry sighed as he watched Kunith dash toward Stryker. Hopefully his joints could handle what he was about to do.
He surged forward at top speed, operating on pure instinct and reflex. He aimed the wind cannon at the floor, slightly behind him, and fired it.
The resulting blast of wind hit the floor and deflected up, straight into Henry. He jumped at the same time to give himself a greater boost and sailed up higher than Rundu had gone.
For a moment he felt like he was in a dream. One where you could fly… Or one of those nightmares where you fell off a building. He arced upward. That part was perfectly fine, even fun. When he reached the zenith of his jump, his stomach rose into his throat. The downward plummet began.
Henry imagined his leg bones splintering into a thousand pieces and thought fast. He fired another shot with the wind cannon, aiming toward where he thought he would land. The gust raced up like the first time. By the time it reached him it had dissipated and was too weak to push him higher. It did go a long way toward slowing his descent.
He landed as though in moon gravity. He touched down softly and realized that he was now closer to Stryker than Kunith was.
“Holy shit, Mr. Neumann just rocket-jumped!” Trent clapped his hands over his head, flattening his mohawk.
Rami shook his head. “Nah, this was cooler. He wind-jumped. Like an Airbender.”
As Henry ran toward Stryker, the gunmen hidden throughout the room woke up from their stupor and started firing wildly. They were trying to hit Kunith, but they all panicked. Bullets flew everywhere and cut across the room in crazy flashes of light. The teens all hit the deck. Winter threw himself over Finch to protect the young elf from harm.
“Stop shooting!” Ward screamed. He came out of his hiding place behind the trees, stepped boldly into the middle of the room, and waved his arms. “Do you idiots really think you can harm the goddess with our human weapons? You’ll only kill Neumann, and that wasn’t the plan!”
It took several moments for the shooters to obey the order. Henry fell prone and crawled toward Stryker. The last few shots rang out and hit Kunith. They fizzled out, doing nothing.
Kunith stayed on her feet and outpaced Henry, beating him to Stryker. The impotent energy projectiles amused her. She paused to see what her attackers would do next.
She had all the time in this world and many others. She could wait another few moments to kill the Pict and finish her mission.
“Well then, this probably won’t do anything!” Henry bellowed. He pulled out the gamma blade and let the deadly radiation extend. “But it’s worth a shot. Hey, goddess!”
Kunith looked toward him. She had no eyes, Henry realized, but there was something deep in the sockets. They were like dark grottos of water, swirling and rippling, reflecting small amounts of light.
They were like miniature portals to some dank, grim place Henry never wanted to find himself.
He held out the gamma blade. “You know what this is? It’s my goddess-killing sword. One swing of this and you’re out of here. Relegated back to the history books where you belong.”
He swung, and Kunith didn’t resist. The blade swept through her cleanly, leaving no marks. She didn’t react. Not the tiniest flinch. She already knew he was bluffing. She knew nothing in this world could destroy her.
Henry looked around and caught Miri’s eyes. The shifter was crouched low over Rundu, holding him on the ground with one paw. He had never seen her wolf form without its mouth hanging open and tongue lolling out. Her mouth was closed now. Her bright eyes had grown dull and hopeless.
Henry knew there was always hope. Always a way out. It only took a little luck. Or a whole boatload of it.
Kunith hadn’t killed him yet. Her face was long, thin, and dark like the ash of a very old fire, and it was expressionless. She took a single lurching step toward him and teetered on her stilt-like legs.
She spoke. Her voice was like a whisper from the dark, dusty recesses of a crypt. “You are no Pict. Why do you protect the one I came to kill?”
Henry wanted nothing more than to turn and run for his life, but he knew there could be no hesitation. No signs of weakness. He stared into the entity’s face. “Because I’m going to be the one who kills him. I get my revenge for what Stryker has taken from me, and I rob your ancient, evil ass of yours. It’s a win-win for me.”
“Henry, what do you think you’re doing?” Winter warned. “Is making her mad a good idea?”
“Oh, he’s not trying to make her mad,” Ward added, slowly crossing the room with his hands held out. “He’s trying to gain her respect. A misguided attempt. It’s a pity, Henry, that you had no time to research our lovely goddess of death and darkness. My fault. I apologize.”
Kunith turned her face toward the warden. “No man can know me. No man stands before me and lives.” She looked back at Henry. “This is no man. This one will be allowed to go on.”
A wave of confusion passed through the room. There were shrugs and narrowed eyes all around, but Winter understood what she was talking about. His eyes flashed with fear—not of the goddess, but that Henry’s secret would get out. He looked at Miri, but her wolf face was far less expressive. She gave nothing away.
You’re a good man, Snow, Henry thought. Lexus really would have liked you. If we make it out of this, I’ll buy you a beer. I won’t ever comment on your excessive eating again.
Kunith was as good as her word. She walked around Henry and toward Ward. The shooters ran out from the trees and converged on her.
Henry had no idea what they hoped to accomplish, and he never got the chance to find out. Kunith raised one of her spidery hands, rotated it, and closed her fingers. The shooters lifted off the ground and flew toward her at high speed. Their screams of fear turned to shrieks of agony as they crashed into each other in a cluster above her head. The initial impact caused several broken noses, and blood rained in thick droplets.
Kunith hadn’t finished. She kept her fist clenched, and the ill-fated guards jammed against each other with increasing pressure until the sounds of snapping bones rang through the room. They crushed into a sphere of paste and shredded clothing. Kunith unclenched her fist. Henry realized what was coming and jumped out of the way. The orb of gore, with the mass of eight grown men, splattered onto the floor.
Several of the teenagers gagged. Benji outright vomited. Trent was excited. “Hell yeah! That shit was metal! Like something out of The Evil Dead.”
Kunith continued toward Ward without missing a beat. “The worshippers of the night have woken me from my slumber. For what? A single miserable remnant of the race I was once ordered to destroy? Now that I am here, now that I am awake once again, I begin to realize that this was never my quest. It was yours, Roman.”
Ward’s jaw flapped up and down. “Uh…what? Huh, um, what?” He wrangled his tongue back into gear and continued. “Goddess, please. I’m no Roman. I’m a pureblooded Anglo-Saxon American. There’s not so much as a hint of Italian blood in me. I’m here to serve you.”
