Chapter 106: Defiance

It took only twenty minutes of hustling around town to round up three more snowmobiles and then they were off, mounted and with their gear stowed, helmets strapped on and tearing out of Old Crow in the pre-dawn gloom.

The tracks were easy to follow. Something like a dozen snowmobiles had left town, churning up the snow along the road’s shoulder and quickly quitting the rough gravel lane for the undulating mounds that rolled between the trees.

James was cautious at first, but soon found that his ridiculous Agility gave him ample reflexes with which to navigate the woods even as he kept putting on speed. The limiting factor proved to be the medium itself; snowmobiles could accelerate quickly but slid into turns, necessitating a more careful weaving pattern as they raced between the trunks.

Headlights strafed the narrow trees. The tracks were deep and threaded ever forward. The snowmobile engines sounded like cheap motorbikes, but there was no gainsaying the traction they found even when they left the tracks for the powdery mounds that rose and fell like ocean swells.

On they raced, Jelly flitting ahead, a loose collective that fought to catch up with every second, every moment.

But twenty minutes was an impossible lead to close. So instead James sent Jelly a mile ahead to make sure nobody had laid any traps or was waiting in ambush, and just did his best.

The sky was lightening when the pop-pop-pop of gunfire came thinly from the distance. James slowed, held up a fist, and everybody else came to a stop. They cut the engines.

Brrrrr.

Pop pop pop.

“What are they shooting at?” asked Serenity. They were too far away to hear any shouts. Just the thin, anemic echo of gunfire carrying a mile or two through the silent, brittle air.

Jelly?

Flying ahead to see what’s up.

“Let’s keep on. Slow and steady till Jelly reports in.”

Ten or so minutes later Jelly spoke up once more. Both groups reached the homestead. Their snowmobiles are parked outside. It looks like one group killed the other. There are bodies in the snow.

Did you see the second group?

No sign of them. Nor the second Anima.

“Well shit.” James stopped again, swiveled around to address the others. “Jelly says one of the groups just killed the other. I’m guessing Jaywick got the drop on Marceau. There’s no sign of them now, though, which means they could be waiting to ambush us. We’ll proceed slowly and have Jelly search again when we’re closer.”

Denzel spit pointedly into the snow.

They proceeded. Despite the danger James fell into something akin to a trance, beguiled by the endless weaving between trees that was only broken by the occasional need to navigate a ridge or the two miles they followed an old logging road before once again diving into the woods.

The eastern horizon was just starting to lighten, the sky gray, beams of faint sunlight causing the icicles that hung from branches and the haze of snow that billowed up behind each snowmobile to glitter.

Going ahead to check for an ambush,said Jelly. We’re only a mile away.

James slowed again, tooling along after the tracks. Jelly reported back five minutes later.

Very strange. There’s no sign of anybody there. I searched the forest and undergrowth thoroughly, and even looked inside the farmstead. The second group disappeared.

The demon symbol?

It’s there, five hundred feet up. I don’t see any sign of demon activity, though.

“No sigh of the second group,” James called out to the others as they stopped around him. “Neither in the woods nor the cabin. We’ll proceed slowly and expect the worst. Jelly will be on site waiting for us. If anything rears its head, he’ll let us know.”

Nobody looked pleased.

They drove the last mile. The homestead was a large, rustic log cabin. Once it might have been grand, something an entire family or several generations had worked on, but it was clear Belanger hadn’t put much effort or had enough time to fix it up. Some sections were discolored, the new timber standing out against the old, and half the clearing before the building was turned into a work area, complete with sawhorses, piles of lumber and trash.

The snowmobiles were parked in two groups. The distinction was nominal; there wasn’t enough space for both groups to have really parked apart from each other. Bags and rucksacks were still strapped to the machines.

James and the others came to a stop behind both groups. Sitting up, James removed his helmet and saw the bodies. A quick count revealed eleven corpses. Most had collapsed in a tight group before the front door, but four or five had tried to make a break for it.

James got off the snowmobile and drew his skeggox. The axe glittered in the fresh dawn light. Senses peeled, he moved forward cautiously, listening intently, seeking any sign of movement.

Nothing stirred. The dense fir trees around the cabin were laden with snow. None looked disturbed, no branches were suddenly bare for having people shove past them and dislodge their cargo.

They all stopped behind the other snowmobiles and studied the clearing.

“Footprints are all over the place,” said Serenity, a Sig in each fist. “Looks like everyone marched up to the house there before the fight broke out.”

“Jelly, anything?”

“No, James.” The Anima buzzed into few and hovered before them. “Very strange. No footprints leading away from the house, nothing.”

James frowned at the symbol. It hung high in the air and burned dawn gold, having caught the rising sun’s rays before anything else. It spun slowly, malevolent, its iron curves and rusted edges defying comprehension.

“Maybe that thing sucked them up,” said Denzel. “Or a Monitor came down and ate them.”

“Maybe,” allowed James. “Let’s keep looking. Nobody’s to go off by themselves. Minimum groups of three. You see something, you shout.”

People nodded uncertainly, clearly unnerved.

“We got this,” said Kimmie. “Whatever happened here won’t happen to us.”

Confidence flowed into James and some of the tension sluiced away. Miriam let out an obvious sigh of relief as her shoulders lowered an inch.

James led the way. He tried to read what had happened from the snow, the shell casings, where people had been shot. It was beyond him, however. The snow was churned up, blood was sprayed everywhere, and the bodies told no tales.

It was Marceau’s group that had been dropped. As dangerous and wary as they’d been in their own right, Jaywick’s force had ambushed them neatly. Most of the shots were in their backs. They’d probably stopped before the cabin and hailed Belanger when Jaywick had opened fire.

Several of Marceau’s men however had tried to make a break for it. Two lay behind a woodpile, both having been shot in the head. A third with gunshots in his back had crawled a dozen yards toward the snowmobiles before being shot in the back of the head twice.

“They got two of Jaywick’s men,” said Serenity, crouching beside the corpses.

“That means there are seven of them out there somewhere.” James scanned the clearing. His heart was pounding but he felt calm. “Let’s look inside.”

Everybody raised their M4s. Serenity ghosted up beside the front door. The wooden planks had been torn up by stray shots. Only the sound of their terse breathing filled the arctic air.

There was no movement from within. James pushed the front door open with his skeggox and when nothing happened he crouched and peered inside.

The cabin was dark and musty and cold. No sign of recent habitation. It was furnished with old, bulky furniture, the kind of stuff a skilled carpenter might have made on site. Light filtered in dimly through the dirty windows. A huge stone fireplace was dark and ashen.

No bodies.

“Going in,” he called, and pushed the front door all the way open before moving inside and stepping aside so that the wall was to his back. Serenity entered a second later, both Sigs raised, and quickly covered the corners.

The doorway darkened.

A Nem3 lowered its head and stepped inside. “Shit man,” it rumbled. “This place is dank as hell.”

James bit back a curse. Yadriel in his demon form. “I nearly cut your head off, idiot.”

“Nearly tried, you mean.” Yadriel padded forward, his tail lashing. “This place is empty.”

James rose and looped around the room, listening intently.

Nothing.

He and Serenity poked their heads in each of the rooms. Silence and dust. Half the place was clearly disused, some rooms having been abandoned, while a smaller part had been lived in by Belanger. Unopened cans of beans and vegetables sat in a warped pantry, while in a small room with a cement drain embedded in the floor hung a flayed and gutted deer. The place was so cold there were no flies.

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“Fuck,” said Serenity, putting up her guns and moving to the front door. “Nothing in here. You guys find anything?”

“No,” said Olaf from outside. “Footprints circle the house but don’t come back around. They disappear behind the house.”

“Let’s take a look,” said James. They all left the house and followed Olaf, who pointed out the prints.

“They move as a group. Here they stop, form a tight group. One man walk over to here by himself, then he return. Group keeps going, around the back, here.”

There was an old oil tank freestanding against the back wall. More trash, a shed whose open door revealed a work bench and abandoned tools.

“See here?” Olaf pointed at the prints. “They stop here. Poof. Gone. No more.”

James frowned at the snow. The prints, maybe a half dozen people, clustered together beside the oil tank, and then just stopped.

“Could they have climbed onto the oil tank and then up onto the house?” asked Kimmie uncertainly.

“I’ll take a look.” Yadriel crouched and leaped, landing easily on the thick sloping logs that crunched beneath his weight. Lithe and fast he scaled to the peak, looked around the roof, then back down at them, his face horrific where it was implanted in the middle of the Nem3’s skull visage. “Nothing.”

“Well shit.” James propped his skeggox on his shoulder. “So they both rolled up. Jaywick got the drop on Marceau, walked to the back of the house, then disappeared.”

Kerim scratched at this chin as he stared straight up. “It had to involve the demons. The Monitors.”

“You’re probably right. Doesn’t help us any, though.” James frowned as he studied the symbol as well. “They don’t seem interested in us.”

“Actually…” Miriam dry swallowed and pulled her ski-mask down under her chin. “Actually, I feel something. Never felt anything like this before.”

“Shut up, Yadriel,” said Serenity.

“What?” He pretended wounded innocence. “I didn’t even say nothing!”

“What are you feeling?” asked James quietly.

“Here, before us.” She gestured vaguely at the snowy area beside the shed. “There’s something…” She narrowed her eyes and raised both hands.

“James.”

The voice slid into his body like a shiv. James stiffened, turned, and there, standing on the edge of the cabin’s roof was Jessica. Her expression was grave and the dawn sunlight gleamed on her glasses.

Everybody startled; Yadriel hissed and raised his huge claws while Serenity drew a bead with both guns, her expression turning colder than the ice around them.

“Meladrix.” He raised his chin. “I was wondering when you’d crawl out of your hole.”

“I have limited patience today. I will give you the same warning that I gave Richard Jaywick. Walk away and live. Persist in this inquiry and I shall personally ensure your immediate destruction.”

The Monitor stared down at him with malevolent intensity. Gone was the banter, the humor, the teasing.

“You killed Jaywick?”

“I erased him and his men from existence. Get on your snowmobiles, return to Old Crow, and fly back to New York. Do so and you will live to fight another day. Disobey me, and I shall snuff your lives out as easily as a child snuffs a candle.”

Crimson Hydra shifted around him, uneasy.

Nobody spoke.

James studied the Monitor. She wore the same business casual outfit as always, clutched a tablet to her chest, wore Jessica’s blonde hair up in the same careless French twist that only made her look all the more elegant.

But her eyes.

They blazed with murderous intent.

Could they take her? She’d claimed once to be as far above the Nemesis 1’s as man was to cockroaches, if not more. But now? If he dropped Gloria-infused Heavenly Assaults while everybody else used their powers? If they all invoked their Virtues?

James rippled his fingers over the haft of the skeggox. “You’re meant to observe, not intervene.”

“Where is it written, James? You know nothing about the rules that govern my kind. But if you break those rules, do not doubt that we shall erase you.”

“Huh.” James considered. “Miriam, what were you about to do?”

“I, ah…” Her voice was little more than a croak. “I was going to use my Benediction, Dispel Illusion.”

“Your lawfully given Benediction?”

“I… yes?”

“Then go right ahead. And if the Monitor tries to stop you, we’ll all summon our Virtues and go to town on her sorry ass.”

Jessica hissed. “You think your weak invocation of Dikastís scares me?”

“Do it, Miriam.”

The tension in the air was exquisite.

Miriam coughed, raised both hands, and closed her eyes.

Jessica’s face screwed up into an expression of utter fury.

James exhaled slowly, rose to the balls of his feet, and reached out for Dikastís, searching for the avatar of Justice in its alternate dimension. Ready to summon it the second Jessica made a move.

The air beside the shed began to shimmer.

Jessica suddenly laughed, all tension fleeing her body. “There is more than one way to skin a cat. Reap what you have sewn, James.”

She disappeared. One moment she stood upon the edge of the rooftop, the second she was just gone.

“Oh shit,” whispered Serenity.

James turned. The snowy ground behind the house had disappeared. In its place yawned a pit some ten yards in diameter, its edges rough and wounded. Trickles of red liquid welled out of the earth and ran between the shattered cracks into the darkness from which rose plumes of steam and a terrible stench of sulphur and heated metal.

“What the fuck?” whispered Jason, drawing back from the edge.

James stared, wide-eyed, into the dark depths.

Some fifteen or so yards below he saw the bottom. It was a large room, hewn from the living rock, the steam emerging from the cracks that rivened its floor and revealed seams of glowing orange in their depths.

A single archway stood to one side, edged in huge stones, a metal portcullis closing it completely.

“Well I’ll be god damned,” said James. “Good work, Miriam. Looks like we know where Belanger went.”

“And Jaywick,” said Serenity.

“And where we’re going,” said Yadriel. “Right, boss?”

“Right.” James gripped his axe. “Here we go.”

And he jumped in.

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