Shadows of Divinity

by Luke Mitchell

  Whatever force had been restraining me was gone.

  By the time the thought fully registered, I was already charging. Not toward the entryway, but straight for Kublich’s turned back.

  Run? Leave my father behind with this… this monster?

  Grop that. I was going to strangle the demon bastard with my own hands. But before I could close the distance and tackle him down, Kublich sprang forward, crossing the room with alarming speed, and clamped a clawed hand around my father’s throat.

  “NO!” I screamed, reaching helplessly out for the second time. Too late.

  The demon with Kublich’s face turned its fiery eyes to me and broke my father’s neck.

  After that, things became a blur.

  I’d like to say that I threw myself at Kublich. That I gouged those burning red eyes from their sockets. But the part of my adrenaline-soaked brain that had watched him survive a gunshot to the head and break my dad’s neck with one hand told me to run for my life. And I listened.

  I was halfway down the entryway hall when my legs locked, that same full-body paralysis taking abrupt hold of me. I hit the floor hard, air exploding from my lungs.

  “You cannot run, Haldin,” he called from the living room.

  I tried to fight, cold dread seeping through me.

  Footsteps approached from behind. “Such a pity your father had to—”

  A scream erupted from my throat, and my hands smashed into the floor as the paralysis inexplicably vanished. Behind, Kublich growled low in his throat, far too close. No time to think. I planted my hands and feet, launched halfway into a sprint for the door… and froze on wobbly feet.

  Someone was striding toward me from the open front door. The strange civilian from the mess hall. Even in my panic, I recognized him. But he didn’t look unassuming anymore.

  The air crackled around him with some intangible energy, sweeping at his hair and clothes. He raised a hand, palm out, and a nebulous light breathed into existence there, intensifying from faint to threatening before I so much as had time to wonder what in damnation was happening.

  I didn’t understand. But the too-close growl at my back told me I didn’t have time to understand. Kublich behind. The stranger ahead.

  I was dead.

  Except the stranger’s eyes weren’t focused on me, were they? I tensed to throw myself into a mad sprint past him. Before I could, his pale eyes caught mine, and he flicked his head almost calmly to the side, radiant palm held at the ready.

  I didn’t have time to ask questions. I dove out of the way and hit the floor with a hard thud. The hallway erupted like an entire crate of detonating snap flares and thumpers.

  Blinding white light. A sonorous crack like thunder.

  A violent rush of air smacked into me, my vision too bleached from whatever had just happened to see anything but vague outlines. I felt more than heard the enormous crash behind me—the monster, I hoped, blasted back into the living room by the stranger’s… whatever.

  It didn’t matter.

  I had to get out.

  I tried for my feet, shaking my head in a futile attempt to restore my sight and clear the steady ringing in my ears. I’d made it to my knees when something grabbed my shoulder. I lashed out blindly, but a deft hand turned aside my wild defense.

  There was time only to scream a wordless challenge.

  Then something pressed against the side of my head, and the world went black.

  4

  Rude Awakenings

  I woke at the dinner table.

  But that wasn’t right. Why wasn’t that right? I couldn’t recall, but as I looked over at my parents, I was sure something was wrong.

  Everything in the room glowed white and pristine. The walls, the table linens. Even our clothes. Kublich sat across the table, smiling amicably over his wine glass. I frowned at the sight of him. There was something there, some muffled unpleasant feeling that—

  I gasped as images flashed through my awareness, too fast to comprehend. There was blood. I was sure of that. Blood and darkness. And, in the darkness, for the briefest instant, a pair of fiery red—

  No, a voice said in my head. No, everything is fine.

  Was that my voice?

  It didn’t matter. It was clearly right. We were all laughing and chatting at the table. Everyone seemed perfectly happy. At the sound of the doorbell, I hopped up from my chair and walked down the hall to greet our guest.

  Before I reached the door, though, it burst open on a powerful gust of wind. Total, utter darkness filled the doorway, so thick it might’ve had physical substance. Smoky tendrils of it began to creep in past the threshold, and in their wake came a man with gray hair and pale eyes, wreathed in darkness. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it.

  Then his eyes came alive with red fire that blazed against the darkness, and cohesive thought fled my mind. His skin shifted sickly green as he reached for me with a clawed hand.

  I turned to run.

  The hallway leading back to the dining room and to the safety of my parents seemed to stretch longer as I ran, the end an ever-distant speck in my vision. A choir of growls and howling wind filled the hall around me. I ran faster—as fast as my gelatinous legs could manage, sure that every moment would be my last.

  After what felt like ages of failing to draw any closer to the end, I looked up to find I’d somehow reached my destination. Something was wrong, though. The pristine white glow of the room beyond had faded, replaced by an ominously pulsing scarlet. Silence hung heavy in the air, all the thicker after the cacophony that’d filled the hall moments before. I stood there on the threshold, suddenly afraid to enter.

  One step. Then another. I entered the dining room to find my parents and Kublich all slumped forward in their chairs. Horror gripped at my chest. They were covered in blood, tar black against their white clothes in the red glow of the room. The man with gray hair and a cloak of swirling shadows stood behind them, his face split in a smile full of glistening fangs. It was only then I realized that the scarlet glow pulsing through the room was coming from his eyes.

  He started toward me, murder in those fiery eyes, and—

  I sprang awake only to be met with a hard blow to the head.

  Darkness. Complete, constricting darkness.

  I pawed frantically around, head throbbing, desperate to fend off the next blow. Except one wasn’t coming, I realized as my probing hands found the ceiling my head had struck. I was quite alone in a space not much larger than my huddled body. No room to extend my legs, to sit up. Only darkness, and a low, steady hum. I flicked my fingers straight. Nothing. My palmlight was gone.

  Panic tried to take me then, darkness pressing in, squeezing my lungs tight. Tighter than the walls of my new prison.

  I closed my eyes—not that it made a difference. I wiped cold sweat from my brow and tried to calm my rapid breathing. Control. I needed to get myself under control and figure this thing out.

  At least my hands and legs weren’t bound. That was something. But where in damnation was I? And how did I get there?

  I focused in on the steady hum permeating the cramped darkness.

  A skimmer engine?

  It was the best guess I had. Which meant I was probably in a skimmer trunk, bound for Alpha knew where with Alpha knew who. The floor shifted beneath me, and my stomach informed me of an unmistakable change in velocity and direction.

  Definitely a skimmer.

  And if I was in a skimmer trunk… I swallowed, panic making another bid for control as I felt around in the darkness to confirm what I already knew deep down: unless I found some magical way to force the latch from the inside, I was stuck here until someone decided to let me out.

  “Grop,” I heard myself whisper.

  My voice sounded strange in the dark space. Maybe I was just losing it. And for good reason.

  Mom. Dad. The thing that had attacked them.

  My breaths were ragged in the darkness. Quickening. A
band of cold hardsteel tightening around my chest, suffocating me. Terrible sights flashing through my memory. The wrecked living room. The blood.

  The demon that had killed them.

  The band tightened, wrenching at my stomach, threatening to push its contents back up. I rolled over, fighting the nausea. Darkness closing in on me. My heart pounding like a wild animal, bent on escaping my chest.

  My parents were dead. And I was probably about to join them.

  I lost it then. Self-control fled me as I gave in to wild panic, kicking and thrashing against the darkness. I beat at the unyielding trunk hatch, anger and fear and desperation all spilling out of my throat in a strangled, wordless cry. The skimmer might have slowed at my outburst. I barely noticed. Just kept slamming my fist against the hatch, raging at that piece of scud latch holding me here to my doom, screaming like a madman for my parents, for a fighting chance, for that Alpha-cursed trunk hatch to open—for the love of Alpha, OPEN!

  It did.

  I wasn’t sure how or why. Only that, one second, I was pounding and screaming against the wall of my dark prison, and the next, I was staring dumbly out past the bobbing trunk door to the lines of nighttime skimmer traffic and rushing city lights beyond, my entire body trembling with sudden and inexplicable exhaustion. I felt like I’d just been electrocuted.

  But I was free.

  It didn’t make any sense. But that didn’t matter right now. I was free, and I needed to move my ass. The skimmer was already slowing down, apparently alert to my situation. Luckily, we were down with the street-level traffic and not up in one of the skylanes. We were still moving a good thirty or forty miles per hour, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it.

  I moved into a crouch, turning to face the front of the skimmer, painfully aware of how sluggish my limbs felt. But I was free, and this was my only chance.

  I leapt from the trunk.

  Indignant buzzers sounded from the skimmers behind. I had a brief moment to appreciate just how fast I was flying through the air toward the hard pavement. Then I hit the ground and found out in excruciating detail just how unforgiving that pavement was. I rolled as best I could, hoping to disperse the violent deceleration and clear the traffic lane at the same time. It was a sloppy roll, and only partially successful at either goal. But I lived.

  If that had been that, I would’ve lain there on the cool permacrete for hours and allowed myself to wallow. Instead, the sight of my captor’s skimmer pulling out of traffic to slow to a halt ahead had me on my feet and moving before my body even had time to fully process how much pain it was in.

  I plunged into a nearby alley at a limping run, only allowing myself a glance backward as I neared the end of the narrow space. No sign of anyone following me. But I wasn’t about to take that as permission to slow.

  The next street over was bustling with foot traffic—civilians of Divinity, all made up in sleek, flowing garments, on their way to catch a show, or, given that it was Alphasday, probably to attend evening worship. My dark pants and green long sleeve shirt didn’t exactly blend with the fashionable crowd, but at least I wasn’t wearing my crisp gray tyro uniform.

  I threw myself into the stream, weaving through civilians as best I could, trying to refrain from shoving people around and broadcasting my location to anyone who might be trailing me through the crowd. Two blocks later, past the flowing lanes of foot traffic, I ducked left into another alleyway, this one wider than the last and lined with several boxy blue dumpsters.

  I hurried along the dim alleyway, intending to cut through and keep running until I couldn’t anymore. My body had other plans.

  About halfway down the stretch, it all hit without warning—the full blast of every thought and sensation the shock and adrenaline had been holding at bay since I’d stumbled into that bloody living room nightmare. I slumped down against the wall in the small space between two dumpsters, tucked my face against my knees, and tried to catch my breath against the plethora of throbbing aches I’d gained in my hasty skimmer escape.

  Think. I just needed to think. Figure it out. For the moment, I was in the clear. No one would see me here, nestled between the dumpsters just like another one of Divinity’s homeless.

  No.

  I wasn’t like one of Divinity’s homeless right now. I was one.

  That Kublich creature—or demon, or whatever—had wanted me dead. Had it really been Kublich? I couldn’t begin to comprehend how that was possible. Either way, I couldn’t go back right now. Not while that thing was probably looking to finish the job.

  So what did I do next?

  I called my parents. That was the obvious, reflexive answer. I called my parents, and I asked them what to do, how to make it better. Only I couldn’t. I’d never be able to do that again.

  Hot tears spilled over, their wet trails warm down my cheeks one moment and cool the next in the deepening chill of the night air. It was nothing compared to the chill in my chest—the one that had nothing to do with my surroundings.

  “They’re gone,” I whispered. It didn’t sound right—couldn’t be right. “Mom. Dad.”

  Silence pressed in around me, the low din of the distant crowds like a mocking call, only highlighting the hollow ache at my core. A shudder racked through me. I pressed my face to my knees even tighter. “Please,” I whispered. “Please, please.”

  I wasn’t sure who I was talking to—what I was even asking for—but the words came out all the same. Memories looped unbidden through my mind. The gut-wrenching crack of the Kublich demon breaking my dad’s neck. The slack lifelessness of my mom’s body on the living room floor.

  It was too much.

  I clenched my jaw, hands curling into fists, and only barely contained the wordless scream in my throat. I looked up at the building across the alleyway, tall and sturdy. A housing tower, from the look of it. There’d be dozens of families in that building, most of them supping right now, or gathering around to watch the evening worship—all of them content, completely oblivious to the tragedy sitting on their doorstep.

  It was sick. It didn’t feel real. A few sobbing huffs escaped me. I glared up at the high-rise, bitter rage eating at my insides. I wanted to hit something. Needed to release some of whatever it was that was building inside of me. I started pulling myself to my feet. I needed to do something. Anything. Maybe I could find a public node and get a message to Johnny.

  Would that even be safe?

  If by some Alpha-cursed sorcery a demon was somehow parading as the High General of the Legion—with the considerable resources that entailed—was there really anywhere I could go? Anything I could do that wouldn’t be leaving a trail for him to find me?

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Gropping scudbucket of a—”

  I froze, boot cocked to kick the dumpster beside me, and listened.

  Voices. Low and serious. Coming closer. They were definitely detached from the din of the crowd, now. But it was probably nothing, right? Just a few civilians on their way to—

  “—ust me when I say he’s nearby,” one of them was saying in a smooth voice as they drew closer. “And gropping be ready.”

  Scud.

  My heart thudded straight into overdrive, fresh adrenaline lacing its electric fingers through my senses as I pressed myself flat to the wall.

  Were they talking about me? Of course they were. But were they really? I didn’t even know who they were. It could still just be a few guys looking for their hound for all I knew.

  Yeah. Right.

  Their boot falls were heavy, precise—uncomfortably reminiscent of those of marching soldiers. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad news. By sheer force of will, I resisted the urge to peek around the dumpster. My instincts told me I was in danger, and right now, that was all I had to go by.

  I needed to move. But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere but down the alley, right in plain sight of the five or six men who may or may not be armed and looking for me. I was o
n the verge of bolting for it anyway when the group halted nearby. The abrupt absence of boot falls was jarring in my tense state.

  I held my breath, waiting. One of them murmured something, too quiet to hear. I crouched there, cowering like a damn cornered animal, not even able to hear what my looming enemies were saying.

  The anger flickered back to life, loosening the tension in my chest, fixing itself at a new target. I was trying to rein in the wild urge to round the corner and do something that would probably only worsen my situation when they finally broke the silence.

  “Come on out, kid,” a voice called—the same smooth voice that’d spoken a few moments earlier. “No need to hide with the garbage anymore.”

  That settled the question of who they were looking for. And whoever they were, something about the guy’s tone told me they weren’t here to give me a warm blanket and a hug.

  5

  False Pretenses

  “Come on, kid. I swear we won’t bite.”

  Somehow, my heart managed to beat faster. They could probably hear the damn thing from twenty feet away.

  Kid. They couldn’t see me yet, but he’d said kid, which meant one of two things. Either some strangers had seen me running and decided to follow me into the alleyway, or these people knew exactly who they were looking for—and, somehow, had known exactly where to find me.

  Either way, it wasn’t good. But there wasn’t really anything to be gained by trying to stay hidden behind the dumpster any longer. So I leaned cautiously out to see what I was up against.

  For a second, I was terrified I’d be greeted by more glowing red eyes. Instead, I saw cream-colored armor and four disconcertingly featureless faceplates of pale gold. Sanctum Guard, I realized with a jolt. But Sanctum Guard didn’t idly stroll the streets unless they were accompanying a cleric.

  And the fifth man was clearly not a cleric.

  He wore plain brown pants and a dull green jacket, his appearance fairly unremarkable but for the odd black circlet around his neck and the haughty smirk hanging across his mouth—a smirk that instantly identified him in my mind as the man who’d spoken.