Outlanders 28 mad gods w.., p.2
Outlanders 28 Mad God's Wrath, page 2
Nodding curtly toward the sarcophagus holding Maccan, Shayd snapped, "Prove it."
"She didn't need to suggestively finger the butt of her pistol to emphasize the request. The cold gleam in her eyes was only slightly less subtle than a direct threat.
Feeling his throat constrict from tension, Neukirk slid the rail gun back into his tool belt and turned toward the canister. He bent and felt around the base. He found the tiny inset keypad and tapped in a sequence.
The smoky vapor beneath the crystal cover suddenly began to swirl and billow. A second later it disappeared completely, as if it had been sucked into a vent and ejected. The transparent sheathing suddenly split in two, the halves sliding apart silently and withdrawing into a pair of almost invisible slots. The warehouse echoed with a protracted hiss, like air escaping from a faulty valve.
A blue-hued light shimmered from within the stasis canister. Shayd stepped forward, eyes reflecting the light raptly. "What's happening?" she asked Neukirk.
Before he could respond, a lean figure sprang out of the sarcophagus as if launched by a catapult. It roared in blind, mindless fury, eyes gleaming with the color of freshly spoiled blood. Shayd and her companions dropped to one knee, bowing their heads in reverence. After a numb handful of seconds, Newkirk did the same, surreptitiously peering upward as Maccan swept a wild, disoriented glare around the warehouse. Neukirk felt cold sweat spring out on his hairline as the burning scarlet eyes fixed on him.
Maccan, last of the Tuatha de Danaan, the mad god of the ancient Celts, reached out a long arm toward him, fingers stretching wide to encircle his neck. An animalistic growl hummed in his throat.
Shayd murmured tensely, "You'd better start talking about this mirror matter theory of yours, George. And make it damn fast."
Maccan heard the woman's words and his hand froze inches from Neukirk's neck. The growl faded and the red flame in his eyes dimmed slightly. Tentatively touching the wound on the right side of his head, Maccan asked, in a hoarse, confused whisper, "What was that again, George? Mirror matter?"
George Neukirk cleared his throat and began speaking.
Chapter 1
Kane awoke to the raucous squawk of birds, the nostril-clogging smell of must and an excruciating pain in his head. Mentally he explored his body, trying to determine where it was presently located and the extent of the damage inflicted upon it.
Slowly he came to understand that he lay on his back with his arms tucked at his sides and his legs together. Several small sharp objects dug into his buttocks and the backs of his thighs. He didn't stir, trying to isolate and identify everything he heard, smelled, tasted or felt. He decided to check out his vision last, not wanting to open his eyes until he was sure of where he was and what was happening.
After a few moments of lying completely still, he grudgingly realized he had no choice but to accept the fact that he had no idea in hell of what was going on. What he could identify was the cawing and screeching of gulls and the rhythmic boom of the surf. The dull ache in his left arm was the result of blocking a blow. Small rocks most likely pressed into his backside, so that meant he lay outside.
He felt a stiffness in his face, a bruise throbbing along the right side of his jaw, spreading out from the side of his head. The rest of his anatomy possessed the general feeling of having been methodically pounded with a sledgehammer.
Kane remembered only vaguely how his body had come to feel like a tenderized steak. His primary recollection of the attack was its savage speed, the quick rush of bodies, angry grunts, blinding pain in the side of his head like a drill-punch boring in, then the sensation of falling. He had no idea of how long he'd been unconscious. He, Grant and Brigid Baptiste had come a long way over the past couple of days, and the meeting at the cove was supposed to be the culmination of the journey from Montana to the northern California coast.
His eyes stung from sweat collecting in pools in their sockets. The heat was intense, but the temperature gave him some idea of the time The sun had just begun to rise when he'd walked down toward the shoreline for the rendezvous.
Respiration labored, he wondered why, if he was lying outside, the air seemed so thick and stuffy and why it required such effort to drag it into his straining lungs. By fractions of centimeters, he slitted his eyes open, then squinted against a confusing pattern of interlocked light and shadow. After a second or two of blinking, the pattern came into focus and he realized a bag of a burlap material covered his head.
Heart pounding from a surge of claustrophobia, he resisted the desperate impulse to reach up and snatch the bag away. He continued to lay still. Patience was a habit instilled in him during his Magistrate training and later pounded into him by its exercise and the often grim object lessons of comrades and enemies who failed to practice it.
A soft male voice, sounding surprisingly cultured and even sympathetic, said, "Hardly an auspicious beginning. Partly my fault. I hope you don't hold it against me."
Kane didn't move or otherwise react, despite the spurt of adrenaline the voice triggered. Although a gambler and percentage player by nature, a calculator of risks and safety factors, Kane retained vivid memories of the consequences of his own unrestrained moments of impulse. Most of those moments were commemorated by the scar tissue imprinted on various parts of his body.
The voice spoke again, this time edged with impatience. "I know you're conscious. You can get up. You're not tied."
Kane considered the man's words, then slowly reached up and peeled the stiffing bag up and off his head. His right arm felt disquieting light, and he realized his Sin Eater had been removed. He pushed himself to a sitting position, setting his teeth on a groan of pain. The movement ignited little hot flares all over his body. He flinched away from the blinding glare of the sun, hot as any dawn could possibly be on the shores of the stretch of northern California coastline once called Crescent City.
He glimpsed gulls wheeling on outspread wings, riding on the thermal currents arising from the juncture of the beach and the thundering sea. They soared gracefully through the smoky spume raised by the nearby breakers. He saw very little except sand, rocks and the long line of combers smashing against seaweed-draped boulders.
As Kane glanced down, he saw a pair of shiny white shoes planted firmly in the sand near his own booted feet. His gaze slowly climbed from the shoes to a pair of denim-clad, sharply creased legs and then up to the man's face, smiling down at him.
It was a very handsome face, topped by longish, carefully styled black hair and adorned with a neatly trimmed, waxed mustache. His eyelashes were unusually long and delicately curved, veiling a pair of limpid brown eyes. His face bore a deep bronze tint, but Kane suspected the tan didn't derive from lying on the beach but from regular exposure to a sunlamp.
He wore a blue yachting blazer with an elaborate crest embroidered on the breast pocket, and in his right hand he held a tiny, battery-operated fan with plastic vanes. As it emitted a faint buzz, he passed it over his face. Kane repressed a snort of derision. Breeze Castigleone didn't look like the boss of the Snakefish barony's Tartarus Pits. In fact, he didn't look like the boss of much of anything, unless it was a clothes closet. Still, though he should have looked ridiculous in his boating ensemble, for some reason Kane could not quite identify, he did not.
Kane shook his head to clear it, opened his mouth and worked his aching jaw. At length, he said casually, "You were right. Hardly an auspicious beginning. But you were wrong when you said it was partly your fault. In my opinion, it was all your fault."
Castigleone teeth gleamed wolfishly in the bright sunlight. "You objected to being searched, Mr. Kane."
"I objected to being felt up by that gimp of yours. Where is he?"
Castigleone gestured with one perfectly manicured hand. "See for yourself."
Kane followed the hand wave, slowly inching around on the rock-strewed sand. The man he had referred to as a gimp sat placidly on a low boulder behind him, huge hands resting on his knees. He was nearly six and a half feet tall and looked three-quarters of that wide, at least through the chest. His complexion was about the color of a charcoal briquette.
One finger was missing from his right hand and part of an ear had been cut from the left side of his shaved head. That side of his face was bisected by a crooked, puckered weal that lifted the corner of his mouth up in a permanent grin. His left eye looked as if it was covered by a gray film. His chest was broad enough to force his arms out at the elbows. He breathed through his mouth because of the mashed condition of his nose. Blood flowed from both nostrils, soaking his white T-shirt with a random pattern of crimson.
"My compliments," Castigleone said in a voice purring with amusement. "You're the first man I've ever known who made Belevedere bleed."
"Do I get a prize for that or what?" Kane asked sourly.
"Not from me, sec man," announced a strident female voice from his left. "I would have ended up the same as him, but I was just a little too fast for you."
Carefully, Kane hitched around, noting the strong Russian accent in her voice. It sounded just a little too strong.
"Meet Tashlyn," Castigleone said genially.
Tashlyn stood about two yards away, leaning negligently against a rock. She wore a sleeveless black silk tunic with a Mandarin collar. Below its gold-edged hem she had nothing on but a G-string, a black, patent-leather V gleaming at the juncture of her thighs. A pair of black net stockings covered her long, muscular legs. The boots on her feet bore high stiletto heels, and Kane recalled the drill-punch sensation on the side of his head, but he decided the time wasn't right to raise the issue.
Her hips were ample and tapered to a tiny waist. The curves above her waist were equally ample, even lush, but the same could not be said about her face. A coat of chalk-white makeup had been applied thickly to her skin, as well as vivid red lipstick and two perfect circles of a crimson cosmetic on her cheeks.
Her eyes, which stared unblinkingly at him from between two wings of glossy midnight-blue hair, were outlined with enough black mascara to paint a Sandcat. False eyelashes long enough to sweep clean the beach fluttered like spider legs in the light breeze. Her penciled eyebrows, angled to form a pair of diabolical arches, completed her look.
Tashlyn would have appeared hilarious to Kane if he had seen her in a barony or even an Outland ville. But standing here in her rig in the bright glare of the early morning sunlight, with salt spray forming a faint vapor around her, she exuded an air of the demonic.
She held a long-handled club in her right hand, a flexible truncheon nearly two feet long made of cross- stitched leather, one end as big around as his fist. He guessed it was filled with buckshot and he figured its vigorous use was responsible for giving his body the overall feeling of being hammered In her left hand she held his Sin Eater, still snugged within its power holster.
"Two strong-arms from two different directions," Kane observed dryly. He turned back to Castigleone. "You don't like to take any chances, do you?"
Breeze Castigleone chuckled. "Actually, I do, but not with a man of your accomplishments and reputation. In dealing with you, I'd be a fool to be anything other than overcautious. Your fame—or your infamy— has spread far."
"I'm on the level," Kane said flatly.
"That remains to be seen. You may get up now." "Do it slowly," Tashlyn called, waggling the end of her truncheon at him.
Kane did as she said, not because she intimidated him, but because his head swam dizzily when he moved too quickly. He climbed to his feet, silently enduring a spasm of pain mixed in with a little vertigo. He was aware of Tashlyn looking him up and down, but he made a casual show of brushing sand from his clothes and arms.
A tall, lean man, Kane stood an inch over six feet, his thick dark hair touched by the sun at the temples and nape. His face was sun-bronzed, making his light blue-gray eyes look paler than they actually were. A thin hairline scar stretched like a white thread across his left cheek. The general aspect of his physique was of a timber wolf, with most of his muscle mass contained in his upper body above a slim waist and long legs. He wore an olive-drab T-shirt tucked into camouflage pants and high-laced jump boots.
Pretending to massage the right side of his head, he gingerly touched the Commtact, feeling for the flat curve of metal behind his ear and hidden by a lock of hair. Not hearing any voices or even a crackle of static since rousing, he assumed the little comm unit had been damaged in the attack.
"Looking for this?" Castigleone asked. Sunlight winked from the small bronze-hued curve of metal he bounced gently on his right palm.
Kane didn't respond, gazing at the little device. The Comm-tact fit tightly against the mastoid bone behind the right ear, attached to implanted steel pintels. The unit slid through the flesh and made contact with tiny input ports. Its sensor circuitry incorporated an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was embedded in the bone.
Once the device made full cranial contact, transmissions were picked up by the auditory canals. The dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the skull casing. Even if someone went deaf, as long as they wore a Commtact, they would still have a form of hearing.
The Commtacts were still being field-tested, since to make them operational, surgery was required and few people in Cerberus wanted to make that sacrifice.
But the surgery to implant the sensors was very minor, only a matter of making a small incision behind the ear and sliding the Commtact under the skin. Kane's implantation had been performed over three weeks ago under the supervision of the Cerberus medic, Reba De- Fore. There had been almost no pain or any awareness of the device after the incision healed. Its presence was only a small, barely detectable lump that was invisible once Kane's hair fell over the spot.
The Commtact's five-mile range was superior to the hand-held trans-comms. The range of the radiophones was generally limited to a mile, but in open country, in clear weather, contact could be established at two miles.
Kane wasn't so much reviewing the Commtact's capabilities, as wondering how Breeze Castigleone could have possibly known he wore such a unit.
Castigleone chuckled and tossed it toward him. Despite his surprise, Kane snatched it out of the air. "Tasha came across it by accident when you were searched, Kane. She removed it just to be on the safe side."
"Do you know what it is?" Kane asked.
Castigleone shook his head. "Not exactly, but I assume it's some sort of comm I didn't want you sending or receiving messages from your companions until I had the chance to make sure you weren't carrying anything we couldn't deal with." His smile became a rueful grin. "Like I said, overcautious."
Kane nodded. "To a fault."
He glanced past Tashlyn, his eyes following a trail of glistening pebbles at the shoreline. They led to a crowded labyrinth of black rotting timbers half a klick away. The bright morning sunlight made the ancient marina look unreal, like a stage setting. Through the open boathouses he saw the partly submerged and barnacle-covered hulks of ships.
Beyond the dock massed a number of seagoing craft, most of them dating back to the years immediately preceding the nukecaust. He saw sailboats, cabin cruisers and even a few barges. Only a few vessels floated high in the water. At least half of the derelicts were waterlogged and nearly submerged, little more than mounds of jetsam rising from the surface of the sea. Some were canted on their sides; others were capsized completely.
"Interesting how you're able to get out of the Pits to conduct business," Kane commented. "Doesn't Baron Snakefish mind that his Pit boss leaves Tartarus unattended?"
Castigleone only shrugged. Named after Tartarus, the abyss below Hell where Zeus had confined his enemies, the Pits were the planned slums of the baronies, melting pots, swarming with slaggers and cheap labor.
Many years before, the barons had decreed that the villes could support no more than four thousand residents, and the number of Pit dwellers could not exceed one thousand. Part of every Magistrate's duty was to make Pit sweeps, seeking outlanders, infants and even pregnant women and either ejecting them from the barony or killing them.
Despite the ruthless treatment of the Pit dwellers, one constant in all of the nine villes was a Pit boss. By no means an official title or position, Pit bosses nevertheless served a purpose of varying degrees of importance, depending on the ville.
Part crime lords, part information conduits and part procurers of luxuries, most barons tolerated Pit bosses as long as they knew and kept their place. If they maintained a certain order among the seething masses in Tartarus, Magistrates were inclined to overlook limited black-marketeering or the elimination of troublesome elements.
