seymoure

Chapter 32
“The Whispers of Shadows”

Emilio Sanchez was getting fairly tired.

He had opted out of napping at the hotel so he could make some contacts with his own kind of “spooks.”

During his time in Military Intelligence he had met and talked with people who had seen more than the man on the street ever wanted to know.

In the jungles near Zambia he had help round up a former Nazi scientist who had created a wall of solidified sound. It was a weapon that would vibrate any matter it encountered out of existence.

In a ghetto outside of Ankara he assisted in the apprehension of a group involved in selling the secret of creating fully undetectable human flesh from scratch. They could mold a layer of DNA that would differ from the base human, and new fingerprints as well.

He had joined Sebastian Claus during a battle between an underground Chemical Cartel and the warriors of a demon named Delavale. The Chemists had invoked the demon while they were looking for a newer, stronger form of Viagra. 75 of the employees were lost, but they were listed as involved in a “chemical spill.”

Now Claus had asked him to check out Harriett Dante at the library.

He had been intrigued by the prospect, since his uncle had been a friend of her father. They had shared a great adventure, and stories of the two had been passed around for years.

What he had heard was that she was a worthy heir to the name. He had also heard she was attractive, and that didn’t hurt his wish to meet her. Few of the women he met could have any idea of the world in which he moved.

As he walked through the doors, he noticed that the temperature of the room fell harshly.

Emilio felt like he had walked into a freezer. The goose bumps rose on his arms, but not from the cold. This was a barometer of psy energy. It sapped heat from its adjacent area, it needed the heat to fuel its existence. The bigger the energy being, the larger the area of cold.

Everywhere in the room was icy.

Sanchez reached into his coat, checking that his gun was ready. He knew it probably wouldn’t do a damn bit of good against something magical, but it was comforting to know it was there.

As he walked to the desk he noticed a man with a bow tie standing behind his name plate. It seemed to be the information area, but there was no lighting, and the farther Emilio walked into the building, the darker things became. The name plate said “Aubrey Stillwell.” Sanchez smirked and thought to himself, “Looks like an Aubrey Stillwell to me.”

Then he stiffened.

Somewhere in the distance was a voice.

The voice was female and it seemed to be having a quiet conversation. He heard it when the voice laughed.

He walked in the direction of the sound, and found himself at the bottom of a staircase.

Another little laugh came from the top of the stairs.

Like a coiled muscled jungle cat, Sanchez stalked up the stairs. He might have been less tense if he didn’t know that nothing with a soul would be waiting to assault him when he got to the top of those stairs.

There was no man or woman on the Earth that Sanchez feared. But this psy-crap scared the hell out of him. Maybe that was why he was drawn to it.

As he reached the first landing, turned and started up the last set of steps, he could hear the woman’s voice more clearly. She was having an animated discussion about some books Emilio didn’t recognize.

As he topped the last step he saw a terrifying sight.

A young woman (He assumed it was Harriett Dante) sitting at a table talking happily, as if to someone she knew and liked.

Across from her was a mound of cancerous green slime, pulsating with her heartbeat. There were blue patches that looked like open wounds, and they seeped some clear liquid in order to live up to that description.

From the mound were what could best be called tentacles. They numbered four, at least that was what he could see, and they stretched from the thing to the girl.

One of them buried itself into her chest, another covered her eyes, the third went into her ear. The last one reached somewhere between her legs.

In the center of each tentacle was something like a vein, and they seemed to be filled with red. It was like they were drawing blood from her, but if they were she would have been dead already. They were large enough and long enough that she couldn’t have filled them with her own blood.

It was taking something else from her, but whatever it was, she wasn’t even aware of the violation.

Sanchez had his gun aimed and cocked without a thought.

Then a face appeared on the side of the thing closest to him.

The face was his uncle Jimmy.