by Brian Fuller
The Sheid went for Aclima, a dark ax forming in its hand. He swung it down in swift arcs, Aclima rolling under and away.
“Helo!” she said. “I need you! I can’t kill it!”
Helo glanced down at Tela. If only he had the healing Bestowal! “Helo. Helo. Helo,” Tela said over an over as if pleading with a ghost who had abandoned her.
How long would she last? If they couldn’t kill the Sheid, none of them would.
He dropped the hallow and blasted the Sheid with Angel Fire, the air warping where light and dark met, the Sheid stumbling back, a sound like the crashing of waves on rocks reverberating through the trees.
“Help Tela!” he yelled to Aclima, striding forward. “I need to Hallow the ground.”
Aclima ran toward Tela, the Sheid’s darkness steaming off it as Helo kept the fire on it. Aclima crossed behind him, and he recalculated. He didn’t need to Hallow. He could just keep driving the Sheid away. The fire seemed to paralyze it. But to use his Strength to punch it and penetrate its skin, he would have to drop the fire for a second. He had to risk it. He closed on the Sheid, dropping the hallow.
And in a blink, the Sheid struck.
A smoking black tentacle punched through Helo’s belly, severing his spinal cord and throwing him backward twenty feet. Helo slammed into the ground and rolled, flopping until he lay face-to-face with Tela. Her eyes sparked, recognition dawning, a tear falling. Her chest shuddered. She was curled in a ball, and even in the dim light he could see the hole blown through her hip, the blood draining out. Draining fast. He was losing her. He’d failed her. He touched her face.
“I’m here, Tela,” he said.
Aclima, who crouched nearby, stood. “It’s coming.”
“Back away, Aclima,” Helo said.
She darted to the right, and he Hallowed the ground around him and Tela. He had to protect her as long as he could. A smoking tentacle shot like a viper toward Aclima, and she deftly shoulder rolled to the right to avoid having her head taken off.
“Over here!” she yelled at the Sheid, trying to draw it away. Another tentacle snaked by, and she used her Speed to fling herself away again.
“Stay with me, Tela,” Helo said.
A distant shot rang out in the night, and the engine of the motorboat died. Tela’s last breath blew on his face like an accusation, the wraith of a hundred questions she would never find the answers to. A sickness settled in his gut, a sickness he didn’t think he would ever lose.
The Sheid was close. He could feel it. It was probably sitting around waiting for him to run out of Virtus and drop the hallowing field. So Helo dropped it. Let the Sheid come. Let it get close. It would be the first to pay for Tela’s death.
And came it did, its speedy approach churning up pine needles and twigs.
“No!” Aclima yelled.
And then it was there above him, bringing the ax down in an arc worthy of an executioner. Helo hallowed the ground again, and the ax dissipated. The desecration disappeared, and Helo blasted the Sheid with fire.
It lurched back as if hit with a stiff wind. And then Goliath Sped up and drove a sanctified dagger into its head. It exploded into a cloud of Vexus, the dagger absorbing it and burning it away. The oppressive feeling departed. Goliath’s aura was a welcome sight, but she was too late. Helo laid back, body limp.
“Oh no,” Goliath said, kneeling next to Tela. Aclima jogged over.
Helo glanced up at the patches of sky above him. “She’s gone. I blew it. I blew it.” Rage and sadness pressed in on him. Cain really had punished everyone for his sake.
Goliath laid a hand on his shoulder, healing energy pouring into him, knitting his body back together. When she finished, he sat up.
“I didn’t think you had Healing,” he said.
She stood, looking at her watch. “I didn’t until a few minutes ago. You and I get to ascend on the same day.”
Aclima extended her hand, and he took it. She pulled him up into an embrace, her eyes wet, her body shaking. He tried not to look down at Tela. Seeing someone so alive, so vibrant, curled up in her own blood in the dirt sickened him. It was his fault. Why did Cain have to come after her?
“Cain,” Helo said. “Where is he?”
“Out in the water somewhere,” Goliath answered.
Helo gritted his teeth. He could not get away! But Tela. “We can’t leave Tela here like this.”
“We’ll take care of her. Come on, Helo,” Goliath said, grabbing his arm. “Shujaa shot out Cain’s motor before he got thirty feet from shore. Cain jumped in the water before Shujaa could plug him. He tried to get back up in the boat for some reason, but Shujaa nearly took his head off.”
Aclima released him and was gone like a shot. Before he could get a word out, she’d sprinted to the water and dove in.
“Come on,” Helo said. Aclima was the best one to track down a swimming Dread. “Padru’s dead, by the way. One more down.”
“Good,” Goliath said, working her way toward the shore. “What happened back there?”
Helo related the story in brief, Goliath shaking her head.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We’ve got to put an end to this tonight. You and I.”
They emerged from the trees, stepping down a small embankment to a narrow, rocky shore. The abandoned boat bobbed in the moonlight, smoke from the ruined engine hazing the surface of the lake. Faramir’s drone buzzed around overhead.
Goliath put her hands on her hips. “So, if I’m Cain, I go to the bottom and walk out somewhere random. We can’t cover the whole lake. I wonder how deep this thing is.”
Helo shucked his tattered shirt and pulled off his shoes.
“What are you doing?” Goliath asked. “Does being angel born make you immune to the water?”
“I don’t know. I’m going out to the boat, see if I can spot their auras out there. The drone cameras can’t see auras.”
Goliath let her backpack fall and removed her armor.
“Hey,” Helo said. “This is one of those ideas Faramir and Argyle would yell at me for. You should probably sit this one out.”
“All your ideas are crazy,” she said, unzipping her jumpsuit. “And last time I checked, I am the head of Sicarius Nox.”
Point taken. He dove in the lake, and, no, being angel born did not spare him the sudden sensation of icy water sliding over his body, water so cold it took his newly returned breath away. His heart hammered in his now-sensate chest. Motion was his friend. He had to move. Pushing away the cold creeping into his limbs, he forced his arms and legs into propelling him forward across the dark lake.
The boat didn’t seem that far away when he had jumped into the water, but he could have sworn the lake was moving it away from him just to tell him how stupid he was for swimming around. But he made it, and the instant he grasped the boat edge and got his chest out of the water, the wonderful Ash Angel numbness returned.
He extended a hand and hefted Goliath inside.
“That sucked,” she said, pixie-cut hair now plastered to her head. “Did being angel born help?”
“Nope.”
“What’s that?” she asked, motioning with her head.
The black satchel Padru had been carrying sat on the floor of the boat.
“Something Padru had,” Helo said, staring down into the water, trying to catch a glimpse of any red auras. “You watch that side. Your comm piece still work?”
“Yep,” she said. “This is Goliath. Does anyone copy? . . . Yes, Commander, Helo and I are on the boat looking for Cain and Aclima in the water . . . So? We’re here. Helo reports that Padru is dead. So is Tela Mirren . . . Yes . . . Yes, I know. Cain killed her. Stand by.”
Goliath pulled the comm piece out of her ear. “Well, Crane’s pissed as usual.”
“Do they know Aclima is a Dread?”
“Yes.”
“Tell Shujaa not to shoot her,” Helo said. “He sees the aura and he’ll take the shot.”
Goliath relayed
the order. Helo kept his eyes peeled. Maybe they had gone too far away or too deep. At least they had Aclima’s heart. Even if Cain did escape her, they would get her back at sunset.
The boat undulated back and forth, the water a little unsettled, nudging the watercraft on its way past. A minute passed, then two.
“I don’t think we’re going to see them,” Goliath said, tone disappointed. “They’re too deep. Got cold for nothing.” She turned and grabbed the satchel, prying it open. “Well, well, what have we here?”
Helo spun around. Goliath’s smile lit up the night. In her hand was a heart.
Chapter 38
Parting
“Who do you think this belongs to?” she said sarcastically, holding the heart up in the moonlight. “Looks like Padru was keeping Cain’s heart safe for him as a backup plan. A little fire might help us find our ugly little fish.”
Helo took the heart, wondering if it really was Cain’s. Cain had grabbed the satchel pretty quickly after Padru had dropped it.
“Just a little toasty,” Goliath said. “It will make him mortal again, and he’ll have to surface or die. We want him alive for interrogation.”
Helo didn’t want him alive, but he tried moderating the flame coming out of his hand just the same. He would like to give Cain a final few words or a good beating before punching his ticket to hell. His hand glowed with a mere fraction of the fire he knew he could produce, just enough to scald the heart in his hand. Not ten seconds later, Cain surged out of the water gasping for breath some fifty feet from the boat.
“Missing something?” Helo yelled across the water. He extinguished the flame, and Cain dropped out of sight again beneath the waves. Helo reapplied the flame and he popped back up immediately, gasping for air. “Get over here or I fry you where you are!”
Cain swam with the grace of long practice, but before he could get halfway to the boat, Aclima surged up from underneath him and dragged him down into the water. Helo let up on the flame. Aclima wouldn’t be a fan of interrogation either. If he kept Cain mortal, she could kill him without even trying. But if he let Cain have his powers, he might overpower her.
He had to support Aclima, but just as he was about to let the heart have another burst of fire, Aclima surfaced, dragging a broken-necked Cain like a lifeguard saving a drowning victim. She towed him over to the edge of the boat but didn’t come close enough for Helo to pull him inside. He extended his arm, but she didn’t take it.
“Finish it, Helo,” Aclima said. “Burn it to ash.”
Helo opened his mouth, but Cain jumped in first. “They can’t. I know too much. Too much that could help them. They won’t let you kill me. Interrogation is what they want.”
“They won’t get anything from him,” Aclima said. “Nothing worth the chance he might escape. He’s done enough, Helo. To you. To me. It’s over.”
Helo glanced over at Goliath, who held up her finger. She tapped her comms. “We have Cain. Permission to burn him.” A few seconds passed while they waited. Helo squeezed Cain’s scorched heart and kept a sharp eye on the water.
“Copy,” Goliath said with a sigh. “Commander Crane says bring him in. I don’t know if they want to interrogate him or take a few selfies before they burn him.”
“No,” Aclima said. “Helo. No more. End this nightmare. Do it for everyone he’s hurt. Please.”
Goliath put her hand on his arm. “There’ll be hell to pay if you do it. You know that.”
He’d already paid and then some. Aclima was right. All of Cain’s plotting, all of his schemes, all of his horrors ended now.
Helo ignited the fire in his palm to a nice even burn.
“No!” Cain screamed. “No! Listen to me. There is worse than me out there. I can help you! Helo!” His face slackened with resignation. “See you in hell, Aclima!”
And then he was gone, nothing but a floating glob of clothes and dirt adrift on the water. Aclima swam over, and Helo helped her into the boat. Her dress was gone. She sat on the bottom of the boat in her underwear, pulled her knees to her chest, and put her forehead on her arms.
Helo sat across from her. “It’s over now. Everyone he’s hurt can rest now.”
“But Tela,” Aclima said. “It’s not right.”
“Was it a sacrificial death?” Goliath asked.
“I’m not sure,” Helo said, soul heavy. “She was trying to get the gun from Cain, but only God knows what was in her heart.”
“We’ll find out in December, on the winter solstice,” Goliath said. “We’ll come to this place and spread her ash together.”
“Any word on Scarlet?” Helo asked.
“Don’t know,” Goliath said. “I’ll ask, but I’d avoid Crane if I were you. I know I will.”
Standing in the mini kitchen of an RV parked at a rest stop not five miles from where the disastrous party had gone down, Helo checked his watch. Thoughts of Tela kept swirling through his head. That she had died so miserably, not even understanding why, hurt. He’d let her down, and now her sublime voice was stilled. No more albums. No more songs. No more texts constantly checking up on him. He’d miss her, and he dreaded facing Dolorem and telling him that his adopted daughter was gone.
It was nearly dawn. Aclima had wrapped herself in the gray comforter pulled from the old RV’s queen-sized bed, which she sat on in the back. Goliath occupied the driver’s seat. Sicarius Nox had used the RV as cover to transport them to the mission, and it would take the team out.
The rest of Sicarius Nox would meet them there for extraction, and Corinth and Scarlet would join them. They’d all been recalled to Deep 7 for debriefing—all except Aclima. Goliath was vague about what they had planned for her, setting Helo’s teeth on edge. He wasn’t going to leave her.
Crane was angry over Tela’s death, but his fury over burning Cain’s heart was, as Goliath had predicted, nearly volcanic. Helo couldn’t pretend to care. He had done the right thing. One look at Aclima told him that. Whatever Cain had done to her, it was awful. The red aura around her was killing him. There had to be a way for her to ditch it, to return to Ash Angelhood, but where to even start?
But there were still questions he wanted answers to.
“Goliath,” he said, “how did the Ash Angels know where to find us?”
Goliath smiled weakly. “They had three cars driving in different directions to throw us off. Fortunately, Aclima’s sudden weight gain turned one of the sedans into what my father used to call a draggin’ wagon. Corinth knew which one it was as soon as it rolled out of the garage.”
“Corinth, huh?”
“Yeah,” Goliath said. “Did a great job of finding the party and infiltrating it.”
“How’d they get Tela?”
Goliath sighed. “The Gabriels are eating it on that one. Alan got a call from Scarlet saying she and Corinth had a gig for her here. Still not clear if it really was Scarlet or a Sheid mimicking her. So few knew about this mission that Alan walked her right into it. No one’s seen Alan. Probably ash on the lake.”
Helo shook his head. “Not sure how Cain figured out she was important.”
“Scarlet,” Aclima said out of nowhere. Her eyes still burned with hatred, and her look said she hoped Cain would come alive again so she could kill him twice. “He had Scarlet for a long time, and he knows how to get information. I doubt she was strong enough not to spill everything.”
Helo ran his hands over his head. “Let’s not tell Scarlet that. She’s been through enough.”
Goliath nodded. Aclima just stared at the wall.
“Here they come,” Goliath said.
Helo moved to the back and sat by Aclima on the bed. He didn’t trust Shujaa not to go after her. He was worse than a bull when he saw red.
The RV’s flimsy door squealed open. Stocky Argyle came first, followed by Faramir and Shujaa, still cradling his sniper rifle. He glanced back at Aclima, eyes like a hunter’s.
“You should come away, Angel Born,” Shujaa said, taking a sea
t on the ratty couch. “The Angel Born should remain free of the influence of evil.”
Faramir sat opposite Shujaa. “Is there some sort of cult where we all worship the ‘Angel Born’ or something?”
“He has a high purpose,” Shujaa replied, laying the rifle across his knees. “You must respect it. He should be made commander of Sicarius Nox. It is his calling.”
Faramir snorted in his annoying way. “After Commander Crane gets through with him, he’ll be commanding the custodial squad at Deep 6.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Helo said.
“Crane is angry,” Goliath said, “but he’s no fool. And neither is Mars. Helo is a Sheid- and Dread-killing machine who can shoot holy fire out of his hands. They just can’t put him out to pasture.”
“Wait,” Faramir said. “Holy fire out of his hands? Seriously? You’ve got all your Bestowals, then. You’re gone in a year!”
His cheery tone left little doubt as to his opinion.
Shujaa grinned. “You see now, Faramir. One year. He will hunt down the rest of the Loremasters and Shedim and free the world from their blight forever. You should start with her,” Shujaa said, staring dead-eyed at Aclima. “We cannot let even one Loremaster live.”
“That’s enough, Shujaa,” Goliath said, face pained.
Shujaa stood up. “It is necessary. Even if she turns white, she could always turn red again. Until she is dead, there will be a Loremaster. There will be someone who can make Shedim.”
“Stand down, Shujaa,” Argyle said, leaning around the front seat. “We will do what Ash Angel command says. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“If she’s not free, we’re not doing it,” Helo objected, grabbing Aclima’s hand. “She’ll be an Ash Angel again, and that means you keep your gun to yourself, Shujaa. That goes for anyone else. We will not throw her under the bus, no matter what command says.”
“Cowboy Helo,” Faramir mumbled.