The Baen Big Book of Monsters by Hank Davis

Author:Hank Davis [Davis, Hank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, science fiction, General, Collections & Anthologies, Horror
ISBN: 9781476736990
Google: cujqoAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1476736995
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2014-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

Our units are transported in varying ways. Sometimes, a striking party of witches will fly on brooms to the location. And sometimes, when the party is mostly male, and mostly not drilled in the ancient disciplines, we are transported in other ways. In this case, it was a black helicopter, though the legion can also use mechano-magical vehicles, which I suspect are responsible for most of the legends of UFOs.

This time we flew at night in a helicopter and were dropped off in a green, verdant area. The Yellowstone River was to our right, and the rim of the caldera ahead. There were tremors underfoot, but I wasn’t sure if there were more than the usual tremors for a geologically interesting region. I’d never been particularly interested in it. There was a time, in the mid oughts, when I’d been having trouble sleeping during the day and spent a lot of time reading conspiracy theories about the Yellowstone super volcano.

We had magically spelled glasses which made the night landscape as clear as day, but we’d be mostly invisible to any observer.

Ropharz was ahead of us, and there were other units from other chapters throughout the west. I was vaguely aware of helicopters landing and disgorging legionnaires, and of a party of witches arriving on broomsticks. Probably from the Albuquerque Chapter. They were almost all female.

The Denver chapter is odd. Most of us are not magically learned. Ropharz was the only sensitive in this unit. At least the only trained sensitive.

For once, he didn’t have his cigarettes, though a smell of them hung about him. He looked odd, as he usually did when he was working magically. His olive skin looked strangely pale, and had a suggestion of translucence about it, and his eyes were half closed. “Ahead,” he said, and pointed. “That way. I’m getting communications from the other units, too. I can sense the first snail is making its way to the surface already. We will have to kill it as it emerges, and probably another three or four of them, then get down the hole they leave and kill the eggs before any more hatch. The one emerging now was close enough to the surface it will not disturb the volcano. But if the deeper ones emerge, they will form a tunnel that will allow the river to spill into the magma, and then . . .”

“And then?” Lilly asked. “Won’t it cool the lava, or something?”

He shook his head. “No. If it hits just right or just wrong . . .” He made a gesture with his hands. “Kaboom.” And then he gestured again, running his hands in a flat gesture, palm down, as if to indicate the quietness of death.

Well, at least it would be quick for us.

Ahead, I could see the ground humping, the green turf rising, a little, then a little again.

Something long and tentacular poked through the grass. There was a scream, and the unit closest to it—I thought it was the New Mexico witches, did something that threw a flash of light into the air.

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