Bloodshift. - Bloodshift. Part 26
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Bloodshift. Part 26

By two hours after sunrise the sounds of fighting were sporadic. Few screams were heard and the last two explosions had been Weston's. Two black-suited yber, wearing the dark mirrored helmets that had protected them from the banks of UV floodlights had dissolved.

One narrow shaft of sunlight shone brilliantly through a parting of the immense curtains that covered the hung- glass wall that faced the rising sun.

Weston had fired his gyrojet at them much earlier. The drapes were not substantial enough to cause the small rocket to detonate. It had torn through the fabric and shattered the glass behind it. Only a narrow beam of light showed where the explosion had taken place.

He had fired another at the centre of the massive track that supported the curtains, but it too had been reinforced as a precaution against earthquakes.

Adrienne, Helman, and Weston stayed protected in the room off the balcony that Diego had made his headquarters.

They had only one charge left for the gun. And in the dim scattering of sunlight, they could see that there were still Jesuits on the balcony and yber down below. From time to time they called out to the trapped humans above. The Jesuits would answer with a salvo of arrows which would clatter uselessly on the floor. The yber would howl with delight.

"How's she doing?" Weston asked.

"She is doing fine, Major," Adrienne said. "I've got about two inches of it out so far, but I'm feeling resistance. I think it has a barbed tip. If I pull on it any more it will tear through the muscle of the heart. I'm going to have to leave it where it is."

"Is there nothing you can do?" Weston spoke with his back to them as he watched the developments in the entrance hall.

"If we don't have to hurry, I can walk. If I can get to a doctor all I need is to have my chest opened up above the arrow and have it lifted out from above. It will heal in a single night."

"Think we can walk out of here by tonight, Major?" Helman asked.

"I don't know. But take a look at this. Those Jesuits over there are up to something."

Helman crawled toward the doorway and lay down beside Weston. Weston's voice was weak and quavering.

Helman had seen him give himself an injection. He had been rapidly looking worse ever since. Helman was familiar with the effects of many chemicals. Even if he and Adrienne were able to walk out of the mansion that evening, Helman doubted if Weston would be alive to join them.

"Those two over there," Weston said, pointing with the barrel of the gyrojet.

In the darkness, Helman could see three Jesuits crouched in a doorway off the balcony on the other side of the entrance hall, just as he and Weston were. They seemed to be preparing for something.

Suddenly one of them burst off along the balcony toward the glass wall. The other two jumped to the balcony railing and fired their crossbows into the darkness.

The third Jesuit leapt to the edge of the railing and dove off, straight into the curtains.

At least five arrows hit him while he was in the air. He crashed screaming into the curtains and fell the twenty feet to the floor. Black shapes scuttled out of the darkness and surrounded his body. The Jesuits by the railing were recocking their crossbows, screaming at the yber in the shadows. They fired their weapons down at the creatures dragging away the body of their brother. Then two figures swung up over the railing where they had been hanging like bats and took them.

The Jesuits' headless bodies were thrown off the balcony. The yber below shrieked in victory.

"It's just a matter of time before they get us," Weston said. "There're probably half-a-dozen under our part of the balcony right now just waiting for the moment when they think our weapon is unloaded."

"And they're using the Jesuits' crossbows. They wouldn't even have to get close to us." Helman was thinking about what the Jesuits had tried to do.

"There's a way to do that properly," Weston said. "Pull down the curtains?"

"The secret's not to get shot when you make the jump."

"How do you manage that?"

"When you start your run, I'll fire this straight in the middle of the floor down there. That will stop them just for the two seconds you need to rip those curtains off the track with the momentum of your body."

"My body?"

"I can't run, Granger. Where I'm laying now is where I'm going to die. I've taken so many stimulants and painkillers to get my lungs this far that this is as far as I go."

"What happens to Nevada?"

"You're Nevada. No one else is left. Some rumours will start soon when a few envelopes of our findings are distributed outside the States. But there's no one else to do our work. Just you. And Adrienne."

"How? I only know what you told me yesterday."

"In your harness. In the pocket there, by the clasp. All the information you need. Go do it. Get the sun in here before they decide to rush us."

Helman crawled back to Adrienne.

"I'm going to open the curtains out there. Bring in the sun." He pulled up on the rug on the floor and covered her with it. "I'll be back," he said.

"Granger-" she began.

He quietened her with his hand.

"It's all right," he said. "I'll be back."

He pulled the other half of the rug over the comatose forms of Steven and Campbell, then joined Weston back at the doorway.

"No way the army is going to come and get us out of this one?" he asked.

"The codes are in," Weston said. "Nobody's going to set foot here for days. The story's already going out to the good people of Nacimiento that they're just filming another movie up here. Somewhere in Washington the word is that there's a biological weapons spill up here. It's coded at such a high level that it will be days before any agency realises that nobody's doing anything about it. We're on our own."

Helman clapped Weston on the shoulder.

"Get ready to fire then." he stood up against the doorframe. The path down the balcony seemed clear.

Weston forced himself to his knees. He was very unsteady and used both hands to steady the gyrojet.

"Now!" Helman snapped and tore off down the balcony.

The yber below shrieked and hooted like animals.

Helman reached the end of the balcony. Weston lurched forward and fired straight down. The explosion flared within the darkened hallway. Helman leapt.

Blinded by the flash, Weston heard more than saw the dark shape that rushed toward him.

Helman made the jump easily. Not a single arrow came near.

He slid about five feet down the fabric as he swung into it. The fold of cloth he clutched at burned like rope as it ripped through his fingers. But he dug in and his grip held.

His momentum swung him one way, then another. The track buckled just a small bit and when he swung back the curtains parted for an instant and let in a killing shaft of sun.

But then he swung back again. The shaft disappeared. And the track held firm.

Then they found him with their arrows.

Some hit the curtains where he hung. He felt others stop against his Kevlar vest. He swung himself violently on the fabric. His injured arm gave out. He hung by one hand.

An arrow hit his leg. Another in his bad arm. The yber screamed at him. He felt dizzy. Another arrow in the back of his thigh. He fell feet first down the immovable curtains, smashing and rolling into the floor.

He was stunned. Unable to move. But he saw that the entrance hall was still in darkness. And from that darkness, they came for him.

Fourteen.

It was over.

The claws of the creatures dug into him.

He felt them drag him over the marble floor toward the dark room they gathered in.

They laughed down on him. They tore off their helmets to show him their fangs dripping with spittle and blood.

Their shrieking and howling washed over him until he heard it no more. The yber danced around him frantically, screaming for his blood. But Helman's mind protected him and he only had senses for the one narrow beam of light that shone through the small hole in the curtains.

The creatures dragged him farther into the darkness.

He saw dust motes dance lightly in the beam. Swirling gently. Then faster. Then madly.

He peered more intently. He realised he was seeing glowing motes where there was no light. They were caught in a luminescent tendril that snaked across the floor in front of the curtains. It was as if the one beam of light was spreading out and melting on the floor, forming impossible shapes.

It was glowing brighter now. Forming more densely. Swirling like thick smoke lit from within.

It rose from the floor. Contracting upwards. And then it was six-and-a-half-feet tall and the swirling stopped. The glowing motes coalesced and the image of the Father stood before them in all his skeletal monstrosity.

And he lifted his arms and he said in a voice that shook the floor and wall, "Behold."

His hands, all joints and knuckles and tendons, stretched unnaturally far behind him and burrowed into the fabric of the curtains.

The jibbering of the yber had stopped. The hall was silent.

And the Father said: "I am the Resurrection and the Light!"

And he wrenched down and the curtains flew away like leaves in a gale.

The sun poured in like a tidal wave. The Father crumpled and swirled into dust in its impact.

The yber around Helman were smashed to the floor as if by an explosion.

The shrieking began again. And this time it was the haunting cry of mortal pain.

And through it all, Helman could hear Adrienne shouting out his name.

His legs were useless from the arrows and the fall. He crawled to her.

All around him black and red blistered things bubbled and writhed in the death grip of the sun. Frantically they tried to replace their protective helmets, but the shock of pure sunlight had stunned them. The yber in shadows were even more unlucky because the sun worked more slowly on them. Their skin puckered and flaked as if a flame thrower were being held against them. Finally the skin blackened and their cries turned to liquid gurgles. In the end, all that was left was a pile of empty clothes, and a rapidly drying, dust-thickened pool of the blood of life.

Helman crawled to the cries of Adrienne.

He pulled himself painfully, slowly up the stairs. Yber still dissolving around him.

He crawled along the balcony. He came to the door.

Weston lay there. Dead. A Jesuit's stake through his heart. A blackened, decomposing yber body lay across him. The curtains had opened just seconds too late.

Adrienne was half-uncovered by the rug. A brilliant shaft of light shone through the doorway. It had fallen against her exposed legs. Beneath her knees, her legs were blackened and charred stumps. Helman dragged Weston's body inside the door and shut the door to the balcony. Light still spilled out around the door frame.

He went to Adrienne.

Her skin was red. Blisters had formed on the side of her face closer to the door.

"Weston saved me," she cried. "He got up and threw himself in front of the yber who was attacking. It jabbed the stake it had for me through him. And then the light came..." She cried in his arms and he comforted her.

He was tired and dizzy from loss of blood but he held on to her as if he were never letting her go.

"Whatever happened to our time?" he said to her.

"You can have it," she said through tears. "All our time. All you need. You can have it."

She whispered in his ear. Softly. Words meant just for him. Words he had dreamt of.

He held her close and whispered them back to her.

"Kiss me, Granger," she said. The blisters were blackening on her face. Her body shook. The arrow was too deep and the sun too devastating. Her hand moved at her neck. The blood of life flowed from her wound.

"Kiss me now," she said.

The taste was indescribable and made him ravenous.

Fifteen.