Shadow Born

“Kane?” Grant repeated, his concern evident in his tone.

“They’re Kongs!” Thurpa shouted. “Kane’s gone bye-bye!”

Grant looked back into the bed, seeing his friend sitting ramrod still and staring straight ahead.

“Bad enough we’ve got those goddamn terror-dactyls, but Neekra’s attacking him now,” Grant growled.

Brigid whirled and saw Thurpa lunge back toward Kane, who lifted his gun, aiming it toward them at the pickup’s cab.

Chaos erupted, just as gouts of steam burst through sections of lava tubes weakened by the truck’s passage.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_b907a898-c7cc-5d29-80a5-202d2ed81674)

Thurpa’s statement that Kane had gone “bye-bye” was hardly a complete diagnosis of the current mental and physical state of the former Cobaltville Magistrate. However, even as Kane watched his right arm rising, the Sin Eater snapped to extension into his palm, a hydraulically launched weapon that turned a simple pointing motion into a death sentence in most cases, he had to agree someone outside of his skull would get the same impression.

He even could hear Grant’s grumbling over the Commtact as Thurpa lunged, pushing Kane’s hand up and away from his two friends, the youth pitting his personal strength against the possessed Magistrate.

Kane could feel the struggle but only through a numb, dense filter. His psyche had been partially dislodged from his body, allowing his telepathic opponents to move into his limbs.

Kane had to assume that it was multiple opponents because he could “feel” and “see” two entities, though it could have been just his mind trying to make sense of what was going on. Tendrils wound around him, snakelike tentacles of darkness seizing his limbs, squeezing his chest. Even as he was grasped by the alien thoughts, he was reminded of the quicksilver monstrosity that had been the living navigation chair that he, Brigid and Grant hunted down in the swamps of Louisiana. The horror took that form, and now he could understand the horror that Brigid had been subjected to as he twisted, pulled, fought to escape the sticky, clutching tendrils.

“Get out of my head, you bitch!” Kane growled as he pulled against the forces assailing him. The other “entity”—a shadowy form zooming between Kane’s view of the world and his embattled mind—looked over its shoulder at the ongoing struggle.

“Your friends are going to die,” came a voice no human on Earth ever had. It was deep, rumbling, all pervasive. It might have been male, but it had an odd, sexless quality. The vibrations of those words burrowed deep into Kane, like termites chewing through the heart of a tree, and threatened to sap his strength.

Kane’s immediate reaction was to rage further, writhing and tugging himself from the smothering grasp of his opponent.

“You’re going to shoot them,” the shadow before him taunted. Kane’s right arm tore free from the engulfing mass of darkness, and he reached out, fingertips brushing the icy flesh of the mocking void.

“I’ll rip you out of my skull first!” Kane bellowed. “I’ll shred you into ribbons!”

Snatching whips of inky blackness slapped around Kane’s wrist and forearm, and he continued to stretch forward, wrestling loose from the grabby opposition.

Something slammed him in the chest, hard as a hammer, and Kane felt the breath explode from his lungs. This was not a psychic attack; this was something in real life, and he squirmed his head, trying to see around the void-thing that stood before his vision. The taunting monster cackled, brilliant white teeth visible behind tenebrous lips, rows of gleaming, almost luminous fangs, serrated triangles in layers. Kane kicked, driving himself out of the slithering tentacles grasping at him.

“I will end you!” Kane roared.

And the bubble of his perceptions popped.

He was back in the bed of the pickup truck, Thurpa kneeling astride his chest, fighting to keep Kane’s wrists pinned to the metal so that he didn’t fire the Sin Eater inadvertently “Kane! Wake up!”

“I’m up now,” Kane grumbled. “How long have you been wrestling me?”

“Twenty seconds,” Thurpa returned. “We’ve got a dozen Kongs swooping after us.”

Kane glanced around. He could see Lyta and Nathan firing their guns into the sky, the powerful arms of the winged horrors allowing them to swoop, flip and soar, dodging the lead thrown their way, even as the pickup truck twisted and turned on the rocky ground.

Kane rose to one knee, foot braced so that he could pivot against the wall of the pickup bed. He did a quick examination of the Sin Eater, but aside from the magazine needing replacement, it was ready to go. Thurpa had managed to render the gun a single-shot weapon, and Kane could see where the single bullet punched through metal, avoiding Nathan. Kane had to admire the young man’s courage and forethought.

“Our one saving grace is that they are reluctant to go through the clouds of smoke. Their sense of smell must be as acute as their hearing,” Brigid stated. “Use your forearm display panels to turn on the ultrasonic sensors for your hood.”

Kane glanced away from the sky, brushing his shadow suit’s sleeve. He grimaced and realized that he was not going to have the time or dexterity to do so, not when the Kongamato were in full-on assault mode. He did, however, keep his eyes peeled, covering the others. He switched to his rifle, scanning the thick smoke, spotting the things as they barely showed up through the hot clouds of volcanic ejecta.

No wonder Brigid said for them to turn on their ultrasonic sensors. The Kongamato had been operating with their bat-like sonar, putting out “pings” of intense noise, inaudible to human ears, which would bounce off of a solid object. In the spouts of steam and hot sulfur, they were actually cooler and harder to see, disappearing behind bright splotches of reds, yellows and oranges.

“Cover me,” Kane said to his partners in the back. He turned to Grant. “We’re going to need a steadier platform.”

“As soon as I find an inch of ground that isn’t slick as ice or threatening to come apart,” Grant answered. “Tremor!”

The pickup’s brakes screeched and Kane grabbed the edge of the truck’s railing. Gravity didn’t seem to quite work anymore, and he realized that the vehicle was spinning out. Kane held on with all of his strength and he glanced back to see Thurpa hanging on for dear life, Lyta clutching at him to keep him from tumbling loose.

“I said steadier!” Kane snapped.

A cone of sonic illumination blazed around them, and Kane grimaced, realizing that the Kongamato were aware of the sudden distress of the truck. It would be on them in a moment, and the only thing that Kane could do was stiff-arm the rifle, holding it straight out. The truck spun, but he did his best to keep the muzzle pointed toward the end of the noise wedge. He pulled the trigger, spraying bullets out of the rifle. The effort to hold the weapon under control was incredible, his biceps and forearm muscles straining, struggling with the bucking and kicking of the gun.

He didn’t know if he could hit anything, but he was suddenly rewarded as a thick, powerful form erupted from the cloud, blood spraying from a dozen wounds. The rifle was empty, so Kane twisted it around and tucked it under one leg. He flexed his arm, and the hydraulic holster spit the Sin Eater into his hand.

Kane could aim and fire the sidearm as certainly as he could point his finger, and the slugs it spit were powerful, the gun specially designed around high-energy charges and heavyweight bullets capable of punching through even a Deathbird’s cockpit glass.

The machine pistol had proved its worth in blowing big holes in the deadly Kongamato mutants before, and as another of the things swooped down, casting a sonic spotlight ahead of it that easily sliced through the smoke, Kane fired again. Kane hit it in its long snout, the Sin Eater slug shattering a hole in its upper mandible. The impact might not have been damaging, but the equivalent of being struck in the mouth with a sledgehammer sent the Kongamato whirling out of control.

The truck finally found its traction, and Kane could see that Thurpa was back in the bed, Lyta handing over a small submachine gun from their gathered arsenal. The young man’s rifle must have toppled overboard.

It didn’t matter because the Panthers of Mashona had provided a huge stash of weaponry for the Cerberus expedition to rely on, as well as spare ammunition, magazines and other sundry supplies. If it hadn’t been for the necessity of the shadow suits, the rendezvous with Domi at a parallax point wouldn’t have happened.

Kane glanced over his shoulder, seeing Grant’s huge shoulders heaving as he cranked the steering wheel, navigating the treacherous ground.

“Just how much farther do we have to go?” Kane asked as Thurpa and Nathan cut loose in unison, spraying another of the winged monstrosities.

“We’ve gone a mile and a half,” Brigid stated, interrupting her updates to Grant on their current location. “We’ve still got three miles to cross.”

“Miles to go before we burn,” Kane grumbled. He whipped the Sin Eater about and aimed down the throat of another Kongamato swooping through the clouds. Kane pumped a trio of rounds into it, and this one smashed into the rock behind them, wings tangling and ripping as it rolled from momentum. It reached a crack in the stone that Grant had just swerved around, and on striking that bit, immediately burst into flame.

The lava had incinerated the corpse of the cloned monster, the heat so intense that it ignited the fatty tissues within the creature’s cartwheeling corpse. Any fluids burst into steam, vaporizing and leaving behind a small landslide of glowing embers and bouncing chunks of ash.

“And that, boys and girls, is why we leave our hands inside the vehicle at all times!” Nathan shouted.

Kane chuckled as he scanned for anything else in the air about them. Three of their own getting shot up, at least two of them down, had forced the aerial marauders to pull back.

“They’re retreating,” Kane announced.

“Just for now,” Brigid returned. “They’ve been weathering gunfire for at least a minute, but the sight and sound of one of their own bursting into flames has given them enough pause and us a reprieve.”

“How long?” Kane asked.

“Until we get to the other side, or we crash through a lava tube that isn’t empty,” Brigid returned.

“I’m gettin’ tired of your endless optimism, Brigid,” Grant grumbled. “Keep an eye out. We damn near died twice while we’ve been in this volcanic playground. I don’t want any...”