I recognized the new MCB Director Doug Stark from his address at ICMHP. He was on one end of the group, red-faced and shouting. There were half a dozen other MCB agents around him. Across from Stark, with his back to me, was the broad, imposing shape that could only be Agent Franks. It took quite a bit of guts, or perhaps insanity, to yell at Franks, but Stark was going for the gold.
“You will stand down, mister. You violated direct orders. Direct orders from the highest authority! You broke into a secure facility and stole top-secret government property. You’ve gone too far this time, Franks. They’re going to burn you for this!”
Franks shrugged. “Eh…”
One of the other agents stepped forward. It was Grant Jefferson. “Director, we’re being used by STFU. I saw their attempt. They tried their weapon and when it didn’t work, they bailed out to let us take the blame.”
“Nonsense,” Stark shouted. “You’re another one of Myers’ loyalists. You’re all out to get me. You and those fish men!” Stark shook his fist in the air. I looked around. Fish men? Holly shrugged. “The monster has been defeated, and now you want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We need to concentrate on damage control and what we’re going to tell the press.”
I spoke up. “The monster will be back soon.”
Franks turned around. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. “Did you kill the host?”
“Permanently this time. The alp is coalescing in the tunnels before it goes hunting for a new host. I figure we’ve got a couple of minutes, tops.”
“Alp? That’s classified!” Stark sputtered. “Who told you that?”
Franks looked me over. “You understand the risk?” I nodded. I was host bait, and if we didn’t manage to kill this thing fast and it got me, I was going to end up in a coma. “We’ll meet it in the open.”
“The open! We’ve been ordered not to take any public action. The open is like…extra public!” Stark bellowed. “You will all stand down. Mr. Stricken said—”
“The situation has changed, sir. Stricken has left the area. He got on the last chopper out ahead of the fog,” Grant said gently. He turned to me. “If the host is gone, now’s our chance. STFU tried to attack the creature with one of the ancient weapons we had in the vault. The thing was, with the host still being alive it didn’t work. It might now.”
“Ancient weapon?” I asked.
I hadn’t seen Agent Archer standing off to the side. “We watched when Stricken’s men responded to our dist—uhm…” Agent Stark was staring at him. “When that car blew up in the garage earlier. They had an old sword.”
“A sword? That’s it?” But then again, I’d already seen repeatedly that our forefathers had been very creative when it came to coming up with mystical ways to win this fight. Hell, I’d blown up an Old One with something originally conceived by Isaac Newton.
“A magic sword,” Archer corrected. “I identified it from our inventory roster. MCB’s been seizing mystical items since our founding. We’ve got a warehouse full of interesting things for study. STFU checked this one out and then locked down the rest of the collection. According to the write-up, this one was supposed to be able to banish otherworldly creatures. Too bad their plan didn’t work, probably since the monster wasn’t otherworldy enough when it was still attached to a human being.” Archer held up the broken hilt of what looked like an old Viking sword. “We found this still attached to the STFU man’s hand.”
Franks pointed at a long nylon case on the ground at his feet. “I stole more. Want one?”
“That’s it. Seize Agent Franks!” Stark ordered. All of the other MCB agents seemed really nervous, but none of them made a move. Having worked with Franks, I couldn’t blame them. I’d rather seize a rabid honey badger. “What are you waiting for? Place Agent Franks under arrest!”
Apparently Franks had finally had enough. He covered the distance in two big steps and grabbed Agent Stark by the throat. Stark reached for his pistol but Franks simply took it away and dropped it on the floor. The other agents were too shocked to do anything. Stark struggled, but Franks dragged him in and, almost gently, placed him in a choke hold.
While Stark struggled and gasped for air, Franks calmly began to give orders. “Archer, get comms up. Call air support. Pasztory, evacuate the locals. Jefferson, Liu, on heavy weapons. The rest of you find anyone who can fight. Meet out front in two minutes.” Stark was turning blue and flopping around from lack of air. Franks looked at his men, obviously displeased that they hadn’t snapped to.
“Uh…The director…You’re sorta…” Archer was trying to frame it as a question. “That’s not good…” He looked to the other agents for support, but they were all too aware of what Franks was capable of. “This is bad, isn’t it?”
Stark was finally unconscious. If Franks wanted to kill him he would’ve just snapped his neck. The big agent dumped his superior’s limp body on the ground. Stark lay there drooling down his cheek. “Move out.”
The MCB agents fled. I didn’t need to be a government employee to know that this was going to cause some really serious repercussions for Franks, who wasn’t human and only existed because the MCB allowed him to. “Will you be in trouble?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered simply. Franks went over to the bag and unzipped it. He rummaged around inside, pulled out a battle-ax and tossed it to me, heedless of whether I was ready to catch something heavy and razor-sharp or not. “Familiar?”
I managed to snag it by the handle and kept both my thumbs. Lighter than it looked, it still had a bright orange inventory sticker on it. The wooden handle was worn smooth and strangely comfortable in my grip. The metal seemed warm to the touch. I knew this blade. I didn’t just know it from using it myself, but I knew it from another man’s unholy memories. “Holy shit.” It was thousands of years old, and if it was in fact magic, it was only because of the sheer number of lives it had taken had given it a sort of life of its own. “This is Lord Machado’s ax.”
“I’ll need it back,” Franks said. He removed a Roman gladius from the bag and tested the weight by tossing it back and forth between his hands. It looked way too small on him.
“You got any more magic swords in there?” Mosh asked hopefully. Franks pulled out a bone-handled dagger. It was about the size of a glorified steak knife. Mosh took it reluctantly. “Seriously?”
Holly had relieved the stunned guard in the entrance of his G-36K carbine. She laughed at Mosh’s little knife. “I’d be embarrassed to let anyone see me with that.”
“Shut up,” Mosh said as he read the inventory sticker. “This one’s called the Black Heart of Suffering. That sounds evil. Is it evil?”
“Way evil,” Franks said.
“Sweet.”
The ground quaked beneath our feet.
“It’s coming.”
The brief glimpse into the nightmare world had rendered most of the quarantine line what Franks would refer to as combat ineffective. The sane had run. That left a handful of MCB that were in the know, about a dozen members of Paranormal Tactical, and a tiny group of cops and soldiers who were getting a real fast tutorial on the fact that monsters existed and one was about to come eat us.
“How do you think this is gonna go down?” Mosh asked me nervously.
“My guess is that the slime will take some sort of form. Whether that will be one big thing or a bunch of little things, I don’t know. What I do know is that it won’t last long, and it’ll probably get weaker as it falls apart or gets damaged. It normally wouldn’t be able to manifest here at all, and what he’s got going on now is a result of human beings. The Nachtmar is on its own now. The more we hurt it, the weaker it’ll get, and then we can get it and stick him with one of these things and send it back to hell where it belongs.”
“And you know this…how?”
“It was in the MHI employee handbook,” I said. Mosh snorted. “Okay, I just know. Call it instinct…How’re you doing?”
Mosh surprised me with a grin
. “Remarkably well, actually. Believe it or not, this is kind of cool. Crazy, but cool.”
I bet the Nachtmar hadn’t realized that giving Mosh a chance to work his anger out against a bunch of death cultists would be so therapeutic. “Dad always did say you were the warped one. Stay back here, okay? I don’t want you doing anything stupid.”
“I came after you, didn’t I?”
He had me there. “Damn right you did.” I reached over and rubbed my brother’s shaved head. “For luck.”
I had stuck the ax handle through the straps on the back of my armor, so it was at least semi-secure. The ax wouldn’t do me any good until the Nachtmar got close, which meant that I would be using Abomination until then.
The rumbling in the earth had gotten steadily louder. Anything small that wasn’t tied down was jittering about from the vibration. “Get ready!” one of the MCB agents shouted. A crack appeared in the street a hundred yards away and began to grow. A chunk of the road split away, lifted, and then fell into the Earth.
Everyone had taken cover, but there had been no time to really prepare. The defenses that had been in place during the quarantine had been disabled or abandoned. We had a haphazard bunch of small arms and whatever else they’d been able to lay their hands on fast. I wasn’t feeling super confident.
The crack in the Strip spread further. Steam came shooting out from the hole. A police car disappeared into the crack. The hole was spreading rapidly, but we still hadn’t seen the Nachtmar’s form yet. Something long and black undulated briefly through the steam then disappeared. Someone jumped the gun and opened fire. Unfortunately that led to several others following his example and wasting their ammo against broken asphalt.
ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!
The sound was deafening. “Dragon! It’s the dragon!” I shouted. Of course it was the dragon form. It was the greatest nightmare the Nachtmar had found so far, and once he’d gone through the work of ripping it out of Management’s head, he wasn’t going to waste it. A mountain rose in the middle of the Strip. The road lifted, breaking. Cars rolled down the side. Pipes broke and sprayed. It got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, the Nachtmar lifting itself on its hind legs, wings wrapped around its body, and when it suddenly flung them outward we were in a world of hurt.
Several of us shouted for everyone to get down, but the air was instantly filled with debris. Tons of rock and dirt were launched in every direction. Men screamed and died, impaled on bits of rebar or smashed beneath flipping cars. Mosh, Holly, and I were behind a fire truck that took most of the hit.
The air was filled with choking dust. Holly leaned around the back of the truck and began popping off shots. There was a horrendous noise to the side as one of the MCB fired some sort of antitank rocket. Fire streaked across the sky and terminated against the dragon’s wing. The explosion was terrible, sending the gigantic beast reeling to the side. All of us were peppered with a fine mist of nightmare slime. A few optimists cheered.
The dragon responded by opening its jaws and engulfing that entire area in fire. The section where the rocket had come from was consumed. Gas tanks cooked off in the surrounding cars, causing a chain reaction of explosions.
I had to get close. Slugging it out at range would only cost lives. “Stay here,” I ordered Mosh, then I took off into the dust.
Running, heedless of the pain shooting up my leg, I scrambled over obstacles. The dragon was still pulling itself out of the earth. The entire world turned red as a gout of fire erupted overhead. The heat scalded me. The dragon lowered its head and burned a path down the Strip. I slid across the hood of a police car and took cover behind the safety of some upturned asphalt.
So hot. The fire struck twenty feet away and immediately melted the asphalt into a circular puddle. Another nearby gas tank ignited and ruptured. As soon as the sweeping fire passed, I got up and ran again, trying to get closer. Moving Abomination’s selector to full auto, I cranked off a magazine as I approached, not slowing, not even bothering to aim. The dragon was so big I couldn’t miss, but it was like mosquito bites on a rhino. I dropped the mag and rocked in another one full of slugs.
Closer now. Its head was less than a hundred yards away. The world around me was on fire. I aimed at the long sinewy neck and held the trigger down. I could barely make out the ripple pattern of impacts, and that was only because the beast was coated in its own fiery breath and when the slugs hit, the nearby splash of slime put out the fire. It turned quickly, spinning as something got its attention from behind, and as it did, a spray of glowing ooze splattered across the Strip from its shattered wing.
It was bleeding. It was shrinking. We could do this.
Then I realized what had gotten its attention. The Nachtmar was taking fire from the area around the Last Dragon. Hunters! They had to be low on ammo and hurting, but they weren’t giving up. There were dozens of figures moving around the front of the conference center, leapfrogging their way forward, pouring a continuous stream of gunfire into the monster.
It was a valiant effort, but they didn’t have anything left big enough to really hurt it. Abomination empty, I dropped it onto its sling and reached over my back for Lord Machado’s ax. This had to work. It was our only hope. Still running, I headed straight for the nearest piece of dragon. One of its forearms was touched down ahead of me, claws dug deep into the sidewalk, balanced as it turned its long neck over its shoulder to launch a stream of fire at the Hunters.
Ax freed, I lifted it overhead and charged. I swung downward with all of my might, aiming for the claw. One finger was as big around as a log. Lord Machado’s ax struck and sliced right through the alien meat like it wasn’t even there. The ax sparked when it hit the sidewalk beneath. The claw fell away and a flood of slime came pouring out. The Nachtmar screamed so loud that it almost knocked me out.
“Suck it!” Then the other couple of tons of worth of claw came off the sidewalk and hit me like a train.
Spinning through the air, I saw sky, then ground, then sky, and then I hit so hard.
It took me a moment to blink myself back to reality. The pain was unbelievable. I’d landed on my side. There was no air left in my lungs. I was twenty feet away from where I’d just been. I could tell because the severed claw was still there.
I’m okay. Get up. Get up and finish this. Lord Machado’s ax had landed blade first just ahead of me and was embedded in the street. I put my hands down to push myself up, but nothing happened. Come on. Nobody likes a fucking quitter. Move. I got my right hand on the ground and struggled up. I realized what the problem was with the other, because it was hanging at a funny angle and there was a bone sticking out of my forearm, having poked right through my armor. Blood was leaking out around it. I stared at it with clinical detachment. That can’t be good.
I took two faltering steps toward the ax. But then the entire world was filled with the head of the great dragon Nachtmar. Its nostrils, each big enough to put my head inside, stopped mere inches above my head. Its mouth was open before me, like I could ride an escalator up his tongue, but only if I hopped over the picket fence of teeth. Blood slime was pouring out of the dragon’s nostrils, leaking from one ruined eye, and splattering around me like rain. “Well…shit.”
Bullets were still striking the beast, sounding almost like a hard rain on a metal roof, but for that split second it was just me and the Nachtmar, all alone in the world. Time dilated down until the instant was an eternity. He’d come to take me, to steal my destiny, to remake our world in his nightmare image, and as that mouth opened around me, I came to the terrible realization that he didn’t mean to possess me; he meant to consume me. He wanted to be one all right, but now the Nachtmar would be the host. I would live forever in his guts.
But then someone blew a hole through the top of the dragon’s head big enough to see the stars through.
I was washed away in a sudden burst of slime, sent spiraling out of control down the street. The Nachtmar rose, spraying glowing fluid in every direction as another c
olossal hit ripped through its back and out its chest. I saw the flash that time. It had come from out of the sky. There was a helicopter turned sideways, hovering over the conference center.
Looks like Franks got his air support. But then I recognized the familiar, odd, bulbous shape of MHI’s MI-24 Hind. That wasn’t MCB air support. That was my wife hanging out the side of a helicopter with a free sample 20mm cannon.
The dragon opened its mouth to engulf the helicopter in flames. “No!” I slipped and scrambled my way forward, trying to get to the embedded ax. Fire arched across the sky, but Skippy was too fast, and the Hind rose up and away just ahead of the attack and out of the dragon’s range. However, that wasn’t even close to being out of Julie’s range, and as the chopper turned and with just enough time passed to work the bolt, a third round blasted through the Nachtmar’s jaw, through one of its arms, and through the engine block of an upside-down police car.
The street was aglow with spilled dragon blood. The bitter taste was in my mouth. The Nachtmar was visibly smaller, deflating as its essence was spilled from its wounds.
Someone passed me quick on the right. The Nachtmar had returned to all fours, but only for an instant as a two-foot line was slashed along one wrist. Franks appeared on the other side as the claw rose, easily dodging the same type of attack that had crippled me. Franks had learned from my mistake, and as the claw went past he hacked a chunk off of it the size of a Thanksgiving turkey with his ancient Roman sword.
Movement on the left. This was even faster, just a flash of red fur, and claws sunk into one of the rear legs. The werewolf was gone as quickly as it had struck, and by the time the dragon’s tail pulverized that area into nothing, Heather Kerkonen was attacking the other leg.
The Nachtmar rose up on its tail and hind legs, one unscathed wing covering the entire street. It aimed its head downward, preparing to engulf the street directly beneath it in flame, taking us all to hell with it. But then Julie’s next round creased the side of its skull, took one horn completely off, and the burst of flame went to the side to melt the front of another casino and to cook their world-famous fountains into steam.