Elgin
*The evil fool has murdered hundreds, maybe thousands with the Green Fang, their liquefied bodies washed down the drain into a sewer. Before the magic returned it was just poison diluted to nothing by the flow of water and time. With the return it has somehow created then fed that thing.* Iffrit-Cutter replied silently, *We are lucky its still a mindless hunger, in time it would have become much worse, and much bigger. It’s what the fool sorcerer is using to de energize the shadow space, the thing is sucking the energy from this section of the shadow realm, but to do that its heating itself up.* That last piece had a thoughtful tone.
-o-
The Alpha was sweating, it had lost more than half the pack in a few minutes against one person. The deaths didn’t worry the Alpha but the tactical situation did, this was all so very wrong.
There was a sound at the stairway, a figure moving down, the Alpha held his fire, until he saw the cowboy’s smiling blue eyes. This was utterly wrong, the Alpha fired. And things were different, his gun was pointing at a decrepit staircase, peeling wallpaper, a window where there shouldn’t have been one, the curtain rod bracket at one side had given way, letting the rotting curtains drape on the floor, a faint breeze curled through the broken window.
But Guy only noticed this after a few moments, what he first sensed was a biting cold, and his breath forming a thick icy fog in front of his face. Ice stabbed up from his feet, clawed at his hand, his nose, ears. All of the remaining pack members felt the same pain reinforcing his. He screamed and fell thrashing.
But the pain started to fade almost as soon as it had reached an unbearable peak, there was a breath of warm air, the sucking coldness snapped off, leaving Guy shocked and very human once more. He started to cough and gag, as the rotting dust that had once been a carpet got into his nose and throat.
Rolling to his feet he scanned the hallway, the half familiar hallway, the only light came in through the window that shouldn’t be there and it was sodium orange. He flicked on the tac light on his pistol and scanned again. Every wall had peeling wallpaper and saging plaster ceiling. The light fixture above him hung at an angle and dropped wires, the wall sconce standing proud of a hole in the plaster was attached to heavy gas pipes. Who used gas for light, who had ever mixed gas and electricity?
He saw Roj slumped against the wall, then with a flicker of pain he remembered it wasn’t Roj, but the younger Hen, and across the hall lay a blonde whore he didn’t know the name of, with a Uzi resting in her lap. He knew she’d been part of his pack, but he’d never heard of a mixed male female pack before, Crazy Tao was getting frighteningly powerful, as well as seriously deranged.
Guy moved to Hen and tapped him in the rips with his sharp toed shoe, the big man started to thrash and gasp as Guy hopped back out of the way. He turned to the girl but she was awake, her grip on the machine pistol indicated she knew what it was and felt much more comfortable with it in her hand. She looked at him with naked hate, the hard iron of the gun putting steel in her backbone. Pushing herself up the wall she kept the weapon carefully pointed down but also lined up with him. Once on her feet she backed down the hall towards the other staircase. She reached the corner, her weapon pointed at Guy now, there was a flat crack and the girl pitched forward and lay unmoving on the floor, her body rippled, then faded leaving the Uzi and a pool of blood.
Van came around the corner, bending to scoop up the Uzi as he came, “Hey boss, what the hell, you left me with a bitch and a boy bitch, had to break both of their necks.”
Guy grunted, they were down to three then, but Van, though tiny and frail looking, was as just attested, a stone cold killer of frightening efficiency and Hen was a good steady man with a gun.
He moved to the stairs and went up to look out the window. The sky was gray except for an odd band of faint orange that lit the world. The rest of the view was a disorienting mix of familiar and utterly strange. The buildings across from the window were the about right, except they showed signs of having been in use much more recently than they should. He could even see the remains of awnings and signs, but it was as if the owners had just walked away to let them rot. If he craned to look east it was worse, the towers of the business district were there sort of, but they were worn down.
Then in horror he saw that the towers were in the process of dissolving before his eyes. Leaning out to get a better view he pressed on the seemingly solid wall. Or at least it was solid at first, until it wasn’t, he felt it wobbling, crumbling just in time and lunged back, staggering down a couple of steps, the banister on the other side crumpled as he brushed against it.
The wall under the window was crumbling, dissolving. And from above he could hear a hissing rush as of sand falling down a crack. The wall higher up the staircase began to dissolve. First cracking then crumbling, beginning to fall, but falling apart even as it fell, to pebbles, then granules, dust, and then...nothing.
“What, what happened boss?” Hen was on his feet his big magnum revolver out and waving around, his eyes wild with fear.
“Some kind of trap Hen, keep it together man.” Van snapped from not far away. Then the little man shook his head in irritation, looked up, just in time to be crushed as a whole section of the floor above came down on him. When the section finished disolving to nothing in front of them there were just the Uzi and Van’s personal SigSauer silver plate.
Guy turned down the stairs “Come on.” He yelled at Hen as he ran down the stairs.All around them he now he could hear creaks and moans as the building came apart. Dust showered down on him, but vanished leaving a cold prickling sensation behind, he hit the landing and spun for the next flight, Hen on his heals. Above them the roof fell in, they both ducked and yelled, but all that reached them was another shower of evaporating dust. Now as they spiraled down the sky seemed to be pursing them, the walls falling faster and faster as the instants passed.
Guy almost screamed in frustration and horror as he made a last turn and found that the stair ended on a piece of rocky ground, his momentum carried him down, onto the dirt and into the wall of the stairwell, which gave way in a burst of dust and pebbles, he tripped and went sprawling into the dirt as the walls of the bordello dissolved around him.
There had never been any sound other than their own thundering steps, ragged breathing occasional shouts and the rushing hiss of disintegration. Now there was a faint rattle of a breeze through leaves and the faintest smell of pine and dirt, mixed with car fumes and other things.
Guy pushed himself up, recovered his pistol and looked around. Hen was curled up in the dirt a few feet away, head covered, pistol lying forgotten in the dirt. Guy understood how he felt. He was standing in a pine forest, on a gentle slope down to a river or lake. The tree cover was open enough that he could see the other shore, another pine forest rising up to low hills and then in the far distance snow covered mountains.
There was a snuffling sound behind, him, he turned slowly and found himself facing something like a furry crocodile. Big nostrils flared as it snuffled short sightedly at him, it seemed confused. Guy flashed his tac light in the things eyes, it jerked back with a snort and waddled away, having decided they were more trouble than it needed.
“Not all the creatures of this world are that easy going.” The cowboy said conversationally from a distance. The blonde man was sitting on a flat topped rock, hat on, jacket open to let the gentle breeze keep him cool.
Guy lined his pistol up triggering the targeting laser and centering it on the other mans chest, “Get me out of here.”
“You can get out of here any time you want, where’s your friend?”
A quick check showed that Hen was gone like the others, his prized pistol still lay near the disturbed patch of dirt he had been curled up on. Guy focused back on the cowboy, “What did you do?”
“Nothing, his brain just overloaded and he fainted, unconscious he fell back into his anchor realm, your home, he hadn’t been here long enough to anchor he
re. All you have to do is lay down, relax and go to sleep and you’ll be home.” He looked around, “Though I’d probably take a few steps north, I think you’re in the middle of the street right now. Hopefully your friend won’t get run over.”
Guy had been pushed beyond the edge, he couldn’t help pulling the trigger. The crack of the pistol round was satisfyingly sharp. The cowboy didn’t even flinch as the bullet blew bark off a tree a few feet to his left. So now the enforcer started to move forward.
The Cowboy smiled, “You really don’t want to do that, as you’ve already noticed I’m not what I seem. And what you’ve experienced so far is the least of it.”
Guy almost pulled the trigger again, but some instinct of self preservation still existed and he let the gun arm fall to his side. “What do you want?”
“How long has that mad man been killing people with the Green Fangs?”
That one was easy, “Tao has been Keeper for twenty two years.”
“And the Keeper before him?”
“More than fifty, the Palace has had a keeper since it was first established. A hundred and ten years ago.” Once he’d said something Guy found he didn’t want to shut up, “But the early Keepers didn’t use the fang more than a few times a decade. The Keeper before Tao only used it a couple of times a month, Tao has disposed of hundreds in the last year alone, mostly undocumented, many of them whores killed by rough sex or suicides.”
The Cowboy looked almost sad, “You are a piece of work, you know that. You don’t seem to care that your boss probably killed more people than some wars have and in the process created something that could kill thousands and destroy a city.”
Guy was backing away now, the Cowboy said all he had to do was go to sleep to escape this fantasy land. Well he’d rather take his chances with that than the Cowboy, another drooling fool of a round eye. He took his eye off the Cowboy to look around.
“Head east, the point of the island’s a big rock, not much wildlife there, you may survive till you can catch a nap ride home.” The big blond fool called out cheerfully, when Guy turned back to shoot the asshole between the eyes the forest was empty.
Guy turned around, the forest was very real and he could no longer smell the engine fumes of a city. The ground was very rocky, the trees growing out of cracks in the rock where dirt had collected where they could get roots down for anchors and probably deep down into the acquifer.
There was a thicker clump of bushes a bit higher up the sloop, a low lying cactus like plant growing out of the rocks like the trees. He looked up at the sky, made a guess as to what direction was east and started to walk. A few moments later he heard a bellowing snarl from someplace nearby and spun, catching his foot his ankle gave way with a nasty popping sound and he collapsed with a curse, almost loosing his pistol
Gasping with with the waves of pain coming up his leg he almost forgot the bellow. But now he saw the owner. Some kind of dinosaur, striped and colored like a great tiger its huge orange eyes fixed on him, it was walking towards him, its mouth half agape, it seemed to be laughing at him.
Pushing his gun deep into a pocket Guy put his hands down and pushed himself back away from the slow moving monster. It stopped and cocked its head to one side, a curiously birdlike movement, as if it was having a hard time believing he was trying to retreat.
If he could just get into the clump of cactus like plants he might have a chance. He smelt a rather pleasant perfume, risking a glance back he realized he was nearly in there. The dinosaur, because that was what it had to be, took another step, as if expecting him to stop and wait for it. He was almost delirious with the pain from his ankle but kept pushing himself backwards. Then he was in the sweet smelling embrace of the rather ugly looking plant which was very like a cactus. He saw that the outer flatter sections of the plant had thorns like a cactus, big green thorns.
He jerked and there was s stab of pain in the palm of his hand. One of the thorns had fallen to the ground and he’d put his hand on it. He stared at it in horror for the last few seconds of his life, then slumped back to lay in the shade of the Green Fang bush. He would provide the bush with a good year or so’s sustenance. The dinosaur grunted in disgust at the waste of a perfectly good snack on a plant then turned away in search of a more sensible victim.
-o-
The Palace was doomed, fire blooming out of the lower two stories’ windows, the upper stories’ billowing smoke. Elgin stood alone on the empty road. The network of ancient spells that had almost completely hidden this block of buildings for the last century and a bit were beginning to unwind now the goddess totem was gone and the sorcerer wasn’t there to rebind the energy of the unfolding that would have sustained them. In fact Iffrit-Cutter suspected that the evil fool wouldn’t have known how to anyway.
The evil one was still alive, and still inside his blazing palace, somehow protecting himself from the fire in a sub basement. The hunger was wailing and thrashing in its catacomb deep beneath the burning shell. Both had to be dealt with soon.
The Iffrit unfolded in the crossroads, its nose filled with the stink of corruption that even the hot flames could not destroy. His creators had designed the Iffrit’s with vast powers but strict limits, one of which was a very limited ability to do damage instantly across any distance. But they had not prevented him from carrying such.
With a drawing motion the Iffrit pulled a slim brown and tan shape out of nowhere. The pods thin aluminum shell was dinged and dented, but the undershot slit at the front showed two muzzles, relatively small only compared to the Iffrit.