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She closed her eyes and extended her consciousness to the minions.
They would rue the day they’d come to her city.
* * *
BRIGID BAPTISTE WATCHED as the earth that the prisoners had occupied suddenly began to crack open, then slanted down as if on a ramp. At first her mind reeled. That was exactly where the dozens of captives would have been had they not been freed; they’d be rolling down a slide of stone. The change of the terrain was sudden and dramatic, and as the dust and dirt tumbled down the preconstructed ramp, she realized that this was an ancient design.
She looked as the ramp disappeared into an arched entrance and segments of the floor slid and crunched out into the open. It all slid together with uncanny precision, producing one smooth inclined plane that stretched down into the darkness and out of sight. Even more boggling to her was that as the floor extended, she could see little lips of stone rising, forming a railing.
“What the hell?” Nathan muttered, gripping the artifact Nehushtan tightly.
“It’s an entrance to hell,” Lyta spoke up. “They brought us to the city of the damned...Negari!”
“Negari?” Thurpa asked.
“It was a realm which was thought to be made up by authors in the early twentieth century,” Brigid spoke. “A hidden city, ruled by an eternal...queen.”
Brigid kicked herself. This was the void entity that Kane had described as his tormentor, the one who’d plucked out his mind, taken it to another plane and tortured him on multiple levels.
“Neekra,” Thurpa snapped. “That blood-skinned bitch!”
Brigid nodded. “That was who was spoken of. She is real, unfortunately. And we’ve encountered her machinations already.”
“There’s movement,” Nathan said. He clicked on a light, but the beam, despite an intense brightness, could not reach the edge of it.
And still there were movements visible in the gloom beyond, odd flickers of shapes.
Brigid knew that she had the ability to get a closer look at whatever glimmered in the inky blackness. She swiftly tugged her hood up, feeling her long flowing curls bunch against the base of her neck, but it was something that she could endure for the time being. She swiftly adhered the shadow suit’s faceplate on, switching to night vision and image magnification.
Immediately, her stomach twisted with revulsion as she spotted the creatures rising from the depths. They whipped out their hands, which stretched out on pseudopods, not arms. Stretching out, hurled like lariats, the hands snapped shut as they gripped the walls. It was an obscene parody of how she’d seen amoeba attack and devour their prey.
Her photographic memory flashed back to the story Nathan had told of his father, Nelson, and Nelson’s death. The disappearance of the murderer through a hole that no man with a skeleton could fit recalled a similar “stretchiness.”
There were a dozen of the things, and they were moving toward her, Nathan, Thurpa and Lyta as swiftly as they could. Her mouth went dry, but she whipped up the Copperhead and peered through the low-powered scope atop the compact submachine gun. They were quick, but she anticipated the path of one of the beasts and she cut loose with the Copperhead, spitting high-velocity bullets toward it. The rounds slapped into it, and her shadow suit’s optics extended, picking up on the thing seemingly blowing apart in chunks.
She pivoted the gun’s muzzle, aimed at another and fired.
“What?” Thurpa asked.
“Monsters,” Brigid said. She ripped off a burst into the third of the creatures, but even as she did so, she could see the first of her targets reassembling itself. It’d been hurt, yes, but she was firing into gelatin-like bodies that could reassemble themselves.
Thurpa shouldered his rifle and looked through the scope. He let out a grunt of dismay at the image of the newcomers. “Enki help me.”
“They’re bulletproof,” Brigid shouted. “Move!”
Thurpa grimaced and triggered his weapon.
“I said—” Brigid began.
Thurpa glared at her. “That little gun doesn’t have the punch this does. I can at least break them up, stun them.”
Brigid glanced back and saw that the creatures that Thurpa had struck were down. They still showed signs of life, but the heavier rifle that the Nagah expatriate had used on them had left them stunned and confused.
She glanced after Nathan, who was leading Lyta away as quickly as his legs could carry them both. Thankfully for Brigid, they weren’t enhanced by the ancient staff’s power. She could catch up. “We both go, now.”
Thurpa kept shooting. “Aim for their center line. That seems to disturb and stagger them the most! I’ll hold this line as long as I can....”
Brigid grimaced. She took off, realizing that she could not allow Nehushtan to fall into the wrong hands.
Durga and his queen, Neekra, were definitely the wrong hands.
She sent a silent prayer of hope to Thurpa, knowing what he was risking for their sakes.
The big rifle kicked hard against Thurpa’s shoulder, and he knew that each bullet he put into one of the strange creatures coming up the underworld path bought more yards, more seconds for his newfound friends and allies to get away. He didn’t want to think of what horrors would befall him once they got to him, but, dammit, the fallen prince Durga had led him astray, pushed thoughts into his head and brought him to this countryside.
He dumped the spent magazine from his gun, pushed another one home and worked the bolt. Even as he did so, he realized that two of the things had survived his rain of lead. Technically, they’d all survived, but these two had avoided his shots and had not been slowed. They were only thirty feet away, and they showed no sign of slowing down.
Thurpa let out a roar of frustration as he tracked one of the slippery pair of translucent, stretchy foes, firing bullets to chase it down. As he did so, he felt a hand grasp him by the throat. Within moments, he was sailing through the air toward one of the underground horrors. Thurpa tried to scream, but the elongated limb around his throat cut him off. The strength of the creature was such that it pulled him through the air, feet airborne.
Those fingers clutching at his throat were as strong as iron, and he struck the ground behind the pair of gelatinous assailants. Thurpa blinked, struggling to bring his thoughts back into line, to get his limbs to respond to commands.
The two leapers continued on their path, having forgotten the cobra man after they’d unceremoniously dumped him on the ground. He twisted himself, rolling from his back to where he could get his hands and knees beneath him. Even as he did so, a hammer blow struck him between the shoulder blades, and his face was mashed into the ground, dirt digging into his nostrils. He turned his head, exhaling and clearing his airways, but another rubbery paw pressed down on his cheek and neck.
Out of the corner of his eye, Thurpa could see it was one of the horrors. It had fissures through its flesh and cracks on the surface of its skin. It looked vaguely male, but inside bones hung like pieces of fruit in dessert gelatin. His nostrils were assailed with the sickening, ugly stench of copper and salt, a cloying reek of decaying and drying blood.
The creature’s face lowered nearer to Thurpa’s, and it seemed to sniff.
“No,” came the order from another. “She says...no.”
Thurpa felt a moment of relief, but even so, the slimy, clammy grip on his neck and face was steely, rigid, unforgiving.
“Lucky,” Thurpa’s captor growled. “Lucky you.”
Thurpa wanted to say something, but he knew better. These creatures had some intellect, but they were following the orders