Hardbingers

25

Numb with shock, Cal turned in a slow circle amid the carnage.

They'd entered as they'd been trained, pepper-potting in alternating pairs. Not until they were sure the main floor was secure did they risk a good look at what had been done to their fellow yenigeri.

Ybarra and the other three who'd been on first-floor duty had all suffered similar fates: necks and backs broken—in how many places Cal could only guess—and their bodies arranged in positions that made them look like spineless rag dolls. Each had a gaping hole in the center of his chest, right where the heart would be. Except the cavities were empty.

Where were the hearts?

Cal wandered around like a dazed bomb survivor. He found their pistols—main carries and backups—spooned together in a line in the center of the floor. But where were their hearts?

Four well-armed men had been slaughtered in broad daylight. How does that happen? He could see if it had been night and a well-trained team with night-vision goggles cut the power and broke in. But the lights were on. How could anyone get close enough—

He heard a faint sob and recognized the voice.

"Diana!"

He whirled. Not here. Couldn't be here. Upstairs—

He wasn't alone as he raced to the stairway. The rest of them had come out of their horrified trances and remembered their primary purpose for being here.

The Oculus.

He heard Diana sob again as he took the steps two at a time. He skidded to a stop in the Oculus's doorway. The others collided with him from behind, crowding him into the office.

Cal choked back a surge of bile. The carnage downstairs had been only a prelude to this.

Except for the blood spattered everywhere, the office was in perfect order, as if the 0 had stepped out for a cup of coffee. Only he hadn't stepped out. He was still here, nailed upside down to the wall behind the desk.

In pieces.

His limbs had been torn from their sockets and rearranged so that his arms jutted from his hip sockets, his legs from his shoulders, in a spread-eagle fashion. Like the yenigeri downstairs, his chest had been ripped open. His head rested on his bloody crotch with his penis jutting from his mouth. Cal noticed that his wide, staring eyes were blue now, the color they must have been before he became an Oculus.

But that wasn't the worst of it. As a finishing touch, his killer—and Cal had little doubt who that was—had used the O's intestines to create a circular border in a hideously grotesque inversion of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

When Cal could drag his gaze from the obscene tableau, he noticed an array of crimson objects on the desk. He took a wobbly step closer and realized they were hearts, eight of them—seven arranged in a perfect circle around the eighth. Looked like some sort of grisly parody of Stonehenge.

He closed his eyes. It confirmed what he'd already guessed: The three yenigeri upstairs had suffered the same fate as those below.

And then a sob… to his right… from behind the door to the private quarters.

Diana—still alive. Why? Why would he do that to her father and spare her? It didn't make sense.

Here was one more item to add to Cal's lengthening list of things that didn't make sense.

He rushed to the door but found it locked. No. More than locked. Jammed.

"Diana?" he called. "It's Davis. You're safe now. Stay away from the door. I'm coming in."

He looked back at Miller and the others, all slack-faced with awe and horror.

"Hey! Cover me."

They snapped out of it and stacked up around the door while Cal threw his shoulder against it once, twice, and then broke through on the third. As he stumbled in he found Diana crouched on the floor, head down, face buried in her hands, her body shaking with sobs.

Cal's first reaction was to grab her and drag her to safety, but he wanted to protect her from the charnel house in the outside room. So he broke procedure and made a quick one-man search of the room.

When he was sure it was secure, he knelt beside her, wanting to put a comforting arm around her, but she was only thirteen and he didn't know how she'd react.

"You're safe, Diana."

"My dad," she said through her hands. Oh shit. "Did you see?"

"No, but I know he's dead."

"How…?"

She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes… all-black eyes, as black as her father's had been.

"Because I am your Oculus now."