The cold and the dark, p.8
The Cold And The Dark, page 8
The door screamed as a corner folded into the room. A black-sleeved claw jabbed through the opening, slicing the air. Curses in harsh, choppy German, marred by the sibilant hiss of forked tongues between sharp teeth, rolled to her ears. A slit-irised eye peered at her.
Her hand tightened on the sword hilt.
Lunging forward on the balls of her feet, she shoved it through the gap. The tip punched into something wet and fleshy before jarring to a stop with a scrape on bone. A high-pitched, hissing scream vibrated the door and the blade yanked down as the thing on the other side fell at its point.
I really should have a devil's-damned ax.
The pounding on the other side of the door doubled in fury.
“Any time would be good, Father.” she muttered through clenched teeth.
Behind her, the chanting continued.
She could feel the press of magic at her back, she had enough of her Father's blood in her veins for that.
Whatever he's doing will be big.
Hopefully, big enough.
And quick.
The bolt on the door bent, creasing like a tube of dough.
Father, please . . .
The chanting continued.
The door burst in, slamming against the wall. Spilling through the opening came a troop of six-foot tall lizard-men standing upright, holding machine guns, and wearing black uniforms. Elongated heads full of sharp teeth and slithering tongues in mouths the color of clotted blood moved in unison. Machine guns held in claws rose to aim at her. Green scales the color of summer grasses contrasted sharply against their uniforms. Red bands circled their arms, gleaming against the light-drinking black of the fabric. Red armbands, white circle, black swastika in the center of a red pentagram.
Occult Nazi Lizard-men.
The Kurg.
One of them stepped forward, jackboots clapping on the stone floor. He was different than the others, his scales a pale whitish green tone with near black markings like tiger stripes. Even his mouth was pale, a fleshy pink instead of dead red. She knew him by reputation. Viktor Von Raptor, Executive Executioner, High Mage of the Reptile Reich, and right hand to the Kurg Fuhrer, Adolph Hissler.
He pointed at her. The double lightning bolt insignia on his black banded collar glittering in the torchlight drew her eye. His voice came harsh, a rasp, “Cea-ssse what you're doing or pay the con-sss-equence.”
Mara thrust her sword forward. “Eat crow and die, Scalescum.”
“You defy me?”
“And they say you reptiles are stupid.”
Thin, bloodless lips pulled back to reveal shards of enamel set in wicked sharp rows. “You shall die in the Con-sss-entration Camp for that.”
“Come at me, Coldblood.” Midnight eyes danced over sharp cheekbones. “I'll step over your corpse to cut the throat of the bastard behind you.”
The lizard-man hissed and it drew out, slipscaling over her eardrums until she thought he would collapse, deflated. “Sss-hoot them both on my command.” He raised his banded arm. “In the legsss.”
The situation was hopeless. She was outmatched and the tactician inside her knew it. Machine guns in clawed hands rose. She turned to look at her father one last time.
He stood, robes pooling at his feet as magic seethed in the air around him, swirling purple arcs and verdant geometric mandalas crashing into scarlet flashes from the ruby he held into the air, pounding in time to his waving hand. He was the conductor to a symphony of energy as old as the Earth itself. He turned to face her, tears streaming down his cheeks, soaking into his braided beard.
He called to her.
“Daughter of mine, blood of my blood, it is up to you to save our world! I'm calling warriors from all of time and space to Hyperborea! Use the ruby Heart of Ekronos to find the One, the Champion!” His face twisted with the force of his words, tendons jutting from a wiry neck. “I love you, daughter. Try to not hate me for my sacrifice or the one this demands of you.”
Mara screamed out the fear and rage boiling inside her.
With a click and an explosion of chatter the machine guns erupted, shredding the air around her with deadly projectiles. Pain smashed into her legs and they buckled beneath her. As she fell, she watched her father drop to a kneeling position.
The bullets meant for his legs stitched across his chest, covering the tattoos there in slaps of blood and gore. His head flew back and he screamed a word never meant for a human throat.
Magic lightning struck and Mara was torn from the floor, uprooted from reality, and flung through the very fabric of Hollow Earth itself.
When she woke the Kurg were gone.
So were her clothes.
She lay, naked but whole, in a field of sweetgrass looking up at the fist of a sun that shone every hour of every day. Waterbirds screed in the distance, their long, raspy caws unmistakable. The air tasted salty.
She was near the Shallow Seas.
Hundreds of miles from home.
The fist-sized magical ruby hung around her neck, pulsing in time to her heartbeat.
2
Detroit, Michigan 1978
The old beater shuddered to a stop outside the gates. All the parts of the heap stayed together but they complained about it in a rust-on-rust whine. A uniformed beat cop pushed off the metal gates to the stone fence, head down to cut the glare of the headlights that bathed him in cream-colored light. He walked over briskly and leaned into the open, driver's side window. His eyes lay in their sockets, flat as the feet in his department mandated footwear.
"Jim, you just can't do this." The beat cop's voice had a brush of Irish to it.
The man behind the wheel filled the seat, thick afro brushing the headliner that drooped. His anger pushed against the cracked windshield. A brown polyester suit crumpled around him, one shade lighter than his skin. He didn't look over at the cop, eyes laser-locked on the house that sat up the hill a quarter mile on the other side of the gate. His hands clenched the steering wheel so hard that they pulsed with each heartbeat.
The beat cop pulled his cap off, running his fingers over the fifty-cent brush cut underneath. He tried again. "Jim-"
"Don't 'Jim' me, sucka." Jim Magnum's eyes cut over at the cop. "Why are you here by yourself?"
"The Chief thought you might listen to me."
"Just cause we used to walk the beat together don't mean shit, Donno. You shoulda told him."
"I tried."
Jim glanced in his mirrors. "Where's your back up?"
"It's just me." Randall 'Donno' Donovan leaned in, putting his arms on the window of the car door. "The Chief thought that if we cordoned off the house with a regiment you'd come in shooting. Believe it or not, he doesn't want you dead."
Jim laughed, the sound barely making it out of his chest. "Martens knows me better than you. He knows I wouldn't shoot at cops. I may not still be blue but I still be true. He wants me to go in, wants me to put this bastard down so his lily-white hands can stay clean."
"It's not like-"
"Shut up, fool," Jim growled. "All this jawin' and what do you think is happening to those little girls at the hands of that sick twist."
"You've got no proof."
"Don't need it. I ain't a cop anymore."
Donno reached for his sidearm. "I'll stop you."
Jim's arm shot out, grabbing the regulation tie Donno wore. Everybody else wore a clip-on, not wanting a noose around their neck if they got into the mix with a criminal, but Donno was a straight arrow, not an ass kisser, but never an order questioner. The rule book said no clip-ons and he never wore one. Yanking the tie hard slammed the beat cops head into the door frame. His eyes crossed on impact and his hand slipped off his service revolver.
Jim shook his head. “You should've brought back up.”
His foot dropped on the accelerator like a rhino on a skating rink, sinking the pedal to the floorboard. The engine roared, then caught, jolting the car forward in an elephantine leap, two-tons of Detroit iron charging like a mad beast. Donno tumbled back, crying out as he banged against the driveway. The car smashed into the gates, tearing them open with a shrill metal cry.
Donno sat on his uniformed ass as his former partner roared up the quarter mile long driveway to the mansion.
* * *
His teeth still rattled.
That's what you get for being a dumbass and driving over brick flowerbeds just to get a few feet closer to the porch steps.
He ground them together as he swung wide the door and hauled himself out of the car. White steam poured from under the long, wide hood while black smoke poured from underneath the back half.
The car was done.
Don't matter none, wasn't my car anyways.
Four long strides of his muscular legs carried him up the stairs. Four more carried him across the porch. He didn't stop, didn't hesitate, just leaned back and drove his foot into the door. The wood splintered at the knob, folding in on itself and buckling from the force of the kick. The door flew inward, swinging freely on busted hinges. He stepped over the threshold, reached under his polyester jacket, and drew out the big, fat .44 Magnum revolver that hung there.
The piece felt right in his fist, heavy and full of righteous justice.
He moved into the house, not bothering to be silent.
He wanted the sick bastard to know he was coming.
Shaky Jake said to look in the basement.
In the kitchen he found the door that led downstairs. Jerking it open he heard sounds, the low rhythmic noise of chanting over the muffled shush of weeping children.
Blind behind his eyes with rage he barreled down the stairs into the darkness. At the bottom he found a scene straight from hell. The room opened up, wide and long, the floor a smooth concrete, discolored and stained. A double circle had been painted on the floor in black with strange, squiggly symbols in red paint between them. People in black robes stood around the circle. They blended into the darkness. At least a dozen, maybe more. The room was bathed in a devilish light from fat candles that guttered like small torches set around the circle's edge, their bottoms gripping the concrete through clumped mounds of wax runoff.
The air stunk of burnt hair and old blood.
In the center of the circle sat a basalt altar, glistening in the low light like a swollen, black salamander.
Two girls, neither of them old enough to walk home from school alone, lay bound and blindfolded on the shiny stone. One of them shook as she sobbed, the other lay still, the only indication she was alive being the shallow rise and fall of her chest and the tears running from under her saturated blindfold. The missing Greene sisters. A cloaked and hooded figure stooped over them, guttural chants falling from under the hood.
"Get away from those kids!" Jim roared. Robed people jerked around, their faces almost glowing in the depths of their raised hoods.
The figure standing over the altar snapped his head up and hissed. "You!"
"Told you I'd be coming for you, Kessler. Now move back or I'll blow a hole in your devil-worshippin' ass so big they'll need a mop instead of a paddy wagon." He pointed the big Magnum at the figure, sighting down the chrome barrel.
Robed people fell like a parted sea of black cloth at the sight of the mighty revolver. One of them gave a high-pitched scream. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.
Didn't give a shit either.
The cloaked man shook the hood off his head revealing a pale face, the skin pulled taut over sharp cheekbones and a sharper chin. His scalp gleamed in the candlelight, scraped clean by a razor not keen enough to do the job without leaving behind a patchwork of cuts and nicks that peppered the bald head like red insects.
"You are a thorn in my side, Magnum."
Jim stepped forward. "Do you think I'm playin' with you? Get away from them kids or I will kill your ass."
"Kill me?You must buy all the hype about you!" Kessler laughed. "Big Jim Magnum, Two-fisted Detective and Kung Fu P.I. . . . please. You're just a bull-headed, two-bit, nigger street cop turned private dick after Nam screwed you up.” More of Kessler's laughter rolled around the room. “You can't kill me. You can't even touch me. I'm the mayor for Christ's sake."
.44 caliber thunder cut the laughter short like a guillotine through a neck.
Mayor Kessler folded like his chest was made of paper where the bullet struck. The back of the cloak billowed as the wad of lead punched through it in a shower of red rain. He collapsed, body crumpling inside the hooded robe and disappearing behind the altar like a magic trick.
The other people ran toward the stairs, giving the private eye a wide berth, their faces turned away. He didn't stop them or strike at them. They wouldn't get past Donno at the gate.
"Shoulda listened . . ." Big Jim Magnum slid the warm gun back in it's holster. "Sucka."
* * *
His switchblade had gone dull by the time he sawed through the last rope holding the girls to the stone underneath them. It fell, covering the drain in the concrete floor below the altar. The hemp soaked up the blood flowing from Kessler's body, turning the fibers pink.
Damn fools thinking magic and shit is real. Like the devil's got any use for dumbasses in City Hall.
Closing the knife, he dropped it into his pocket then carefully helped both the girls sit up. He didn't let them pull off the cloths tied around their eyes until their backs were to the slowly cooling corpse behind them. They weren't old enough to see that without becoming even more messed up than this whole night of terror at the hands of a sick psycho would make them.
Regret that he hadn't gotten there sooner blasted through his heart like a volcano erupting.
He knelt in front of the sisters. The one on the left, the oldest, sobbed and sniffled, weeping uncontrollably. The younger one looked at him with half lidded eyes, wary and guarded. Her hand slid over to touch her sisters leg and the older girl lunged sideways, wrapping scrawny arms around her, looking for comfort.
Jim looked in the eyes of the younger sister, keeping his voice low. "You okay?"
She nodded, big eyes not blinking.
"What's your name, honey-child?"
"Lakemia." Her head tilted toward her still sobbing sister. "She's Shakemia."
"That's a real pretty set of names." He smiled softly, trying to push gentleness at the girls. "I need you to do something for me, sweetie. You think you're strong enough to help your sister up those stairs over there?" He could hear movement above them, footsteps with the crackle and squawk of police walkie-talkies.
Apparently Donno had called in the boys in blue.
They would sweep up the other devil worshipers.
The girl nodded again and slid off the altar to stand on her feet, dragging her sister with her. Keeping her arm around Shakemia, she started walking, guiding the other girl around the still burning candles, their wicks now flickering with normal flames.
Jim stood and watched them go. At the steps Lakemia stopped and looked at him.
"Thank you, Mr. Magnum."
It surprised him. “How you know me, girl?”
“Everybody knows you in the neighborhood. My momma thinks you're real handsome.”
"When you see your momma you tell her I said 'thank you'. Now, get on up them steps, girl."
They went.
Jim looked around the room, twisting his neck side to side. The tight fist of tension there crackled. His eyes swept over the altar, the candles, and the symbol he stood inside.
This is some fucked up shit right here. The muthafuckin' mayor a devil worshipin' baby killer.
Noise and shouts came from upstairs.
Won't be long before they get down here.
Stepping over he looked down at the dead mayor. Working it up, he took the bitter taste of bile from the back of his throat and spat it down on the corpse.
"Good thing I never voted for your sick ass."
More noise came down the stairs, footfalls banging down steps. He turned to face the oncoming officers, hands rising in the air by his shoulders.
Hope they don't shoot first and ask questions later.
His fingers had just laced behind his head when the trans-dimensional portal cracked the air around him in a split of burnt ozone and bittersweet magic, sucking him into another world.
3
Stygea
Mara crouched on the ridge, tucking herself into a clump of Bershan bushes. She ignored their curved thorns that scratched on the slippery steel links of the micro-mail shirt that covered her arms and chest, the weave too tight for even the needle-like points to penetrate.
Thrice-cursed Kurg. They beat me again.
Her hand tightened on the haft of her ax., knuckles popping against the leather wrapped handle.
Next time.
The outlander lay on his back in the sedge grass, surrounded by four lizard men. From her vantage point she could see the brown uniforms of the Kurg soldiers, field troops. On all of their shoulders, above their armbands, were three slashmarks stitched in red, the symbol of an SS Kill Crew.
The outlander was a dead man.
The Kurg would do the only thing they were trained to do: hunt outlanders and slaughter them. Scale-covered fingers would pull the oiled triggers of machine guns, and the outlander would die, stitched in lead.
Then the Kill Crew would feast.
If he was lucky, that's what they would do. If not, then it would be a ride to the Concentration Camp.
She was too far away to stop them.
Rising from her cover, she backed away to leave.
The outlander rolled into a crouch facing the Kurg, his hands clenched in fists, teeth bared, and his shoulders set in a hard line.
She stopped moving and stayed to watch.
4
Jim pushed himself into a crouch. His legs underneath him tingled, heavy, like they'd been carved from waterlogged wood. He kept his eyes on the lizard men, sweeping them from side to side to track all three. His mind wrestled with what he saw, running through explanations and dismissing them one by one.
Masks?
Hell no. This ain't Halloween.
Hallucination?
This one was a possibility. He thought about it for a moment.
