On the side nearest the house they sought, Scirea backed up to the wall, pistol readied, a grenade in his left hand. He lobbed it down the street ahead of them, and a wall of smoke began to rise where it landed, some twenty yards away.
Good thinking, Geraint thought grimly. If that’s where their mage is, they may have other back-up there. They’ve probably got the equipment to see through the smoke, but maybe not all of them can. There were so many possibilities.
Mohinder had dispatched the injured samurai with one sweep of his hand razors across the man’s throat, but now his cybereyes were scanning the doorway, a machine pistol in one hand and the Predator in the other. Geraint was just behind him as Mohinder sprayed an armor-piercing clip through the closed door. Perhaps it was a scream they heard from inside, but it was impossible to tell beneath the rattle of the guns. A spurt of automatic fire burst into the road from a middle window of the three-story house, then all hell let loose at the far end of the street. Wild fire was streaming through the smoke, and everyone was grateful for the ballistic body armor they wore for protection. Ricochets pinged off the surface of the street.
“Get inside!” Geraint screamed, but that wouldn’t do for all of them. Francesca and the dwarf were returning fire into the open window of the house, the dwarf switching his attentions from the north end of the road where he’d been watching for any sneak strike from their rear. He seemed to move with effort into position to shoot back, and Francesca saw that his armor was shredded from bullets.
He’s been hit, she realized, with a sickening chill through her body. Then she saw the hint of a figure behind the flash of the automatic weapon, and she took extra care with her aim. If that slint was firing at the dwarf, it gave her a little edge. She got lucky; three close-timed Colt shots were enough to stop the chatter of the other man’s gun.
The dwarf was urgently plastering patches on his side, but Francesca screamed at him to take cover. It was brave of him, trying to get to her to protect her, but he could hardly walk and she knew he was gravely hurt. Two men with pistols, one also hefting a ridiculous-looking axe, were running toward them from the end of the street. Francesca was leveling her gun again, but the dwarf croaked the word “Friends” to reassure her. Thank heavens the cavalry is here, she thought.
The elemental came roaring through the smoke just as Mohinder crashed the door open enough for Scirea to lob a grenade through it. The Italian reeled back as he took a chestful of shots, then collapsed lifelessly onto the ground like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut.
Mohinder waved Geraint and Rani back as the grenade blast exploded in the room, sending shards of glass and splinters of wood flying everywhere. It was a minor miracle none of Geraint’s team was blinded by the stuff, but somehow they’d all managed to turn their faces away just in time. Mohinder was the first in after a Uzi sweep by Rani had cleared whatever might still be alive in there.
Serrin was struggling desperately. He clutched at another spell focus and poured himself into denying its force, grinding it down, forcing it away into banishment.
Francesca was emptying her gun into the smoke, hoping for the best. She had a horrible feeling some amorphous forms were beginning to storm through from behind the blinding brilliance of the flame pillar. Just then, one of the reinforcements dropped to his knees as the axeman waved comically and toppled over backward. People were coming out of the smoke, but the kneeling man’s launched grenade turned the ones in the front to mincemeat. Frag me, she thought as her stomach lurched sickeningly, this is one heavy-duty business.
Automatic fire ripped through plaswood floorboards as the heavy gunners fired through the ceiling. Geraint screamed at them to stop, they were trying to prevent Mary Kelly being killed.
“Too late for that, term,” Mohinder yelled at the top of his voice as he slammed a new clip into the machine pistol. Rani moved to cover him as he headed up the stairs to the landing. They seemed to be working well together, each covering the other at just right moment. A troll slumped in the stairwell was playing possum, feigning death, but that couldn’t save him. Just to be sure, Mohinder emptied the rest of the Predator’s clip into the body. The troll twitched to death in a blood-spattered spasm.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Mohinder kicked down the last door on the top floor. Rani darted out from behind him to empty the last of her magazine into the elf by the window before he could complete his spell. That left two of them standing over the hideous, eviscerated body, staring at the three people in the doorway. For the tiniest instant, they were frozen as if in an old still photo: one bloodied corpse between them on the filthy mattress and an elf off to the side, with an expression of fatal surprise on his face and a half-dozen holes in his torso.
The cloaked man was middle-aged, flabby-faced, a bushy. positively Victorian mustache wavering above full, fleshy lips. His hands were still twitching, the fingers and hand razors covered in gore. The black bag lying on its side by his feet had disgorged its collection of surgical scalpels, scissors, saws, and retractors across the floor; now they were abstract, shining slivers glinting amid pools of deep crimson gore.
The samurai next to him was a surprise: neatly be-suited, almost all machine. Yet he stood still, the ghost of a smile playing over his features until the burst from Geraint’s heavy pistol ripped away his jacket. Some flesh remained, but not much. He slumped to the floor very slowly, his legs collapsing under him, pistol falling from the lifeless hand.
The three assailants edged around the monster by the mattress.
“Got you, you rakking bastard,” Geraint yelled in an ecstasy of victory as the man backed up against the far wall. His face was expressionless, already dead. His teeth and jaw ground together and he collapsed in a heap.
“Drek? Bloody suicide implant,” Mohinder roared.
They were all fumbling at the medkit but it was too late.
“Mohinder, get back outside and cover the others.” Geraint ordered. “We can’t do anything else here,” He was searching furiously for any ID on the bodies. The Ripper was beyond any medkit now.
But Mohinder waved Rani outside instead. Scanning the scene, he saw something bizarre happening to the Ripper’s body. It was beginning to decompose before their very eyes, at an impossibly rapid rate. The flesh lost definition and form, deliquescing into a heap of shapeless tissue. Geraint was astounded, staggering back from the horribly degrading corpse. For an instant he almost didn’t notice that the scanner he’d brought in was indicating that this monster had no headware chips.
“Oh God,” he moaned softly. “How are we ever going to prove what happened here?” His mind was racing. “The police-”
Mohinder jerked back from him. “No way, term. No police. They’ll be here in a tick, but none of my people are gonna wait around to greet them.”
Geraint nodded numbly, thinking there was wisdom in the samurai’s words. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain his presence at this gory scene tonight. It was time to grab up the evidence and run for it.
When they got outside, they found three of their own dead. The troll from Mohinder’s group had never arrived and Scirea they knew about, but the dwarf had bought it while unleashing one final burst of shots at the samurai who’d come running out of the smoke. Rani had arrived at the door of the house just in time to cut the last one down as she fired at his flank. Of the reinforcements, the axeman had breathed his last and the grenade expert had made off into the night as soon as the shooting stopped.