Hitting the wall felt like pressing through a plastic bag. It stretched and strained until it suddenly released him and he was inside in the deeper darkness of the building. Now he could hear the screams. Impelled by a new urgency, he barreled forward, only to be caught by O'Connor.
"No so fast, Twist. You're no shock trooper," she whispered urgently. "Dodger would never forgive me if I let you rush to death."
She was right. Getting themselves killed wouldn't help those poor unfortunates, and rushing blindly in would get them killed. There had been one barrier, and there might be more. There might be physical traps as well. Or hidden guards.
Estios, Chatterjee, and O'Connor scanned the dark with their elven eyes. Feeling inadequate, Sam tugged out his light amplification goggles and donned them. The murk lightened a little.
Estios cursed. "This fragging rattletrap distorts sound. Call the halfer and get a precise location. I want numbers of hostiles and weapons."
"What about electronic intercept?" Sam asked.
"They're busy. Remember?"
A long quavering scream punctuated Estios's question.
Sam passed Estios's request on to Willie and switched his receiver to full speaker mode.
"Two flights down in the sub-basement," she reported. "About ten meters northwest of main door. Seven druids and eight assistants present. Don't know where the rest went. All have knives. All assistants and most of the druids are packing\a151nothing heavy. Access on north and west."
"Frag it! I wish we had a picture," Estios said. "Can't be helped. Chatterjee and I will take the north approach. It'll take us a while to get into position, so the rest of you get to the west entrance and wait. Nobody moves until we go in. Got it?"
"Yes," O'Connor answered.
Sam nodded.
It wasn't until he and O'Connor were crouched just outside the entrance to their destination that Sam realized Hart was not with them. But the shattering impact of the scene before him drove all worry about her from his mind.
The chamber was huge. Great arches and porticoes extended it beyond Sam's line of sight. The floor on the east side dropped away abruptly in an embankment. An arm of the Thames had been diverted into this area. Sam noted distortion on the water surface and searched the shadows until he found Willie's spy drone, hovering near the vaulted ceiling. From the scattered piles of moldering crates, this place had once been a loading dock. In olden times it had held the hustle of honest workmen, or perhaps dishonest ones. Now it hosted workmen of an evil bent. Its stone walls range with the screams of their tortured victims, scattering the echoes into an infinity of agony.
The druids were gathered in a cleared area about five meters south of the west entrance. Magefire lit their work, providing enough light for Sam's goggles. Far too much light. He had no need to see them slicing flesh from the victims who remained alive. They were moving briskly; there already were three skeletons on the dank floor.
"This one is diseased," Carstairs announced as if observing the color of a house.
"Dispose of the affected parts. Such flesh is unsuitable," Hyde-White told him.
Carstairs nodded. The golden sickle in his hand rose and fell. The Lord Mayor's victim shuddered and went limp, her screams abruptly cutting off as she fainted. Or died.
Sam's mouth filled with bile as he watched Carstairs hold out a severed limb to one of the assistants. The man who took it was tall, well-dressed, and almost regal-looking. He seemed pleased to be of service. He carried the arm reverently across the chamber and stopped a foot from the stairs that led down to a river landing. Throwing underarm, he pitched the limb far out into the polluted waters where it splashed softly and disappeared. The man returned to his station, oblivious to the blood on his hands.
A flicker of motion caught Sam's attention. Two men were moving in from the north entrance. Estios and Chatterjee. Sam watched them crouch in the lee of a pillar and begin a mystical centering process. He turned his attention to the druids, drawing a bead on Glover. He was not happy to see the pectoral of the archdruid on the man's chest.
Estios and Chatterjee unleashed a brace of fireballs. Mystic energy exploded on either flank of the druids' gathering, flinging flaming men and women in all directions. Sam saw Carstairs go down.
At the sudden violence, Sam flinched involuntarily, but his target reacted better. Glover's body flared with a defensive spell as he ducked for cover. "Hanson," he shouted. "Protect me." Sam lost his clear shot as the big acolyte stepped between him and Glover. Just delaying the inevitable, Glover. He shot Hanson, but the man didn't go down. Another dose of the Lethe tranquillizer might overload his system and kill him, but given the man's involvement in the druids' affairs, Sam didn't care. He fired again. Hanson staggered, but still didn't go down. He showed no sign that the drug was having any effect at all. Sam emptied the rest of his clip into Hanson, rapidly reloading as the man stumbled forward.
By Sam's side O'Connor opened fire, raking the crowd with her H amp;K G12. Sam watched her hose down a group clustered around Hyde-White. His protective flunkies fell like mown wheat. The fat old druid sagged as O'Connor's slugs reached him. He joined his followers on the cold, damp stone.
Taking down half of the Circle's numbers wasn't enough to stop the fight. The enemy had split up, scattering around the chamber in search of protected firing positions. Fortunately, the enemy's actions remained uncoordinated. Better still, they were indecisive. That was good; the druids probably didn't realize that they had the runners outnumbered, outgunned, and outmagicked. The imbalance of magicians was what worried Sam the most. Flashes and bursts of sound and smell from the far side of the chamber raised his worry to fear as Estios and Chatterjee came under magical attack. Their defenses and luck were holding, though, and the sharp buzzsaw sound of their G12s made it clear that they were still functional.
A throbbing moan announced the arrival of the runners' equalizer, Willie's combat drone. Unlike the smaller spy drone, this machine was armed and armored. It was also far from quiet; only the sound of the combat had allowed it to approach undetected. But it was here now and odds shifted more in the runners' favor. The drone's high-tech nature made it largely immune to magic, and its firepower alone was probably more than the druids could deal with. Panels slid back along the cylinder's side and gun muzzles snouted forth.
Before the drone could open fire, the room was suddenly lit by an enormous flare of white light. Sam screamed as his amplification goggles overloaded, the compensators not quite quick enough to spare him from all of the burst. The shouts and howls from the druids' forces showed that the runners weren't the only ones caught unprepared for the tactic. Sam dropped to the floor and ripped the goggles free. He rubbed at his eyes as if he could scrub the whirling spots of color away. Blind, he was helpless. The drone wasn't firing. Had Willie's sensors been affected too? If so, they were hosed. Several people ran by his position, but he could do nothing. He heard O'Connor's G12 fire and send slugs into the wall. Her sight was affected as well. They would have been dead now if the druids hadn't been more interested in escaping. Sam's eyesight cleared with maddening slowness.
But when he began to focus on his surroundings, he almost wished he couldn't. Some kind of dark slimy sludge was puddled near the body of an acolyte who had fallen near the open sewer. Contrary to the slope of the floor, the puddle was moving. Sparkling with an oily iridescence, the polluted surface of the river was flowing up and over the cornice. The leading edge of the slick reached the fallen woman but instead of creeping along and under her outstretched arm, it crawled up and over. Black smoke rose hissing where sludge contacted flesh and cloth, Sam saw bone where spatters of the slime had leaped ahead of the puddle's leading edge.