Our objective was simple; break into the museum and put a stop to Landon’s schemes before he accidentally destroyed reality and unleashed a horde of demons onto the world. Landon wanted their blood for his super-soldier program, and a consistent supply at that. The ones that died in combat and from the degradation of their bodies would have to be replaced somehow. He couldn’t pick the bones of that old corpse from the railyard forever.
His dream was to industrialize the process. Factories would take the blood squeezed fresh in local slaughterhouses using similar Veil-breaching devices and dilute it into a form that could be injected into thousands of willing soldiers. His name would go down in history, if not entirely for the right reasons.
Walser would potentially roll over its enemies from antiquity and establish an empire that spanned the continent. It sounded easy when men like Rentree and Sloan said it – but there was more to war than having the toughest soldiers. An effort like that would transform Walser into a war economy and demand effective leadership to see off a coalition of every major nation.
These guys were tough, but were they ‘artillery shells landing on their dugout’ tough? The strange properties of the blood wouldn’t stop them from being ripped limb from limb like I saw with the half-hawks. Modern warfare involved a hell of a lot of explosives. Many casualties occurred before they ever saw the enemy across the trench line.
I was getting off-topic. I doubted that a conventional war between major powers was enough to elicit notice from Durandia. She had bigger problems to worry about than the universal follies of man. Her concerns started and ended with what Landon was planning to do. If her goal was to protect the integrity of this universe and the Veil, she was right to be worried.
The Etherscope was a necessary evil for speaking to us through the Veil, but Durandia was willing to put it into Landon’s hands in this case. The calculation must have been that Landon would have achieved this goal if she left him to his own devices, so adding us to the mix and making it easier for him would ironically result in the best outcome. Such things were possible with an esoteric machine that could accurately predict the future.
Soon it would be time for Samantha and I to fulfil the mission that Durandia gave us, and I was counting down the seconds until she decided that unleashing me was every bit as dangerous as allowing Landon to make his idiotic demon farm. I bristled somewhat at the thought of being compared to him and his lack of common sense.
I was back to warbling between thinking she had the right idea and wanting to cling on somehow. The only problem was that my pampered noble hands were far too short to box with a genuine goddess.
Back to reality; we still needed a good way to get into the museum.
Sneaking in with Max, Claude and Adrian on top of everyone else was going to make life too complicated for no return. The boys, except for Claude, were happy to sit this one out and leave it to the professionals. They didn’t know why Samantha needed to come with me, but I was the one giving the orders so they fell in line and accepted it without a fight.
Landon Sloan was taking no chances this time around. There was an armed guard at every entrance, men stationed on the street corners as early warning scouts, and even four men on the roof to prevent future-facing aerial assaults. The museum’s architecture was problematic to that end. It stood alone in a small plaza with no buildings rubbing shoulders with it, so we couldn’t clamber through next door’s window or jump across the rooftops. Nor were there any convenient underground passages that the architects included for no good reason.
“We should find an isolated guard and eliminate them,” Veronica posited, “From there we can gain access to the building. A subtle approach will serve us well when we’re this badly outnumbered.”
I frowned, “That depends on how many people are inside. The building is tightly packed outside of the main chambers. If Sloan has rammed the place to the rafters with every man he trusts to hold a gun...”
“It won’t work. He’s on war footing. We can’t expect you to slip inside using your name and reputation as an excuse either.”
“I could use my magic to teleport us through one of the exterior walls. It would have to be a spot we’re confident with, and it might cost a lot of my energy to transport all four of us at the same time.”
“Is that a worthwhile trade? Your magic is extremely effective against those demonic killers of his.”
“A few bullets to the head are enough to kill one of them without magic.”
“You make it sound so simple. You’re not going to get a chance to do that in the middle of a real firefight. That’s why they teach you to aim for the centre of mass.”
I smiled coyly, “Oh. Is the experienced intelligence officer afraid of missing her shots?”
“Is now really the time for jokes?” she responded briskly.
Frankfort and Samantha watched our back-and-forth with curious expressions.
“They really are mother and daughter, aren’t they?” Frankfort sighed.
“They’re like two peas in a pod. It’s funny how it isn’t just how they look, but the way they speak with each other. It’s hard to believe they’ve never met.”
We eventually settled on Veronica’s approach. It would be easier for us to find an isolated guard on one of the entrances and take care of them versus teleporting four people through a solid wall and exhausting myself off the bat. I’d only had a short time to rest and recover since all of the trouble at the palace. I would prefer to have delayed any assault on the museum by a few days – but that was not an option.
Samantha also refrained from asking us to take a non-lethal approach to this problem as she had once before. There was simply no credible way to do it, and she was savvy enough to know that hobbling ourselves with self-imposed restrictions for the sake of her squeamishness was a horrible idea.
Veronica would lead us to the door of her choosing.
“Are we ready?” I whispered.
Samantha, Frankfort and Veronica nodded in agreement. Veronica took off, briskly walking across the street. There were scouts positioned at the corners of the block that surrounded the museum, so we needed to avoid them. We found an open gap in the net and approached the main building on the side with the least windows.
The museum was one of the biggest buildings in the city in terms of square footage, and it was four stories tall on top of that. The front had a set of marble steps and matching Greco-Roman pillars, along with big arched windows that let light flood into the reception and main showroom. The back side was lined with glass doors, normally covered with red curtains to keep people from spying on what was happening in the rear.
The best angle of approach was from the western side. It had the least number of windows for the guards to see us from. We paused at the corner of the neighbouring building and made sure that nobody was watching as we approached. The men on the roof weren’t actively looking down at ground-level to catch intruders, they’d left that responsibility to the doormen.
“They’re looking very relaxed,” Veronica whispered.
“He hasn’t exactly been hiring the best help for this project,” I replied, “It may well be that the police and military officers refused to dispatch men to protect a non-critical location.”
Ekkehard was on Landon’s leash but that didn’t mean they would always see eye-to-eye on how to operate the levers of power. Landon was in a rush to complete his demon factory as soon as possible. If there were people obstructing his attempts to deploy professional guards to the museum then he would have to fall back on his private forces. This was why Welt wanted them ready in the first place.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
We skittered to the side door. Veronica and Frankfort covered me while I jiggled the lock open using my tools. Not the best place to house your experimental demon-summoning machine, but it was never built to handle a sustained assault from a talented thief in the first place. I could hear footsteps, or some other type of noise, coming from the other side.
“You do it, Veronica.”
I stepped aside and she swept in, taking a hold of the door’s edge and prepping for the fight. She waited a second, located where the guard was based on the location of the sounds, and dashed in to take care of him. I followed and covered her rear, only catching the tail end of her slamming his head into the nearest wall and wrapping around him, choking him out until he fell unconscious on the floor. She pulled out a set of cuffs and restrained him using the nearest utility pipe.
Samantha poked her head in after us, “How long is he going to be asleep?”
“Long enough,” I shrugged. He was lucky that Veronica didn’t shank him dead.
We had to knock some pieces off of the board before trying to destroy the Etherscope. It was obvious even from the outside that the first floor overlooking the show space was heavily patrolled by armed guards. It was an easy vantage point to shoot from, so that was where the patrol patterns were the most concentrated.
The biggest concern was what remained of Landon’s first batch of soldiers. I had bumped off a lot of them over the past month, but there were many, many more who flew under the radar and remained concealed within their dispatch posts. That plan was in the rubbish bin now and they were free to fight whenever and wherever Sloan ordered them to.
Samantha was coming with me. Frankfort and Veronica were splitting off to mop up their own floors and try to spread the damage as quickly as possible. We wordlessly moved through the tight corridors of the backstage area and found a stairway that led up to the first and second floors.
Frankfort kept going straight ahead, Veronica got off on floor one, and we took floor two.
“This is going to be disturbing,” I warned her.
“I’m not going to go and hide in some cupboard! Let’s get on with it.”
What would happen if Sloan got his way was far worse too. A part of me was hoping that Samantha didn’t completely submit to my sense of cynicism. There was something refreshing about someone who believed so firmly in a ‘better way’ of doing things.
The second floor consisted primarily of offices and smaller exhibits. There were glass cases lining the walls, filled to bursting with images and displays, and various objects that Snow used over his illustrious career. We stumbled across our first two targets peering through the reflective surfaces.
“Why don’t we just smash this place up and steal this shit?” one of them wondered.
“Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind is going to buy an old hammer? They can go down to any smithies and get a brand new one. They’re only in this museum because that Henry Snow bloke used them.”
“Yeah! And that means they’re more valuable, stupid!”
“And what do you reckon happens when you sell this on to a noble, or whoever, and you tell them that you stole it from this place to make the sale? The police will be round your house to have a good long chat soon enough.”
“I won’t tell ‘em I stole it.”
“Then they’re not going to buy it! It’s just a random bloody hammer if you don’t tell them where it’s from!”
The sound of gunfire coming from a lower floor startled them both, and I took that as my signal to strike. I popped up from behind one of the floor cabinets and fired at them. Two clean shots went through the first goon’s chest and splattered blood all over the display. The second man couldn’t react in time. I shot him in the stomach and once more in the dome. They both fell into a heap out of sight.
That was a lot gorier than I anticipated. Samantha popped around the corner to see blood running down the glass pane and onto the wooden ledge below. She grimaced and averted her eyes.
“Goddess above.”
“She was the one who asked for it,” I quipped.
“I suppose it shouldn’t come as a shock that the Goddess is hardened to the nature of man...”
The noise attracted another guard from the other side of the room. I pulled up my sights and took aim – striking him in the chest and cutting him down before he even had a chance. Samantha flinched at the incredibly loud noise.
“I’m going to go deaf listening to this!” she complained. She ducked out of the way before the next man came running, only for him to meet the exact same fate. I stepped closer to the door and kicked his body over, discovering that he was one of the same assholes who invaded the academy to try and hold all of the kids hostage as leverage.
What a waste of time. They rolled over for the new King anyway.
“Where are the demonic soldiers?” I worried aloud.
I really hoped they weren’t all on the other floors. Veronica and Frankfort were going to struggle to kill them. They needed to land a few solid shots to the head to stand a chance of putting them down, but they only needed to land a single lucky shot to put them on the floor with a bleeding wound.
I didn’t have time to waste thinking about it. I could hear a stampede of footsteps approaching from outside. I reloaded my pistol and pocketed the mostly-empty magazine for later. I racked the slide and gripped it tight, stepping through the door and into the hallway on the opposite side.
I was immediately met with the sight of Darin and a gaggle of his remaining men. There was no grand speech or recrimination between us. I pulled the trigger and unleashed hell into the group, killing another two before they could raise their guns and fire back in response.
The survivors scrambled for cover, almost tripping over the dead bodies in their way as they found doorways and corners to conceal themselves behind.
“It’s Walston-Carter! Be careful!” Darin called out.
“Why don’t you just drop those guns and go back home?” I offered, “Because none of you are going to survive this!”
“Shut up!” he barked back.
I turned on the heel of my boot and grabbed Samantha, walking away from the door that they were all watching in the hopes that I would poke out and get destroyed by their firing squad. Picking a fight you couldn’t win was a stupid idea – so I simply chose not to and repositioned while they were getting their shit together.
There were a lot of ways to outmanoeuvre the competition in these tangled halls. I could have destroyed the barriers blocking my way with magic if I so pleased, but I wouldn’t have to use my energy reserves to put these rubes six feet under. At least one of the men was worried about a flanking attack. He put his body in the line of fire to make sure that I couldn’t sneak up and slaughter the lot.
“Crap!”
Bullets whizzed past my head and tore into the plaster wall that was behind me. Samantha squealed and backed away, having followed me blindly out into the line of fire.
“Stay back!” I implored her, “Don’t stand directly behind me!”
Samantha nodded and skittered away on her hands and knees. The man who was on watch called out to his allies.
“Spread out! She’s trying to get around us!”
One of them was ahead of the curve. My attempt to move around that corner again and shoot at them was interrupted by a disparate member of the group arriving late to the scene from dead ahead. It took him a second to aim the bolt-action rifle he was holding. I couldn’t destroy the mechanism from so far away without wasting a huge amount of energy.
It was a split section decision. Focusing my senses, I pulled myself into an empty space in reality and blinked to the right. His shot flew through the empty space where I was kneeling a moment before and struck the marble floor. My stomach performed a backflip and bile shot up into the back of my throat, not to mention my sense of balance going out of the window as my ears adjusted to the rapid shift in pressure.
“Screw off!”
I blasted him using one hand. The other was too busy trying to keep my lunch down. My vision was swimming. It saved energy, somehow, but I didn’t consider the effect it would have on my body when I teleported it across the hallway. This must have been how Charlie felt after I sent him through the wall back at the palace!
“I should have tested this first,” I grumbled. Samantha stared at me with sheer panic in her eyes.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to heal you?”
“You can’t stitch this back together with magic. I just knocked myself loopy.”
How stupid was I? Using an experimental type of magic on myself without considering the aftereffects first. Sure, it was better than getting shot by that goon - but now I was two seconds away from throwing up and I couldn’t stand straight without wavering from side to side like a drunkard. Turns out that passing through a non-existent space for a moment wasn’t something the human body was built for.
Someone was behind me.
I fell down onto my stomach and used my feet to push myself over. My hands quivered and I pulled the trigger on instinct. Two shots rang through the hall, and the man trying to approach from that angle was dealt with in a vibrant splatter of blood. He stumbled towards the window and smashed his head through the glass pane before falling down to his knees.
There was no time to collect myself. I was trying to get back up when the next target charged into the fray. The momentum carried me up and over, causing me to roll onto my back. With my vision flipped upside down and my arms locked into a weird position, I was forced to take speculative shots at him until he stepped back.
But the sound of the slide locking back was deafening.
“You goddamn son of a bitch-”
He sensed his chance and moved in for a second try. What he didn’t expect to see was Samantha holding out her hands and aiming directly for his centre of mass. A bolt of energy flew through the air and struck him, sending him heel over head and several meters down the corridor with enough force to slide even further when he finally touched the ground.
I stared at his smoking, unconscious body with a frown.
“To be honest, I forgot you could do that.”
Samantha smirked, “You swear like a sailor when things get intense, and your accent changes too...”
“You already know why!” I groaned. She reached down and helped me back to my feet, using her broad shoulders to support my weight while I fumbled around and loaded another full magazine into my gun.
Stunning myself with that ill-planned spell, rolling around like an idiot in an overly-choreographed action movie, and now getting coddled by the girl I was supposed to be protecting. It was lucky that Veronica wasn’t here to witness me dress myself in the language of a circus performer.
“There are a lot more of them,” Samantha worried.
“Yes. Let’s fix that before we try to deal with the Etherscope.”
