Elgin
*Uh...is that...uh forget it.* Elgin picked up an image of a delta winged jet spinning out of the sky with its belly ripped off. The airplane had been a lot more fragile than the Iffrit had anticipated. But the jet had been going down anyway, the pilot having ejected in terror when he found himself facing a dragon in the night sky over the Arabian desert.
The sky to the west was glowing and the Iffrit popped up over a building to find the Dragon flaming a building, apparently irritated at its own reflection in the mirrored glass. It was systematically burning them out, leaving flaming holes as it worked its way along.
The Iffrit banked and lined up, the dragon was a huge legless, armless flying snake with two short sets of wings that beat fast in a complex pattern that allowed it to hover. Spotting the Iffrit it darted backwards.
The GSh-6-23 crashed out a burst of twelve, half pound rounds, in a fraction of a second. Most self destructed beyond the dragon but one drilled a gaping hole through one of the fast flapping wings, another grazed a belly plate, a third hit, detonated on the gleaming yellow shell armor on the beast’s ‘neck,’ the section of body between the wing sections and the head.
As massive as he was the gun’s recoil impulse was enough to slow the Iffrit. The Dragon streaked backwards and got behind a building, though it didn’t forget to send a stream of white hot rage at its attacker. The bolt of fire left a fading trail of flame hanging in the air, a very showy effect. The Iffrit was far beyond the point at which the stream had been aimed before the relatively slow moving bolt passed through.
There was a flash of fire from behind the building as the Iffrit banked steeply to come around at the monster again. This time the dragon had flamed a street full of cars, leaving a fiery holocaust in its wake as it darted away from the Iffrit’s avenging shape.
The snow had eased but the clouds were still less than three hundred feet off the ground, so a lot of building vanished into the clouds. The Iffrit and dragon played hide and seek among the buildings, giving thousands of office workers the scare and thrill of their lives.
The Dragon was much more maneuverable than the Ifftit and effectively faster most of the time. It probably could have escaped and hidden if it had wanted to. But every time it got clear of the Iffrit it would find a target to blast with fire then dart away before the Iffrit homed in.
Four more times this happened, another block of blazing cars and humans, an immolated church, a subway entrance left a blazing crematorium and a parking structure gushing flame from every deck level.
It was this last target where Myyr the dragon miscalculated. As she darted up and out of the ramp to the roof of the structure she ran into a stream of explosive shells that caught her in the soft belly armor. Seven hits out of twenty four shells made an end to her. A wing came off as the corpse staggered and twitched, spraying body fluids some of which burst into flame as they fell. The head was a ruin, a shell having entered under the jaw and blown the side of the skull off in a gout of gore. The dragon was turned from deadly threat to ruin in less than a second. Spurting and burning, the body tumbled as it arced down, slamming onto the loading dock area behind a hotel where it flopped to a stop and burnt.
-o-
The crack of a sniper’s rifle made Elena flinch a little, crouch down a little more behind Allen’s no longer pristine Mercedes. A SWAT team’s armored van had caved in the trunk after someone in the building killed the driver with a single armor piercing bullet.
Not far away a blue SWAT assault vehicle belched smoke from every door and hatch, the tires had caught and they burnt with an ugly red sooty flame. Something like ball lightning had rolled and bounced out of the building and latched onto the ugly armored vehicle, blowing every circuit and stopping it cold. The blue green plasma ball had then proceeded to melt its way through a couple of inches of hardened steel. The crew and SWAT team had gotten out just before it got inside, the vehicle had blown up a few seconds later.
Things had not gone the way anyone had planned after they had met Allen a block away from the coffee shop. The police had flooded the whole area, apparently warned by video feeds that something very bad had gone down. Allen had only just gotten in before roads were blocked and traffic directed other ways. Zeph had hardly had a chance to introduce Elena to Allen before the reports of shooting from Viktor’s building had started arriving.
The police were already almost on top of it. Finding the coffee shop area completely lacking in bad guys the tactical units had moved on, in force, with confidence. The first police units to arrive were pinned down and the higher ups had fed in more, committing a combat command cardinal sin. Of course they hadn’t been thinking of this as combat, not until it was far too late.
Zeph and Elena had convinced Allen to follow one of the later police units in. The police had been too distracted to realize that the fools in the Mercedes weren’t supposed to be there. Following a cruiser they had gotten much too close to the building. The car ahead of them had apparently gotten lost or something, when it started taking fire Allen had started to back out. Which was when they’d been rear ended by the careening armored van.
Now Allen was laid out with several police officers under the care of a medic who’d run up a few moments before. Zeph was sitting by her boyfriend, her face white with the pain of a broken wrist.
Elena had an SR25 semi auto sniper rifle lying on the black hood, the deadly big brother of the M14 carbine. One of the SWAT team had been hit as the team moved forward, she was one of the wounded lying with Allen. Elena had claimed the fallen weapon. It was a lot more comforting than her G39, 45 caliber loads or not.
The Mercedes was skewed slightly to the road, its bumper pressed firmly under the rear of a Crown Vic cruiser. A gray haired police officer with the stripes of sergeant was looking over the Vic’s trunk with a pump action shotgun, two other officers were using the same car as cover. Two more were using the Mercedes’ comforting solidness as their protection, though the cabin and trunk weren’t going to provide much protection from the kinds of rounds flying around this morning.
The crackle and crash of combat inside and around the building just seemed to stop. After a couple of seconds the sergeant moved to stand up, Elena, on instinct, lunged, pulled him back, “Don’t show yourself, its just a l....” The sniper in the building behind them fired three quick shots. A rapid fire weapon responded, riddling the wall around the offending window in a few seconds.
The crown Vic rocked hard as a series of rounds drilled through it, sending the three offices ducking. They all ducked, but none were hit, the metal and plastic of the car had deflected the rounds.
The shooting became general again, almost comforting after the few seconds in the focal point of firing. Someone behind them used a battering ram to bash in a door so an EMT could go up to see if the sniper was dead.
“Who the hell are you?” The sergeant had finally noticed that he didn’t recognize the blonde woman in civilian clothes who was cradling a big sniper rifle like she knew how to use it.
Elena gave him a coldly distant look, “Loretta Sands, Homeland Security, we’ve been watching this building for a while, human trafficking.”
The man grimaced, turning to scan the building, “Shit, just what I needed to hear.”
Two lean shaggy shapes sprinted out the shadows, racing towards Elena’s little redoubt. She was lucky, she had been cradling the rifle, keeping her face turned away from the policeman. The second were was equally unlucky, almost literally swallowing her round, which continued through its body, rupturing and ripping, tumbling and slashing till it tore out a hunk of hide while exiting. The creature slid to a stop against the Mercedes with a thump.
Unfortunately, none of the several other rounds hit the second were, it leapt over the hood of the cruiser, its multi hundred pound mass smashing an officer onto the pavement, cracking his skull. The wolf used the body as a jumping off point, its lithe body twisting so it leapt away from Elena and towards
a collection of police and civilians taking cover behind a raised sidewalk.
Elena tracked it in the air and fired once, twice, then it landed, dodged, and leapt again, straight into the center of a cluster of men and women in civilian dress. She missed the screams, shouts and gunfire, as a massive shaggy shadow rose snarling over the hood of the car.
The were was slow, its hyper fast healing still incomplete, one fore leg was still hanging limp, a nerve bundle sliced by her shot. But it wanted her blood, it wanted her dead. What was horrifying was the pistol in the operable paw-hand, drawn from the webbing wrapping its deep chest.
Instinct saved her again, spinning she hurled the heavy sniper rifle at the creatures leg-arm, slamming the pistol hand down; the gun, on auto, stitched a line of holes in the Mercedes hood. Unfortunately the were didn’t drop the pistol, but the wounds and the blow slowed it., slowed it enough that Elena’s G39 was leveled and crashing before it recovered. Then the sergeant’s shotgun was roaring, blowing the creature off the hood.
“Shoot it in the throat, the neck, separate the brain from the spine or it will just regenerate” Zeph screamed from the aid station, she was looking around for a weapon of some kind in case the monster got past the front line.
Elena had two rounds left, the creature was already going down but she’d seen it regenerate once already, she didn’t need a repeat. Lunging forward she took careful aim and put both rounds through the thing’s neck. As it collapsed the head flopped forward, no longer connected to the spine. The body swelled and burst in a spreading foam of orange fairy dust, that dissipated in an instant, leaving a much smaller, naked human, draped in a ridiculously oversized webbing, to slump into the red slush.
“Holy Mother Mary, God in Heaven.” The sergeant nearly whimpered as he turned away, going to kneel by his dead compatriot. The other officer was huddled against the side of the cruiser, head in his hands, utterly overwhelmed.
The group the second were had gone after was now triaged. Separated into the dead, the traumatized and the active who were trying to get some semblance of control. There was no sign of the were, it was either dead or escaped, the latter seemed the most likely.
There were some yells, some new target spotted, but then an odd lull fell across the firing line. There were yells of challenge and shots, but only one or two then silence. Elena could feel the soul deadening coldness of the vampire’s presence. Resisting looking, her comforting sniper rifle was jammed between the Mercedes and Crown Vic where it had come to rest after being used as a bludgeon. She wouldn’t risk firing it again until she had a chance to check it thoroughly. She reloaded the G39, stuck the empty magazine in her pocket, the pistol was a backup gun, she was down to the last six rounds.
“Elena!” Zeph called out, she was climbing down from the back of the SWAT van. She had another SR25 and a webbing with spare magazines. She slid along the side of the truck and Elena duck walked under cover. Zeph glanced into the street and flinched back, swallowed, “It’s coming this way.” She was shaking, “Damn it, I can hardly stop myself from turning back and looking at it.” Then she yelped, as her new friend kicked her legs out from under her. Elena tried to control Zeph’s fall, somehow getting the taller and heavier woman down onto the vans step without jarring her wrist too badly. Zeph smiled, “Thank you.”
“De Nada,” Elena smiled in return and hurriedly started checking and loading the rifle. But as she got ready to pop up at take her shot she had a sudden thought, a memory from a story she’d heard or read in her childhood.
She glanced up, the van’s big after market rectangular parking mirror was just above her head. She reached up and twisted it around until she could look out over the hood of the van. She saw the vampire, and bit her tongue, ready to fight the urge to just go numb. But nothing happened, the mirror nullified the effect, just like in the story of the medusa. Only the vampire didn’t turn to stone, or even stop, instead it looked her way and strode a little faster.
Judging her moment, Elena pivoted and brought the rifle up, the impulse of the shot was almost a shock, she had already begun to submit to the monsters domination. Then there was no compulsion, the thing was staggering backwards squalling in pain. Her second round blew the back of its head off, the third blew the head off and it fell backwards into the snow and lay unmoving.
Elena frowned, glanced around, the gunfire didn’t start up again. People were moving, shaking their heads, staring at the prostrate monster, a few were staring her way, not something she was very fond of. There was a distant crackle of gunfire, and cracks that Elena thought were grenades, more shots, but it was all either in the building or on the other side of it.
“Elena,” Zeph called, waving. She had moved back to the line of wounded, which had grown longer even as some were hurried away by litter carriers moving through alleyways and buildings to get the wounded back to ambulances away from the fighting. When Elena got to her she pointed, her face grim, the low clouds to the south glowed with red gold reflection of fire.
“Shit.” Elena whispered.
The sergeant, Childers she saw on his name tag, came to stand beside them, “Reports of some kind of weird helicopter, or dragon, setting fire to things all through the business district. Hundreds more dead.”
Elena and Zeph exchanged worried looks, then there were yells and screams, that died away into silence. Elena spun, and found herself trapped by the vampire, the one she had thought she had killed. The thing’s head was a ruin but it was slowly getting to its feet, and its hypnotic power was unaffected by the fact that it only had one eye right now.
Elena fought against the power she had felt three times now, realized that she was in fact able to control her body, to move, slowly, some people were moving, had learnt their lesson. But each time someone rose to take a shot they were lost before they could pull the trigger.
A staccato roar slapped down from the sky, the pavement around the vampire burst into a fountain of ruptured pavement with ragged pieces of vampire in the mix. An instant later a huge golden brown shape landed with a vast whomp of air trapped in cupped wings. The Ifritt stood on his back legs like the heraldic monster he had been the original inspiration of. The slender brown and gray lozenge he held like a machine pistol, was disconcerting and yet reassuring, especially as the still spinning muzzles of the multi barallel cannon were pointed into the settling crater of pulverized tarmac, concrete and vampire.
With an odd sheathing motion the huge weapon was gone and the Iffrit reached for the burning assault vehicle, without obvious effort or pain he grasped the hot metal and rolled it over so it tipped a burning slush of fuel, rubber and plastic onto the pulverized oval that contained the vampire’s remains. There, grotesque flaps and ribbons of flesh were already squirming in an insensate desire to reunite into their original form. Then the burning mash poured over the remains, and they caught fire, after a few moments the fire started to spread like a flashover. The Iffrit jumped backwards and in a second the whole patch was burning with a searing green flame, which faded and was gone, leaving behind a patch of bubbling asphalt with concrete lumps.
The Iffrit settled back onto all four legs. In the confined space of the plaza he was still simply mind bogglingly large. Standing he had easily topped the fourth storey of the building, on all fours he was a good storey and a half at the shoulders.
But as frightening as he was there was something reassuring about him, the calm grace with which he moved, the lion gold of his fur, the wings that were more eagle than bat, the head that was more dog than dragon. He was so big that it seemed obvious that nothing a human could shoot would hurt him, no one even thought about shooting at him, especially after he had killed the walking horror that had had them entranced.
The Iffrit moved back and forth like a searching cat, his head scanning for a few moments. Then he looked over to the line of ruined cars and his voice boomed out “I am sorry this got out of hand, but it is almost over. Not a
ll of the evil ones are dead or withdrawn yet, but there are hostages inside, girls destined for the slave markets.. Do not follow me but stand ready to help or arrest those I send out to you.”
With which the Iffrit dissolved into smoke which billowed into a dense fog which quickly faded leaving the plaza empty except for the burning assault vehicle and the police line.