"Sir?"
A light flashed in the darkness, and the Commissar saw Jen, and behind her - Dwyer, who, numb, stared in the direction where, presumably, the grate and the monster remained.
"I'm fine," Brannon said. The bubble was getting stuffy - Redfern warned about the supply of air. A faint bluish glow spread under the water, and Nathan, with Jen's help, finally made the bubble move towards the grate.
The carcass of the monster lay at the bottom, buried in the silt. Fragments of a lattice were scattered around, sparks of a magical current clicked in its place, cracks adorned the canal walls, and consultants and the pyromaniac contemplated their handiwork with a contented look.
"That's not bad," Longsdale said. "As Mister Redfern had expected, the creature's armor was not designed to withstand a powerful magical…"
"I see," the commissar the commissar cut him off. "Now get out of here before the canal collapses or Roismann sends a couple more of his pets."
"You be right," Bergmann nodded. "We hurry!"
Nathan looked back at the puma, noted without much surprise that the beast was safe and sound, and was the first to make his way into the canal. Roismann took care of laying out the walls, the floor and the ceiling with stone, and therefore there was not much silt in the water, and the visibility remained good. The commissar made out some kind of structure in the distance and walked towards it.
It turned out to be a pumping system that brought water up to the laboratory. There was a floating platform nearby. By the light of the balls of fire, Brennon peered into the rising tunnel above it and saw hatch and staples driven into the wall. Probably, even in Roismann's lair, the pumps needed cleaning, repairs and other maintenance. Nathan was already trying to climb onto the platform, when suddenly Jen hissed:
"Do you hear? Someone is upstairs!"
The Commissar looked up. Someone's hands slowly pushed the hatch cover, and a silhouette with glowing green eyes appeared in the opening. Snappish pushed Brennon away from the tunnel and in three powerful jumps, pushing his paws off the walls, soared to the hatch, turning into a blazing fireball on the fly. The puma rushed after him, after the puma - the wolf, and from above there were shrill screams, which were now and then blocked by the powerful roar of the hound. Soon the hiss of a cat and the snarl of a wolf were added to it.
"I feel like useless trash," Dwyer muttered, and Brannon shared his feelings completely. Redfern, ahead of the commissar, climbed onto the platform, got rid of the bubble and began to inspect and feel the pump system. The Commissar did not even doubt that the pyromaniac was planning a sabotage, and did not interfere with him. After all, they are not only here to capture Roismann, but also to raze this place to the ground.
Silence fell overhead. Snappish appeared in the hatch and nodded, as if inviting the other guests to enter. Longsdale was the first to climb into the tunnel - fluttered like a butterfly, dispelled an air bubble and raised Brennon. It's a good thing this devitation of them, the Commissar thought, soaring after the consultant to the hatch. Without a bubble, it was much easier to breathe even in the damp, stale air of the dungeon.
A small room above the canal was littered with dead undead. The puma and the wolf sniffed at the corpses. A massive door was visible ahead. Brannon jabbed a foot into the charred body.
"Do you think Roismann ran out of undead supplies?"
"Who knows," Longsdale said. Redfern got out of the tunnel and was about to say something, when suddenly the animals turned to the door and grunted menacingly. The witch and the consultants instantly surrounded Brennon, Dwyer, and the pyromaniac. The door opened slowly. Mazandranman stood on the threshold, his mighty arms folded across his chest. He took a long look at all the uninvited guests in turn, reached Jen and suddenly gave a weak cry, leaning forward. The witch stared at the bearded man and with a loud cry rushed to meet him, as if he were her brother lost in infancy.
"Jen!"
"He's one of us!" The witch shouted in rage. "This vile is holding one of us in slavery!"
The giant parted his thick beard and showed a wide collar, mottled with mehndi patterns. Reddfern stared at the collar and hissed something obscene.
"There is a disguise! That's why Margaret and I didn't understood!.."
The giant spoke excitedly in Mazandranian. Brannon caught a few familiar words in his speech, but in twenty years the language in which he once spoke not badly with the locals had completely disappeared from his memory. The Commissar only realized that Jen's kinsman could not remove the collar, but how could they help him with this? While Nathan was trying to scrape together words for the question about Roismann, the pyromaniac asked something briefly in Mazandran, listened to the answer and frowned.
"While he is wearing this collar," he said, "the witcher is forced to follow Roismann's orders. Fortunately, the dickhead told him to take us prisoner, and not kill us, otherwise..."
The bearded man shook his head in sorrow and clenched his powerful fists, then poked his collar with his finger and rattled a short phrase inquiringly. Jen ran her hand over the patterns and turned to Brennon.
"I can try. I can melt it."
"Right on him? Dwyer gasped. "You kill him!"
Redfern posed this question to the giant. He laughed and answered in Mazandranian.
"Fat chance," the pyromaniac translated briefly. The giant added a few more phrases with concern. Angel pursed his lips and after a few seconds said:
"I don't quite understand, but it seems to me that he means that we need to hurry. Not seeing him with the prisoners, Ragnihotri, in the sense of Roismann, can panic and give him a new order."
Brannon considered the situation and decided:
"Well, in captivity, so in captivity. Lead us to this great teacher."
"But why?!" Bergmann exclaimed. "There have a place a trap for sure!"
"I don't doubt it," the commissar grunted. "But the Mazandranman is right - Roismann will probably begin to take action if he realizes that his order has not been fulfilled. Wait a minute, though," he figured something out and said: "Raiden, are you sure you can remove the collar without killing your kin?"
"Yes," Jen answered and with tenderness that surprised Nathan squeezed the wide palm of the bearded man in her hand. "The collar is designed to contain his powers, not mine."
"Good. Then do it here, and we go to Mister Roismann, if he so longs for our company."
"I think you'rre right, " Miss Oettinger said. "We can'tt lett him go iv he want to escape. And he want to."
"You bet," Redfern said. He exchanged a few phrases with the Mazandaran witcher and strode towards the door. Behind it a staircase began, along which the consultants and Brannon and Dwyer, holding their weapons at the ready, climbed to the second floor, into a small hall with several doors. Redfern opened one of them, and without the slightest trepidation or caution, he was the first to cross the threshold with the words:
"Didn't expect us so soon?"
Brannon sighed heavily and hurried after the madman. And why are some completely unteachable?
However, judging by the expression on his face, the pyromaniac was the last person Roismann expected to see in his holy of holies. The master of the undead jumped out of the chair, backed away as far from the entrance as possible, and held out an orange-patterned hand in front of him, muttering ominously. A quivering, pale yellow haze appeared between him and his guests. The consultants and the animals surrounded him in a half-ring, and Roismann's gaze darted in panic between them and Redfern, who stopped at a distance, put his hands in his pockets and, swaying on his heels, surveyed the room.
Brannon looked around too. Overall, the room looked half like a study with a desk and bookshelves, half like a laboratory. On the other two tables, something was bubbling and smoking in retorts, and the shelves were crammed with all sorts of cans, flasks and boxes. In front of the fireplace a Mazandran armchair was, and in the spaces between the cupboards and shelves, the Commissar counted five mirrors, where nothing was reflected. He didn't like it.
"Dwyer," he said quietly, "fire off the mirrors."
The detective willingly took aim and fired, but the bullet ricocheted off an invisible obstacle and shattered the retort of bubbling red liquid. It poured onto the table and immediately burned right through it, spilled onto the floor and began to work its way down.
"Stop it, idiots!" Roismann howled in falsetto.
"And not what?" Angel asked coldly. "We all die? Well, be comforted by the thought that you will go to another world in good company." He pulled his hand out of his pocket and clicked a button on some round thing. Roismann's eyes popped onto his forehead. "Oh yes, you know what it is. You must have seen it when stolen one of my mail containers from the Aventine station."
"But I don't know what it is," Brannon said. "What have you brought with you?"
"The grenade," the pyromaniac responded serenely. "It completely destroys all spells, enchantments and magical properties of objects within a radius of ten yards."
The Commissar did not even ask why the hell this nutcase was carrying grenades in his pockets. He, in fact, was not even surprised, because what else to expect from Redfern? Nathan just asked through clenched teeth:
"Does it destroy people too?"
"If you stand too close, shrapnel wounds are possible," Redfern said and threw a grenade at Roismann's feet. At the same moment, Dwyer rushed at the Commissar and slammed him into the floor with his entire mighty body. Brennon barely had time to wheeze " Holy shit!.." when the office was drowned in a fierce flash, and the walls and ceiling were shaken by the roar of an explosion, overlapping the shrill cry of the master of the undead. Then a thick, acrid smoke poured from somewhere, and Nathan coughed convulsively. Then a whole cannonade of quiet explosions burst out, and finally, after a minute or two, everything was quiet.
Brennon crawled out from under the detective, rubbed his eyes watering from the flash and, covering his mouth and nose with his hand, looked around. Blackened retorts and flasks on the tables smoked, shelves, smashed by a hundred small explosions, tilted dangerously towards the center of the room, books and cupboards with them were charred, empty mirror frames gaped on the walls, and everything around was littered with small, black glass crumbs. The consultants prudently clung to the floor, and beasts covered them from above. The window flew out from the explosion, and a gentle breeze blew into the room.
"What are you waiting for?!" Redfern hissed, covered in soot, dust, and whitewash, rising like a snake from behind the chair by the fireplace. "Grab this bastard!"
Brannon pulled a regular, good old Morrigan out of its holster and walked over to an overturned work table behind that showed a hem of orange robes. Snappish jumped off Longsdale and hastily overtook the Commissar. Behind the table a faint, vicious exclamation came. The hound bared his teeth and growled dully. Brennon's heart thumped with fear, and he sternly said:
"Snappish, stop."
Roismann pressed himself against the wall between the table and the window. The orange patterns on his body darkened and looked like caked blood. However, the shards of glass only cut through his clothes, without causing any harm to the master of the undead.
"Do you really think," he hissed, "that you can arrest me and keep me in jail?"
"I'm not going to."
"So you came to negotiate?"
"No," Brannon put his hand on the hound's withers. Roismann shouted something short in Mazandranian. Nathan recognized one of the words and said:
"He will not come. Jadugar whom you have enslaved."
"Sir!" Dwyer yelled. Brannon turned to see something with long black hair sweeping the floor had already crawled out of the fireplace to the waist. The detective's self-control cracked, and he put a bullet right in the top of the crawling creature's head. The creature's head twitched, green eyes flashing from under its hair. The puma jumped on the filthiness and tore off its head.
The floor cracked ominously, and a crack went up the wall. Roismann made a desperate dash and, leaving a piece of Mazandran robes in the hound's mouth, jumped out the window. Snappish rushed after, Brennon was about to dart to the window, but then the floor stood on end, and something huge, howling, like a whirlwind, crashed into the office with a crash, broke through the ceiling, tore off the roof and broke free. The consultants, the pyromaniac, and Dwyer were slammed into the walls, and Brennon was nearly thrown out of the window by a gust of hurricane.
"It is he!" Jen shouted, emerging from a huge hole in the floor. "I melted the collar and now here!"
The house crackled and reeled.
"Get out of here!" Brennon snapped. "This way, it's not high here!" and jumped out of the window.
He successfully landed on soft grass, but was immediately knocked to the ground by a gust of wind. A hurricane funnel spun around.
"Hey!" the commissar yelled. "This is us!"
A narrow sleeve separated from the hurricane, dived into the house, pulled out all the consultants, animals, pyromaniac, Dwyer, the witch, and rather carefully lowered them to the ground. A hound roared triumphantly nearby. Brannon and Redfern almost raced towards the sound.
A huge fiery monster darted around a man crumpled on the ground and roared low, scratching the ground with its paws, but could not grab of him. A swarm of orange patterns hovering over Roismann kept the monster away from the victim.
"Now what?" The Commissar asked.
"We can wait until he dies of fear," the pyromaniac suggested in anticipation. "Although I promised Margaret to skin him," he pulled a long, narrow blade from its sheath. The hound snapped at Redfern and loomed over Roismann with its entire flaming body. Roismann's clothes started to smoke.
"I can offer you something you never dreamed of!" He squealed. "Listen, we can agree!"
"No," Angel replied. His eyes lit up like those of an animal, his nostrils flared eagerly, and he even leaned forward, although an unbearable heat emanated from the hound.
"I can share!.."
A hurricane roared. The house creaked heavily and sagged to the side, one of the walls collapsed inward.
"There's nothing already," the commissar said. The consultants, their animals, and Dwyer joined them. Jen remained near the crumbling house.
"You don't even understand what you are destroying!"
"We understand, that's why we destroy."
The whirlwind sank to the ground and turned into a bearded Mazandranman. He became even taller and larger, his eyes sparkling brightly from under the overhanging black eyebrows. The giant stared at Roismann, contemptuously exclaimed "Bha!" and went to the former owner. Roismann pressed himself into the ground, looking frightenedly at the figure of the giant.
"Help!" the great teacher shouted, without finding the collar. "Help me and I... I will not stay in debt!"
The Mazandranman leaned over to Roismann and took him by the collar, not paying attention to the orange signs that stung his hand until blood, lifted and pinched his nose with two fingers. Roismann gasped and opened his mouth; the bearded man pressed his lips to his and blew air into the lord of the undead with a powerful breath. Roismann twitched convulsively, kicked his legs, scratching his fingers against the giant's hand. He breathed more air into the mouth of the former owner. The "teacher" let out a faint hiss.
"Oh," the pyromaniac whispered with interest, "I wanted to flay his skin, but it's even better... like with a frog!"
Roismann struggled unsuccessfully in the Mazandranman's grip. Orange patterns scratched at the giant's arms and chest, leaving narrow, deep wounds. From the third breath, Roismann arched weakly, his arms and legs dangled, weakly twitching.
"Kill him," Brannon said through clenched teeth. Jadugar clamped the mouth and nose to the master of the undead, gave the commissar a mocking glance, hummed something in Mazandranian and nodded at Redfern. He obviously enjoyed the sight.
The giant again fell to the victim's mouth. After the fourth breath, the Dorgern's ribs swelled unnaturally, and he whined barely audibly. The wounds on the Manzandranman's body began to heal - brother Jen fed himself with the pain of his master. Brannon pulled a revolver from Longsdale's holster and shot Roismann in the head. The orange tentacle lunged forward and caught the bullet.
"Heck!"
"Reliable protection," Angel purred. The Mazandranman, not paying attention to the shot, continued to breathe air into Roismann, and finally the man's body in his hand twitched for the last time. Longsdale hastily exclaimed "Scutum!" and put up a shield. Roismann's chest burst, and the jadugar threw the corpse away in disgust. Trickles of blood and bits of flesh crept across the shield.
"Like with the frog?" Brennon asked dryly to the pyromaniac.
"When I was a child, we inflated frogs through reed stalks until they burst."
"How sweet," the commissar said through set teeth and went to the body. The patterns on Roismann's skin were still stirring.
"He is dead?"
"Deadd az hell," Miss Oettinger squatted down, took out a magnifying glass and examined the patterns through it. "Although the mehndi will keep theze scrapz frrom decomposition forr a long time."
"Burst too quickly," Redfern said bloodthirsty. "We should have experimented with the force of blowing air." He glanced at Brannon with a sneer. "Or is it not Christian, and you would forbid me?"
The commissar was gloomily silent. He never thought that an enemy's corpse smelled good. Although, in all honesty, the world has clearly become better without Roismann. Well, at least cleaner.
"He needs to be buried."
"What for?" Redfern raised an eyebrow. "Rotting does not threaten him in the next couple of hundred years."
"That's not the point. You would..."
"I would have put him on a stake for all his achievements," the pyromaniac said coldly. "He got off easy."
"I thought you were a burning-alive specialist."
"The one thing does not interfere with the other."
"Why?" Brannon asked, staring at the pyromaniac. "Why do you think that painful death is better than an ordinary bullet in the forehead?"
"Because before death, each such asshole should feel at least for a minute everything that its victims felt."
The Mazandranman loudly notified them all about something of his own, Jadugarian, threw up his hands to the heavens and turned into a madly spinning whirlwind. A gust of hurricane wind threw everyone to the ground, even the hound rolled like a ball on the grass. Jen's desperate exclamation rang out. The commissar raised himself with difficulty on his elbows - the hurricane pressed him to the ground like a giant palm. Redfern grabbed Brennon on the right, Longsdale on the left, and they both yelled something, but the wind blew their words with a laughing roar. The wind, swirling like a funnel, slid towards the house.
There it hovered for a moment over the ruins and pecked down like a float. The roar of the wind merged with a crash and crack, and fragments of stone, wood, bricks, glass, shreds of cloth, and thousands of other small objects flashed through the vortex, quickly disappearing into the tornado.
"He's free!!" Jen screamed into Nathan's ear: the girl stuck in his back like a cat. "Absolutely!!"
From the roar of the hurricane, the commissar became deaf, from the wind blowing from all sides - he became blind and lost almost all feelings, except for the feeling of an imminent end. He felt only the weight of the witch on his back and Longsdale and Redfern clinging tightly to him. For a moment, Nathan was lifted into the air, a panicked "End!" flashed through his mind, and the Commissar fell flat on the ground. The breath was knocked out of him, and for some time he lay, feeling like a frog after a reed stick. The roar of the wind suddenly began to subside, rapidly moving away, the hurricane also weakened until it disappeared altogether, and Brennon was finally able to blink.
The first thing he saw was a hound sprawling on the ground. Snappish's eyes were tightly closed, ears flattened, fur disheveled, and a doomed expression was on his face. Redfern on the right coughed loudly, released Nathan and hissed:
"Alive?"
"Are you safe?" Longsdale croaked into his left ear. Hot hands of the witches quickly groped Brennon from head to back, and Jen said uncertainly:
"Physically, yes."
The pyromaniac's long, skinny fingers immediately slipped under the Commissar's collar and felt the pulse on his neck.
"Throat is normal, pulse is fast..."
"Hell!" Brennon croaked and shook the witch off of him. "I'm fine!"
He rose to his knees and was greatly relieved to find Dwyer, Miss Oettinger, and Bergmann nearby with their menagerie. The detective stared around dumbfounded, clearly not having time to really realize what it was and where all of a sudden everything went. Then the Commissar turned his gaze to Longsdale, the pyromaniac and the witch. They, too, looked completely intact, albeit dirty, like miners.
"And where?.."
"Flew away," Jen answered.
"And thank God," the commissar muttered, seeing a hole in the ground, covered with small crumbs, in which it was no longer possible to distinguish wood from stone. Brannon was reluctant to continue the acquaintance.
"I wonder," Longsdale said thoughtfully, "why didn't Roismann fly from the ship on his jadugar?"
"Because Roismann told him to make a storm, in which we all almost drowned like kittens in a bucket," Redfern snorted, looked at himself with disgust, and somehow brushed himself off.
"How did he ever manage to enslave such a creature?" Brennon shook his head and immediately regretted it: his head began to boom like a bell.
"What the hell am I doing here?" he was a little less than useless. Dwyer brought more practical benefits. At least he tried...
"I suppoze you mustt go home," Miss Oettinger said. "We'll have to go back to the Kaiser roadd, to open the portal."
"We read ourselves the cleaning rituals," Bergmann added.
"Oh yes, um... thanks," the Commissar held out his hand, and the Dorgernians shook it ceremoniously. He did not dare to stroke the puma and the wolf, although both animals politely sniffed him goodbye.
"Want to visit your niece?" The pyromaniac suddenly asked. Brannon shuddered: before Redfern did not behave like a normal person, but now suddenly why?
"Yes," Nathan said. "Longsdale, will you take Dwyer to the department?"
"Sure."
"Are you all right?" The Commissar asked the detective. He nodded hollowly: it seems that everything he experienced shocked him so much that it almost made him speechless. "You will personally report to Broyd. Not a word to the others. Clear?"
"Yes, sir," Dwyer replied melancholy.