Deathstalker Legacy (6 page)

Lewis steered his gravity sled in beside Finn’s as they approached the towering outer wall of the Arena, the grim gray stone rising up before them. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the rising wind. “How bad is it; do you know?”

“Bad,” Finn said flatly. “Maybe a dozen ELFs. More than have been seen in one place for over thirty years.”

“Enough to take on the whole Arena crowd?”

“More than enough. They’re stronger when they work together, you know that. First reports talked of hundreds dead. By now, it could be thousands.”

“Then why hasn’t the oversoul sent help?” said Lewis angrily. “The Psycho Sluts; they’ve got a good track record against the ELFs.”

“Them? They’re more trouble than they’re worth.” Finn’s voice was entirely calm. They might have been discussing where to go for dinner. “I don’t want those show-offs anywhere near me. Crazy as their progenitor, and dangerous with it.”

“We need backup on this, Finn . . .”

“We won’t be getting any help from the espers, Lewis. I already checked. They’ve got their hands full with an ELF attack on New Hope. The greatest concentration of espers on Logres is currently under attack by a suicide mind, broadcasting cannibalism memes all over the city. It’s all the oversoul can do to keep a lid on its own people, and stop them from eating each other. Or themselves. They said they’ll turn up when they can, so don’t expect them any time soon.”

“What about the other Paragons in town for the Ceremony?”

“Too far away. By the time they get here, it’ll all be over, one way or the other. And all the local peacekeepers have been told to stand down and hide behind their esp-blockers. No point in giving the ELFs more minds to mess with. No, Lewis; it’s down to us. Turn on your esp-blocker. We’re going in.”

Lewis’s hand went immediately to the flat box at his waist. Cloned esper brain tissues, activated by an electric current. Not alive, not in any way conscious, but once activated capable of broadcasting a telepathic signal that blocked all esper powers in its vicinity. For a time, anyway. Finn glanced at Lewis, grinned briefly, and then his sled topped the colosseum’s outer wall and plunged down into the Arena; and Lewis was right there with him.

They could hear the maddened screaming and howling long before they were close enough to see the cause. Finn and Lewis descended swiftly through the sounds of Hell, into the heart of horror. The crowd were doing awful things to each other. Hundreds of thousands of people, raping and torturing and murdering each other, screaming and sobbing in anguish as they did it, their bodies moved by thoughts not their own. The ELFs had possessed the crowd; every man, woman, and child there dominated by an outside force beyond any human resistance. Appalling thoughts and needs and desires thundered inside their heads, and their bodies leaped to obey. Every foul thought and sick impulse ran wild in the blood-soaked terraces, while the hidden ELFs laughed and laughed, savoring the forbidden pleasures by proxy, and feeding on the released psychic energies.

There were old names for creatures like this that preyed on Humanity. Very old names. Demons. Vampires. Eaters of souls. But no name was more cursed in the Golden Age of Empire than that of the ELFs.

And the true horror of it; the possessed knew what they were being made to do. Helpless inside their own heads, they could only cry out at what their bodies were doing. Even those who survived this atrocity would spend the rest of their lives remembering it. Mental torture was just another pleasure, another source of energy, for the ELFs.

Lewis and Finn came roaring in on their gravity sleds, faster than the human eye could follow, howling their war cries. Finn’s call to battle was his own ancient family name:
Durandal!
Lewis inherited his from the blessed Owen:
Shandrakor! Shandrakor!
The proud names stood out against the howling, and the ELFs looked up and saw their enemy coming; and a concerted mental roar of hate came boiling up to meet the descending Paragons.

The moment they revealed themselves, their minds blazed out like balefires on the instruments on Lewis’s sled, marking their positions in the crowd. Lewis’s heart sank. There were twenty ELFs present. Even with an esp-blocker to protect him against direct mental attacks, Lewis was in trouble and he knew it. If the ELFs even thought they were losing, they’d make every man, woman, and child in the crowd kill themselves. Hundreds of thousands of innocents, dead in a moment. Twenty ELF minds working together could do that. One last spiteful gesture.

Lewis carried an energy weapon on one hip and a sword on the other, and a force shield on his arm. And that was all. Usually, it was enough. Disrupters took a mere thirty seconds to recharge between shots these days. Though of course the sword was still the preferred, more honorable weapon. Neither of them much use here and now. The gravity sled had a great many built-in protections, but no offensive weaponry at all.

Lewis skimmed his sled low over the heads of the heaving crowd. Close enough to count the bodies, see the blood and the torn flesh, and the possessed faces transfixed with outside pleasures. What the hell were twenty of the bastards doing in one place, out in the open? Four or five was a more usual grouping, and even then they usually preferred to hide somewhere secure while they worked their evil; close enough to affect their victims without having to expose themselves . . . But the closer the connection, the more minds the ELFs could control, and the greater the pleasure and energies to be gained.

And, just maybe, they wanted to see it all for themselves . . .

Twenty ELFs. Hundreds of thousands of victims. This wasn’t just a feeding frenzy, Lewis realized slowly. This was a statement. A warning, a threat, an insult to the King to be.
Leave us alone. You don’t rule us. No one does, not even our own kind. Leave us alone, or we’ll do terrible, awful things. We’ll make your people butcher and slaughter each other, and we’ll eat it up with spoons. Do what we wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Wrong,
Lewis thought coldly.

Even as Lewis grappled with what to do, the enemy revealed themselves. In their arrogance, in their hatred and contempt for mere Humanity, the ELFs rose up out of the possessed crowd to show themselves, and taunt their enemy. Twenty ordinary-looking men and women flew up into the air, floating high above the writhing mass below them, and called out mockingly to the two Paragons, defying them. Their eyes glowed golden, bright as suns, and blasphemous self-generated halos circled every malevolent head. Their presence beat upon the air like giant wings, and then lashed out against the Paragon’s esp-blockers, trying to smash aside their defenses through sheer brute power.

Lewis cried out despite himself, as something vile trailed fleetingly across the edges of his mind. As though a monster had hammered its fist on the door to his soul, demanding to be let in. Part of him wanted so badly to just run away and hide, but he was a Paragon, and a Deathstalker, and there were some things he just didn’t do. He gunned the engine of his gravity sled and aimed it at the nearest ELF, shooting forward like an arrow from a bow. His eyes were very cold and very steady, and full of death. The rogue esper actually hung there for a moment in midair, unable to believe a mere human had dared to defy him, and then he dropped quickly back into the surging mass of the crowd below, hidden and secure behind his human shields. Lewis lost sight of him and shot by overhead, cursing silently.

He could leave his sled behind, drop down into the crowd himself, and go after the ELF. He had a face now, and a general position. But if he did, and couldn’t find the ELF fast enough, the human thralls would fall on him, on their master’s orders, and tear him apart. They’d probably be weeping while they did it, but that wouldn’t help Lewis.

He turned his sled around in a tight arc, and there was Finn, slumped half-conscious over the controls of his drifting sled. The ELFs’ attack must have got through his esp-blocker. Lewis hit the accelerator on his sled, but the nearest ELF had already shot through the sky to drop onto Finn’s sled, grinning widely at the thought of possessing and then draining so famous a Paragon. And Finn Durandal turned around, also grinning, and the ELF knew he’d been had. Finn’s hand came up with a disrupter in it. This close, the sled’s esp-blocker was strong enough to blow away the ELF’s psionic defenses, and Finn laughed softly at the look on the ELF’s face. At that range, the disrupter bolt tore the ELF’s head right off his shoulders.

Lewis cheered and whooped, but his voice was quickly lost in the roar of shock and anger that went up from the other ELFs, as they dropped quickly back into the safety of their crowd. Finn ignored the cheer and the lamentations. He just kicked the headless body off his sled, and went looking for someone else to kill.

Out on the sands, a hundred or so of the crowd had been sent forth by the controlling minds to shout ELF propaganda at the hovering Arena security cameras. The rogue espers knew that by now the major news media would have struck a deal with the hiding Arena security people, to allow the media access to the security camera feeds, so they could broadcast the atrocity to their viewers live, as it happened. News commentators were probably already doing anguished voice-overs, decrying the horror and tragedy of it all, but the bosses knew what sucked in the viewers. Human blood and suffering, in close-up. The ELFs knew that too, and were taking advantage of it.

So men and women who’d been made to tear out their own eyes and cut off their own noses, their hands dripping with the blood of innocents, chanted ELF demands to the unblinking cameras, calling for their own subjugation to ELF rule and the destruction of the esper gestalt. They sneered at the Paragons who’d come to save them, laughed at the dead and dying in the crowd, and taunted the viewers with their own helplessness.
We are unstoppable,
said the ELFs, through their thralls.
And when we’re finished here, we’ll come for you. We’ll come for all of you, and play with you till you break.

And in the cheap seats, on the terraces, and in the private boxes, the possessed crowd raped and tortured and maimed each other, howling and crying like the damned as they did.

Lewis was so distressed and angry by now, he could hardly breathe for the tightness in his chest. Hot tears stung his eyes, but he wouldn’t give in to them. There’d be time for grief later. He glared about him, studying the sands, suddenly sure he was missing something. Where were the gladiators? There would have been dozens out on the sands, entertaining the crowd, when the ELFs attacked. They must have run for cover the moment they realized what was happening, protected by their own esp-blockers. (All gladiators were protected from all kinds of outside influence; how else could the betting be kept honest?) They were probably huddled together in their cells under the Arena.
They should have stayed and fought,
thought Lewis angrily, but he already knew what Finn would have said to that.

Lewis pushed that thought aside, to follow another. He was closing in on something, something important. The gladiators would have left the sands by the main entrance. Lewis shot across the sands towards the main gates, closing his mind if not his heart to the sounds of suffering all around him. Above the closed gates was a security control center, computers to run the automated systems. Like the security cameras . . . That at least was something he could do. Lewis took careful aim and blasted the center with his disrupter. The whole place blew apart in a satisfyingly large explosion, and all the security cameras went offline, dropping out of the air like dead birds.

The thralls on the sands screamed the ELFs’ frustration, as they realized their propaganda wasn’t going out any longer. No doubt the media bosses were also doing a certain amount of screaming at being denied such prime material, and no doubt there would be any number of official complaints to come, but Lewis decided he wouldn’t worry about that until later.

He looked around to see what Finn was doing, and his stomach dropped. Finn’s first thought was always to take out the bad guys. Preferably by the most direct route. Lewis saw immediately what the other Paragon was planning, and cried out to him, but it was too late. Finn wouldn’t have listened anyway. He never did.

Finn drove his gravity sled into the crowd at full speed, plowing through them like a battering ram. Both he and the sled were protected by the force shield at its prow, and he slammed through the screaming people, throwing them aside, bloodied and broken, as he sped towards the ELF he’d located in the crowd. The ELF threw himself into the air, but he was too late. Finn raised the sled’s prow just a little, and hit the ELF head-on at full speed. The sled’s esp-blocker shut the ELF’s powers down, and his body was splattered all over the gravity sled’s force shield. And all it cost was fifty or so dead and maimed innocents who happened to be in the way of Finn’s sled. Finn didn’t look to see. He was already circling over the crowd again, looking for another target of opportunity.

Afterwards, he’d make all the appropriate noises to the families of those he’d injured and killed, but Finn didn’t really care. All the Paragons knew about Finn. All he ever cared about was taking down the bad guys, and if some innocents got caught in the cross fire, well, that was regrettable but sometimes necessary. And people accepted that, because Finn was so very good at taking down the bad guys.

Lewis had never accepted it.

He shut out the horrid din of the crowd, and the thought of how many poor souls Finn might kill in the ruthless pursuit of his prey, and made himself concentrate on the main problem. There was an answer . . . he could feel it. Something someone had said, not too long ago . . . The thought eluded him, maddeningly just out of reach. All right. All right; think it through. The crowd is trapped in the Arena. No way of getting them out of the Arena. Security would have sealed all the exits automatically. So the answer to the problem would have to come from inside the Arena . . . Security! Arena security used tanglefields and sleepgas to control the imported killer aliens! Dammit, he’d only just been discussing that with Finn and Douglas at Court!