by A L Hart
His face paled and he no doubt felt as cold as I did.
I didn’t know the details of what HB did to immortals, but by the sheer hatred from a woman who was normally sweet, nurturing and almost child-like in innocence, I didn’t think I wanted to know.
“What will it be, Dave?” I pressed. “We can eliminate the dark energy poisoning your morality and you can pave us a path into the facility or we can go our separate ways now, where your life is as good as over.”
The man glared at us. Me, specifically. “You’re not like them.”
“Like who?”
“The demons you walk beside.”
I didn’t look to Ophelia. He was right. I wasn’t like either of them. I was weaker, less knowledgeable, and at my core, I didn’t have the same impetus as they did to defend the immortal race. I just wanted to protect those I’d promised to protect.
“You’re like me, aren’t you?” he continued.
When I looked in his eyes, I questioned where I stood.
As though I were looking into a funhouse mirror, a distorted reflection of myself. What I could easily become if ever I allowed the dark energy in me to spread beyond the dark knot of diseased energy inside of me.
We all had our good and our bad. If you weren’t the predator, you were the prey. The world would have you believe there was no middle ground. No place of stagnation. I may not have desired to kill like him, but my dark energy could easily twist my recent fits of rage, protectiveness, and irritability into something murderous.
I mean, wasn’t I already close?
I may not have been a murderer, but what if I walked beside those who were? Jera was a firm believer in kill or be killed and had extrapolated on the philosophy right in front of me. I hadn’t tried to stop her then, only scolded. Didn’t that make me just as bad?
But then I thought of the upcoming infiltration plans. The lengths Ophelia and I were going to simply ensure none of the agents died during. It may have exonerated my conscious, but the line still existed. And that line whispered at me, saying, if not now, then tomorrow and if not tomorrow, then the next day. But one day, that ball inside of me would become the size and shape of me and I wouldn’t simply walk beside the demons, but be their ring leader.
I pushed the thought away and said stringently, “Do we have a deal?”
Dave postured. Swished his untouched tea around, then stared right into my eyes. “If I’m caught, I will lie and blame demon glamor. They will then kill you on the spot.”
Brow lifted: “Duly noted.”
*****
“Demon glamor?” I wondered.
“Not all of us possess such a convenient ability, though HB thinks differently,” Ophelia explained to me as we pulled into the backlot of the All American Coffee House.
Danny was waiting at the front door, the sound of drills and pummeling coming through the glass. He squinted up at me, his lips tight, arms crossed.
I looked down at Ophelia. “Jera did tell him about our temporary closing, right?”
Her eyes said it all.
“Boss, what’s happening here?!” the boy demanded, looking fed up with the churning of the world around him. “I show up here day after day and the doors are locked.”
He’d come here before? Jera slept during the day and Ophelia and I were restricted to tame practices and teachings upstairs when the construction workers were making a load of noise downstairs. If he had come by during those hours, there was no way we could have heard him. Which, in all fairness, wasn’t my fault.
I told him so.
“Was it the witch?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, eyes narrowed. “It was.”
The boy looked ready to spit. “What’re they doing in there?”
“Fixing up a couple of things—aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
“Homeschooled,” the boy reminded me.
“Well then, aren’t you supposed to be at home . . . getting schooled?”
“Not when my income source is being tampered with by that evil lady. Boss, when are they going to be done?”
I ran a hand through my hair, the chestnut curls having since reached my shoulders. “Give it five more days, kid, and you’ll be back in the game.”
By the set of his lips, he didn’t like the calendar.
I assured him, “I promise, five days. It won’t happen again.”
With a huff of acceptance, he said, “It’s bad for business, boss, forgetting to tell your employees. I couldn’t even reach you on the phone line!”
A tinge of guilt sidled in. That was my fault. I had everyone else’s email address, home address and phone number and they had mine, while Danny here had nothing. I wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt giving my number out to an under the table kid, but by the daggers he pinned me with, I found myself whipping out a notepad from my back pocket, flipping to a clean page and scribbling my cell phone’s ten digits down. “Here.”
He accepted it with puckered, scrutinizing lips, eyes examining the number carefully, “And this is a number I can call, your number?”
I set my lips. “Don’t get any ideas. Call only if there’s a reason to or if there’s an emergency.”
He shoved the number in his back pocket. “Right, boss.” His temper seemed to finally cool with the firm line of communication between us, enough so that his eyes slid over to Ophelia and seemed to brighten to honey-gold instantly. The two of them gave each other a quick hug, Ophelia shucking his hair before he gave me one last look and started down the street.
Leaving me, once again, oblivious of the relationship those two had. Or why.
Not that I wanted to dwell on the matter. Instead, I dredged up the previous one while it was still hanging at the cusps of my thoughts. “Ophelia, if not all demons possess the ability to use glamor, does that mean they’re capable of other things outside of their one gift?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Jera, does she have the ability to alter one’s mindstate?”
Ophelia looked at me blankly.
I ran a hand along my neck, not exactly jumping on telling her the multiple occasions the woman had sent my towering frame to my knees, bellowing out in pain.
“Do you mean a high, fiery pressure in your head?”
I froze. “Yeah, something like that.”
Her gaze flitted away. “When you bond with a succubus, you bond with them. Your soul, your dark energy, your mind. Though your source of dark energy presides primarily in your stomach, residue of it has since spread throughout your entire body, faint as it might be. When a bond between a succubus and another immortal—or human afflicted with dark energy—forms, you’re both handed the reigns on one another’s energy. You’re synchronized. If one of you wanted to manipulate aspects of the bond, it’s quite literally as easy as thinking it. Jera’s far beyond your years in expertise. While she has never been bonded to another, she has a habit of learning the art of manipulation at the speed of light.”
No doubt, someone like Jera had begun to research ways to dominate the bond since the moment her parents taught her of the succubus’s price—
My brows creased as another question occurred to me. One I’d wanted to ask over a week ago at the mall. “That first night when the two of you came into my shop, Jera said something.”
Ophelia tensed.
I went on. “She said I made you. At the time she assumed I was this Maker that you all talk about. I mean, if the name itself doesn’t say it all, am I right in assuming you all didn’t come from birth parents but the Maker himself?”
The look she gave me dissolved, her mouth curving into a small smile as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Of course not. The Maker has created many things, but we were not one of them.”
I frowned, confused.
“She meant the Maker was the one who made us the way that we are,” Ophelia rushed to explain. “In the way that some people have such a strong influence on your life
, they began to shape the person you become.”
That made sense.
“So you do have parents?” I asked.
A light flickered in her eyes, her smile wavering. “We did.”
Did.
I bit down the ball of sorrow that threatened. I’d been right. That night when I’d kissed Jera and encountered that ghastly mass of loneliness, it was due to someone she’d lost. Someone she could never get back. Was that where the woman’s hatred for the Maker began? Had he murdered their parents before, or was I jumping to conclusions?
“Ophelia, why did you all come to my world? Why come when you yourselves said the price is almost never worth it?” If they were safe in their own world, never having to pay the succubus’ price unless they entered into mine, what was so important that they would risk their own freedom?
She gave up hope of entering the shop, instead leaning against the wooden threshold beneath the awning, out of the sun. Beneath those curls, she watched me steadily, searching my reaction. “We came here to find someone.”
I waited, knowing what I would hear next and hating it.
“We came here to find you.”
Ch. 23
The date Dave gave us came sooner than I’d have liked.
The hunter, Ophelia and I had discussed the plan beforehand. Meet blocks away form the compound at 8. At 9, the security measures would be disabled for exactly 20 minutes before the backup generator kicked on and/or the security made it down to the base level to reboot the system.
Ophelia was convinced we’d be back in 15.
I on the other hand was sweating in the driver’s seat. Palms clammy, leg bouncing up and down as I stared out at the neighborhood we’d decided to stakeout on. The crickets chirped loud enough to threaten the last thread of sanity I had. The cool air did little to disarm my nerves. And I sat in perpetual fear of my wings snapping open and my not being able to calm down enough to retract them.
Ophelia’s hand closed over mine. “Breathe, Peter.”
That was my line.
I tried to follow it, but all I could see was our bodies bleeding out on the ground.
This was a bad idea. Terrible idea. We were going to die. Here. Tonight.
“Peter.”
“Ophelia, our plan is garbage. You do realize that, right? Second we go near that facility, they’ll spot us and behead us.”
Ophelia actually laughed at this, trinkets, crystals raining all around us. “I had no idea you could be so . . .”
“Sensible?” I offered.
“Fearful.”
I glowered in the dark of the SUV.
Her hand closed around mine tighter. “It’s not a bad thing. It only reminds me that you’ve not lost yourself in all of this. That you’re still . . . human.” She said it with an adoration that made something finally click in my head: Ophelia adored humans. Maybe not those who worked for the likes of HB, but the way she got along with all of my staff and greeted the customers with a genuine, unfathomable amount of warmth spoke volumes.
I couldn’t pick apart the why of it just then.
Only focus.
On the terrible plan.
Dave had given us a better layout of the first two levels than the uncertain map Vincent had provided, but as for the sublevels, Vincent’s revelation was spot on, according to Dave.
He and Ophelia seemed to be in agreement that seeing as this compound wasn’t as heavily manned as most, getting in and out of it without being seen should be relatively easy if we took the west wing’s entrance—where the security feed would be disabled and the locks undone, then we could take the staircase all the way down to sublevel D, locate the mainframe which was just past the unclassified enclosure levels. There, the passcode to the system’s database was DPEJ902, our names and cases filed by dates, which meant Ophelia would have to handle that portion, given not only could she move faster than me but also scan faster than me.
The only reason I was still imperative here was as a safety measure, which was where the loosely plotted plan came in.
She was relying on the sole assumption that should someone attack and should it trigger her lighting and should that lightning happen to hit me, I might miraculously kick into high gear and clear out the threat or, at the very least, teleport her home to safety while I said my goodbyes to breathing.
If it was just my life at risk here with this plan, that would have been fine by me. The problem was, if I failed as a hidden weapon, that meant we both died. Which also meant Jera died. And of course Anisah, Kyda, and who knew how long before they found out about Walsh and offed him, too.
I did as Ophelia instructed, breathing deeply, letting it out slowly and telling myself this was going to work. Everything that’d happened so far had been one series of events that couldn’t have possibly been considered coincidence, right? I was here for a reason, with a purpose, and when the world is on your side, how could you lose?
At least, that was the idiotic logic I hefted onto my shoulders as we got out of the car.
Above, the star-studded sky was in full bloom, the neighborhood blackened with the lack of streetlamps. We were only about a mile out from the compound, Wichita’s city lights coming into view as we broke through the fortress of the woodsy neighborhood’s trees and out onto a gravely, grassy field. It sprawled on for acres ahead of us, the rural sliver of land singing with crickets.
The compound, distant as it was, stood out as a dark print upon the orange-velvet haze of nighttime, Wichita’s lights haloing behind the structure unnervingly. What did those on the city’s border think the long, ovate building really was? A car manufacturing shop? A warehouse of sorts?
I scuffed quietly as we toed neared the winding cement barrier draped around the property, reading the sign ‘Wichita Aerospace Labs - Private Property’. So it was disguising itself as a space lab. Clever, when you thought about it. Who would question its integrity when the details surrounding the place panned out?
The closer we drew, the more the building itself towered over the massive, concrete encasement circling the property’s parameters.
It wasn’t until we were up against the wall, the both of us dressed in black from head to toe like in the movies where the heroes actually lived and weren’t turned to brain pudding, that I noted the smaller sign beside an iron ladder. ‘Warning - High Voltage.’
I gulped at this.
Not looking to me but possibly sensing my reserve, Ophelia whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll go first. If the electricity is still on, I’ll know and will likely inadvertently short circuit it.”
Her confidence wasn’t contagious anymore. Not when I officially had the good sense to recognize the foolish nature of our plan. But I didn’t voice it. Instead, I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see it. “Right,” I said, peering out into the enormous field beyond. The electric lines went on in a column until it disappeared from sight, their lines all connected and leading back to the compound. The moon was absent, leaving the refraction of the city’s light as our only source of guidance.
Mine anyway.
Ophelia moved with ease, finding the ladder and ascending it without a second thought.
She moved fast, giving me little time to admire her courage and determination as I clamored up after her as silently as possible. Which equated to noise enough to wake up the entire neighborhood we’d left behind.
I knew because Ophelia winced at each clattering, obnoxious sound I made, froze to cock her head to the side and listen for something, then shook her head to continue until she was at the top of the wall. Again, with that same fearless determination, she simply reached a bare hand out and wrapped it around the coiled barbs running the length of the fence, waited, and when nothing happened, she smiled down at me and gave me the thumbs up.
Alright, so one victory, but that didn’t mean anything.
I climbed over after her—still leery of the cutting wire—then descended the ladder on the other side with much more stealth than before,
confidence building.
Moments later, I dropped to the grassy plain beside her where she held her hand out for me.
Right. If anything happened at any moment, I needed to be in contact with her so as not to miss the small window of opportunity should she release a stream of energy. I closed my hand around her cooler one.
With that, we sprinted across the field.
The west gate wasn’t complicated to find, the bold, screaming red letters giving it away even in the poor lighting. It appeared Dave hadn’t led us astray. We wasted no time, the both of us gripping the wheel latch barring the door, twisting, and the thing turned without protest. The heavy metal shifted leftward, a bloody, unsightly sheen of red light reaching out to us, glowing from the caged overhead light.
A dark gloom settled into my bones at the passage laid out before us.
I couldn’t discern the sensation as something portent or a weakness stemmed from fear, but whatever it was, it sent me stepping into the building first, Ophelia’s hand still tight within my own.
“Do not be afraid of the unknown,”Ophelia whispered behind me, her other hand on my shoulder. “It is but a new adventure.”
She was trying to sooth me, rid of the sensation worming around the pit of my stomach, but the farther I led us into the building, away from what little safety the exit conveyed, the thicker the darkness grew inside of me.
This was a place where they kept Ophelia’s kind locked away for culling, experimentation. These very walls around us, what had they seen? How many immortals similar to Ophelia had been brought here?