The mummy stood before me in the foggy storage room. My arm was extended. The heavy blade of the kukri had sliced cleanly through Marcus’ neck.
And then he collapsed. Skin ruptured into dust and the bones fell with a clatter.
The Nachtmar’s scream shook the world. The fog boiled, furious, away from Marcus’ body, fleeing.
Killing its host would seriously wound it, but it wasn’t done yet. It would be stunned momentarily, disoriented, probably expecting its Chosen to return to life like he’d done before. Marcus had been its main source of power, its anchor to Earth. When he didn’t come back to life, the Nachtmar would become desperate. The alp by itself had grown strong, but it would need to find someone else to bond to if it wanted to remain here. And why wouldn’t it? Earth was an all-you-can-eat buffet of fear.
Our mental journey to Topaz must have only taken a few seconds of real time, because I caught Mosh and Holly in the hall. They were pushing their way through the thick fog, heading for the tunnels. “Not that way,” I shouted. “Out the front. We need to find Task Force Unicorn.”
“Oh, come on, Z!” Holly got the still-stunned Mosh turned around. “First help the dead guy and now find the bad guy? Any other horrific assholes you want to hang out with?”
“The dead guy’s gone. Now we just have to worry about the ancient nightmare monster. Piece of cake.” We made our way in the direction of what I thought was the front. At first I thought the fog was dissipating, because it was certainly taking up less space, but when I looked closer it appeared to be coagulating, becoming thicker, slimy. It was soaking my boots and freezing my toes. It was alive, and seemed to be leaking through the floor, or gathering on the vents, searching for a downward path.
“It’s collecting,” Holly said. “There’s tunnels under here.”
“I cut off the main battery. I think it’s gathering its remaining strength in one place.”
“Why? Shit. Never mind. It can’t possibly be good.”
I hobbled along behind Mosh and Holly. Luckily Mosh was beginning to snap out of it. We came to a heavy, locked door, and in Pitt family fashion, Mosh simply roared and kicked it open. We were on the casino floor.
“Turn right,” Holly pointed.
These places were so damn confusing. “How—”
“I lost a thousand bucks here last night…Look out!”
A man crashed through a glass wall to our right. I flinched away from the stinging glass as he landed flat on his back with a splash in the flowing nightmare goo.
I didn’t get a good look at what had tossed him, partially because of the bad light, partially because it was made out of nightmare fuel and was rapidly disintegrating, and partially because it had started out looking like an eight-foot-tall bipedal porcupine with six arms. It was so close that I just angled Abomination and fired from the hip. Two quick shots and the creature ruptured like a water balloon. I was splattered with slime, but most of it just oozed away with the rest.
Mosh moved to help the fallen man. “Are you okay?”
“No…but I’ll live,” the man gasped, obviously in pain. He was wearing armor, but was so covered in nightmare slime that I couldn’t recognize him, but he recognized Mosh. “You!”
“Oh crap, it’s Ultimate Lawyer,” Holly said. “Sorry about earlier.”
“Save it. Let’s get the hell out of here first. I can sue the hell out of you later.” Mosh pulled him up. He pointed with one dripping hand. “My team’s over here. We could use some help—”
“No problem,” Holly answered.
“We could use some help because someone stole all our guns.” Embarrassed, Mosh handed over the Browning that still had slide-locked open. “You’ve got Mindy!” he exclaimed. “Come to daddy. Did the bad man hurt you?” Ultimate Lawyer promptly pulled a mag from his vest and reloaded. “If you so much as scratched her I swear that I will beat you to death,” he told Mosh nonchalantly. “Name’s Durant. This way.”
We followed the terrifying attorney to where the remaining members of the Paranormal Tactical team were holding off more melting super-porcupines with bar stools. They’d been split into a few groups, using rows of slot machines as choke points. Ultimate Lawyer broke off and began shooting one of them. I headed toward another of the creatures that had someone trapped behind a blackjack table.
Armstrong had managed to survive, and I had to hand it to the guy, even if he was a complete prick, he could fight. He was beating the monster over the head with a pipe, but the slimy beast didn’t seem to notice as it pursued him around the table. The two circled around each other, Armstrong was desperately trying to keep the table between them. He saw my approaching glow sticks. “Over here! Help!”
Because I really am a jerk, I simply couldn’t resist. “I’d love to, but this is way closer than a hundred yards.”
“Pitt…” Armstrong snarled, then had to duck as the monster came over the top of the table. I shot the monster in the back and it burst and sloshed the walls with nightmare slime.
“Clear!” Ultimate Lawyer shouted from the other side.
That seemed to be all of them. We were safe for a minute. “Clear,” I responded. Armstrong was on the floor, wiping goo out of his eyes. I extended a hand to help him up. “You can thank me later.” He was pissed, but he grudgingly took my hand. Mostly because it is really difficult to stand up when you’re wearing heavy armor and the floor is slippery. “Right now I need to find Stricken. I know he hired you, so I’m hoping you know where he was going when everything went crazy.”
“And why should I help you?”
I pointed at the ground. The slime had congealed more and was now glowing with a faint gray light. It was inching along, leaving moisture in its wake, but the actual substance was escaping. “We’ve got a very limited amount of time before all that stuff gets together and does something really nasty. Your new boss has a secret weapon to kill this thing and I’d like to use it. We can save the animosity toward each other for later when the big nightmare demon isn’t about to eat Las Vegas.”
Armstrong shook his head. “We have a principal to protect. I have to find him first—”
“I’ll save you the time.” I held up Abomination and pointed at the butt stock. “I had to cave Dr. Blish’s head in with this. Don’t worry. He was already dead. It’s a long story. But as I was saying, secret weapon?”
“Uh…” Armstrong was looking at Abomination. I realized there was still some blood and hair stuck to it. “One of his men had it. Hang on. Comms have been sporadic since the fog showed up.” Armstrong tried his radio. “This is Swift Fury Six. Anyone read me?”
“Swift Fury? You guys really do take yourselves way too seriously.”
But Armstrong had gotten someone. “Where is Command?” he looked over at me. “Because we’ve got something big coming.” I pointed at the floor. “I think from underground…Roger that. We’re on the way.”
“Where?”
“Right out front. There’s a plaza on the street by a bunch of fountains. Know it?”
The others had gathered around us. The Paranormal Tactical team looked exhausted. Every one of them was injured somehow. My people appeared even worse. “Ready? Let’s go,” Holly said.
“One thing first,” I said. This part sucked, and I knew that Holly wasn’t going to like it and Mosh would probably flip out. I turned to Armstrong. “I want to hire Paranormal Tactical for a job.”
“Wait. What?” The poor guy had been having a very confusing day. “Hire us?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Holly asked.
“Whatever your standard rate is, don’t worry. I’m good for it. I got one of the biggest PUFF bounties in history, remember? Two-part deal. First off, send a couple of your men to the top of this place’s parking garage. I’ve got a friend there who might be dead or injured. Get him.” And with these money-grubbing bastards, I felt the need to clarify. “Just to be clear: He’s an orc. But he’s not PUFF applicable, so if you mess with him, I’m not paying you.”
“You got some strange friends,” Armstrong said.
“Second part is more complicated, so listen close. Here’s the deal. The Nachtmar is going to come after me and try to beat me into submission.”
“You? Specifically? Why?” Ultimate Lawyer asked.
“Because I’m the Chosen One.” Paranormal Tactical shared incredulous glances. “There’s no time to explain. It’s a long story…”
“You say that a lot,” Armstrong said suspiciously. “I’m all about taking your money, but I can’t do anything that would be a conflict of interest with our current contract.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Stricken will love this.” I looked Armstrong right in the eyes. He needed to know how sincere I was. “This next part is important. If it looks like the Nachtmar has won, and it looks like I’ve been possessed, you need to knock me out. Don’t kill me, because then it’ll just go looking for someone else. You need to knock me cold, drug me if you can, secure my body, and then turn me over to Stricken.”
“Z!” Holly protested. “Are you insane? He’ll kill you!”
“He won’t.” He’ll just turn me into a vegetable and bury me in a chemical weapons dump. Mosh began to say something but I cut them both off. “It’s our only chance. Hopefully we can just kill it or banish it, but if we can’t then we can imprison it again. Otherwise it’ll keep floating around until it finds someone else like me or Marcus and then we’re screwed all over again.” I looked back to Armstrong. “Can you do it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why not. I’m down with tranqing you and turning you over to a megalomaniacal nut job so he can throw you in prison. I’m not really seeing the downside here.”
“And it sounds like we’d get paid twice,” Ultimate Lawyer said. “Wait…If you die, how do we collect?”
Armstrong stopped him. “Naw, Shane. It’s all good. I’d do this one for free…But Pitt here is going to owe us a huge favor when this is over.”
There really wasn’t time to debate it. “Only if I’m possessed,” I warned.
Armstrong’s big fake smile looked even more malicious when he was covered in slime. “Of course, Mr. Pitt. Paranormal Tactical is the best in the business. You’re in good hands.”
This had damn well better work.