Ascendance by John Birmingham Page A

form of torture, as he cowered, helpless to do anything about the cries for mercy, the screams of horror and of pain he alone could hear.
    If Karen heard them, it didn’t seem to bother her.
    The police fired back at the Sliveen, who seemed to be scattered from the ground floor to the rooftop of the condo. A daemon scout had even holed up in the tower of the cathedral next door. Handguns and a couple of shotguns roared, making life hazardous for any daemonum closer to the ground. The single shot crack of what Dave guessed to be sniper fire swatted at those higher up. He saw a Sliveen topple forward, out of the church bell tower. The giant, insect-like carcass bounced and skidded down the old stone facade, catching here and there on some irregular facet of the building. Newton’s Laws finished the job in spectacular fashion at street level where the Sliveen’s bony carapace cracked and explosively blew apart on the steps of the cathedral.
    Next door, at 530, glass shattered, masonry fell and iron-tipped arrakh-mi bolts clanged and sparked off the road in reply, or banged into the steel panels of the police cars. For one mad moment the vehicles reminded Dave of circled wagons in an old western. From his hiding place he watched Karen arguing with one of the cops. Sheathing her katana, she reached out and grabbed the guy’s face.
    ‘Whoa.’
    Dave knew what was coming. He knew too that he wanted no part of it.
    The cop, who had resisted fiercely whatever she’d been saying, suddenly changed. His whole demeanour, as outlined in his posture, even crouched so low in cover, switched from resistance to compliance at her touch. Or so it would seem to anyone other than Dave, or perhaps Trenoweth. He watched as the officer handed over his weapon, a submachine gun of some type and, presumably, a bunch of reloads for it. The small, dark objects looked like unusually large pistol magazines. Dave didn’t think beat cops packed that kind of artillery, but maybe he’d picked it off one of the dead guys. There was plenty of dead guy stuff lying around. Another cop handed over his weapon too, a pistol, although Warat didn’t appear to reach out and touch him in any way.
    Dave edged out of cover and tried to warp. The way this clusterfuck was killing people, it was worth trying. ‘Karen,’ he yelled. ‘We’ve got to get in there.’
    A force ten hurricane blew through his head. The pain blinded him, loosened his bowels and forced him to his knees. Looking up through the blurry haze he could just make out another Sliveen on the roof of the building far above, shooting down into the street. He was sure he heard SWAT snipers in other buildings nearby start firing at the exposed creature.
    A medic appeared from out of the blizzard of pain, dropped down next to Dave and tried to assess him. With great care he pushed her away. Careful not to break the black-clad, body-armoured woman.
    ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’ a voice asked. Male, gruff.
    ‘He needs a teaspoon of harden-the-fuck-up and don’t- be-so-fucking-stupid.’
    Karen. She was angry enough that he fancied he could detect the merest hint of a Slavic accent underneath her carefully curated American voice.
    ‘I told you not to do that,’ she said. The faint echo of Mother Russia gone again.
    As his vision cleared and the pain receded he saw she’d abandoned the cover of the patrol car and joined him in the entryway of the building across the street from the condo. He wondered how she’d made it across, if she’d been as fucked up as him.
    The two cops she’d left behind sat with their backs against the side of the vehicle, watching her with moon eyes, their legs splayed out in front of them, their posture and attitude akin to public drunkenness. A condition with which Dave Hooper was not unacquainted.
    The situation out on the street was chaotic. Corpses and parts of corpses everywhere. Body parts hanging from trees on the median strip: human and daemonum, but