Nosferatu

29

Luther was still unaware of anything around him, so totally absorbed was he in putting the finishing touches on his preparations, when the gates of the monastery simply evaporated into thin air. Incredulous, Martin sat and stared at the few monitor screens that were still giving

him anything more than static. He tried to activate the gateguns and realized they were useless. The elf had lied. He must have been a spy, an infiltrator. He'd babbled about three of them, an elf mage and a troll and some girl or other. But there was a whole damn army out there somewhere.

He didn't know what to do whether to get the remaining pawns out into the open to deal with whoever was trying to storm the place or to keep them back for defense and attrition. He keyed in a message for relay to Luther's trid screen and sealed off the laboratory complex.

Machine-gun fire poured from the turret atop the monastery's east wing, lacing the forest with fire and a hail of metal. Not wasting time comparing the merits of various targets, Gunther had the launcher embedded in the moist soil of the forest floor and was sending the second missile on its way.

In a brilliant, deafening display of pyrotechnics, the entire front of the east wing was demolished. Glass and stone screamed into the air and rained down around the building. The samurai heading for the gates, or where the gates had once been, narrowly managed to avoid being crushed by what was left of the walls.

Tom was already heading in after them, assault cannon leveled at the main doors to the building. He raced past the remains of the gate guards, almost tripping in a slippery smear that turned out to be what was left of a guard dog. The combination of barking and gunshots from his left told him that any remaining canines were rapidly becoming extinct. Peeling off to the right, he took aim. Gunther, abandoning the launcher, had had the same idea on the other flank. The two shots hit the doors simultaneously, the wood and metal disappearing in a firestorm. It was impossible, in the mayhem, to see whether anyone was inside. The ork squad heading for the doors paused and lobbed in a couple of concussion grenades just in case, then quickly ducked down and covered their heads.

Continuous machine-gun fire from the HKs was streaming into the smoke-filled hall when the ground itself seemed to tremble. As Serrin watched, the second ork

squad raced away from the west side of the building, but they didn't quite make it to complete safety before the out-building collapsed in on itself.

Frag me, he thought. Those guys may not have had any experience with explosives, but that went off pretty well. He continued to survey the scene, looking for enemies the raging orks wouldn't see, anything emerging from the shadows. He hadn't cast a single spell in anger, knowing he had to hold on to every ounce of power he had.

Far below them, Luther saw Martin's message. He reacted slowly, drawing himself up out of his focusing, and then he saw the images Martin was relaying to him, the destruction of the buildings above him, orks storming the hall, in through the doors now. Two of them were mown down by the remotes covering the hall, but when the screens went blank, he realized they must be using explosives or grenades to blast their way through now. The fury and destruction of it snapped him into a cold, controlled rage.

Luther began his spellcasting. He'd been ready for something like this for a long time. The relay focuses were in place. It wouldn't ruin the barrier; no other mage could cast even the most trivial spell inside it.

Tom felt a chill of intuition flicker through his body. He screamed to Serrin to get inside the building, his voice slightly distorted through the respirator he'd donned. The elf hesitated, unsure; the orks who had gone in were lying riddled with lead from the automatic guns inside. Tom grabbed the elf and forcibly dragged him inside as the corpses erupted from out of the ground.

When one of the orks blasted the ragged, rotting figures lurching toward him with his shotgun, the thing exploded in a brilliant ball of fire, drenching the screaming ork in fire and acid. His fellow, ten yards behind, gawked in disbelief until he discovered that these things didn't have to be shot up. They exploded of their own accord. He went down as a charred, blistered, reeking corpse. And then he rose up again, still on fire.

About a half dozen of the raiders were inside the monastery. They knew anyone outside was dead or as good as

dead, and the things now trapping them in here would surely come in after them. There wasn't going to be any escape.

Torn emptied a clip from his Panther assault cannon down the hallway. "Frag everything and ask questions afterward!" he screamed. Serrin saw blood on the troll's broad shoulders. He prayed it was only a superficial wound, or better yet, not even the troll's blood at all.

"Where the frag are we going?" Serrin shouted above the cacophony. With everyone wearing respirators, it would have been hard enough to communicate even without the hellish din.

"Frag knows. Just blow everything away." Tom wasn't really listening. He was berserking, Serrin realized.

Gunther was muttering something about a flamethrower being really useful as his clip emptied into an amorphous body of men ahead of them. Tom still had rounds in the Panther, and he used one. The shock wave nearly blew them backward, but whatever had been on the business end of the shot certainly wasn't like the corpses outside. The figures lay in a broken, shattered heap after the hit.

"Behind us," Kristen yelled as the first of the things from outside lumbered in after them.

"Don't shoot!" Serrin screamed to her, having seen what had happened when the outside orks had tried it. "Just keep moving!"

Tom switched to his H amp;K, hefting the machine gun and ripping an arc of bullets into the distance as they ran forward. From behind them came an appalling scream. Serrin turned in time to see one of the few remaining ork samurai staggering backward, his throat a brilliant red scar from ear to ear. The grinning dead thing with the garrote around his neck pulled harder and harder. Serrin hadn't the time to take in the concealed doorway the thing had appeared from before he drilled it through the forehead with a precision shot. Sometimes you just get lucky, he thought.

The zombie went right on grinning and yanked the ork's head clean off its body. Then the creature sank down on top of the headless corpse, twitching and gibbering, splashing itself in the fountains of blood pouring from the neck.

Serrin forced vomit back down his throat. Half-blindly, only needing to know that Kristen was still there, he raced after Tom and Gunther. Mathilde looked back at him and urged him on with a desperate gesture. The elf had to grit his teeth against the scream of pain in his leg.

They rounded the corner and ran straight into the path of Martin crouched behind his control rig. His shotgun disposed of Gunther with a blast that exploded the samurai's chest into a mass of bloody, ragged flesh and protruding shattered bone. But Tom had already leveled his H amp;K and blown Martin against the far wall. A limp rag doll with a shattered torso, the body slid down the wall, smearing it with a huge streak of brilliant blood. It then lay slumped and broken on the floor, the head lolling almost comically to one side as a trickle of blood dripped from red-purple lips.

I can't risk assensing but I've got to find him, Serrin thought desperately. Where the frag is Luther?

Tom was hammering at the far wall, ramming his fingers into the elevator buttons. The elevator didn't respond.

"Stand back," the troll yelled.

"No! No! We'll never get down there if you blow the thing to hell!" the elf shouted at him. Mercifully, the troll hesitated. He seemed at last to be calming down a little. That made Serrin a lot happier. Sharing an elevator with a berserking troll wasn't the most inviting prospect in the world.

"Must be isolated," Serrin mumbled, trying to figure out the bank of displays where Martin had been working. "Where are the fragging controls?"

He looked over the console in dismay. There were thirty screens, mostly blank now, and enough keypads to keep him busy pressing them for hours. "Oh drek."

As the elevator doors hissed open, Tom was inside before Serrin had time to realize they were being operated from below. Worse still, everyone was inside before they realized it, thinking that Serrin must have something brought off a fluke at the controls.

Gas filled the elevator as it sped downward. Serrin desperately cast a barrier for them; if gunfire came streaming into the cramped elevator when the doors opened below, they'd be rats caught in a trap. Their respirators bought them safety until the doors opened. Then they poured out of the elevator and paused for half a second, trying to take in where they were. Serrin sensed Mathilde strengthening herself, magically boosting her reflexes, he guessed. He would have followed her example if he'd gotten the chance.

The passage led only one way, straight ahead to a pair of open metal doors gleaming with brilliant metal and glass. Tom had his machine gun aimed to blow away whatever was in front of him, but his finger couldn't even reach the trigger. They all stood, stupidly, frozen. Serrin could feel the immensity of the thing, paralyzing his mind, holding him in its hand and amused by their hubris.

"Excuse me, won't you," the figure before the doors said. He removed the white coat he was wearing and handed it to a red-haired elf who slunk out of the room behind him on all fours. Magellan gibbered and preened in the coat like a child who'd just been given a new toy. Luther ran a hand back over his bald skull, then gestured at them to approach.

"Now, I feel better dressed to receive you," he said, flicking a speck of dust from his immaculate gray Italian suit. "Oh, except for that ork. I do find orks most especially distasteful, to be frank. Magellan, will you do the honors please?"

The elf dropped the coat and got to his feet, drawing a long knife from the inside of his jacket. Stealthily, as if creeping up on something unseen, he slunk forward and drove the blade clean through Mathilde's belly and up into her heart. She dropped to the floor in a lifeless heap. The elf pulled the blade out and licked it clean, cutting his own tongue on the serrated metal as he did.

Tom felt rage unlike anything he'd ever known. Furiously, it tore at the iron grip the nosferatu had on his mind and railed impotently against it. He could hardly see now, the anguish was so intense.

Their feet moved without their willing it. A shambolic, pitiful trio, they lurched forward into Luther's domain, aware of everything and able to do nothing but his command.

Niall watched the battle rage until Luther called the toxics from the earth. Toxic spirits bound into corpses, their fire and acid scorching everything, destroying anyone and everyone in their way. The magical barrier did not extend beyond the building itself. Filled with hate, the elf called spirits of the forest to rise up and destroy these abominations. He had his own power to summon things from the earth, and from the forests they advanced, destroying the toxic creatures, though several were themselves destroyed in the doing.

Niall shook with fury and impotence. He knew he could still not enter the place; the iron defense held firm.

"Wait," the ally spirit said slowly. "There may be something. There may be a way in. Wait, Niall. Hold to the power now. Take everything left to you, and wait."

The grip on Serrin's mind relaxed, infinitesimally. His mouth dropped slightly; he realized he could move his facial muscles as he wanted.

"Is that better? I think it would amuse me to talk with you," Luther said contemptuously. "Please sit down."

He made their bodies sit down on one of the benches. Then he walked up and down before them, strutting, for all the world like an august lecturer before a group of slightly dense students on whom he is about to squander some nuggets of his precious wisdom.

He took Kristen's chin in his right hand and bent down to kiss her. Her face muscles contorted, unable to move away from him. Moving along, he squatted on his haunches to meet Serrin's gaze.

"Quite a pretty one. Perhaps I might have my pleasure with her in front of you? Would that be amusing?"

Serrin would have given his life to be able to strike the thing down at that moment. His head and heart filled with black, bitter hatred.

"But, as you probably know, that wouldn't be of much pleasure for me," Luther smirked, getting to his feet again.

"You can ask questions if you like." Then he corrected himself. "No, from what Magellan has told me of you, that would be a waste of time. So, I will tell you what I have done."

"You fragging bastard," Serrin managed to get through his lips.

"Oh, do hold your tongue," Luther said irritably. "I don't have time to waste on trivial insults. In the next twenty-four hours the world will be forever changed and you trouble yourself with insults? Be silent, I say." Serrin's mouth clamped shut.

Tom felt something within him break irrevocably. Later, he was never able to put it into words that others could understand. It was something like plunging over the summit on a roller coaster ride, at the point where your guts turn inside out. The fury in him seemed almost to invert itself and in that instant he realized what the killing of Mathilde, and the threat to the girl, were for. He's feeding on hate, Tom realized. That's what he wants, to get our emotional energies as cranked up as he can, so he can take it all into himself when he kills us.

He felt the fur on his back and the clamping at the nape of his neck. He knew that the meat body wouldn't work, but he was outside even his own mind. He let it go. It wasn't the same as before, when it had been passivity, surrender, awareness of something else, awareness of Shakala or the call of a dead zone where Serrin was hidden. This time, he emptied into nothing.

He felt himself dissolving. For an instant, he panicked, and then he just totally let go.

"What is it?" Niall cried out. "It's inside. I can reach it!"

His astral body found the minuscule point of light and he wove a tiny strand of power to it, a thin pencil of light stretching into and through the barrier, drawing itself back to his body, through Luther's barrier, creating a breach in the shield wall. He went back into his body and called to Mathanas.

"Take it," he said simply. "Go in through it." He walked up to the shattered, blazing remains of the monastery, leaving Mathanas to weave his own magic. He took up the cauldron and walked through what looked very much like the gates of hell.

"It is theoretically impossible, of course," Luther droned on. "It is not possible for a retrovirus to infect the germ line. That's the point. A virus that has the effect of destroying key neural systems, those involved in will and volition, that's easy enough. One that is engineered only to trigger such an effect when the genome lacks the meta-type gene complex, that takes time. One that also goes back into the germ line and affects all future offspring is almost an impossibility. It took me nearly seventy years to create it.

"That's the wonder, the beauty of it. It will make humanity pliable, will-less, automata in perpetuity. There is no remedy. Gene therapy wouldn't work because the neural damage is irreversible. Oh, well, perhaps certain neural substitution treatments might compensate, but they're tricky to handle and the expense is enormous. Not feasible for billions of people. Especially when no one left would want to do it anyway.

"The virus is irresistible. Stable, reasonably persistent, it lies dormant in a whole variety of mammalian vectors and is agreeably infectious. Samples will arrive with elven groups in twelve countries within six hours, though of course things are at a more advanced stage locally." He pointed to the small metal boxes sealed on a table before him. One, Serrin noticed, had not been filled. Yet?

"The next stage, of course, is to develop the virus to create variants that affect only certain metatypes. Then filth like orks and trolls can be pacified as well. Not that,

in the interim, they're going to be any kind of problem. They simply don't have the intelligence of elves."

His eyes were flaring with his madness. For all the coldness and self-control, Luther's inner fires were still alive. He stared at Serrin again.

"Oh, you fool. Why didn't you want to be part of this beauty? We can all be Princes now, we elven people. This is a joy, a wonder, a glory to behold. Now I know how the scientists felt when they saw the first mushroom cloud. I've been waiting nearly three centuries for my own people to be born into the world, and now I will lead them into the promised land."

He leaned back and clenched his fists, an expression of indescribable joy and peace on his face.

Tom couldn't scream as he needed to. Something was funneling into him, a burning fire that left him spinning helplessly in some place he didn't even know existed. It felt like his very soul was being shredded by diamond claws, his memories and emotions fragmented, his very personality rent asunder.

"I'm going to free the world!" Luther screamed and lunged toward Serrin, to sink his bared teeth into the elf's throat and drain everything of life and soul from him. Then he stopped, staring stupidly at the troll, his jaw dropping.

Metal was extruding, flowing like liquid, from the troll's skin. From his right hand came a stream of coldly molten, viscous steel dripping onto the floor. From the skin of the troll's arms and legs seeped what looked like liquefied meat streaked with metal, also dripping and dribbling onto the floor. Luther was transfixed, unable even to comprehend what was happening as the spirit began to form from the body of the troll.

"No, you're not, Lutair." A quiet elven voice came from the doorway. "You are not the Creator."

Niall took the golden vessel in his hands and pointed it up to the ceiling. The immense spirit, manifested as an implacable elf, took hold of the power Niall released and channeled it into a glowing line of force, striking up against a hundred feet of earth and stone.

Earth and stone gave way. It simply vanished, leaving

a huge hollow shaft reaching up into the air above. Luther stood below it, unable to comprehend it. Far above him, air solidified into a brilliant mirror. Streaming down the shaft came the reflected light of a summer's dawn.

Luther screamed, staggering away from the light. Blood welled up in his eyes and dripped from his ears and nostrils. From the elf's cauldron, rippling light poured around the base of the shaft, gathering up the sunlight and driving it into the nosferatu.

On its knees, the thing convulsed in choking coughs. It gagged up a great gout of black blood onto the floor before it, which hissed into the stone and corroded it. Flesh peeled away from the body, burning and steaming, its fluids vaporizing in wisps of acrid, stinking mist.

Niall stood over the decomposing remnants of the nosferatu and chanted in Gaelic-Sperethiel. It wasn't a dialect Serrin knew, but he spoke the basic elven tongue well enough to understand the gist. The elf was committing the remains of the soul to the Great Shining Spirits, calling on their protection and righteousness, calling down retribution on the soul, weaving gleaming chains of karma in which to bind it for many lives to come.

The remains of the body shuddered in one last great heave and then lay still on its side. Only the skull and the great bones of the physical body remained within the ragged ruins of its clothes. Niall took a silver dagger from his jacket and drove it into the septum. The skull melted like butter where he struck it and then split in two. An appalling howl echoed around them before fading into an endless distance far above.

Serrin's gaze was still fixed, stupefied, on Niall's power, when his body registered that he was no longer controlled. He fell forward, unable to stop himself, not an ounce of strength left. He rolled helplessly, ended up lying alongside Kristen, looking up at Tom.

The troll was on his feet. The huge elven spirit was holding him, its arm around the troll's great chest. Tom's eyes and those of the spirit were locked in a lover's embrace. Warm tears streamed down the troll's face and he closed his eyes.

He couldn't remain upright without the help of the spirit at first, the strength from the implants lost to him, until life and growth poured into the once-ruined meat body. From being like a child, helpless and unable to stand, Tom felt energy, growth, every joyful and wonderful thing about being alive stream through his body, heart, and soul. The dead and pain-filled places inside flaked away as the metal in the meat had done when the spirit had poured into and through him. For an instant, he saw the face of Bear on the spirit and felt the huge paws around him. It was like being reborn a second time.

Serrin's hand twitched. Somehow, he managed to find Kristen's and hung on to it for dear life. Then NialFs hands were on them both, healing and cooling, and they felt some semblance of strength returning to their bodies.

Serrin managed to get to his knees and look up at Niall. He wanted to say something, anything, but where could he find the words? He just squatted with his tongue rolling around inside his mouth. He couldn't have spoken even if someone had ordered him at gunpoint.

He didn't see the elf then. Kristen was on him, hugging him hard, kissing his face. She took his head in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth.

"I think we should go," the elf said.

None of them could think about anything else as they made their way from the ruins. The effort of putting one foot in front of the other was great enough to demand every ounce of attention and willpower they had. Led by Niall and Mathanas, they somehow managed to negotiate the forest quicker than they'd ever have been able to on their own. Spirit power, Serrin managed to reflect. Movement. The spirit is altering the terrain.

It seemed ridiculously incongruous when Niall opened the door of the car. Cars belonged to the real world. They weren't ready to return to it yet. Tom sat in the front, rocking himself slightly to and fro.

"Let him be," Niall said. "He has much to come to terms with."

"Don't we all," said Serrin, almost to himself. There was so much they'd never understand. He turned to the other elf. "And just who are you?" he demanded.

"It is better that you do not know," Niall replied in a way that told Serrin he spoke true. "You might be killed for knowing."

Serrin was momentarily distracted by the sound of planes flying high above. Squinting into the sun, he was unable to see them through the car window. "Where has the spirit gone?" he asked.

"This place must be destroyed utterly," Niall said simply. "Mathanas is calling spirits of the earth to begin that. Then he will bring his own fire to raze all that is left."

"Look, just tell us who you are. From that accent I'd say you must be from Tir na n6g," Serrin pressed him.

"You must trust me," Niall said quietly.

"It isn't about trust. I have to know."

"I cannot tell you."

Serrin was about to protest again when Kristen put a finger over his mouth to hush him. She looked hard into his eyes.

"It doesn't matter now. We're alive. And we've still got to see about Michael," she said.

A look of pain passed over Serrin's face. "Of course," he said. "What's wrong with me anyway?" How could he have forgotten about Michael? He got out of the car. Incongruously, he badly needed to take a leak. When he ambled back from his selected tree, Niall was waiting for him outside the vehicle. They strode quietly away a short distance.

Niall was still watching him. "Some things I cannot tell you, but there are some things I must," the elf said quietly.

"I'm listening," Serrin muttered, then followed as the elf gestured that they should walk a little ways.

"The troll. He's how I was able to get inside. Lutair had a magical barrier that I could never have penetrated. We got in through the troll."

"His name's Tom."

"Tom, then. Look after him. He will be lost to the outside world much of the time for the next few weeks. When Mathanas channeled himself into him, he forced out all the rubbish in Tom's body. The metal and the implants. The things that would not let him go beyond his

own past. They're gone now. Mathanas re-grew parts of Tom's own body from what was left."

"By the gods, what is Mathanas?"

"Well, now, that would be a very long story indeed," Niall smiled. "Which brings me to my second point. You do not understand about you and the girl, do you?"

"Kristen. Her name is Kristen, and I'm Serrin. She's not the 'girl,' " he retorted rather petulantly.

"Yes, I know that. You do not see it, though, do you?"

"See what?"

"You have not been together very long this time, I know."

"How do you know? Wait, don't tell me. It's better for me not to know, right?"

Niall laughed. He took a silver flask of brandy from his jacket and offered some to Serrin. It was good; strong, rich, a real jolt he needed badly.

"More or less. I had been watching you, at one point. But that was some time ago, and it is not important," Niall continued. "But you and her; that is important. What did you experience when you first saw her?"

"What do you mean?"

"Think carefully. What did you feel when you first talked to her for a little while?"

"Urn, it was strange. It felt like I knew her quite well."

"Well, that is a start," Niall said. "But you have not made love with her."

"That's none of your fragging business, you

"Don't be silly," Niall retorted sharply. "It is obvious to anyone from the way she looks at you."

"It is?" Serrin muttered, his annoyance mixed with puzzlement.

"Yes. She yearns for you, and yet you refuse to see it. There is a simple reason why you are unready. But I do not know how much I should tell you."

"That seems to be the usual story with you," Serrin said testily.

"I can let you know in two ways. I can give you just the details, or I can let you enter into it for yourself," Niall said. "Up to you. It is more than I ought to do."

"Just tell me," Serrin said, afraid of what this extraordinary elf might do to his mind. Niall seemed to understand that, but he made his own decision, deciding that the stubborn mage would not listen to words alone. He took Serrin's head in his hands.

Almost instantly the memories flooded over Serrin. He saw the skyline over the port with the sailing ships, felt the warmth from the winds over the azure waters, saw his own white robe, saw her beside him. He could hear no words, but he saw himself talking to her, jabbing with a finger as she wrote down what he was saying on a piece of animal hide, using a sharp reed as a pen. He had hardly registered the fact that she, too, was elven before the scene faded away. Then he saw himself alone, inside some gloomy straw hut in a damp darkness illuminated only by a beeswax candle guttering on the crude wooden table before which he sat. He sensed damp, smelly fur on his back, a hide covering him. An ornate iron plate and goblet were beside him, but he didn't take in much more of his surroundings. The wretched feelings just spun around inside him. / can't have her. She's been sold by her father into marriage with Declan and I can't have her. Do I kill him or do I kill myself?

Niall let go of him, leaving Serrin white and shaking again.

"It's a trick," he blustered. "You fragged with my mind. It's not real. None of it is real!"

"It was. Once you were her teacher. You felt it was wrong, a betrayal of your responsibilities. I think that is probably echoed in your being so much older this time; it has a similar inhibiting effect on you. Another time, she was taken into marriage against her will. It has always been difficult, but you have seen only two instances. She was hurt enough that she did not want to enter another cycle. Which is why she is human this time. It is a step backward on the Path for her spirit, but it was a price she was ready to pay for you both. This time, it is possible. You need not be apart this time. You have been given the chance to make it right."

"I don't understand. What do I do now?" Serrin asked him.

"Even if I knew, I could not tell you. It is not for me

to walk another's Path. But if you do not return something of the love she has for you, you will be making it even harder for yourself next time." They walked back to the car in silence.

Just before he opened the car's rear door, Serrin said, "I can't understand this. I just can't get my head around it."

"Try forgetting your head," Niall said simply, and climbed into the front seat. The car pulled off, moving slowly down the hillside into the morning.