Preying for keeps

7

Twisting to avoid the creature's attack. Skater reached for his Predator. As he drew the pistol, the hell hound's flaming breath slammed into his shoulder with more physical force than he expected. His first two rounds went over the beast's head as he stumbled back along the stairs.

Blue and yellow flames clung to the duster's shoulder from the beast's fiery breath. Heat soaked in through the Kevlar hot enough to burn. Before he could bring the pistol up again, the animal was on him. Its eyes burned red, and flaming slavers dripped from its blunt muzzle as it opened wide and reached for his face. Its front paws were heavy on Skater's chest.

Thrusting his free hand up between the creature's forelegs. Skater bent his arm at the side of the animal's neck and leveraged it away from his face. The glistening fangs took a bite out of the carpet covering the stairs instead of flesh.

Skater's muscles strained to hold the hound's muzzle from his face. It bayed again, spitting more fiery breath that singed the wall beside the stairs. Skater brought the Predator's barrel up behind the beast's ear and pulled the trigger. The detonations echoed through the room even above the snapping and crackling of the flames.

Blood and bone and fur covered Skater. With a spasmodic quiver, the huge black dog collapsed. Unable to take a deep breath because of the animal's weight, the smoke, and the heat, Skater struggled to push it off him. When he got to his feet, his vision was blurry. The Predator was starting to heat up in his hand, but he refused to release it. He'd heard rumors that some corps were using hellhounds as guard dogs, but he'd never run into one before. The hound's handler had to be somewhere close.

"Larisa!" Skater could hardly hear his own voice above the inferno swirling through the spacious apartment. He reached the landing and swept his gaze across the two closed doors in front of him. Perspiration dripped off him, soaking into his clothes as his body tried to compensate for the heat facing him. His chest burned with the effort of trying to breathe, and his lungs were wracked by fits of coughing.

He chose the door on his left. Using a fold of the duster to hold the knob that was already melting, he twisted and pulled it open. A mirror on the opposite wall picked up the incandescence given off by the flames and filled the bedroom with light.

No one was inside.

But for a moment Skater was hypnotized by the wallpaper covered with exotic animals wearing happy smiles. Just inside the door to his right was the crib. A small pillow sat at one end of a pile of bed clothes that were heaped enough to hide a small form beneath them.

Skater let the Predator drop at his side as he crossed to the crib. He shouted Larisa's name again, wondering how long a baby could have lasted in the noxious smoke.

A carousel mobile with a dozen multi-colored seahorses dangling from it was secured to the headboard. The pillowcase held more seahorses, and Skater recognized the stitch styling even through the smoke as something Larisa had done. The colors were bright and vivid.

Skater raked a hand through the bed clothes. Then he breathed a burning sigh of relief because no baby was in them, only a purple-furred teddy bear.

Even with his low-light vision kicked in, details in the room were hard to make out. However, judging from the furnishings and the stray bits of clothing in the hamper, the baby was a little girl.

Before he could stop to think about what he was doing, Skater picked up the teddy bear and shoved it into a pocket of his duster. Then he sprinted out of the room and hurried to the remaining door, knowing he was working on borrowed time.

When he tried the knob, again using the duster, he found he couldn't turn it. Stepping back, he raised a foot and kicked it. Wood splintered and tore. The door shivered open.

"Larisa!" he shouted as he stepped into the room.

A fat man wearing an expensive double-breasted pinstripe suit and a maroon cape turned to face Skater from a kneeling position. His jowls hung, framing a ruddy red nose that had surfaced in a sea of black and gray beard. With the gimlet eyes and his hands full of items from a wall safe, he looked like a larcenous Santa.

Skater lifted the Predator. He didn't think the man would see him clearly with the light from the fire filtering into die room from behind him-but he'd recognize the gun. "Where's Larisa Hartsinger?"

"I'm afraid you're far too late," the fat man said, then uttered some words Skater didn't understand.

Something told him this was magic, but before he could fire the Predator, a whirling mass of shimmering hot air came at Skater from one comer of the room.

The flaming creature knocked his arm aside, making the bullet go wide of its intended target. More than two meters high, the body roughly humanoid but definitely lizard-like, and the color and consistency of orange clay, the thing had to be a fire elemental. Fire clung to it like gossamer webs. Its eyes looked like they'd been poked into its head with a dull stick, and it had a crooked slash for a mouth.

Skater succeeded in partially deflecting the attack, but the sheer explosion of power knocked him backward. He slammed into the doorframe behind him. and bruising pain shot across his spine and his kidneys. Knowing the pistol wasn't any good against the elemental, he holstered it, continuing to give ground at the thing's approach. He tried to slam the door in its caricature of a face.

The elemental howled again as it pushed through the door. Fiery, four fingered handprints lingered on the wooden surface, then sank into the door as they burned more deeply.

Skater yanked a pole from the second floor hallway railing and swung it at the elemental. He'd been told that madmen had the best chance against elementals on the physical plane because they became obsessed.

The pole collided with the elemental's face hard enough to jar the thing's head. Flaming yellow blood trickled down its snout.

The fat man came to the door, maintaining visual contact with the elemental.

With a ragged howl of rage, the elemental filled one hand with a spinning ball of flaming plasma and threw it at Skater. The ball grew as it passed through the air.

By the time it reached Skater, the fireball was the size of a pumpkin. A fiery vine trailed after it. Skater grabbed the edge of his duster and raised it before him. The Kevlar took the brunt of the small, gaseous explosion, but the force was still enough to knock him back.

Then the fragging fire thing came at him again.

Abandoning any pretense al holding his position, Skater raced for the railing overlooking the lower floor. He vaulted over the edge as another fireball whizzed past him. There was a frozen moment of free-fall that twisted his stomach, then the expectation of being engulfed in the flames claiming the tower floor.

The fire licked at him as soon as he landed, drawn to him as a source of fuel. He was in motion at once, his knees protesting the continued abuse. A few islands of carpet still remained and he directed his steps toward the biggest one near the apartment door.

The elemental's roar filled the room.

Looking back over his shoulder. Skater saw the creature launch itself from the second-floor railing. Its arms were outspread as it kepi its balance, and for a moment it looked like some kind of avenging angel wrapped in holy fire.

Then it landed with enough force to vibrate the floor. Its tail whipped around, scattering the flames. It roared again and started for Skater.

He sprinted for the door, cutting through the waist-high fire dug into the carpet. The trapped smoke was a roiling gray-black fog that was nearly impenetrable. Still, a metallic gleam above the door caught his attention. Eyes burning as he slammed against the doorframe and fumbled for the entry button, conscious of the fire elemental bearing down on him, he made out the gleam of the manual activation switch for the KIDDE fire-suppression system for the apartment.

The door was jammed.

Skater turned, one hand poised above the KIDDE switch. Even if the computer-driven automatic systems had been crashed, the manual switch should work. He hoped.

"Come on, you slotting freak bastard!" Skater yelled at the elemental.

The creature batted the remnants of the burning couch out of its way and came at him. The slash of a mouth was turned up in a rictus of a feral grin.

A fit of coughing consumed Skater. He had to force himself to remain erect enough to slam the KIDDE button. As soon as he did, jets of compressed foam and pressurized water sprayed from the ceiling nozzles.

The elemental was instantly drenched. Steam rose from its body, and its growls turned to howls of rage amid a cacophony of evil hisses. Wrapping its misshapen arms around itself and rolling up as tightly as possible, it vanished from the physical plane.

Spots whirled in Skater's vision. There was no oxygen left in his lungs. He pulled the Predator and fired the remainder of his clip into the door's locking mechanism, shattering it and ripping up the metal around it. He yanked, again and the door opened.

The sudden supply of oxygen created a backdraft that rushed out into the corridor with Skater in a liquid whoosh. He sucked in the fresh air greedily as he leaned against the opposite wall.

Through the open door that held a fringe of stray flames seeking out the ceiling in the hallway, he saw that the smoldering apartment had been consumed by the fire. Nothing could have lived through that.

He thought about Larisa and felt hollow, wondering if he'd ever know the truth. The sudden clamor of alarms drove him to action.

Glancing up and down the hall, he saw that most of the dosses had their doors open. A small cluster of people was gathered at either fire escape while the pall of smoke from Larisa's apartment poured out into the corridor. Several of them had spotted Skater and were pointing him out to others.

Embers still clung to his clothing. He ran to the elevators and jammed his fingers between the doors to open them. He knew from the digital reader overhead that the cages were already near ground level.

"Get away from those fragging doors!"

Skater caught the Knight Errant sec-guard in his peripheral vision. The guard wore an armored uniform and was charging down the hall from the crowd around the fire escape route to his left.

Skater spread the elevator doors and looked inside. The cage was a dozen floors below and still moving. The tracked cables rolled with the cage.

"Last chance, brainwipe," the sec-guard yelled. He took a weaver stance with a Narcoject pistol pointed ahead of him. The blunt muzzle centered on Skater.

Without hesitation, Skater threw himself into the elevator shaft. Darts stabbed into the duster, needling their way through, then pinged into the corridor wails and the elevator doors. The darts were proof against most armor and would have nosed their way into his flesh if not for the layer of Kevlar next to his skin. Removing the duster later was going to be a cautious thing.

His leap carried him out into the elevator shaft. He wrapped his arms and boots around the tracked cable and moved with it.

The elevator doors banged shut overhead and filled the shaft with black so impenetrable that Skater's low-light vision couldn't make out any details. An instant later the doors reopened, spilling an elongated rectangle of harsh white light into the shaft. By then. Skater had dropped three floors and was gaining speed.

"He just left fifteen," the Knight "Errant guard called out over the clamor from the hallway. "Elevator three-cee." He aimed the Narcoject pistol and fired a half-dozen rounds.

Skater dropped like a stone, nearly at terminal velocity. With the added speed and the narrow confines of the elevator shaft, the cage had the illusion of coming up at him.

"Not in the cage, damn it," the Knight Errant said. He stood in the open elevator doors nine or ten floors above Skater and reloaded the Narcoject. "On top of the slotting thing."

With less than two floors separating him from the descending cage. Skater tightened his grips again. Pain burned bone-deep into his arms, chest, feet, and knees. He held on as long as he was able, then abandoned the cable less than two meters above the top of the elevator cage. Going limp, he crashed to the hard, irregular metal surface waiting on him.

Before he could regain his breath, a pale ellipse of halogen-powered light fell over him, tearing away some of the protective shadows. He forced himself to his feet and stood swaying as the cage slowed. For the first time he noticed the meter-high numerals painted in red on the gray steel shaft walls next to the doors.

The three went by, and the cage was almost at a stop. Moving to the front of it, he leaned out and caught the lip at the second-floor level. Even with the boosted reflexes kicking in extra adrenaline and adding speed to his nervous system, his endurance was flagging.

He kicked his feet against the wall and pulled himself up even with the second floor. Shoving his fingers into the space between the double doors, he pried them open and tried to ignore the double-imaging taking place in his vision. For a moment, he didn't think he was going to get the doors pushed back to the break-over point. Then they slid apart effortlessly.

Two Knight Errants stood in the doorway with drawn Narcoject pistols.

Skater held onto the lip because he had nowhere else to go. The cage below him blocked any escape to the first floor, and he didn't have the strength to climb back up the cables, much less dodge flying darts.

A steady ssshussh came from overhead. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the sec-man from fifteen sliding down the cable after him, at a sedate pace with his pistol pointed directly at Skater.

He was fragged no matter what he did.

"Looks like you're all crapped out," the grim-jawed Knight Errant ork with sergeant's chevrons said. He kept his pistol aimed at Skater's face.