Kharrn raised the axe and used it to cut the restraining straps. He said, “Go and join your brothers. Do what you want with the men in this place, but I won't let you kill the innocent islanders.”
“No human is innocent. And you are too late, savage. For we are many.” The Deep One pointed over Kharrn's shoulder.
It was a feint, of course. Kharrn shifted his head but not his gaze. When the deep one tried to attack, Kharrn knocked the creature away with a backhanded blow of one huge fist. The Deep One had been imprisoned for a long time and it posed no real menace. The same couldn't be said for the group of Deep One's crowding into the outer room. The carried spears and knives and swords. They rarely needed more advanced weapons, as humans couldn't stand against their mental powers.
They wore garments that glittered like the scales of fish and all of them sported golden jewelry. Rings, necklaces, bracelets and anklets. It had been many years since Kharrn had seen the intricately worked golden creations of the Deep Ones.
Kharrn stepped out into the lab. He said, “You brother is here. Take him and go.”
He felt a dozen minds turn toward his own, seeking to take control of his actions. To seize his mind and destroy it from within. Kharrn grinned. He said, “Last chance to walk away.”
None of the batrachian creatures answered. He doubted they could. These were not hybrids, born on land and raised as men until their time came to go down to the depths. These were true denizens of the sea.
The Deep Ones brandished their weapons and began to stalk forward. Kharrn rolled his shoulders, preparing to hurl himself into the middle of his opponents.
That's when the soldier Kharrn had spared on the beach came running into the room pursued by a horde of the mutant Deep Ones. The old Deep One had learned to control his distant cousins. The other Deep Ones had no such chance, and apparently the mutants didn't recognize their progenitors. True Deep Ones suddenly found themselves locked in combat with things created from their blood.
And of course all of the Deep Ones, old and new, wanted to kill Kharrn. He raised the axe and waded in. He sent the head of the closest true Deep One rolling, then drove the heavy, double-bladed axe into the spine of one of the mutants. He jerked the blade free and the backswing tore through the throat of a creature that had attempted to spear him from behind.
The soldier was in a corner and apparently down to his last few rounds. He fired off three shots, then pitched the gun away and caught up a heavy stool to use as a bludgeon. Kharrn liked the fact that the young man didn't give up. He began cutting his way toward the Spec-Ops guy.
Four of the true Deep Ones converged on Kharrn, seeking to bring him down with swords and spears. The giant man bellowed in rage as he swung the axe in wide arcs. The blades of the Deep Ones' weapons shattered as they struck the axe and Kharrn hewed into the fish-men, cutting and hacking with the huge weapon.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kharrn saw Jonathan Crowley enter through a door on the far side of the lab. He struck one of the Deep Ones in the side of the head, crushing its skull.
Crowley had no idea how many ways there were to kill a Deep One, but he was willing to find out. Adrenaline sang through his system and drove him into the conflict. There was a blend of hybrids among the creatures, but even with mixed heritages, they were always the same beasts. That was what the scientists had failed to understand. No matter what the Deep Ones mated with, man or fish or even, he supposed, an alligator, they always had the dominant genes. The end result was always a Deep One, just sometimes with a few genetic advantages.
Crowley yanked the heavy spear from the hands of a monster coming for him and cracked it’s skull with the butt end. The sharp side was used on the next one to send it croaking in pain as it lost an eye.
The claws on one of the nightmare’s feet cut into his calf and bare foot and he growled at it as he shoved forward, knocking the thing backward and into a few more. Three cuts from claws and teeth were his reward, but he threw his new toy and pinned one of the true Deep Ones to the wall.
A heavy necklace of gold and stone marked one of the demons as a high ranker. Crowley jumped over the back of one of the things that had dropped to all fours and shoved it down to the lab floor even as he grabbed the elder around the neck with one arm and twisted. The spines from the elder’s back pushed against his chest and stung, but the Hunter wrenched the vast head of the thing sideways until bones snapped and it dropped, dead.
So often he had to restrain himself, but not now, not this time. Whether or not he lived through the encounter, he would kill as many of the things as he could before he died.
Brent had run out of luck and ammunition. When the three fish-men had appeared from nowhere, Brent's only avenue of escape had been to run inside the facility and hope for the best. That plan had turned to shit pretty quickly when he ran into even more of the creatures. He fired off a few rounds and then dodged into a stairwell, and now he was trapped in one corner of a room filled with fish-men, some of who were wearing clothes and carrying weapons.
He emptied the .45 without doing much damage that he could see, and then caught up the only weapon handy, a metal stool of the kind he remembered from college science labs.
The big man from the beach was making like an escapee from a Schwarzenegger flick, chopping through the fish-men with an axe like Brent had seen in Viking movies. The guy was hell on wheels and he was doing heavy damage, but there were just too many of the things. They rolled into the room like a black tide of death.
There was one way out, but it wasn't a good one. A primary component of any clean-up operation, though not one Brent usually handled — two team members had been carrying mass quantities of explosives. Captain Younger and Warrant Officer Mason Gentry. Gentry was dead and Younger too, probably. But when Brent had scavenged Gentry's ruck, he hadn't just taken ammo. Brent had a bag full of explosive devices if he could just get time to use them.
Brent dug into the bag, and then dropped it as one of the big fish-men came charging his way. The explosive charges scattered on the floor as Brent took up the stool again. He jabbed with the legs of the stool like he was trying to push back an attacker with a knife. The fish-man slapped the stool aside and that was all she wrote. The creature snarled, and drew back one big, clawed hand.
And that hand and the arm it was attached to went spinning away. Blood sprayed everywhere as a second blow from the big man's axe struck the fish-man.
Brent said, “I thought you were going to kill me.”
“Changed my mind. Can you set those charges?”
“Yeah, though we'll die.”
“Maybe,” the giant said. “Do it.”
Maybe? Did the guy think he could survive ground zero of half a dozen explosive charges? Brent shrugged, he was out of options. He set to work, trying his best not to look up as he heard the big man chopping away at anything that came close. Didn't the guy ever get tired?
“Kharrn, what are you up to?” Brent heard another voice call. He didn't look up. He almost had the charges daisy-chained together so that he'd only have to use one detonator.
“Fire in the hole,” Kharrn called back.
“Do you know how long it will take to heal up from that?”
“Yes. Keep fighting.”
Brent looked up. A man he hadn't seen before was fighting the fish-men with his bare hands. Who the hell were these people?
Brent said, “I'm ready. Give the word.”
“STOP!”
Kharrn heard the single word so loudly inside his head that it made him wince. He glanced over at Crowley, who gave a short nod to show he'd heard it as well.