DEAD PACIFICA

  Part 6

  In a span of a second after Kowalczyk exploded, I tagged two of the cultist soldiers still flailing mid-air from the force that hit them with what’s left of [ Organic Combustion ].

  They detonated like grenades.

  Limbs tore loose. Blood sprayed in thick sheets. Bone fragments scythed into the cluster of men I couldn’t reach with [ Shockwave ], knocking them down as bodies slammed into bodies. Men were hurled into stacks of rusted cars, into the mud, into each other. The junkyard rang with explosions and their screams.

  Milford’s voice cut through it somewhere, barking orders, losing control. Soldiers scrambled. Some fired wildly. Some ran. Some just stood there, locked in place because their minds refused to accept what their eyes were seeing.

  Their momentary daze was all my archetypes needed to attack.

  I tugged at the dense fog to press closer into the junkyard.

  It rolled in from the edges like a breaking floodgate, thick and choking. Visibility vanished in seconds. Shapes became silhouettes. Screams became unnerving echoes.

  Then, to my right, Old Growth darted into the pit.

  In under six seconds, Old Growth slaughtered four soldiers in front of me.

  Nine feet of lithe, fibrous muscle wrapped in thick bark armor charged through the fog. He crossed the yard in a blur, bearing down on a soldier who was still trying to get his bearings, helmet hanging crooked on his head. His mouth opened, but it was too late to let out a scream when Old Growth leapt and came down with his full weight on top of him.

  The impact drove the soldier flat into the mud. One claw seized the helmet and hammered the man’s head into the ground. Brain matter burst out of his skull and into the gravel in pink-gray clots. When Old Growth lifted his claw, bits of skull and sinew stayed behind, stuck to the mud like bloody string cheese.

  Old Growth menacingly towered over the soldiers, strings of blood dripping from his claws.

  The three soldiers nearby, also covered in blood and mud, were already getting up, scrambling for their weapons. The closest one fired blindly at Oldie. The rounds chewed very little into the archetype’s torso, tearing tiny chunks of bark free. Sap sprayed, dark and viscous, but that didn’t slow Old Growth down.

  One of the javelin-limbs snapped forward.

  It punched through the shooter’s sternum and out the back. He screamed as the force lifted him onto his tippy toes. Old Growth yanked the limb free and the man collapsed to his knees, hands clawing uselessly at the hole on his chest.

  With his other claw, Oldie grabbed the soldier by the throat and threw him into the gathering crowd of soldiers behind him. The body crashed into a pair of soldiers who were just recovering from the shockwave, bowling them over before they could even pick up their rifles.

  The last two soldiers took a few steps back to get some distance from Old Growth, one dropped to a knee while the other remained standing. They aimed their rifles center mass. He could sense them immediately. He whipped his head around, and although he didn’t have a face, he was “looking” directly at them. Fear washed their faces as they gaped at the creature.

  “Let’s light the fucker up!” One of the soldiers cried out in a panic, though his voice betrayed him.

  Old Growth punched a javelin into the earth and vines sprouted out from under like crawling roots and burst upward around the kneeling man and cocooning him before he could shoot. He tried to pry it off his body, but suddenly, his palms started to sizzle. Acid ate through his gloves, then his flesh. One vine slithered across his stomach, excreting a thin trail of slimy acid eating through his skin, and split him open. He thrashed on the ground, desperate to keep his insides from, well, staying inside his body.

  Upon seeing that, the fourth soldier broke, turned, and ran.

  But Old Growth was already barreling toward him. He didn’t get past three steps as a claw got him mid-stride, sending the soldier flying and tumbling through the air, and and fell onto the roof of the junkyard’s mechanic shop. His head slammed on a workshop table, breaking his neck.

  In the same six seconds, Alan Sawyer sprinted straight at the nearest soldier as shouts of “Silver! Silver! Silver!” rang across the yard.

  Alan wasn’t taking any chances for these silver bullets to slow him down. He let out an intimidating roar, calling for his pack-mates, as he slammed into the soldier, carrying the poor man with him as he leapt behind one of the stacked cars for cover. Bullets ricochet off the metal husks, too late to do damage to the werewolf now safe behind cover.

  The soldier in Alan’s grip drew out his knife, but Alan slammed him to the ground, the knife clattering under the vehicles. Then, the werewolf drove his claws into the man’s throat, and took his head off in a single, clean swipe. He hurled the head over the stacks, landing in the middle of the crowd with a sloppy bounce. The rest of the body came after, hitting Milford on the back. Reed and two other soldiers helped him to his feet.

  Hearing the Alpha’s call, Luke and Garth vaulted the junkyard fence together, caught two soldiers peeling away from the main group, and tore them apart before either one could scream or notice they were missing, using the fog and the junkyard’s maze as cover.

  The junkyard had become a killing field.

  Old Growth was still backhanding and throwing a few soldiers away from ever reaching my Core when two men with flamethrowers came up behind him, fingers tightening around the trigger. Fire was the one thing Old Growth couldn’t shrug off.

  He turned too late.

  But just in time, Goliath saved the day.

  His blade left his hand in a clean, spinning arc and struck the first tank dead center.

  Bullseye!

  “Fuck yes!” I hollered.

  The second flamethrower ignited just as I seized the weapon’s muzzle with [ Telekinesis ].

  [ Power: 51/60 ]

  The stream of fire from the muzzle lurched sideways, washing over the second soldier instead of Old Growth. The man screamed as flames wrapped around him, and then the damaged tank detonated, and a piece of a metal shard flew out, decapitating a soldier trying to get up after being thrown around by Old Growth.

  The explosion should have blown outward, but instead, I crushed the fire inward, bent it, and forced it into a massive roaring funnel, a wall of flame that tore across the yard toward Milford and his men.

  “Back! Back! Retreat!” Milford and Lieutenant Reed shouted.

  Panic hit them all at once.

  The cultists broke and ran, diving into the maze as a tidal wave of fire chased after them. One soldier tripped, went down hard, and didn’t get back up. The flames swallowed him, his screams cutting off almost immediately. The two flamethrower soldiers rolled on the ground, thrashing uselessly as they burned to death.

  In less than thirty seconds, fourteen of Milford’s men were dead.

  Goliath nodded at me, then to Old Growth, basically saying, I got you, boss.

  I mean, that’s probably what he said.

  As I viewed the carnage from above, four separate groups peeled off into the labyrinth, scattering in different directions, desperate to find a way out like ants with their nest kicked open.

  “No survivors tonight, my lord?” Duke Henry asked me from the treeline.

  I shrugged and gestured to the bulk of the cultists moving at the central corridor with Milford. “I want Milford alive, and also knock out seven of his men.”

  Henry arched an eyebrow, curious.

  “As a snack for later, Henry. As for the rest of them…well, hey, free meal for you. Aren’t you a little hungry?”

  “I could go for a snack,” Henry said. “What about you two?”

  “We’ll hang back,” Mother Gertrude said. “I’ll make sure The Collector doesn’t have any surprises. I could use a little help from you as well, Zal.”

  “Ah, typical as always. A hag asking a lich’s expertise when it comes to abjuration spells,” Lord Zal sighed. “Very well. And I’ll also command my men to keep watch around our borders.”

  “Good. I want Milford and the others to reach the woods at least, then we can herd them toward Lost Valley, to the clearing with the tall grass over there,” I said. “I want them to see those helicopters get wrecked from the sky. He needs to get out of the cave at some point. This is a good excuse as any.”

  Gertrude chuckled. “About time that little brute gets out for a stretch. I’ve invited him to many of our book club meetings, and he refused my invitation.”

  Lord Zal grumbled. “That’s because he can’t talk, my dear.”

  “Everyone heard me?” I asked. “Herd them to the woods.”

  Henry smiled and nodded. Through Many-Eyes, the others did the same.

  I looked past the sprawling webbing and the caverns’ thick shadow of Smitty’s Mine miles away from the junkyard, which she and her brood now called home.

  “You up for some catch and release?” I asked.

  Eight faint golden eyes flared in the dark in unison with a pale humanoid smile beneath them. The Spider Queen unfurled her legs and leaned forward, her face still shrouded in the darkness. “With pleasure, my liege,” she said in a sultry whisper.

  I could sense her Brood awakening.

  Back at the junkyard, Goliath and Demon Bolton exchanged a competitive look.

  “You take the two on the left, I take the three on right, big man? That alright with you?” Bolton asked.

  Goliath tilted his head to the side, doubting Demon if he could take three guys on his own.

  Bolton laughed. “Oh, please. That’s nothing! Hey, Whoever gets to kill them quick gets to have the remote to the TV tonight.”

  “Not fair!” Luke screeched with his bellowing werewolf voice atop the stacked cars. “I get to pick the movie today! It’s a new one with Matt Damon.”

  Bolton looked up and shooed him away. “Shoo! You’re not part of this! Wait a minute, Luke! Come back! You can be the judge!”

  Luke pointed at the fleeing soldiers. “We’re busy,” he said gruffly.

  “Eh! Alan and Garth can do that with their eyes closed. You heard the Dungeon Lord! We’re keeping some of them alive, anyway! You can spare a moment. Pleaaasssseeee.”

  Luke grumbled. “You two have thirty seconds. Better be worth it.”

  Goliath raised three fingers at Demon; He wanted the three soldiers.

  “Aw, fine! I’ll take two. Easy for me to win!” Bolton said. “Race ya!”

  I could feel Goliath smile behind the mask.

  They took off, leaving Luke to sulk and herd Milford and the other cultists toward the exit. Goliath took the stragglers on the east side of the junkyard while Demon chased after the ones on the west.

  I followed Bolton.

  Using his own telekinesis, Bolton levitated off the ground, and perched atop a tower of crushed cars, and scanning the maze below. Two soldiers burst into view, sprinting hard in the wrong direction, panic driving them deeper into the labyrinth instead of out of it. Bolton grinned and landed gracefully behind them.

  “Hey, knuckleheads!” he shouted. “You’re going the wrong way!”

  They spun, rifles snapping up on instinct, and opened fire.

  Bolton barely reacted as bullets tore through him, punching neat holes through his clothes and flesh. He threw his head back and laughed as the rounds passed through him and clattered uselessly against metal and concrete.

  With a flick of his wrist, Bolton triggered [ Mocking Torment ].

  Venomous snakes poured out of windows, crawled up walls, spilled across the ground in a powerful illusionary torrent. They wrapped around the soldiers’ legs, arms, and throats while hissing and biting at them. Their rifles suddenly melted in their hands and turned into boa constrictors wrapping around their arms. The men screamed and fought back, took out their knives, and slashed wildly.

  And that’s when it got beautifully ugly.

  One soldier felt something coil around his neck. Panicking, he stabbed downward hard, and the blade slid into his own throat, opening it from ear to collarbone. Blood fountained as he collapsed, choking on it.

  The other hacked at what he thought was a snake coiling around his abdomen. He drove the knife in again and again, not realizing he was cutting himself open. His entrails spilled free as he dropped to his knees, hands slick and useless with his own blood, his eyes widening with dawning horror.

  The snakes vanished as suddenly as they’d appeared.

  Bolton stepped over the bodies, wiping imaginary blood from his hands.

  “Ha! Classic,” he laughed.

  Bolton looked down as the man with an open belly gasped for his last breath, and with another flick of his wrist, broke his neck with telekinesis.

  On the other side of the junkyard, Goliath found his three targets almost immediately, heading straight for the chain-linked fence.

  He vaulted across the stacked cars in long jumps and leaps, metal groaning under his weight. He landed directly in front of them, blocking the narrow path to the fences.

  They skidded to a halt.

  And Goliath didn’t waste a second.

  His axe left his hand in a fast spinning throw and struck the soldier at the middle square in the chest. The impact lifted the man clean off his feet and slammed him onto his back hard enough to knock the air out of him.

  Before the other two could even react, Goliath drew the handgun he had picked up from a dead soldier during the commotion at the central yard while I was chasing the others with the funneled blaze.

  BANG!

  BANG!

  Two shots rang out.

  Two heads snapped back behind red mist.

  They were dead before they even hit the ground; a single bullet hole right between their eyes.

  The soldier with an axe to his chest groaned, twitched. Goliath walked up and planted his heavy boots on his face with a wet crunch, crushing his head like a smashed potato.

  Luke leaned out from behind a wrecked truck, and shouted, “The Big Man won!”

  Bolton floated down nearby just in time to hear it. “What?!” he snapped. “Are you kidding me? You used a gun?!”

  Goliath shrugged, retrieving his axe.

  Bolton scowled. “That’s not even your main weapon!”

  Goliath brushed his shoulder and chased after Milford and the soldiers now exiting the junkyard and fleeing into the woods.

  “You have too many fancy tricks, Demon,” Luke said laughing as he darted across the stacks. “You gotta make it simple!”

  “Oh, shut up, you!”

  I smiled, watching their little competition. Demon was not only going for a quick kill but thought of the flair of it. I reckoned he inherited the dramatics from me. Goliath went more practical and efficient. Like John Wick, I thought.

  As Milford fled to the woods with his soldiers, it made me realize how much my archetypes were holding back due to essence collection. But when that was out of the window…well…the results were very messy.

  They hit the treeline at a dead run.

  The junkyard grew smaller behind them, swallowed by the mist and the darkness. The woods closed in fast, branches clawing at their clothes, roots grabbing at their boots, the ground uneven and slick with mud; the moonlight barely threading through the canopy.

  Men crashed through undergrowth and foliage, their breath tearing out of their chests as rifles whipped against their ribs. Someone fell. Someone else hauled him up. No one stopped long enough to check if the monsters were still chasing after them.

  “Keep moving!” Milford shouted. “Keep running!”

  Reed was right behind him, lungs burning. “Where the hell are we going?”

  “There’s a clearing up ahead. We passed it on the way in and I think it’s wide enough for an emergency pickup. I’m calling the choppers down.”

  He reached into his coat as they ran, fingers closing around the cold plastic tube of a flare gun. He didn’t pull it out yet.

  Something moved overhead.

  And the first web hit like a gunshot.

  A soldier at the rear was yanked straight off his feet, lifted screaming into the dark canopy. The sound cut off abruptly, replaced by frantic thrashing as white strands wrapped around him midair.

  “CONTACT! Coming from above!” someone screamed.

  Webs fired from above in thick, glistening ropes, snapping taut as they struck.

  They came from the trees or from the burrows hidden in the thickets and undergrowth. Each giant spider of the Spider Queen’s brood was about the size of a small car, bodies lean like stretched out leather sacks, legs long and thin enough to look fragile until you realized how fast they move with them. Their dark chitinous hides drank in the darkness, broken only by the faint glow of clustered eyes fixated on their prey.

  “Open fire! Open fire!”

  The woods erupted into a new chaos.

  Muzzle flashes strobed in the darkness as bullets tore through bark and chitin. One spider shrieked and fell, legs curling as it hit the ground hard. Another took a burst to the body and collapsed, ichor spilling across the leaves and undergrowth.

  But with each spider struck down, twice more replaced them.

  Beyond the forest, the soldiers realized they were surrounded by hundreds of giant spiders.

  More webs filled the air, crossing paths, tangling men mid-stride. Soldiers were ripped off their feet and hauled upward into the branches, and were cocooned midair as the spiders paced along the tree trunks, their mouths and fangs clicking softly as they worked.

  Milford ran ahead than the others, though no one seemed to notice that the spiders were deliberately ignoring him. Reed stumbled behind him, firing upward blindly at the moving shadows above them and emptied his rifle’s magazine. He threw the gun away and pulled out his pistol.

  A spider dropped in front of them and Reed pulled Milford back and away and put six rounds through the creature’s eyes, sending it back into twitching heap.

  “There’s too many of them!” Milford screeched.

  “Which way, man?!” Reed bellowed.

  “I think it’s through here!”

  They broke through the treeline and burst into the open space of the tall grass. Only five of them made it out of the forest, including Reed and Milford.

  “Call the helicopters down now!” Reed said.

  Milford nodded and fired the flare.

  A red streak tore into the sky and bloomed overhead, bathing the clearing in hellish light. The flare hissed and burned, painting every face below with panic, dread, and hope in equal measure.

  A distant thump answered back.

  Then another.

  The sound grew louder.

  Relief crept into their faces.

  “They see us!” One of the soldiers gasped. “They fucking see us!”

  That was when something dove out of the sky.

  It hit the nearest soldier like a freight train without a warning. He didn’t even make a sound as the man’s head came off in a single, clean sweep with the creature’s sharp claws, spinning away into the grass as his body crumpled a half-second later.

  Before anyone could react, the thing barreled into the next soldier and lifted him straight up into the air. The man screamed as he was carried skyward, legs kicking helplessly.

  Duke Henry unfolded fully in the moonlight.

  His monstrous form blotted out what little moonlight poured through the gaps of the fog. His vast wings stretched wide, leathery and scarred, ribs visible beneath stretched membrane. His animalistic vampiric form was massive, twisted into something bat-like with limbs elongated and looked quite powerful, yet both eyes were burning with feral intelligence.

  He seized the soldier with a clawed hand locking around the man’s torso. The vampire tore into the soldier’s neck and kept going, crunching through vertebrae with a sound like snapping branches. The spine gave. The body went limp instantly, yet the prey remained conscious and alive.

  Blood poured and rained down in warm sheets over Reed, Milford, and the last remaining soldier, spattering their faces. The copper stench filled the clearing.

  The helicopters crested the treeline moments later.

  White beams cut through the dark and caught Duke Henry two hundred feet in the air, feeding on the soldier. And the pilots saw everything. Henry lifted his bloody head slowly, gore slicking around his jaw. He let the body drop, hitting the grass somewhere unseen.

  Henry turned toward the helicopters.

  Smiled.

  Raised one claw and pointed, very cheekily, off to the right.

  The pilots followed where he was pointing at…and saw the fog moved as something massive pushed through it.

  Rakradag.

  The black dragon emerged from the dense mist, dwarfing the two helicopters. His body grotesquely thick and overbuilt, shoulders humped with slabs of muscle that rolled beneath overlapping impenetrable black scales. A heavy horned crest framed a wedge-shaped skull, horns curling back like broken scythes. His chest was pale and ridged, rising with slow, powerful breaths behind jagged rows of sharp teeth, each huff carrying the smell of ozone. His shadow loomed over the face of the pilot gaping at him through the cockpit window.

  Rakradag then tucked his wings tight as he surged forward like a battering ram, slamming against the lead helicopter head-on. The rotors slammed into its hide and did nothing, not even drawing a drop of blood, as it tried to chew its way through, but ended up mangling the metal instead. Rak’s claws closed around the fuselage as he leaned down and bit through the cockpit like it was made of tinfoil, and ripped the pilot out.

  In a single motion, Rak flung the pilot in the air like tossing a piece of peanut, opened his jaw wide once more, and caught him with his teeth midair, then gulped the poor sucker down his throat. The gunner lost his footing as the helicopter lurched violently sideways, his hands slipping off the mount. He fell free, but the dragon’s spiked tail lashed up and skewered the man clean through the chest before he could hit the ground.

  Rak whipped the body hard, hurling it toward the second helicopter. The pilot there swerved instinctively, narrowly avoiding the corpse as it spun past the cockpit, covering it in a spray of blood.

  “Get us close!” The gunner on the second helicopter shouted through the radio.

  The second helicopter banked hard, trying to escape the dragon’s massive wings. The gunner inside opened fire, bullets stitching across Rak’s impenetrable scales.

  Annoyed, Rak slowly turned around, opened his maw and a lightning bolt erupted out of it.

  The bolt hit the helicopter dead center in a flash of bright blue light, followed by a thunderclap, detonating instantly. Burning fragments rained down. Rak released the first helicopter then. Both vehicles fell onto the tall grass and exploded almost simultaneously, fireballs flattening the field and lighting some of the trees, the growing blaze lighting up Henry’s gleeful and bloodied face from above.

  Milford and Reed emerged from their crouched position in the grass and watched in horror at the carnage in front of them.

  Henry hit the clearing first; the ground dipped under his weight as he folded those vast wings inward, his talons sinking into the soil. A heartbeat later, Rakradag landed behind him, the dragon’s massive mass shuddering the earth. Heat rolled off its scales in slow waves, the air humming faintly with residual crackles of lightning and static.

  Milford stared up at the giant beast and the abomination in front of him. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

  Henry straightened his back, gore still clinging around his mouth, his eyes bright and sharp with amusement. He looked Milford over the way a butcher appraises meat.

  “The Dungeon Lord likes to be dramatic with these kinds of things,” Henry said. “We certainly revel in the carnage. Makes for interesting delves.”

  “But he didn’t let us delve,” Milford said.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Milford. Delving makes it much, much worse. Be thankful we didn’t draw it out for hours.”

  Milford took a step back. “But I’m just a messenger!”

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised,” Henry said pleasantly. His voice carried smooth and cultured. “You had to know this night would end with you being…outmatched.”

  Henry took a step closer.

  “I do love this part,” he went on, tilting his head. “That exact moment when the meat finally understands it’s meat. It’s always fascinating to witness. How they beg, how they grovel…how they whimper and soil themselves. It’s euphoric.”

  Milford swallowed hard and found his voice again. “Shoot him. Shoot him!” he snapped. “Now!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Shoot him!” Milford barked louder.

  Reed didn’t move. Neither did the other soldier. They stood stiff, rifles hanging loose in their hands, bodies locked in place. Strangled gasps crawled out of their throats, like men drowning on dry land.

  “Lieutenant?” Milford started. “What are you—”

  Only I could see this, but I watched as thin smoky wisps entered through Reed and the other soldier’s nostrils, mouth, and ears, and Demon sat inside them like a second spine, his presence warping their souls. Reed’s pupils were blown wide and glassy, reflecting something that wasn’t there. The other soldier trembled as if something were pulling on his nerves like strings, one hand violently twitching as he struggled for control of his own body, and he was losing fast.

  Then, Reed’s head snapped sideways with a sharp crack. He looked straight at Milford, walked forward, stopping inches from the liaison’s face and backhanded him. The sound echoed across the clearing. Milford went down hard, sprawling into the grass with a reddening bruise blooming across his cheek.

  Before Milford could scramble to his knees, Henry lifted one clawed hand. Blood rose from the grass like a calm stream, from Milford’s own split lip, from the air itself, creating threads of crimson coiling and tightening around the vampire’s hand. Milford froze. His eyes rolled back as blood magic halted the oxygen and blood supply to his brain for a heartbeat. He slumped into the grass, breathing shallow, alive but asleep.

  Henry let the blood fall back to the earth, pleased with the trait I had given him months ago.

  Henry looked at me then, dipped his head just enough to be respectful. “Your stage,” he said lightly, “my lord.”

  Suddenly, Demon slipped out of Reed like smoke escaping a cracked bottle, ending the possession instantly. Reed fell to his knees, coughing and gagging as if he’d just broken the surface of a very deep ocean. He scrambled backward on hands and knees, eyes scanning around the clearing at the scorched earth, the monstrous dragon, and at Henry’s towering silhouette backdropped by the roaring blaze.

  I turned to Demon. “What’s going on?”

  “I saw something, my lord.” He hesitated, muttering quietly under his breath, out of Reed’s earshot. “Please. Trust me on this?”

  “What did you see?”

  “Trust me. Let him leave.”

  I didn’t like it, but I trusted Demon. He was up to something. I let Reed staggered to his feet, hands shaking as he found his pistol and picked it up. He swung it up instinctively—first at Demon, then at Rakradag, then at Henry—waiting for one of them to move and attack him.

  None of them did.

  Reed backed away, eyes never leaving us. His heel hit a root. He stumbled, caught himself, then turned and ran into the forest.

  Henry watched him go, then slowly turned his head toward Demon. “Well,” he said calmly, “that’s new. Care to explain?”

  Demon’s shoulders relaxed. “I caught a glimpse of something in his memories. A brief flash.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “A single thought,” he leaned in. “One word...institute.”

  Henry’s brow furrowed. “That…rings a bell.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I said. All of us were familiar of what the Institute was, and that wasn’t saying much. All we had was that they studied the supernatural stuff, and possibly hunted monsters. We had never encountered someone who was a part of the organization. “Wait. Are you saying…”

  “Possible, yes,” Demon said. “I’ll give you this much. His name is not Lucas Reed. And he was thinking of a phone number. I felt an emotion there. Trust. Dependable.”

  “Uh, can someone take care of that fire, please?” I said.

  Henry whirled around and stretched his hands at the roaring fire behind him. Blood lifted and coiled around his body as he concentrated into The Ways, curled his hand, and the fire slowly died into embers. The Ranger station was a few miles away, and another watchtower was close by. We shouldn’t let the people of Point Hope panic from a sudden forest fire. But if Zal’s amaurosis spell worked, they couldn’t see anything with a naked eye into the dungeon at all, a glamoured valley where everything was perfect and definitely not a lot of people just died in the past ten minutes.

  And just in case, I spied on the forest ranger up on the watchtower, who busy playing Candy Crush on his phone. I doubted he heard all that gunshots.

  I told the others no one noticed our violent extracurricular activities tonight.

  “What will you do if he is part of the Institute, my liege?” Henry asked.

  “Well, that tells me The Institute were already aware of who the Havashar Society serves, or at least suspects.”

  Henry’s wings settled with a soft rustle.“Ah. The lieutenant is a spy?”

  “Might be. I mean, it kinda makes sense for the other secret organizations to spy on each other, you know?”

  “But it doesn’t seem like The Institute is aware of him being here,” Demon interjected. “The Collector decided to send them here on a whim, it seems.”

  “A gamble,” I corrected.

  “Then why not kill him now?” Henry pressed. “After what he’s seen?”

  I followed Reed through the darkness as he broke from the treeline and sprinted toward the road where their SUVs were parked. “Because I want to know who he calls,” I said calmly. “Relax, Henry. He’s a dead man walking. I have a plan.”

  Reed reached the vehicle, yanked the door open, and nearly fell inside. The keys were still sitting right on the dash and the engine turned over on the first try. He threw it into reverse, tires screaming as he fishtailed out of the turnout and tore down the road like the devil was still on his tail.

  He blew through the on-ramp, cutting off a sedan so badly the driver laid on the horn hard. Reed didn’t dare stop. He drove until North Cedar Lake was a smear on the rearview mirror, until he was only a couple of miles away from Point Hope’s town limits, then finally pulled over on the shoulder, hands shaking that the steering wheel rattled.

  He dug through the dash and pulled out his phone, dialing a number from memory.

  It was a call to somewhere in Washington, D.C.

  “A Chinese restaurant, sir,” Oracle said. “A two-for-one deal, the finest Peking, Szechuan, Mongolian, Shanghai, and Cantonese cuisine in the DMV. At least that’s what their website says. They claim to have the best soup dumplings.”

  “Aw. I like soup,” Mother Gertrude mused. “That reminds me. I should go on a holiday in this new world and eat at restaurants all over. Well, maybe after we settled that second dungeon in New York, of course.”

  “Can I come?” Lord Zal asked.

  Mother Gertrude smacked her lips. “I don’t think a walking undead being will be good for anyone’s palate, dear.”

  “Shush! Someone answered!” Demon said.

  A woman picked up the call. “Hello, good evening. Thank you for calling Zhang’s Restaurant. My name is Lei. How may I help you tonight? Dining in or take out?”

  “Uh, take out.”

  “Okay. Are you ready to order?”

  He swallowed, forcing himself to calm down. “There’s a lot to choose from. Um, I think I’ll order from the special menu?”

  A brief pause. “One moment.”

  Another pause.

  “What’s your delivery address?”

  “8546 Oregon road, Wyoming Avenue.”

  And another pause.

  “Hold on a sec…alright, you are free to order.”

  The phone clicked to a secure line.

  Reed let out a shuddered breath of relief. “Listen, Wyoming. I’m going to make this brief. I’m in Oregon at some small town, I think it’s called Point Hope?” His voice cracked. “Um, there’s a place here in the mountains like nothing I’ve ever seen. The Society sent several of their grunts to a shakedown, at least I thought it was another hunt—”

  Reed had to force himself to breathe. “—fuck. Everyone’s dead. Everyone is…hell, I don’t know what’s going on. But, listen. The Society is after something here. Something very powerful like nothing we’ve ever encountered before. Something new. I saw it. I felt it, man. They call it a Core. I’ve seen what it can do, what it can…” Another breath. “There are monsters here. I don’t know how many but this place is teeming with them like it’s Christmas and they follow this thing, this Core as if its their god. You have to send the big guys, you just gotta. You have to send everyone. Shit! Just nuke this fucking place! Burn it to the ground. Whatever you can! It got me, man. It went inside me…and I…I…”

  Then Reed broke down crying. “It got me. It made me see things I thought I’m over with…with Farah…”

  Suddenly, the radio crackled to life as Baby, I’m Yours from Arctic Monkeys played over the speakers, startling Reed. Demon insisted that Oracle played it through the car.

  “It’s their song,” Demon said to me while forming a heart with his hands, gleeful at watching Reed’s face broke in surprise, fear, and confusion. “How romantic, right?”

  I turned to Oracle. “You got it?”

  “Already on it.” Oracle showed me the screen. He had cut the call the second he was transferred to a secure line.

  Time to cut through the jugular, I thought. Showtime.

  “Who are you?” I said through the mic. My distorted voice reverberated through the phone and through the SUV’s interior while the song was still playing in the background.

  Reed threw the phone away, clattering under the seat.

  “Who are you?” I asked again.

  I nodded to Oracle to play the recording of those cultist soldiers getting butchered in the junkyard, screaming and whimpering as Old Growth tore through them.

  “Wha…what…” Reed couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find the words.

  I held in his fear for a long moment, savored in it. And then, I gestured for Oracle to do the next step.

  The screams through the speakers jumped in volume, deafening, pressing in on him. Reed fumbled for the door handle, kicked the door open and spilled out onto the asphalt, desperate to get away. The road was empty, but only for the next couple of seconds.

  A semi-truck thundered toward him in the opposite lane. The driver swore as the headlights flickered, plunging the road ahead —and Reed—in darkness.

  Then the lights snapped back on.

  Reed turned and for one frozen instant, he stood there in the wash of white light, mouth hanging open, bloodshot eyes wide, knowing there was nowhere to dodge.

  The truck slammed through him at sixty miles per hour.

  The Brood dragged the unconscious soldiers deep into Smitty’s Mine, including Mr. Milford.

  I had built a special cage for them, surrounded by a labyrinth of caverns, tunnels, and traps. A classic and cliche dungeon, Oracle told me once. Demon broke their possession with the soldier, bringing the total to nine prisoners.

  Nine meals.

  Mr. Milford might get his wish to delve, but not right away. I’d fatten them up for the next few days with fear, anxiety, and all kinds of horror. And real food. Sometimes, I forget that mortals needed actual food to survive. Then, Demon would draw out their real names after briefly possessing them so I could add it to the list of delvers, three at a time. I didn’t want all of them to delve in one night. I was trying to avoid giving the others rewards for making it past dawn by basically doing nothing and sitting in the cage while I was “feeding” on the real delvers. Honestly, I was glad I was already past my insatiable juvenile phase.

  So, I’d let the three delvers out of the cage and place them in a random location in the mines with the weapons of their choice and watch as they ran around the labyrinth, fighting some of the monsters, avoiding some traps, solving puzzles with death traps on them, and desperately looking for a way out.

  And since he asked so nicely, I would save Milford for last.

  I knew exactly how I was going to use him once Dylan Griffin and Retto Kearns reached North Cedar Lake.

  In horror movies (and in other action movies in general), there was always that one “expositions” guy who lore dumped on the main characters just to get the fucking runtime moving, and ended up dying after he told the characters everything, usually in the same scene. That would be Milford’s primetime role in the upcoming scenario. I wanted him broken, frail, and desperate when they finally encounter him, and then BAM! He punched his ticket in the most violent way.

  “And who knows? Milford might be a good foil against them,” Demon said. “He could be the human villain like that zombie movie we watched last month.”

  “I remember Train To Busan,” Luke Sawyer said. “That motherfucker. I’m still not over it.”

  “Good point,” I said. “The podcast is using me as a focal point for the livestream as the first victim.” Yuck. I hated that word. I didn’t know why it caused a physical reaction from me, but I refused to be known as a victim.

  “May I be clear that The Institute is bound to send somebody to check up on their agent,” Oracle said. “Especially when he just died.”

  “I know,” I said. “I want them to.”

  “You’re actually luring them here?” Demon asked. “To us?”

  “Of course. They can’t always be kept in the sidelines. We know they are organized, but by how much?” I said. “And what better way to learn about them than by meeting them face-to-face?”