“I understand,” Mike said. “Cloak and dagger and all that. Fine. Let’s get going, Courtney.”
“When do we…” Courtney asked.
“We’ll get together sometime tomorrow,” Herzer said. “About the farming stuff. The rest has to wait until…” He paused and shrugged. “You’ll probably be spending a lot of time here.”
“Okay,” Courtney said. “Later.”
“Come on,” Mike said, pulling at her hand.
“Well,” Megan said, leaning on the door as they left, “I think that went well, don’t you?”
“No,” Herzer grunted. “I hadn’t thought about how incredibly badly Mike would take it. I should have. I wish it was Mike that was the computer tech. I could imagine him surviving.”
“What a sunny thought,” Megan said, grimacing.
“Now, I think we had other plans,” Herzer replied.
“Frankly, that little scene sort of took it out of me,” Megan temporized.
“Well, I think a little brandy would help,” Herzer grinned, grabbing her hand. “And then we’ll see what comes up.”
Chapter Nine
“Oh. My. God.” Megan whispered. “Paul was never like… did you get… enhanced before the Fall?”
“Pure genetics,” Herzer said calmly. He’d discovered long ago that reciting multiplication tables helped. “My parents might have had a hand in it, but I never asked them. They’d released me before I really started to… grow.”
“That’s…” Megan said then stopped, tilting her head to the side. “I’m not sure…”
Herzer just waited as she tilted her head back and forth and then reached out with one finger.
“Does it get any bigger?” she asked humorously, running a single fingernail over the tip.
“Careful, or we’ll be starting all over again,” Herzer said, trying not to groan.
“I’m not sure about it… fitting,” Megan said, huskily, leaning forward, “but I think I might be able to get my mouth around—”
There was a shout from outside and then a scream and Herzer cursed luridly.
“Not NOW Bull God damnit!” he shouted, rolling to his feet and drawing his sword.
“Well, you should be able to beat them to death,” Megan said tightly, trying not to laugh. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Spiders. Two of the sentries are down. More… something. On the street and the roof,” she added, looking up at a scrabbling sound.
“Corner,” Herzer said, pushing her back and turning to the window.
“The girls!” Megan shouted. “Shanea, Meredith…”
“I’m just hoping to keep you alive!” Herzer replied as the window crashed in.
It was, as Cruz had reported, a giant scorpion, about two meters in length, not counting the tail. That was as long and it whipped back and forth outside as the thing climbed through the window.
Megan mouthed a syllable and extended her hand but the bolt of lightning stopped halfway across the room.
“They’re shielded,” she snarled.
Herzer darted forward as the thing scrabbled at the sill and swung the sword to bash the left claw out of the way. The right claw snapped at him, the monster pausing in its quest to enter the room, and he jabbed the tip of the sword into the joint of the claw, wrenching it with a hard twist of his wrist. The joint popped open and the claw flopped uselessly to the side.
The other claw was snapping at him by that time so he ducked to the right and jabbed the sword into the space between the creature’s eyes, twisting the sword again to prevent it being bound. There was a cracking sound and the scorpion began to spasm, its tail, which it had never gotten into the room, thrashing at the wall outside.
There was a scream from somewhere in the building and Herzer heard Megan dash to the door.
“Shanea!” she shouted.
“Megan, damnit,” Herzer shouted in turn, turning away from the beast and following his bride-to-be.
Mirta’s eyes had flown open at the first shout and she shuddered in her bed at a scrabbling on the roof. She jumped up and went to the window but the guard that was supposed to be on the alley below was nowhere in sight. She opened the window and leaned out, looking up. There was a noise up there, but whatever was making it wasn’t visible, yet.
She looked around the room and shook her head, then hiked up her nightdress and clambered out of the window. Grasping a drainpipe she half slid, half fell to the alleyway and scuttled across it into the deeper shadows on the far side.
Only when she was in shadow did she look up. Coming over the top of the building was some sort of massive bug, a scorpion, judging by the tail. It carefully climbed over the eaves and then slid down the wall to the open window. It had some trouble fitting through but in a moment it was out of sight. Before it was in, though, another had appeared on the roof and another, each of them heading for the other windows on that floor.
Shanea’s window crashed in and then Ashly’s, and Mirta shuddered at the screams but she didn’t move. It wasn’t courageous but she’d survived by knowing exactly when to be courageous and when not to be. And there was nothing she could do about those things.
“Shanea!” Megan shouted at the door, pounding on it. Two of the guards were down the corridor, holding one of the scorpions at bay, while more were apparently fighting on the landing.
Herzer slammed his bare foot into the door and then stepped back, trying to get a view in the room. The lamps in the corridor were turned up and the room was inky black. But he saw a movement by the bed and leapt through the doorway, pausing at the far side to check to the side.
The scorpion was at the bed in the room, scrabbling at something underneath, its tail waving in the air. From the sounds of it, what it was scrabbling at was Shanea, but he couldn’t tell if she was hurt or just screaming her bloody head off.
Herzer made another bound and flipped his sword through the air, cutting off the bulging stinger on the tail and removing that threat. Then he stomped down on the rear end of the creature, pinning it to the ground. He flipped his sword up and over, pointing it down and drove the tip into the thing’s braincase, all the way through and into the floorboards.
“Damnit,” he muttered, wrenching at the sword. “Shanea, are you hurt?”
“No!” she shouted.
“Then quit screaming!” Herzer bellowed, finally getting his sword free. He pulled the thing away, then reached under the bed until he made contact with one scrabbling hand and yanked the girl out, roughly.
“It was a… it was a…” Shanea whimpered, flailing her fists in front of her chest wildly.
“I know,” Herzer snapped. He went to the door and looked out, then ducked back as a black arrow embedded itself in the doorframe. “Fisk!”
He slammed the door and grabbed the bed, sliding it across and blocking the door. Then he looked around.
“Meredith,” Megan said, tightly. “Mirta, Ashly.”
“Bowmen in black in the corridor,” Herzer snapped. “Both guards down but so is the scorpion. But I don’t think the bowmen are on our side.”
There were crashing sounds coming from the next room over and Herzer shook his head.
“Meredith?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He walked over to the wall and looked at the plaster, then drove the sword into it, tearing downward. The plaster shattered and he continued cutting until he had a fair-sized hole in the wall. There were studs in the wall but there was enough room to fit between. He slammed his foot into the plaster on the other side, getting a small hole, then hammered his shoulder into it, finally breaking through in a shower of plaster dust.