As the body disappeared under the advancing foulness, the slime began to bubble. A mound humped where the woman had lain, welling up into a hideously humanoid column.
Sam flashed on a warehouse in Hong Kong, remembering the thing Glover had raised there. Then, the toxic spirit had saved Sam's life, even though the result had only been incidental to saving Glover. This time, it was Sam who threatened Glover. The noxious parody of a man lurched toward him. As the slime thing rose, the remaining druids and their acolytes burst from hiding. Under cover of magical and mundane firepower, they made a concerted break for the northern entrance. Estios and Chatterjee, unable to reply to the concentration of firepower, couldn't stop them. Leaving their dead and wounded behind, the druids fled.
As soon as he had a chance, Estios fired at their retreating backs. He rose from his hiding place and shouted for the runners to follow him in pursuit. He didn't wait to see if he was obeyed. Chatterjee was hard on his heels, and O'Connor hurried to join her fellow elves. Sam hesitated, unsure of the wisdom of pell-mell pursuit into the dark; he had lost his goggles. In that moment, the thing moved between him and the northern door. Like an angry wasp, Willie's drone buzzed the slime shape, 5.56mm machine guns blazing. The drone's high velocity slugs tore through one side of the thing and out the other with no apparent effect. The thing's half-formed head swiveled to track the drone as it circled.
Willie concentrated the fire of both guns on the shape's malformed shoulder. Bullets slammed into the viscous goo, perforating the limb. The guns raked up and down, dumping a volume of fire that eliminated in-pouring slime before it could reseal the breech. The right arm that had been reaching languidly toward the drone dropped to the floor and splashed on the hard stone.
A rapid series of beeps from the drone was Willie's cheer.
Sam didn't join in. He was watching the puddles of the arm coalesce and flow into the base of the shape. Willie wouldn't be seeing it; she would be concentrating on amputating the thing's other arm.
The second limb splashed down only to trickle back to the parent mass. Willie was keeping its attention but doing no significant damage. Sam thought it would be wisest to get out as soon as he could. A bulge was beginning to develop on the monster's right shoulder. It would be restored to itself soon, and Willie's ammo supply was limited.
Sam was looking for a way past the thing when he realized that it wasn't reforming an arm. Its shoulder just continued to bulge until it began to look hunchbacked. Willie's fire gnawed at its neck, but the thicker attachment was proving more resistant to the drone's fire.
With appalling speed, a tentacle burst from the growth on the thing's shoulder, whipping out and wrapping itself around the drone. The shock and mass almost brought the machine down, but Willie revved the rotors. The blades sliced gobs from the pseudopod and the drone rose again, but it was still trapped.
The monster pumped its substance into the tentacle, becoming thinner and thinner as the portion gripping the drone bloated. It was nearly a caricature stick figure by the time the mass overcame the drone's lift capability and the machine crashed to the floor. The drone's landing gear was still retracted and the rounded lower end offered no stability. The cylinder canted sideways immediately. Guns firing wildly, the drone toppled.
With the drone down, the massive cord wrapped around its middle sagged. The walls of the tentacle relaxed, letting its toxic substance flow across the surface of the captive machine. The shining metal pitted and blackened everywhere the slime touched. A shower of sparks erupted as the first drip slithered through the open gun ports. The drone crackled with miniature lightnings, and acrid smoke billowed out through seams and service ports. A strangled machinery sound began to come from somewhere inside the drone, rising to an unbearably high pitch before suddenly cutting off. The lights which had begun flashing as soon as the drone hit the ground winked out.
The hovering spy drone's rotors cut out, and it dropped into the river with a splat.
Sam hoped the electronic feedback had only knocked Willie off line. There was no one there to jack her out if the destruction of her combat drone had caused a lethal interface loop. She might be dying alone.
He, on the other hand, was facing a messier death. He watched the slime flow and reshape itself into its hulking, humanoid shape.
Hart knew that she should have done something sooner, but she had been paralyzed by an uncharacteristic indecision. While she had dithered, the runners had set out after the Circle. Her arguments against precipitous action had been overriden by an equally uncharacteristic agreement between Dodger and Estios that they could not wait. Having those two elves backing him was all that Sam had needed.
His obsession with seeing the Circle stopped was every bit as strong as his fixation had been with bringing Haesslich to justice. But this time it was purer, more noble. It was more than just a revenge scheme. He was working against the Circle because he had been tricked into helping them with their plots. Deep down, though, he was out to stop them because they needed to be stopped. And he was right.
Maybe that was why her arguments had lacked force, why she had not found other ways to handle the problem.
When she had not been able to deflect the runners from charging in on the Circle's ritual, she had gone along. Opportunities could not always be predicted. Besides, if they had all been out of her sight, she would have had no way of keeping track of their actions, no hope of guiding them. She had still been looking for a way to short-circuit the raid when the precipitous rush into the old warehouse had begun.
The Lady would not be happy.
Hart had seen most of the druids escape the runners' attack. Given their capabilities, she had no fear that they would not escape Estios and the others, especially now that Willie's surveillance drones were neutralized. The Hidden Circle would re-form to perform their dirty magic. They were still a functional ritual group; even though they had lost members, their leaders and strongest magicians survived. Perhaps that would be enough for them to do whatever it was that the Lady expected them to do. If so, Hart's lack of action would be excusable. Except for one matter. Sam.
From beneath the cloak of her invisibility spell, she watched him scramble about the warehouse looking for a weapon. He snatched a pistol from the hand of a dead acolyte and began firing at the slime thing stalking him. His calm was commendable; he grouped his shots neatly between the dark pits that would have been eyes if the monstrosity had had a face. His shots inflicted no significant damage.
The stubbornness that made him so persistent had betrayed him. Had he faced his true nature, he would have known how to deal with this summoning. This was a thing of magic; evil and twisted magic to be sure, but magic nonetheless. Short moments ago he had seen how ineffective the combat drone's machine gun fire had been. Had he studied spirits as he should have, he would have known that the minimal firepower of a pistol could not affect it. Magic must needs be fought with magic.
It would be so easy. All she had to do was turn her back and it would be over. She wouldn't even have to do it herself. Sam would be dead and the Lady would be satisfied. Or reasonably so. Distracting or eliminating Estios's crew wouldn't be so hard. By the letter, her contract would be fulfilled.
So why didn't she? Why was her heart racing and her palms sweating? She felt her concentration slip, and the invisibility spell die.
Sam's attention flickered from his opponent to her as she appeared. She saw fear in his eyes, and when he shouted, she knew what he feared.