Cheri and her companion alighted from the helicopter and ran to the cover of the front of the building where the door stood open and slightly askew in its hinges. Gun at the ready, Cheri motioned for the other to follow her in. Pale curls bouncing, the girl nodded, her weapons already in her grasp, the words of an ancient chant on her lips.
The entry was empty. Cheri lifted her communications device to speak into it. "Dr. Heron?"
Static and then an answer. "I'm on the roof. So far, no one has come after me, but the clouds seem to be lowering." The woman sounded frightened. "It's a little difficult to shoot a cloud, Miss Yuconovich."
"We're coming up." Cheri nodded to the nearby stairwell. "Seal off the entrances as we pass them."
The girl nodded and continued her low chant, marking each door and window they passed with an Elder Sign in chalk. It wasn't as efficient as paint or inset precious metal, but it would work against anything the locals could throw at them. Odd, the old man had never mentioned Blackpool as a potential gate.
The achieved the roof with no trouble to find Heron with her back against a chimney and a very serviceable machine gun in her hand. She was breathing hard and barefoot.
"The fluid grabbed my shoe. Can't run for the high ground in spike heels." There was anger in her voice over the loss.
"Expensive?"
"Very. OK, now what? I passed no one on my way to the roof. That is quite daunting," she pointed to the black roiling mass over head. "And I cannot get into my lab."
"We go take out the problem, rescue your people and burn the installation to the ground."
"What!?" Heron stared at her.
"Tamara Taakin, once groomed to be a gate for a sea god, this is Dr. Heron. Dr. Heron, Tamara Taakin. Miss Taakin is going to tell us whether we can retake the installation or not."
The tow headed girl frowned, concentrating on her tasks. "I think so. The Great One is not here. Although there is one who …" her voice faltered as she remembered the man she revered as her father and the changes his priesthood had brought to him. "There's one like Ayala here. I can feel his strength … Her? Maybe?"
"OK. You have enough strength to fight them off?"
"With you beside me? I could close the gate on the Black Pharoah," she told them, bitterness coloring her voice as tears filled her eyes. She dashed them away angrily and nodded to Cheri to proceed.
"With me, Dr. Heron. Let's see if we can retrieve your people and … the two agents?"
"Right. Yes, they're still here."
Down in the lab, two groggy UNCLE agents were back to back in a corner staring at the mob of THRUSH personnel who seemed to have lost both their minds and their humanity. "Tentacles, for Christ's sake," the red head swore, gripping a scalpel in each hand. "I did not sign on for evil horror movie duty."
That got a shaky laugh from her partner who had grabbed up vials from one of the glass fronted cases and after tossing sulphuric acid on one of the still white coated personnel with practically no effect, he was checking the other containers to see if mixing them might help. "Neither did I. I mean, tentacles?" He gave a quick look at the approaching hoard and realized that the petite blonde in the front clutching a clipboard under one arm looked completely terrified. "Y'might not want to cut that one," he told Cowl in a low tone with a nod to the one he meant.
"Duck!" he yelled and tossed the contents he'd mixed on the critter directly behind the little blonde.
She ducked, the changed security guard clutched his face and made odd gargling sounds as he slowly collapsed onto the floor, looking more human as he did so. Cowl pulled the woman into the corner between herself and Oxblood.
"Who are you and what the hell is going on?" Cowl demanded as she slashed at a grasping member that bore little resemblance to a hand.
"Corinth. Maisie Corinth. I'm from Liverpool. My uncle gave it to me and said if I got scared to read it. I didn't it would do this. He didn't tell me," she practically sobbed. "He didn't tell me … "
"Read what?" the woman cut through Maisie's panic.
"This." She pulled a much folded piece of parchment out of her lab coat pocket and poked it at the red head who gave it a glance before turning her attention to the still oncoming monsters.
"That looks incomprehensible. Craw, what are you doing?"
"Hold on. Gimme some room to splash." Cowl backed up enough to give her partner some more room. He shook fluid out of a vial, then a second and third until most of the creatures were writhing on the floor and becoming quiescent. "You're not a local, are you?"
The woman with her back against the entrance to the room smiled, revealing a mouth full of needle pointed teeth. "No. I'm not." She surveyed the bodies on the floor then looked back up at Crawford Oxblood. "Nor are you, my delicious one." Her progress across the room forcibly reminded the agents of something sinuous and snake like rather than human, her long full skirts sweeping over the bodies as she passed, until she stopped in front of them, out of reach of Del's weapons. She fixed her wide dark eyes on Maisie and held out an oddly long fingered hand. "Come."
The woman pushed past the two agents, dropping the clipboard she'd clung to like a raft in a shipwreck. Eyes glazed, she walked the few steps to the exotic one and submitted to being taken into the woman's arms where she was turned to face the two.
"Is it my imagination or does she look like she's …"
Crawford nodded as the pale hands caressed the girl through her clothing, something from beneath the long flowing skirt the dark haired woman wore sliding up Masie's pale legs to disappear under the short, tight skirt the blonde wore. Her pale lips became an O of surprise, she gasped and leaned back against the other, her chest rising and falling in what the agents identified as arousal. She jerked once, her eyes widening in terror as blood began to collect in her mouth and drip down her chin. A couple of odd choking noises and the light died out of Maisie's eyes leaving her a limp doll in the other's embrace.
Del thought the sucking sound of something leaving the body was going to make her vomit there and then. She held on, braced against her partner who was trembling. His tight face told her it was anger that shook him, not fear.
"Who are you?" he growled as the … thing let the body slide to the floor where it lay so obviously bereft of life.
"I've been called many things. Medusa. Siren. Mermaid. Servitor," her voice caressed the last word like molten chocolate covering cold fruit. "You may call me Mistress."
"Like hell," they snarled in unison.
Rich laughter bubbled up from their opponent. "My, but you are feisty little morsels. I'm not really hungry at the moment, so I'll let you be. But truly, tonight, your dreams will all be of me." She retreated across the floor and through the doors leaving the agents in shock.
"Does she look … flat?" Del finally asked her partner when she could find her voice again.
He looked where she was looking and nodded. "Yeah. She looks a might deflated. What kind of scum would do that to his granddaughter?"
Cheri, Dr. Heron and Tamara arrived a moment later. Surveying the scene, Cheri lifted her weapon and put the safety back on. "Cowl and Oxblood, I presume." Well, that did not lift the tension. "I'm Cheri Yuconovich. Yes, I am THRUSH. However, I believe you will find we have a common enemy at this time. I have full authority to call truce between our organizations."
"And if your superiors object?" Del demanded.
"You might ask Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin what happened to the last Council member to cross me. His name was Bailey."