Electronic piffling - Equilibrium, part 8

Fandom: Anita Blake
Pairing: N/A
Characters: Anita, Edward, OC, small appearance by Jean-Claude and Jason, miniscule appearance by Richard
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Takes place after Obsidian Butterfly and can be considered an AU starting from that point onward
Summary: Killing things is much more entertaining in good company.



"Thus it lightens into action:
I am come to kill thee."
Webster, "The Duchess of Malfi"

Pausing in the darkness, we waited for Dessa to extend her cautious feelers out through the building.
After a moment, she shook her head in frustration.

"We're too close to whoever is running this little show," she whispered to us. "I can't feel a thing
except a vague direction. Thataway."

She gestured down a long hall to our right. We moved in the direction she indicated, Edward taking point, Dessa between us, and me bringing up the rear. The only light we had was from several skylights,
clouded over with age and dirt, which let in pale slivers of moonlight.

Careful as we were, we nearly rounded a corner right on top of another guard. He was snoozing in a chair
in front of double doors, his chair precariously tipped backwards so only two legs were on the ground.
Edward was on him like a striking snake, one leg kicking out to topple the chair so the man flew backwards to land with a thud. But before Edward could silence him permanently, the man yelled, a raw sound of surprise and anger. It echoed down the hall, still ringing out even after Edward, with a vicious kick to the head, spun the man over onto his stomach, limp as a rag. A small trickle of blood dripped down onto the floor. Fractured skull.

A mere second later, I felt something tingling in the air, washing over my body and raising the hairs on my
arm and the nape of my neck. Edward and Dessa felt it as well, and Edward looked at me, waiting for an
explanation I couldn't offer. Dessa lifted her head, eyes wide.

"Uh-oh," she said. "I think somebody knows we're here." As the words left her mouth, I felt something
careening down the hall towards us, a massive glowing wave of searing heat. It sped closer, and I swear I
could feel my eyebrows start to crisp. I panicked, and rummaged frantically through my lessons with
Marianne for something to do about it. Throwing up my hand, I did the only think I could think of to stop it - a protective spell that had been one of the first things Marianne had taught me. I didn't dare hope for it to do anything other than diffuse the volcanic heat, but instead of the small magical shield I
expected, a blazing blood-red wall of light sprang up between us and the attacking magic, stretching from
floor to ceiling. As the wave of heat reached the shield, I felt it diffuse, ebbing away into nothing
and leaving us untouched. Frankly, I was as shocked at hell. From the looks of it, so was Dessa. She
turned to me, eyes wide.

"How the heck did you do that?"

"Something Marianne taught me. But I didn't expect it to do that, exactly..." My voice trailed away as I
realized what had given me the extra boost in power. "We just killed a man. I think I used the energy from
his death to boost it."

Dessa grinned savagely, her teeth white in the dim light of the room. "Good job, necromancer. Hope you
have a few more tricks like that. They're ready for us now."

Edward had the double doors open, and was scanning for signs of anyone watching us. A sudden ping, and he jerked his head back behind the doorway as a bullet ricocheted off the wall nearby. Another bullet whined in close behind it, fired from a different side of the hallway. No way to go forward, with two people shooting at us. And no way to go back and find a new way, in this maze of a factory.

I could see Edward furiously thinking. He flung himself out into a long, rolling dive, firing several
rounds from his shotgun as he crossed the open doorway. A spatter of bullets chased him back behind cover. He got to his feet and cursed under his breath.

"Two of them. One on each side. We're nicely pinned here, and I can't see them to shoot."

"Grenade?" I suggested, patting the sack that carried them.

"It's an idea, but I'm wondering if the roof will hold up if we do that. This place is a wreck. We might block our route with debris. Or panic our target into running with the victim."

Dessa turned to me, the glimmering of an idea on her face.

"Anita," she said speculatively, "You can control a zombie, right? Tell it to do something and it'll
obey?"

"If you're thinking about me raising the guy we just killed, forget it. It takes three days before the
soul leaves, and until it's gone, I can't raise the body."

"Well," she pondered, "Maybe I can help you out a little bit with that." She reached into a pocket and
pulled out a small mirror. "I can pull the soul into this for a few minutes. We use the body, and then
I'll put the soul back in so it can leave at its own pace."

I gaped at her. "You can do that? I've only met one person who can trap souls, and she used death magic!"

"I'm not trapping it, exactly. It's very temporary; I couldn't hold the soul in place for more than about
five minutes. Mirrors have their own magic, and if we survive this I'll show you how to do it. I'm not
positive that it'll work, but we can try. I'll coax out the soul, and then you can send the zombie after
those guys, right?"

"I think so. No...I know so. I can use an abbreviated ritual. Now's not really the time to say I don't approve of using zombies like this, is it?"

Edward and Dessa both shook their heads in unison.

I looked at Dessa. "Do it."

She nodded and walked back over to where the body lay. Kneeling, she lightly brushed his temples with her right hand. Gesturing, her fingertips flickering in a pattern that I couldn't follow in the half-light, she seemed to pull something cobweb-thin from the body, and then to draw it into the mirror. A rolling shudder went down my spine as I looked into its reflective depths...and saw the dead man's face looking back at me, trapped within it. His expression was blank, and I wondered if he could see me looking back at him through the thin glass of the mirror.

"Do it," Dessa hissed. "The soul will pop back into the body very soon. It's not done preparing to
leave!"

With one of my knives, I nicked my fingertip and squeezed several drops of blood out, enough to make a
rough circle around the body. Stretching out with my power, I willed the body to rise. With a snap only I
could feel, the circle closed, and the corpse filled with my power, with my will. It opened its eyes, and
rose to its feet, looking mutely at me.

"Go," I said, the power of command filling my voice. "There are two men there. Bring them to me."

The zombie, still looking quite alive save for a certain dullness in the eyes, and shambled forward into
the hallway. It was met with a slurry of bullets, which tore into it with little effect except to pockmark it with holes. The zombie ignored these, and headed for the man on the right. I heard a terrified scream, and a weapon drop to the floor. The zombie emerged, dragging the man by the wrist. He was wailing, terrified of this thing that he couldn't kill and which now had him in a literal death-grip. From across the hall, the other man fired several more rounds into the zombie's face, and we heard the wet *goosh* of an eyeball being destroyed. But it continued forward, free hand reaching out for the second man. The second gunman flung his empty weapon at the zombie, and took to his heels, pounding down the hallway. The zombie turned to pursue him. I stopped it with a word.

"Enough. Bring the man you have to me."

The zombie brought his prize to me, like a dog with a frisbee. I had it drop the man on the ground, where
he lay sniveling, completely unable to function. A dark stain had spread across the front of his pants.
Edward, who had been keeping well out of the way of the zombie, now stepped forward.

"This just wasn't your evening, was it?" He brought the butt of his gun around, and crashed it against the
man's head. He slumped, unconscious, but not dead. I raised an eyebrow at Edward.

"That was nice of you. Not to kill him, I mean."

"He's not any danger to anything anymore. Not worth the bullet."

"Anita," Dessa said urgently. "I've got to let the soul go now."

The surface of the mirror was undulating. Dessa passed her hand over it, and we saw the same stream of
silver cobweb drift out of the mirror, which now reflected only the darkness around us. I felt it - the soul - slide back into the body, and as it washed in, my power was forced out, trickling away until the
zombie was once again just a dead body. I took a deep breath.

"I don't ever want to have to do that again. Ever."

"I agree," said Dessa. "Let's not." We moved forward, deeper into the heart of the factory.

*

Judging by the height of the ceilings, we were in what used to be the main industrial area of the factory. Ahead of us, we could see light, seemingly coming up from the floor. As we got closer, we could see that we were above an even bigger room, which opened up below us, with a catwalk area ringing it about 20 feet in the air. Chains and pulleys hung from the ceiling, including what looked like a jury-rigged elevator, made from a window-washer's platform. The man who had fled the zombie was riding it down as fast as he could. We belly-crawled to the edge of the catwalk, and peeked over the edge to see where he was going.

The sight that met our eyes was as surreal as anything I had ever seen from my dealings with vampires. A large empty throne that looked like it had been built with plyboard scraps sat in the middle, barbed wire spilling around it in heavy coils. There were several candles placed on heavy iron candelabra throughout the room. Heavy wooden tables, with deep gouges scarring them, held the remains of a fast-food meal. On the floor, a carpet that must have once been luxurious gleamed dimly, its colors faded and the wool moth eaten. The effect was like a gothic thriller set in a post-apocalyptic era.

The room held about 10 men, by my count, all heavily armed and looking very nervous as our friend from the
zombie encounter babbled out his story, his hands flapping wildly as he told it. I didn't see anybody
who looked like the boss, however - these were all henchmen, several rungs lower on the ladder. Dessa
was looking angry, and she rolled to face me, hissing, "Nobody down there has enough ability to pop a paper
bag. And I don't see Paul anywhere."

Edward looked at us. "I don't like this at all. If we have to spend more time chasing through this place,
our odds are going to fall substantially. We've had too many problems to make me want to do that. I think
a smoke grenade and some rounds fired off into the chaos might lure your problematic friend in here to
see what's wrong."

It was a good plan. In fact, it was an excellent plan. It's a shame we didn't get the chance to try it
out. As I opened my satchel to pull out a smoke grenade, we heard a hoarse shout from the floor. We'd
just been spotted.

"Above us! They're up there!"

A spray of bullets arced up at us. Edward and Dessa rolled left, and I rolled right, returning fire instinctively. Edward's face was totally blank as he fired, jacked a new shell into the chamber, and fired
again. Below him, men were dying, making wet sounds as they fell. Dessa was following suit, aiming and
firing with a skill not hers until earlier this evening. As for me, I did my part, squeezing off dozens of rounds with my mini-Uzi. A pause, and we could hear groaning from the floor. A few of the men had taken cover behind overturned tables, but the majority were on the floor, dead or at least out of commission. I felt sick, momentarily - they had died so easily. We had the high ground, and they had been sitting ducks. Ok, sitting ducks with guns, but still. It had been so easy. I fought back the bile rising in my throat, and didn't meet Edward's sharp glance in my direction. Appearing weak in front of him was like bleeding in front of a shark.

Dessa's attention, meanwhile, had been caught by the far side of the room. She pointed.

"Look. I think we might have gotten what we wanted. Somebody's coming."

The room, oddly silent after the ear-splitting noise of the gunfight that had ended moments ago, was now
full of a shrill squeaking sound. It made my teeth ache as it grew louder, and I saw two figures entering
the room, one pushing the other in a wheelchair that was making the horrible noise.

"Dear, dear," said a masculine voice, rich and soothing, and clearly audible to us, perched as we were above its source. "All this fuss. I apparently didn't hire very qualified people, did I? Let's see who we have."

The voice spoke a word which I didn't hear clearly, but which I knew instinctively was a word of power.
The room filled with a blaze of light, illuminating every corner. As we moved back from the edge of the
catwalk to avoid being seen, the voice below us said, in greatly amused tones, "No, don't hide, children. I want to see who's come to play."

The catwalk under us collapsed, and we plummeted toward the floor.