by John Hook
“What is this doing?”
The grains flowed faster and faster, and suddenly it was as if he were caught in a sand storm. Except this sand was tiny glowing blue crystals, hard like diamonds. As these particles picked up speed they were sanding away the metal grains as if they were rust. Baron Steel cried out and tried to fly away but, while the main mass of the swirling cloud remained stationary and didn’t change volume, the tendrils of tiny crystals followed him and clung to him like hornets. Now the dust was blowing around and around him. He fell and his platform glided to the ground near me. He was screaming as finally the crystal dust wore away all metallic surface and began to eat away his blackened skin. Still screaming and calling for his Manitor to intervene, he became a bloody mass and finally only brightly polished bone was left. Like Janovic, there was no proto. Shades were different.
Like Janovic, this one was gone.
A black light surrounded the skeleton and then it seemed to be pulled over to the platform, the talisman, which lay near me. The bones crumbled into dust and disappeared.
As I finished typing, the cloud made the return journey through the typewriter. I felt something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with flow deeply into me. Then, the typewriter just faded.
I got up and picked up the platform that had belonged to the Baron. It was very hard to see the lattice work on it because it glowed black.
“Give that to me!” I looked over at the jackal-headed Manitor. I and the others began backing away from the tower.
“That’s mine!” the Jackal shouted.
I heard another low growl from Guido. It was very different from any I had heard before. It was disturbing.
The jackal-headed Manitor turned and looked at Guido.
“Don’t interfere. We’re even now.”
Almost faster than I could follow, Guido charged the astonished Jackal with lips drawn back and fangs out. In mere seconds he had taken the Jackal down and ripped open his throat. The ferocity and suddeness of the moment was probably one of the most frightening things I had ever witnessed. There was a sudden glow and then a sharp and deafening crack as a bolt of pure energy shot skyward. Guido rose and stood, blood dripping from his mouth and the other Manitor dead at his feet.
“Now we are even.”
As if to provide an exclamation mark on what had just happened, Taka must have decided everyone was out of the way enough to fire. All three rocks hit the tower and exploded. Apparently Taka’s slide rule was as good as ever. The tower burst into flames and collapsed upon itself.
When Roland could see no more shots were coming, he led the charge and the troops swept in over the remaining demons, who were still somewhat confused by what had just happened.
“What have you done?”
The voice seemed to be as much in our heads as in our ears. The question had been directed to Guido. Out of the sky floated the angel. She turned to me and her face became monstrous, something with small red eyes and a large maw with rotating wheels of sharp teeth. And then she was just an angry angel again. I looked around. I wasn’t sure anyone else had seen it.
“Will you never be gone?” she said bitterly and then turned to Guido.
“You have broken the agreement.”
“The Council will have to take that up.”
“The Council is irrelevant. You have shattered its basis.”
“Perhaps the Council was already irrelevant.”
“You have plunged your people into war.”
“Perhaps.”
The angel made an angry gesture in my direction and the black platform was torn from under my arm and flew to the angel. She looked at Guido, who simply smiled. She rose and looked at all of us.
My body was still covered in tattoos. I raised my short sword into the air.
“All this is ours now,” I shouted.
Everyone around me cheered, thrusting weapons into the air.
The angel still had her strangely and inappropriately beautiful face, but it was clear she was angry. More than the Manitors, I knew nothing of the angel’s power. I had not seen much of it. She had carried me off and torn my heart out and once she had tried to siphon power from me. Other than that, I had seen very little, but I suspected this was a very dangerous adversary. Why she didn’t act now I wasn’t sure.
Then I thought maybe she was going to after all. She let her eyes roam over all of us. When they came to Rox, they stopped. For just a moment, I sensed something different about Rox, but it was fleeting and then it was gone.
The angel’s expression changed however. It was like she was momentarily unsure. The rage seemed to pass. Holding the talisman to her chest, she flew off and faded out of sight.
I looked at Rox.
“What just happened?”
“I don’t know. I felt something probing me for just a moment, but then it was gone.”
Then I looked at the ground and all thought of victory left. I kneeled next to Saripha’s broken body and as Rox and Izzy held me, all of the grief I had stuffed away came out.
The thought of never seeing Saripha again seemed, in that moment, to make everything else seem small and meaningless.
24.
I wanted nothing more at that moment than to let myself fall apart. Unfortunately, I really couldn’t afford to do that. The battle was over, but there was a lot of work still to do. I stood and looked at Guido. He still had the jackal Manitor’s blood on his jowls. In contrast, his eyes were strangely serene, if a man with a dog’s head and bloody jowls can look serene.
“Damn,” I said. “I take it you are in trouble now.”
Guido let a look of amusement play momentarily at the corners of his mouth. He put a hand on my shoulder
“We can worry about that later.”
Behind us, what remained of the tower, mostly a pile of rubble and one shattered wall, roared with flames that licked skyward. The remaining demons that hadn’t been caught in the fire and falling debris, had been killed outright by the remaining archers.
Guido stepped over and picked up Saripha’s body gently in his large arms. He was quiet. You could tell by his mannerisms that he cared deeply but he showed no outward emotion. He held her in his arms and looked at me. “Join me when you can. Bring the others from Rockvale. We will lay her to rest.” With that a swirling cloud of ravens sprung out of the ground and they were gone.
I joined the others. There was much we needed to work out between us. We had in fact freed a second territory, eliminating both a Shade and a Manitor. I had no idea what would come of that. We would deal with the consequences of that when it came. We were all tired and needed to tend our wounds, especially the emotional ones. We agreed to meet later and went our ways.
The hardest thing I had to do when I got back was to inform the rest of the original Citizens, the ones I met when I first arrived, that Saripha was gone. For all of them, myself included, she was both an anchor and a ray of hope in this place. She had an ageless wisdom that, no matter how crazy things got here, reminded you of where your center was. We all loved her deeply and I could not yet think about the fact that she wouldn’t be there.
I went with Izzy and Kyo. Taka wasn’t back yet and both Rox and Blaise felt that it might be important to keep this to just the original group. It would be easier somehow for them to deal with the grief. I knew how deeply Rox cared about Saripha, who had spent so much time helping Rox learn to deal with what was inside of her. However, I also knew Rox still made Paul uncomfortable. Normally, I felt little urge to care about Paul’s comfort, but I knew he would be particularly devastated. Knowing she was there comforted him. This would be very hard for him and, in this circumstance, I felt a lot of compassion for him.
I walked in with Kyo and Izzy. I had no idea how to do this. They had been told we had an update from the expedition. I think I had this notion that I would first talk about our successes and then get around to the bad news. When I actually saw them sitting there, looking at me expectantly, all the ways I had
thought this would go went out the window. I sat down in a chair. Izzy and Kyo sat on either side of me. They all saw it in our faces.
“What is it, Case?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know any good way to say this. Saripha is gone.”
“Gone?” Paul was already showing agitation. However, he was right to keep asking. There are a lot of ways one might be “gone” in this place.
“She was killed, Paul. The Shade…”
Paul slammed the table with the flats of his hands, startling all of us.
“You!” Paul shouted. “You killed her! By refusing to take your luck-won tiny corner of peace and let the rest of this horrid world go its awful way. By going up against impossible magic and dragging your friends with you! You killed her! You killed the only pure and beautiful thing in this…”
And then, all fury spent, Paul collapsed inward and grief took over. He began sobbing. Kyo went over to him and helped him out of the room. She looked at me once before exiting with Paul. I saw her form the words “not you…” It didn’t help much. Paul was just giving voice to how I felt and right now a lot of my energy went into ignoring that voice.
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
I looked over at Sidney. Sidney was mostly always quiet. He was ashen and stunned by the news. Zeon had come over and was rubbing his shoulders. For all the teenage angst and boredom that Zeon projected, he and Sidney were close and he took devoted care of Sidney and his emotional well-being. Despite how devastated Sidney felt over this loss, his eyes met mine with an inner strength.
“Even with Saripha being with Guido, Paul always felt connected to Saripha. It was his grief speaking just now.”
“Thanks for the kindness, Sidney, but that sounded more like rage to me than grief. And I wish I could be sure he isn’t right.”
“Saripha made her own choices,” Zeon said. “Including going with you. Unless you are planning to bend over and take it here like everyone else, you’d better get used to this kind of stuff.”
“Nice choice of words, Zeon.”
“It’s Hell. Get over it. Keep moving. It’s not all about you.”
I shook my head.
“Darn it.”
Shortly after we broke up, Taka returned to town. He knew about Saripha. He had watched helplessly from his firing position on the mountain. He had been about to fire hoping he might hit the Baron when he put her on the tower. There had been nothing he could do.
Taka had Philip with him. We shook hands.
“Philip, how are you?”
“Under the circumstances, I guess I’m good. It will be a while before I can forget the sustained pain we had in the tower.”
“I wonder if we get PTSD here. You have any trouble, find someone to talk to.”
“Quentin, I need a favor.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t tell Anita the worst of what I went through. Just tell her I was a prisoner.”
“Why?”
“I’m just getting her to come out of her shell. She’ll find a way to turn it inward and blame herself. As it is, she sometimes thinks the only way to find peace is to turn herself into a proto and get a brain wipe. I don’t want to lose her. I think, in time, I can get her to care about things again. I want the chance to try.”
“Well, I can tell you she cares about one thing already. Come on. I think it’s time to let her know you are back.”
Anita was waiting nervously. She had heard we were back and was beginning to think it bad news that I had not come to her right away. When we knocked and she opened the door, her face lit up in a way I had never seen. In that moment, she shed all of her being of the mass and embraced what we euphemistically called “citizenship.”
Philip smiled wryly and self-effacingly. “Hiya, kid. Miss me?”
She threw herself into his arms. He rubbed her back with his hand.
“We’ll, I think I’ll let you folks get re-acquainted.”
“Quentin.”
I turned. Philip looked at me with a strange expression. “I’m so sorry about Saripha. I didn’t know her, but I know she was important to folks here.”
“She was. She will be missed. Thanks.”
“She’d still be with us if you hadn’t come looking for me.”
For a moment I thought he was joining the blame Quentin line, which included myself. Then I realized he had something different in mind.
“You didn’t cause what happened to Saripha, Philip.”
“But if I hadn’t been stupid and gone to Haven…”
“Lot of that going around, Philip. It wasn’t you.”
Anita came up to me. There were tears in her eyes and she looked ten years younger.
“Thank you.” Anita hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, but she was too choked up to say more. I watched them go into the house together.
At least one thing had gone right.
“Grass tea?”
Rox poured herself a cup. “It’s about the only thing I know how to cook.”
“How do they make all that fake food and booze stuff.”
Rox shrugged. “It’s some trick where you borrow some substance from your glamour and then reshape it.”
I thought about the owner of the Dirty Glass. “Eww.”
“You probably wouldn’t say eww if it were part of my body.”
“But you don’t know how to do it.”
“I have other talents.” Her eyes shone.
“I have noticed.”
She moved a little closer and put her face next to mine. I could smell her, a light flowery scent which must have been part of her glamour because there was no perfume in this place. I could feel her breasts press against my arm as she barely kissed me on the cheek just under the ear.
“I’m supposed to be in mourning. I don’t think you’re supposed to be horny when you’re in mourning.”
“I don’t recall your spending much time doing what you’re supposed to.”
“There’s that.”
Rox smiled. When Rox smiled fully, rather than looking more angelic, she tended to look more devilish. Not that I was complaining.
“Hey, no fair. You are distracting me.”
“I am.” She smiled even more.
We lay in bed together. I was on my back, thinking. Rox lay at my side, her head on my shoulder, her hand rubbing my chest. Her skin shimmered.
“Someone had some aggression to get out,” She said into the silence.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You are going to have to work this through.”
“I get that I can’t blame myself, though it will take a while to really become convinced. What I don’t get is how I just go back to the flow of things.”
“There is no going back. The flow is going to be different now. You have to accept that.”
“I’m only trying to do good here.”
Rox raised herself up, leaning on my chest with both of her arms. She had this expression where she could look both serous and playful at the same time.
“And you expect to win every time?”
“Well, yeah.”
Rox grinned.
“How often did that happen when you were alive?”
“I wasn’t spending a lot of time going up against psychotic magical beings when I was alive.”
“You have to decide if this is what you are going to do.”
I looked at her, not sure what she was getting at.
“For whatever reason, crossing over here changed you. You have become a force here in Hell and you now have people looking to you to lead them or at least work with them.”
“Yikes.”
“Exactly. What you are doing is important, but you can’t go out there and then decide you can’t do it anymore because it gets too rough. What’s the expression? In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“I have to keep going.”
“Or you have to just stop. There is no in-between for you.”
“I don’t think
I can stop.”
Rox nodded.
“I don’t think so either. But you had to say it. However, that commits you to doing so no matter what happens.”
“If they throw Smurfs at me, I’m cutting and running.”
I couldn’t tell if Rox knew what Smurfs were. She looked at me enigmatically and ran one hand over my chest and down my stomach.
“So, I just have to keep going.”
“No, you have to believe in what you are doing. That’s why you will keep going. Saripha understood that and believed in you.”
“Look where that got her.”
“It got her where she wanted to go. She killed herself, the Baron didn’t kill her. She believed in the cause.”
“And you are saying I believe as well.”
“Yes, and as long as you follow what you believe, you will do the right thing. There will be consequences, sometimes terrible consequences, but you have to keep going because others are depending on you. This isn’t obligation, it is faith.”
“Oh, well, thanks. I don’t feel any pressure now.”
“We’ll get you through this and move on.”
“I hope so. I may need a lot of distraction, though.”
“That can be arranged.”
Luckily we had a couple of more hours before the Rockvale contingent headed to Guido’s place. We found some ways to occupy the time.
Guido surrounded himself with a very different breed of demon called Azaroti. They were large, not like the Demon King, and actually quite intelligent. I didn’t know much else about them, but they seemed to work for Guido. The two I had met that I nicknamed Tweedledee and Tweedledum came in a wooden wagon pulled by what looked like demonic armored horses and took all of us over. When we got to where Guido lived, they didn’t take us into the bar, but into the abandoned city.
In a courtyard that seemed to be formed out of marble was a small round pool, maybe fifteen feet in diameter. It was surrounded by pillars. Vines grew up around the pillars and spilled out over the arches connecting the pillars. From the upper vines, bunches of grape-like fruits hung down, the color of blood. The water was deep and very still. Its surface was like a mirror.