“Going in,” I said as Julie killed a few more of the demons chasing me. The interior of the fire-escape stairwell was nothing but plain concrete walls and metal stairs. I looked up. They seemed to go up forever.
“Climb fast. Ed, get ready to toss that black backpack over the side…Yes. That one. Careful. It’ll go off on impact…Yes, boom…Yes, it is heavy…Owen, climb really fast.”
“Crap.” Each step felt like taking a hammer to my foot as I put my weight down, but it sounded like Julie was throwing down something nasty, so I gritted my teeth and hauled ass up the stairs. Behind me, bullets fell like rain as Julie kept the monsters off the door. “Second floor.” Pain. Pain. Son of a bitch. Pain. Two steps at a time. Not fast enough. Three steps at a time. “Third floor!”
“Reloading,” Julie said. “Keep going, Owen.”
My leg hurt so bad I could taste it. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. One of the bomb nuts made it out of chemicals from the nail salon.”
There was a crash below me as one of the demons thrashed its way through the broken door. “Fourth floor,” I gasped.
“Let it go, Ed. Ahhhh!” Julie screamed. “Not me! The bag! The bag! Drop the bag. Hold onto me!”
“You okay?”
“Fine. Orcs can be so literal sometimes.”
I was still climbing when the improvised explosive device hit amid the demons crowding their way against the entrance. The boom wasn’t as big as I’d expected, either that or I was so frazzled that my system just wasn’t registering concussions anymore, but a look over the railing showed me that the bottom floor had been sprayed with colorful blood and entrails. A foul smoke was drifting up the stairwell. The chemical stink of acetone burned my eyes as it hit, but nothing else was trying to get through the door. “Clear?”
“For a minute. They’re milling around.”
“Who made that one?” I asked as I resumed climbing. Talking kept my mind focused on something other than my foot, which felt like it was so swollen that I was expecting my boot to pop open.
“Cooper, Lee, or Milo. I’m not sure. I think those three are having a competition to see who can build the most dangerous thing out of household chemicals.”
There was a fierce rumble. The hotel shook. Dust fell down the stairwell. “What was that?”
“Damn! Half the conference center just blew up. It was the overlook area where the demons broke in. That was huge. I think Milo just took the lead.”
“Right on.” Getting those particular pyromaniacs together was like a Discovery Channel show gone horribly wrong. The Mythbusters had nothing on our guys.
“I’m sending a couple of the men down to meet you. Skippy’s prepping the chopper. I hope you know what you’re doing, Owen.”
Not really. “Sure do. Don’t worry.” I thought about telling her about the baby, but quickly dismissed that thought. We needed to concentrate on not getting killed first, then talk about the future. Now I could understand why Earl hadn’t said anything. Normally it was the woman that knew about this sort of thing first. This was supposed to be happy news, not hey, we’re trapped in a nightmare dimension surrounded by demons and a nightmare creature that’s going to swallow our souls, but you’re pregnant! Yay! This sucked. Keep climbing. Keep your head in the game, Owen. I had to focus on the task at hand. Not my stupid foot, not fatherhood, but focus on beating the Nachtmar.
Beating him required getting his attention first. “I’ve got to talk to Earl.” I toggled through the channels and found the main band. It was chaos.
“Holding on two, but Kantrowitz is down.”
“Demons are stalled at the escalators. I don’t know who, but somebody’s flanked them.”
“There’s fifty of them at the conference side entrance. We can’t hold them. Falling back.”
“No, damn it. Belay that. This is Nate Shackleford. I’ll hold that side. We fail here and Russians will be stuck in the open. Don’t you dare move!” I’d never heard Nate so fired up before. He was a Shackleford after all. “Haights on me. Hold this fucking line until everyone is in!”
Every second counted. I had to get the Nachtmar’s attention away from the others, but if he knew what I was planning, he’d take me out before I was in position. I had to wait. My chest hurt. I could barely breathe, but I kept taking the steps three at a time. Abomination banged back on its sling against my back as I used my hands to pull myself up the railing. I listened to the radio chatter for several awful minutes. The world’s Hunters were taking a beating.
“We’ve got some of those acid-tank bastards coming through the hole.” Nate was shouting into his microphone. “Gregorius, I need more ammo for that fifty-cal.”
“Hang on, Shackleford. Omaha Stakes on the way to back you up. Shit! They’re coming through th—” Static.
The Hunters were losing.
Chapter 22
There was movement above me on the stairwell. Footsteps. It was quicker to draw my pistol than reach for my shotgun. I put the STI in my left hand so I could keep using my right to hurl-drag myself up the rail. A flashlight bounced above. It was the Hunters Julie had sent. Someone bellowed a challenge. “Pitt, is that you?”
“Yeah. It’s me.” It was time to get the monster’s attention. I switched to Earl’s command channel, but somebody else was talking.
“Earl. This is Lindemann. I believe I just saw my father killing demons. This is troubling, since he died fighting vampires when I was young. Am I losing my mind? Over.”
“This is Pitt. Negative. The Hunters’ ghosts are on our side. They’ll stall the monsters as long as possible. It’s a long story. Over.”
Earl came on next. “Z, I thought you were dead. Milo said you got blown up by that meteor.”
“Nearly.” My ankle made an audible popping noise as I reached the fourteenth floor. “I’ve got a plan.” It was hard to talk and run stairs at the same time. “Mordechai showed me how to kill the Nachtmar.”
“We’re in a world of his creation. He can certainly hear you,” warned Lindemann.
“Good. He should listen. I know his secret. If he can read minds, then he knows what I’m going to do next. Come and get me, asshole.” Only four more floors. The flashlight from above shined in my eyes. It was Jason Lacoco. The squat shadow behind him could only be Edward. “Get ready,” I warned them. Once I got the Nachtmar’s attention, things would probably get really hairy. Lacoco only grunted. He might have hated my guts, but this was business. Edward took the lead. Lacoco grabbed onto my left arm and helped me along. The son of a bitch was so strong that he actually began dragging me. Not that I was complaining. My leg muscles had turned to jelly.
The information that Sam had given to me was all there, crammed painfully in between my own orderly memories. Of course I was the one picked for this. My brain was like a filing cabinet stuffed with folders from multiple people. Hell, I spoke sixteenth-century Portuguese because of this sort of thing. I was prepped for this sort of craziness. Thanks, stupid Old Ones and your stupid artifact. I flipped through the files, examined what my brother had overheard, until I found what I needed.
I kept broadcasting. “We’ve been calling him Nachtmar, Nightmare, things like that. We guessed right all along. That’s all he is. He’s nothing without us. He needs humans to give him form. He can’t do anything without us. He feeds on our fear. The Nachtmar is just an alp. He’s a parasite. He’s a worm. Humans made him strong and he’s only this powerful because of his human host. If he’s connected to somebody weak, he’s nothing. He’s a pathetic little alp. The Nachtmar ain’t shit.”
It was working. I could tell the monster was listening. The hotel rumbled. Edward turned to look at me as if to ask are you sure this is a good idea?
“This particular little nightmare spirit was lucky enough to find a powerful human to stick himself to a long time ago. One of the Chosen.” Like me, I didn’t add. There was only so much fate I wanted to tempt at one time, and I didn’t know what to make of t
hat possession business that Dr. Blish had spoken about near the end of the memories. “The Nachtmar was too pathetic to take a man like this over on his own. It was the scientists that broke him and let the Nachtmar in. All of this? The dream monsters, the destruction, it’s all from the power of a special human mind. The Nachtmar likes being thought of as a wrathful god, but he’s just a manipulative little prick piggybacking off a great man.”
“This is Julie. Owen, you’ve got incoming.”
“What now?” There was a violent crunch. The cement wall on the landing above us was suddenly riddled with cracks. Lacoco and I stopped.
“Gargoyles. You’ve got three gargoyles on the exterior of the stairwell.”
Edward ran back past us, hit the nineteenth floor landing, yanked the door open and looked inside. He nodded quickly. Clear. The concrete on the twentieth floor was raining down in dust and chunks. An enclosed space was a stupid place to take on an animated stone monster. We went after Ed.
His response had been much faster than expected, but I wasn’t done provoking our monster. “Gargoyles? Probably the same ones from Appleton. See, what did I tell you? Now he’s cherry-picking Julie’s memories. He can’t do anything on his own. He’s a chump. He’s got no imagination.” The three of us entered the nineteenth floor. It was pitch-black, but Lacoco and I turned on our flashlights. Ed could see in the dark. This floor was still under construction, and was a mess of half-finished metal frames, dangling wires, scaffolding, and stacked sheetrock. There had to be another interior stairwell in the middle, and we could take that to the roof. “He’s limited to the weapons we provide him, and even the poor deluded human he’s keeping alive isn’t powerful enough to handle the things I’ve got in my head.” I could only hope that the great Old Ones were so sanity-bending and incomprehensible that they couldn’t be copied, otherwise we’d all just get squished.
There was a horrendous crash as the gargoyles broke into the fire stairwell. We kept moving as fast as we could, but I’d seen how quick these things were. It was a straight shot down the middle. Ed found the door for the next set of stairs and jerked it open. Ed looked inside, up, down, then back at us and nodded. Clear.
I got back on the radio. “Screw you, Nachtmar. Your world is nothing. You cobbled together all of this from your host’s subconscious. Your days are numbered. They know your secret back on Earth. They know how to kill him and banish you now. They’re going to find your poor human, waste him, and you’ll go back to being nothing. You might find someone else to bond with, but it’ll never be the same. Your glory days are almost over. You’ll be so weak that you won’t even show up on the PUFF table. You’re a nuisance. The best you’ll be able to do after this is make a five-year-old wet the bed.”
The hotel was experiencing a continuous low-level earthquake. “You’re really pissing him off,” Lacoco said as we went up the last flight of stairs. I had one arm draped over his broad shoulder. It was faster than trying to walk on my own swelling foot. Lacoco was half ox, and though huffing and grunting, was dragging me along fairly quickly. “You better know what you’re doing.”
“I’m winging it.”
“The only reason I haven’t dumped your ass is because I trust Earl Harbinger. You’re making that really difficult.” The crashing told me that the gargoyles had entered the hotel. The stairs ended earlier than expected. There wasn’t an opening to the roof. We had to go back out onto the twentieth floor and go back to the first set of stairs. “Hell.” Lacoco murmured when he came to the same realization. Ed led the way through the door.
The gargoyles were below us. Their movements were so destructive and heavy we could feel them vibrating the floor. We’d have to pass back over them. We’re almost there.
The twentieth floor was an even more chaotic construction mess than the nineteenth. Some walls were in, others were just metal skeletons waiting to be dressed. There was a low animal growl from the opposite end of the hall. A primal fear instinct caused all the hair on my arms to stand up. Something was waiting in the dark between us and the stairs to the roof. With no hesitation, Edward drew his swords. “Ed! Wait!” But the orc was already charging the unknown threat. Ed leapt over a wheelbarrow and disappeared into the dark.
“After him.” There was a sudden movement to the side. Something incredibly cold collided with me and Lacoco. Our flashlight beams whipped about, adding to the confusion. I was knocked head first into the opposite wall.
What now? Dazed, I managed to get to my hands and knees. I reached for my pistol, but caught a kick in the ribs so hard that it lifted me off the floor. “Ooof!” The air in my lungs came shooting out. I caught the framing, struggling to rise, but a big fist caught me right behind the ear. The framing collapsed on top of me.
In the conflicting light, I’d seen that it was a man. A big dude, at least my size, shirtless, and thickset with muscle.
Lacoco came up with his shotgun, but our attacker blocked the muzzle with one hand and slugged Lacoco in the face with the other. The Remington landed a few feet away. The Hunter roared and drove himself forward. They collided. Lacoco caught an elbow drop to his back, but rammed his opponent through one frame and into another solid one. They came right off, whirled around, and Lacoco was the one that hit the opposite wall, tearing a huge gash through the new sheetrock.
His enemy was me.
Lacoco froze, shocked, and the nightmare version of me hit him again, and again, and again. Harder and faster than I’d ever been capable of in real life. Blood splattered the sawdust as Lacoco’s nose shattered. The fists kept pumping, falling over and over like pistons. The look on my evil mirror twin’s face was completely dispassionate, emotionless. It was my face, but it was younger, free of scars, and the eyes were dead, blank, all humanity shoved aside and focused on only one thing, utterly destroying his opponent.
It was exactly how I’d looked when I’d ruined Jason Lacoco’s life.
Lacoco tried to shove him off, but it was an overwhelming assault. Lacoco hit the floor, and the copy followed him down, knowing exactly how to manipulate an opponent on the ground. He got a knee over one of Lacoco’s arms, and hit him, and hit him, and hit him. Lacoco’s face was being pulverized. An elbow fell and his glass eye had popped out and rolled across the carpet.
It was exactly like last time. I’d lost it. I’d broken his skull open. I’d put out his eye. If I hadn’t been pulled off I would’ve beaten him to death. I’d put him in a coma.
Of course this creature was here. It was made of nightmares. This younger, blank-faced version of me had been Lacoco’s nightmare. I was his monster.
But like the rest of us, Lacoco had gotten a lot better at fighting monsters.
WHUP. The fake me lurched. The bloody hands left Lacoco’s face and grabbed for his leg. The knee that had been used to block one of Laccco’s arms. Lacoco’s hand came off the floor, holding something boxy and orange, and he drove it against his opponent. WHUP. A black circle appeared in the copy’s chest. WHUP. WHUP. Two more.
Lacoco had landed on a powder-actuated nail gun.
As the copy rolled off, Lacoco got one big boot up and kicked him in the face.
The copy crashed into the far wall, reached up emotionlessly, and ripped one of the nails out of his sternum. He immediately started to rise. There was a sharp crack. The nightmare copy looked down in surprise at the new, much larger hole that had appeared in the center of one pectoral. Screw the nail gun, Lacoco had gone for his pistol. His XD .45 extended in one shaking hand, Lacoco lumbered back up, blood streaming from his battered face.
Hands pressed against the holes in his chest as blood trickled between his fingers, the copy turned his head and studied me, speaking with my voice. “You mocked me, Chosen, but I’m not the only one here that causes bad dreams.” He began to laugh.
Lacoco shot him again.
The Nachtmar grimaced and slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood, until he came to a rest, seated, chest full of weeping holes. “It is all f
or nothing. The human I am bonded with is beyond your reach. You cannot kill him.”
“I know,” I said as I slowly got to my feet. “That’s why I’m going to talk him into doing it himself.”
And then the ancient nightmare creature realized what I intended to do. “No! You—”
This time Lacoco walked over, put his pistol against the copy’s temple, and blew a reasonable facsimile of my brains across the twentieth floor. Lacoco spit on the corpse. “Shut up.” His lips were so mangled and the words were so slurred that they were barely understandable. The big man turned toward me, quivering with fury. One side of his face seemed shrunken without the eye. The other side was battered into split-open pulp. I was amazed he was still standing.
I looked at the pistol dangling in his hand. “That wasn’t me.”
“It was once…” He looked back at the body.
“Neither one of us is the man we were once, and I’m sorry for the man that I was, for what I did to you.”
Lacoco put his pistol back in the holster. “Apology accepted. You can buy me a beer when we get back to Earth.”
“Deal.” I moved my arm around from behind my back, revealing that I’d pulled my own .45, originally to shoot the copy, but had kept it hidden until Lacoco had put his own gun away. “What?” Lacoco shook his head ruefully when he saw that, but he still came up to help me limp along. “I’ve got things to do. I didn’t have time to get shot by you.”
He grunted in acknowledgement as he put my arm over his shoulders and took some of my weight. Then he said, “I gotta say, it felt awfully good to shoot you…the old you.”
I chuckled, then paused to listen for the gargoyles, but I couldn’t hear them. Maybe even here the Nachtmar could only pay attention to so many things at once, and there was an army of demons below. But now that the Nachtmar realized what I was up to, it would be coming for me with everything it had, which was exactly what I wanted. That would distract it from the others. There was a sudden crash and a cry from the other end of the hall. “Ed!”