Terminal White. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ in the chamber turned, all except for an elderly man who walked with a stick who was even now having his blood drained from him by the stone thing that had come to life.

      Across the chamber, Brigid Baptiste was standing before the statue of her other self, of Brigid Haight. She had stripped off her jacket and the loose shirt she had worn, revealing the tight black bodysuit she wore beneath—the shadow suit. The shadow suits had been discovered in Redoubt Yankee and were so named because they absorbed light, reducing the profile and visibility of the wearer. However, in the flickering light of the temple, the shadow suit’s similarity to the sleek black leathers, which Brigid had worn while possessed by Haight, “wrapping her body in the dead” as she had termed it then, was impossible to miss. With her grim expression and wild halo of red-gold hair, she looked for all the world like the hateful thing she had been before—Ullikummis’s hand in darkness.

      “Stop this, all of you,” Brigid shouted, her narrowed eyes scanning across every face in the room.

      For a moment there was silence—shocked silence at this vision of the woman whose statue dominated one wall of the temple chamber. Then, the leader of the robed acolytes cried, “The demigoddess has returned!” He dropped to his knees, arms outthrust in praise.

      Beside him, two more acolytes fell immediately to their knees, bending low until they touched the floor with their foreheads, muttering confused praises for the glorious return they were blessed to witness. In a few moments, it seemed that everyone in the temple had fallen to their knees to worship Brigid—all except for Kane, who lay sprawled and bloodied on the floor, and the stone monster that loomed over its latest victim.

      Still surrounded, Kane peered between the kneeling bodies of his attackers, and his brow furrowed. “Baptiste?” he muttered incredulously. “Don’t tell me this has all got to you.”

      “Hear me now and hear me well,” Brigid announced, pitching her voice in a low timbre of command. “This monster—” she pointed to the stone creature that had been brought to life in the flaming pit “—is a false god. He is not the great one. He is nothing but simple puppetry, brought to life to test your faith.”

      A stunned buzz burbled through the worshippers, and one pilgrim loudly cried, “We’ve been tricked!”

      “Yes, you have been tricked,” Brigid assured the crowd, striding toward them on her booted heels. “I walk among you now because such heresy cannot be allowed to flourish.”

      As she passed Kane, Brigid caught his eye and he detected just the slightest wink of one narrowed eye. Relief sang through him, bolstering his tired limbs and aching body.

      “B-but what should we...?” an elderly woman asked, confused by the direction her pilgrimage had turned.

      “Leave this place,” Brigid told her, addressing everyone in the room. “Feed not this false idol. Let it wither and die, struck from your very minds in disgust.”

      “Oh, brother,” Kane muttered. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t we?” But no one heard him.

      The pilgrims and the acolytes were stunned, and for a moment they all just knelt there, watching the demigoddess Brigid Haight walk among them, a vision from legend come back to life.

      “Go now!” Brigid commanded. “Swiftly. While I deal with this pretender!” And she stomped with a determined swagger toward the stone monster that loomed by the fire pit.

      There came a mass exodus from the temple then, pilgrims and acolytes hurrying out into the rain. Kane joined the crowd, slipping behind a pillar as sixty-something people hurried from the temple, which was alive with more flashes and bright bangs, as if a thunderstorm were occurring within its hallowed walls. Kane knew it wasn’t a thunderstorm, of course, or any other kind of godly, supernatural show. No, he had recognized the thing Brigid had used when she had made her first dramatic reappearance as “Brigid Haight.” She had employed a man-made device called a flashbang, similar in shape and size to a palm-sized ball bearing and designed as a nonlethal part of the standard Cerberus field mission arsenal. Once triggered, the flashbang brought an almighty flash of light and noise. It was similar to an explosive being set off, only the flashbang did no damage, as such. Instead, it was used by the Cerberus personnel to confuse and disorient opponents—and, just once, to pose as demigods, it seemed.

      Once the temple was clear, Kane made his way across to Brigid, who was standing a good distance away from the other standing figure in the room—the stone monster—watching it warily as they slowly circled one another. Around them, the fallen bodies of almost a dozen pilgrims and one robed acolyte lay, their skin pale where the blood had been drained.

      “So, what do we do now,” Kane asked, “your goddess-ness?”

      Brigid shot him a look. “Worked, didn’t it?”

      “I had things in hand,” Kane assured her.

      “You were getting your ass handed to you by three hick farmers and an old woman who walked with a stick,” Brigid shot back.

      Kane shrugged, knowing that now was not the time to argue. “Plan?”

      Brigid eyed the stalking stone figure across the temple. It was moving slowly, its limbs breaking apart, chips of stone trailing behind the main body.

      “It needs blood,” Brigid said. “Its body is made up of stone seeds—the obedience stones Ullikummis generated from his body.”

      “Yeah, he’s a regular chip off the old block,” Kane agreed, as the stone monster lunged at him and Brigid.

      The two Cerberus warriors danced out of the way—which was far easier now that the temple wasn’t crowded with other people—and they sprinted across the empty room until they were behind the fallen meteor, placing it between them and the monster.

      “Those stone seeds require the iron content in human blood to power them, remember?” Brigid told Kane. “Without blood, they revert to a dormant state.”

      “But Junior there just got a big feast of blood,” Kane reminded Brigid. “Enough to bring him to life.”

      “Yes, enough to bring him to life,” Brigid agreed, “but not enough to sustain him. That’s why he needs to absorb the blood from his victims.”

      The stone monster emerged from behind the meteor rock, unleashing a gurgled cry as it reached for Kane and Brigid. Brigid spun out of its reach while Kane dropped back and blasted a burst of fire from his Sin Eater. The monster swayed in place, recoiling from the impact of 9 mm bullets peppering its disjointed stone body.

      “How long do you estimate before the kid needs his next feed?” Kane asked Brigid in a breathless voice as he hurried across the temple to join her.

      “Hard to say,” Brigid answered, “but I think he’s moving slower than he was. Don’t you?”

      Kane watched the stalking figure emerge from behind the rock prison. It was moving slower; Brigid was right. It seemed to lurch more now, and barely remained upright as it searched for the two Cerberus warriors—the only sources of blood left in the temple chamber.

      “So, what—we keep out of that thing’s way until it burns through its energy source?”

      “Where’s the fun in that?” Brigid said with a smile. Kane looked down and saw what she held in her open hand. СКАЧАТЬ