Gotta run.” There was a rattle of a pipe and Lance was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.
Desperate, Francis turned his attention back to the spell. Time was up. He had to make this damned thing work or else.
The rat scurried up the conduit, forced its head through a tiny crack in the wall, and then pulled its body through behind. Lance knew that anything its skull could fit through, the body could be forced to follow. All of God’s creatures, even the utterly disgusting ones, were amazing. He was tracking the gasoline stink of the engine. The generator was close. He could feel the vibration through his feet. More twists and turns took him through walls and behind panels.
The generator room was illuminated by a single light. There was no smell of danger, though the corners were cloaked in shadows. The rodent tumbled through the last hole, dropped several feet to hit the hard floor, and immediately scampered toward the engine. Pick some wires. Chew till something breaks. Get the hell out of here.
The rat didn’t even hear the tiny demon until it was too late. A black claw pierced the rat’s body and pinned it to the floor.
Crow’s modest apartment overlooked the Potomac. Though he couldn’t even see Mason Island from here, he’d parked his chair right next to the window anyway. A smile creased his face as his distant minor Summoned destroyed the intruder in the generator room. He’d figured they’d try to kill the main Dymaxion somehow.
He released the demon from his control and let it fade from reality. By the time the demon had drifted into smoke, Crow was entirely back in his own body. The little ones didn’t take much consciousness to control, so within seconds he was in full possession of his limited human faculties and could again feel all the weakness and fragility of the body he’d been born with. Since he’d received the Doctor’s spell, he’d been spending less and less time in that body every day, just returning to it often enough to keep it fed and cleaned. Returning to his real body always seemed like such a waste.
The telephone was waiting on the stand next to him. The line had already been prepared to go directly to OCI headquarters and all he had to do was push a button to be patched through. Someone picked up on the other end immediately. “This is Crow. Intruders are on the island. Lock it down. Prep Stuyvesant and Koenig for transport. I’ll be there in a minute.” He returned the handset to the cradle.
This was a special occasion. It was almost like picking which tie to wear before that special date with a sweet young thing you really wanted to impress. He was eager to kill these Grimnoir, so only one of his finest demons would do. The one that he’d used in Oklahoma was the strongest he’d ever attempted to control, and that had turned out dicey. He’d lost control and embarrassed the OCI last time. Since the boss was going to be at the scene, he’d better play it low key and Summon something a little tamer.
But Crow hesitated. Something was eating at the back of his mind. Screw Doc Carr. I know what I’m doing. He’d Summon the same demon that he’d used in Oklahoma. If the Traveler girl was going to be there, the ram- horned demon deserved another shot at her. Its spirit had been out here sulking since it had been defeated last time. It was only fair.
The ram-horned demon wasn’t the greatest that Crow had ever found, just the greatest that he’d ever attempted to bring over to the real world. He’d sensed a few others out there, floating in the between place that only Finders and Summoners could reach. Those were bigger, older, even stronger, just waiting to be given form. Their spirits dwarfed all the others, so epic that he hadn’t even been able to recognize them as actual entities before the Doctor had magnified his Power. These things had been the top of the food chain on the dead world that the Summoned originally hailed from. It was really tempting to try one of those on for size. To be able to have a body like that..
Better safe than sorry. Ram-horn will do for now. I’ll work up to one of those big boys eventually. Crow reached deep inside, fired up his Power, and called for his servant.
The tiger’s sudden roar caused Sullivan to fall over on his backside into the mud. The gigantic feline took a step toward him. Surprised, he jerked the BAR up and got ready to shred the cat.
“Lance! What’re you doing?” Sullivan hissed.
“Got speared by a demon.” The tiger rapidly shook its head as if it were distracted by pain. “They know we’re here.” The tiger leapt away and disappeared into the trees.
Sullivan got out of the mud and hurried for the compound. Active or not, it was now or never. Ahead, the shape of the wall appeared ahead through the trees. The only gate was on the south side facing the bridge. There was no entrance here on the north side, so they’d planned on making their own. Hoover’s intel said that it was twelve feet tall, made of bricks, with a single tower overlooking it, and there was an open space of about fifty feet where the trees had been cut away for visibility. All of that was good useful information.
However, the intel hadn’t specified that there was a walkway on the other side, so that men could peer over the top to shoot at them.
He’d almost reached the clearing when brilliant floodlights switched on, bathing the trees in light. “Everybody down!” Sullivan shouted as he slid behind a fallen log. He shouldered the BAR and the front sight appeared as a gigantic black triangle before the light. The Maxim silencer absorbed most of the noise, and he was rewarded with shattering glass and darkness. He swept over and took out another one of the floodlights before someone on the wall returned fire. Sullivan calmly got as low as he could as machine gun fire ripped the log to splinters above his head.
Toru dove into the bushes off to the side and crawled behind a mound of solid dirt. He leaned out and worked his machine gun across the top of the wall. Somewhere inside the OCI compound a man cried out in pain and another light went out. A Thompson roared far to the left as Diamond’s men joined the attack. Within seconds, seven automatic weapons were peppering the fortifications and smashing brick into dust.
“Ian!” Sullivan bellowed at the top of his lungs. The plan hadn’t changed, they just had to do it while getting shot at was all. “Make us a door!” Then he went over the log and emptied the rest of his magazine into the watchtower. “Toru, hit that tower.”
Between the two of them, the wooden structure was absolutely riddled with bullets. The guards’ shadows jerked and twitched. A red mist hung in front of the watchtower’s spotlight for an instant before it too was broken. Gun empty, Sullivan ducked back down. He barely had time to see a body sag against the railing, flip over the edge, and tumble from sight. The tower was out of the picture.
Deprived of targets, the fire from Diamond’s side tapered off. Toru pulled back behind cover to reload. The Iron Guard’s teeth were visible in the dark as he smiled. “It seems they did not expect that level of response.”
“Too easy.”
“Agreed. Expect trouble.”
He raised his voice. “Anyone hit?” Sullivan counted the shouts back. Nobody was down. If there were more OCI on the wall, they were staying concealed. “Hurry it up, Ian.”
“On the way.”
A pale glow appeared in the forest back the way they’d come from. The soft ground began to rumble with ponderous footsteps as the glow grew brighter and brighter. Ian’s Summoned was coming. “Cover that monster!” Sullivan’s command was echoed a moment later as Diamond repeated the order to his men.
BAR reloaded, Sullivan watched the wall, but no targets appeared. A dark spot that could only be an arm dangled limply over the side, but other than that there was no sign of the OCI. The rhythmic rumble increased as the Summoned neared. It crashed haphazardly through the brush, breaking smaller trees and pushing medium-sized ones over. The Summoned was only a few yards away when it passed by, the color of the full moon, vast, four eyes glowing red. It looked clumsy, with a great big body, oversized arms, and stubby little legs driving it relentlessly forward, but it was gaining speed as it charged the wall.
Someone in the OCI realized what was coming and shouts could be heard on the other side. Shadows appeared as a few guards risked peeks over the wall. The Grimnoir immediately began shooting at anything that moved. A few of the OCI got shots off before they were driven out of sight. Bullets puckered through the Summoned’s doughy flesh, hissing smoke, but it wasn’t nearly enough to slow the mighty beast.
The Summoned lowered its formless head, ducked a shoulder, and hit the wall with a terrible crash. The bricks cracked, split, and the whole wall shuddered. Men cried out as they were flung from the walkway. The Summoned kept on pushing, stubby legs throwing up plumes of dirt, and the wall began to fall apart. The pale glow momentarily disappeared in a cloud of red dust as stones crashed and broke.
The Grimnoir began to cheer.
