Part Thirty Nine

Prayer had never come easy to Dana Scully. Nonetheless, soundless, involuntary words tumbled from her lips. Her finger caressed the trigger of her weapon and her heart pounded a staccato beat in her ears. Hail Mary, Mother of God…

The antique elevator ground to a halt, and the ensuing silence was suffocating.

Holy Mother guide me…

Reyes’s arm rose and there was sudden movement as a low figure shot toward them from the unseen maw of the machine. Scully pulled the trigger…

And nothing happened.

She heard the other woman’s weapon likewise misfire, and in the same instant, a soft, familiar sound echoed through the empty space.

"Mama?"

The silence was ended instantly. Scully cried out, "William!" and everyone began talking at once.

Mulder’s voice was thick with emotion. "Scully?"

"Dana, honey, it’s Mom!"

Reyes asked "Doggett, you there?" Her flashlight flared to life. Its mate woke from inside the dilapidated lift, giving a clear view of everyone in and outside the antiquated machinery.

Sydney froze in mid-lunge, not two feet away. When she realized whom she nearly attacked, she rose stiffly, allowing a long ebony rapier to drop parallel to her thigh. "Something stopped me," the professor explained. In her eyes, relief warred with confusion. "I couldn’t carry through."

"We’ve got injured people here," Margaret reminded. "And we’re still in that monster’s territory."

Thunder crackled overhead, and water dripped to splatter on the cement underfoot. Scully grumbled, "Anybody besides me feel like we’re in a bad Frankenstein movie?" She strode over to the door and yanked it open. "We’ve got both a civilian and an agent down in here, somebody get a paramedic!"

There was no answer from the SWAT team – or anyone else. Inside the elevator room, unease flitted over all six adults’ faces. Scully’s only concession to her fears was to give her son a quick hug and kiss and to whisper that he had to stay with his grandmother for a little longer. She couldn’t tell her mother to take William and stay someplace safe. Both the baby and Margaret Scully were still in jeopardy, as were the injured men and Sydney Fox. They wouldn’t truly be safe until Attila was permanently stopped.

Scully raised her voice, allowing defiance and derision to saturate each word. "I know you’re watching, Attila. You’re not a warrior, you’re a coward and a bully! You don’t have the balls to face me alone!" If their enemy fed off of their fear, she wasn’t providing him any sustenance now. She was too pissed. Her mind poured out malevolent wishes against the unseen enemy. Medical training allowed her to imagine specific damage to organs and tissues. It was a dance of guilt and fear, anger and anguish, intellect and gut instinct, all rolled into a single, compact stream of thought aimed at the being who took on the name of an ancient evil.

A figure stepped through the wall. The brick and mortar shattered outward as though struck with a human-sized sledgehammer, filling the room with a storm of dust and grit and rubble. Small pieces of cement shrapnel bit into Scully’s skin, a quick, harsh reminder that this was no movie. The self-proclaimed warrior emerged from the swirl of dust. Attila’s eyes glittered with an evil that sent a collective shiver through everyone else in the room.

Then the female FBI agent gasped. And for just a moment, compassion replaced cold fury.

Attila’s body was nearly unrecognizable. Tumors and pustules rose from exposed flesh, and every joint in his hand was swollen and bent in arthritic distortion. He moved slowly, deliberately, allowing her to see his agony. "This is what you’ve done to me…" he hissed. "And you’ll pay. You can’t kill me. All you can do is hurt me. And injuring a tiger only enrages it, making it more dangerous."

"You’re lying."

"Am I?" the killer sneered. "Try me. Shoot me with your little firecracker. It will only make me more deadly. It will make me stronger."

Killer or not, Attila was unarmed. His outstretched hands were empty. Firing on him would cost her job and possibly get her jail time.

Scully trained her weapon on the walking, talking antiquity and muttered, "Worth every bit of it."

Go to Part Forty.


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