Recursion Page 11

  None of them looked really attractive for a first-time-back event, until I spotted “Hillwood Career Day?”

  Quin spun in her chair, stopped herself against her desk with a knee. “Their annual Career Day is in two days, and the Chicago Crisis Aid and Intervention Association always sends a few of us down to represent. Blackstone’s scheduled, but do you think you can take his spot?”

  “Um.” Yes! “What about Scowly McShooty?”

  “Hey,” Black Powder interjected mildly, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. “And yeah, what about me?”

  “Wear your shades and be yourself.”

  I tried to tamp down my excitement. Why hadn’t I thought of Hillwood? Ozma was finishing her junior year there now, and if anybody could help me find answers it was her—she even had a box for it. The Question Box. If there was any sure way to get answers, that was it. “Who else is going?”

  “SaFire, Jack Frost, and K-Strike.”

  Not a bad selection; most Hillwood Academy students weren’t A Class types, and Jack Frost and K-Strike were mid-class capes who made maximum use of the advantages their powers provided. SaFire was colorful proof that not all super-strong capes focused on the punching part of the job. “I’ll do it.”

  “Great. Now I’ve scheduled a session later this morning with our favorite photographer. And Terry.”

  I sighed. “Really?”

  “Really. Don’t worry, Terry’s proven he can toss softball questions.”

  “I know. I—” And I smelled it. I hadn’t smelled it in three years, and I still hadn’t forgotten it. Stinking, rotted flesh, sulfur and corruption. “Shell! Evacuate the level! Now!”

  Alarms split the air and my blood froze as the qlippoth burst into putrid existence in the air outside Quin’s door.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I hate demons. I mean someone gains supernatural powers and they use them to summon monsters from our darkest nightmares? Why not unicorns? Or fairies? There’s nothing wrong with fairies.”

  Astra interview, Terry Reinhold’s Citywatch.

  * * *

  The floating nightmare, shrouding flesh-rags veiling too many stick-thin arms, spun at the shouts and screams that rose from the Dispatch floor, spun again. Somewhere inside that iron claw-tipped tangle of limbs and rotting flesh were eyes that focused on me. It was here for me and I could feel its malevolent attention.

  And that was the bright side. My pulse thundered in my ears as I braced myself.

  “It’s vulnerable to fire, explosions, forcefields, big hits! Go!” The heaviest object in Quin’s office was her desk and I grabbed it without thought for the computer sitting on it, launching out from her office holding it as a shield and battering ram. The qlippoth shrieked, a sanity-shredding sound, scrabbling to reach me around the table as I smacked into it and thrust us away from the balcony towards Dispatch’s high ceiling. I felt the first cuts as the razor claws sliced—right through the carbon-fiber webbing layer where it caught my top or bottoms instead of skin. Shell screamed words I couldn’t hear over its shriek and the rush of my own blood in my head. Then something punched into the thing repeatedly and we were falling.

  Our landing flattened a Dispatch station—the abomination might have been able to hover, but its body was as heavy and dense as the iron claws ripping through The Harlequin’s desk to really get at me.

  “Get away from it!” Shell yelled as I pinned it down. She looked absolutely freaked—a luxury she could afford since it couldn’t shred her virtual butt.

  I screamed when a razor claw nailed my right hand to a piece of desk-top, ground out “Tell me when the room’s clear!” then screamed again when Quin ripped my hand free by landing on the remains of her desk. Her hard bounce pushed the whole thing away from me as it began exploding piece by piece, covering me in bits. Black Powder stood at the rail above us, calmly and methodically pouring fire into the qlippoth, a stream of shots passing me by inches to explode with each hit and tear arms, claws, flesh-veils away as it screamed its rage.

  They regrew, like Hercules vs. the Hydra—if the Hydra was nightmare-ugly.

  “Incendiaries!” I barked, ripping up another desk. The exploding gory bits turned into an eruption of flaming gory bits, scattering burning pieces of putrid shrieking qlippoth around me, but it didn’t go down. How long could it last?

  “The room’s clear!” Shell called over the solid clangs of emergency doors clanging shut. I threw the desk before looking for more big throwable things as the flood of Black Powder’s shots dwindled to a rhythmic popping, stopped and started up again as he switched to his pistol, and there was no multi-ton armored truck to pin the thing down with, no—

  Blackstone appeared in a flash of light and smoke, with Ambrosius. The white-hatted ranger took one look at the shrieking, reaching abomination and his hands glowed with liquid light.

  Yes! I felt my lips stretch in a mad grin as I laughed, swinging my third desk as a club to batter burning bunches of reaching arms aside.

  More claws sliced at me but I broke bundles of nightmare arms and then its ululating shrieks climbed the scale from rage to pain and fear as warm golden light flowed around me to envelope it. Ambrosius’ divine inner light burned the unspeakable thing like holy water bathing a vampire (no offense to Jacky). I felt like my ears were bleeding but now, at last, the qlippoth sank to the ground, scrabbling limbs turning fragile, friable as my swings fractured and shattered them.

  “Well, wow.” Shell appeared, looking wide-eyed at the results of Ambrosius’ light. I dropped the remains of the desk, touching down to watch the thing blacken, collapse, and dissolve, and nearly started laughing again at the look on Ambrosius’ face. He obviously hadn’t ever faced something that was 100% pure, unadulterated Evil (with a capital E) before. Well, now he knew he could make a killing as a divinely powered “demon-hunter,” even if he didn’t really believe in the divine anymore.

  Or maybe now he would; fighting hell-spawn had a way of making a person believe in God.

  * * *

  It was an unutterable relief to learn the qlippoth had been the only attacker; Blackstone had waited until Dome Security verified that we weren’t getting hit anywhere else before committing himself and Ambrosius to the fight. Now we ran down the checklist while I tried to ignore all my sliced bits and the burning hole in my hand. At least my super-duper toughness meant I stopped bleeding fast. With the glove still on, it didn’t look that bad; making a fist was painful, but it stopped the shaking.

  “Guardians teams are reporting in,” Shell spoke in my ear through her official Dispatch channel. “No reported headquarters attacks anywhere in the city, no interference with patrols.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I knew those reports would be seconded by the various Bobs that were all part of Platoon. I’d asked once how many duplicate-Bobs there were out there, guards and staff at embassies, CAI headquarters, military bases, anywhere where fast-reaction was important, and been told it was Need to Know and I didn’t. Shell had once guessed that the “visible Bobs” might be outnumbered by the Bobs who’d been physically altered by surgery or Verne-tech. For all we knew, “Bob” could be a vast conspiracy of one.

  “Astra, report.” Blackstone stopped beside me; he’d had to pick his way over the debris of wrecked Dispatch stations. The room remained locked down, Dispatch functions routed to secondary locations.

  “That was a qlippoth, sir. A Devourer, a particularly nasty anti-life demon in some hermetic magic traditions. I listed Hecate as one of the new Villains Inc. group we’d be facing?”

  “The leader of the group that included Flash Mob and Tin Man.”

  “Yes. That thing was hers. I’ve fought one three times now.”

  “How did you beat it before?”

  “The first time Dr. Cornelius banished it. He’s in L.A. The second time we used fire, Variforce’s fields, and a really big truck. I guess now we know that ‘holy’ stuff works, too?”

  Blackstone grimac
ed. “I don’t think Father Nolan will be happy with our filling super-squirters with holy water.”

  I giggled. “He’d count lives and decide it’s worth it. Can Vulcan fabricate flamethrowers for our security?”

  “The Superhuman Response Team has several in its armory,” Veritas said, joining us. “How do these things reach a target?”

  “Dr. Cornelius said it’s the traditional way for magic summoning—you get something belonging to the target, a hair or a shoe or something, and use it in the ritual. She must have something of mine.” And what was Hecate doing in all this? Nothing about this made any sense, and I worked to keep my confusion out of my voice.

  Veritas rubbed his jaw. “Since your notes said that in one future she sent it after Blackstone, I’m going to assume she has something personal for each of you. Do you know Hecate’s civilian identity? Can we find her?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Write everything up or dictate it. We’ll get warrants and task a team to find out everything about her. In twenty-four hours she won’t be able to scratch herself without us knowing where she itches.”

  I looked around at the smoking wreck of Dispatch. We’d been lucky, so lucky, that nobody had died. “If she can do this to anyone, anytime, shouldn’t we— Right.”

  Blackstone smiled. “Know your enemy. We’ve identified her, but we don’t know who she’s really working for. It’s obviously not the mob.”

  And if we grabbed her now, her boss (whoever it was) would know that at least part of their operation was compromised. They’d disappear. Or cut Hecate out of the loop in case she decided to cooperate with us. It was the Ascendancy situation again; we needed to put ourselves in a position to sweep the board completely.

  And I was starting to think that the whole Villains Inc. thing hadn’t ever been quite what we believed.

  “But in the meantime, we need to protect everyone,” Blackstone mused aloud.

  “I can help with that,” Veritas said before I could offer to go get Dr. Cornelius. He texted something on his cellphone, looked up at the balcony offices. “We’ll need a door.”

  I’d managed to miss damaging Quin’s door too badly on my way out, so we all trooped back up there. The six of us made it a little tight, but it wasn’t a small space and with her desk gone we were able to fit even Ambrosius and Black Powder in. Once we were all inside, Veritas shut the door and did a quick “Shave and a Haircut” knock on it.

  It opened and a librarian stepped through it to join us.

  “This had better be important,” she said to Veritas.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “A Merlin-Type breakthrough is any breakthrough whose power appears to come from belief in some kind of magical tradition. This includes historic traditions like Voodoo, Wicca, Hermeticism, and Kabbalism, as well as modern syncretic systems and purely “fictional” systems of magic such as Rowling and Vancian magic. With breakthrough powers behind them, all are equally valid.

  Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans.

  * * *

  At least she looked like a librarian. Or a Fortune 500 CEO. She wore a tailored white button-down shirt over a black pencil skirt and tights and very nice black pumps. She had her dark hair up in a bun, and the expression on her face matched her words.

  “It is.” Veritas took off his shades, polished them. “May I introduce Erica Free, the Lady of Doors? Erica, a local Merlin-Type summoned a qlippoth.”

  “One of the Gamchicoth? Who did it kill?”

  “No one. Astra was the likely target, and she and the rest here put it down.”

  Almond eyes narrowed and turned to me. “You look like you did. And you’re out of place. Is this a general incursion?”

  “No—no,” I stuttered. “I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “If you don’t know, then we need to talk. Veritas, what do you want? I’m busy.”

  “Are we still on for Friday night?”

  “Only if this doesn’t take long.”

  “Incentive. I like that. We know who did the summoning, but we can’t bring her in just yet.”

  “Bring her in? If she’s summoning qlippoths then you don’t need to bring her in, you need to bury her face-down in a lead box at a forgotten crossroads somewhere. They call qlippoth Devourers because it’s believed to eat the soul of whatever it kills. Anyone dealing with them has to be so vile they’ll poison the groundwater wherever you plant them, otherwise.”

  “Good to know. In the meantime, she may have other targets. As the Lady of Doors, passage between worlds is your domain. Can you stop her?”

  The woman looked thoughtful. “Bring me some of its remains, and I’m sure I can shut the way against her. But if I’m acting as the aethyr of Iudal, I require a payment for the service. Rules.”

  “I’ll bring a really good wine, Friday?”

  “You would, anyway. What else have you got?”

  “Broadway tickets.”

  “They’d better be great seats. And I get five private minutes with Astra, here.”

  “Deal.”

  She looked at her watch. “The five minutes starts now. Everybody else out, and bring back my qlippoth ashes.”

  Veritas moved fast for the first time since I’d met him. “You heard her, out.” He led the way and held the door. Blackstone and The Harlequin gave me an inquiring look, but left when I nodded. The door closed, leaving me alone with a short-tempered woman who could apparently stop major nasty magic in its tracks with a pinch of ash. For show-tickets. Great.

  “You and Veritas are dating?”

  “I like emotionally vacant men.” She sat on Quin’s office chair and took off one of her pumps to rub her foot. “How did you get here?”

  So much for Shell’s theory of dumped future memories. “I don’t know. Where am I?”

  “You’re here. And you belong here but also you don’t. I can see when things are out of place, and you’re like a jigsaw piece from another box. You really have no idea why you’re here?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I’m an Astra from three years in the future? And I’m here to do something the three-years-younger me couldn’t do?”

  She gave me a long look. “Okay, you’re not ripping people into tiny pieces and eating their souls, so I’m not going to interfere. But it sounds like you’re a piece in somebody else’s game, and that rarely ends well. If you want off the board, I can get you back where you belong. You don’t have to play the game out.”

  I sucked in a breath. Yes! Oh, yes! “Thank you—I’d need to think about that. If I’m needed . . .”

  “Capes.” She put her shoe back on, stood up, and reached into her shirt to pull what looked like a hotel keycard out of her bra. A jet-black card with the symbol of a golden key with concentric rings on it. “I always carry a spare. If you decide you want out, wave this in front of any door and it’ll open to a suite of rooms in the castle. I’ll know when you do. Bring something to offer the staff, they like chocolates and new movies. If you can pay your bill, we can have you home the next day. If you come empty-handed, we make you work it off before you check out.”

  I accepted the card. “You just give these out? Aren’t you concerned about who might use this?”

  The smile she gave me wasn’t exactly friendly.

  “The Castle of Doors is mine. It deals with whatever comes through, so, not really.”

  All right then. “Well, thank you.” What else could I say?

  * * *

  The Lady of Doors went to get her ashes, and I went to see Dr. Beth. The Harlequin beat me to the infirmary and I found her sitting on an examination table with her shredded harlequin costume half off. I tended to think of her, with her “rubber” body, as even more injury-resistant than I was, but that mostly applied to blunt-force impacts her body could bend or deform under to absorb hits. Cutting? Not so much; Dr. Beth was using glue to close deep slices from when she’d bounced off the qlippoth. I shivered. If it had managed to get a grip on her . . .

  “H
ey.” She winked at me. “Fun morning, huh?”

  I grabbed her in a hug—she was one of the ones I didn’t need to worry about.

  “Hey,” she repeated, patting my back. “I was worried about you, too, kid. Watch the glue unless you want your uniform to be one with your skin. And I think you’re going to want to change.”

  I looked down and laughed. She was right about that; the new Andrew creation had stood up pretty well—one of my previous costumes would have been ripped to ribbons. But even the new material hadn’t been impervious to the qlippoth’s supernaturally sharp razor-iron claws. I looked like I’d wrestled an insane barber, with dozens of bloody shallow cuts and a few deep punctures that ached and burned.

  Letting go, I looked her up and down. “Are you alright?”

  “No blood, no fuss. I just need to be careful not to stretch the cuts for a few days and I’ll be back to my bouncy indestructible self.”

  “And now it’s your turn, young lady,” Dr. Beth announced cheerfully, setting aside the tray of cleansers, glue, and applicators he’d been using on Quin. He handed her a cotton jumpsuit to replace her rags, then pulled up another tray for me. Quin dressed and said goodbye with a laugh and a promise to put off the photo-shoot, leaving me to strip to my underwear and get on the table. Dr. Beth began with an antiseptic wash, and I worked on not wincing or thinking about how much I missed everyone. Especially Jacky, who right now would be ignoring the blood and making sarcastic comments about staying out of reach of demonic wood-chippers.

  What she was doing down in New Orleans right now was important.

  Cleaning every cut, my hand, and two deep punctures I hadn’t even noticed (one on my right hip, right through my shorts), took nearly half an hour. Not that I really had anything to worry about—I was broadly immune to viral and bacterial infections—but who knew about demonic ones? He finished with surgical glue on my holes and cuts, issued another blue jumpsuit, and sent me on my way with a lecture on my limits and a lollypop.