When I saw Barbara, though, my marginal optimism wavered.
She was watching me, her expression worried or maybe nervous, and her face was just a shade too pale. At my gaze, she looked quickly away, refusing to meet my eyes.
An important sign? Or simply a reasonable reaction to the sight of a teenager walking in chains to his own execution?
I tried to focus on what I could control, trusting the others had fulfilled their end of my confounded plan. We reached the steps carved at the side of the larger plateau tiers and began the climb. Steps proved less than shackle-friendly, but I shambled along, goaded by a steady stream of pokes and prods from behind, until I found myself standing at the base of the archaic wooden platform of the gallows.
Aside from me and my escorts, the only other people on the plateau were two guys from Barbara’s setup crew and a rotund goodfellow I recognized as the resident Sanctum hangman. Not that the noose he was tying left much to question. But I did remember.
I’d first seen him when my dad had deemed me ready to witness an execution at the ripe age of twelve. The hangman had been portly then, and he’d only grown more round in the several years since. He gave me a practiced once-over as we approached. I suppressed a small shudder as his gaze lingered on my neck, his hands still tying the knot by feel.
“Best you come on up and get situated,” he said, his voice thick and his tone matter-of-fact but not unkind. “Folk’ll be startin’ to drift in soon.”
The wooden steps creaked underfoot as I made my last ascent.
“Be seeing ya, kid,” came Smirks’ voice from behind.
Coming from him, the simple goodbye—and the lack of insult therein—almost seemed sweet. Almost. I only glanced back long enough to confirm he and the two guards were headed back down to the main floor of the hall.
The wood of the gallows had a feel of apathy under my bare feet. It wasn’t warm or cool. Wasn’t particularly rough or smooth. It simply was.
I stood where the hangman indicated and closed my eyes, trying to calm my swirling thoughts and ignore the labored breathing and occasional wheeze of the hangman as he finished and double checked his noose.
My noose, rather.
A swoop of frightened panic made a bid for my senses, begging me to run.
The voices in the room were multiplying now. I opened my eyes and saw that folks were indeed starting to drift in. All types of them. I made a sort of game of trying to deduce their stories as they filed close enough for me to get a decent look.
Some were clearly devout acolytes and servants of the Sanctum, come to confirm that Alpha’s supreme Will was upheld today. Others just as clearly came because they thought it’d be cool to see a man hanged. And then there were the Legion and Sanctum officials, a mixed bag of officers and clerics, attending out of duty or desire.
Soon, the hall was bustling, and I was starting to sweat wondering where Carlisle and the others were, and what they were up to.
We were only fifteen or so minutes away from sunset when I noticed Barbara making her way up to the gallows from the crowd. A tap on my shoulder brought my attention back to the hangman, who hefted the noose, now suspended from the high arm of the gallows.
“Ready, fella?”
I just stared at him, not really sure how to answer that question.
He nodded in perfect understanding and gently slipped the slack loop over my head. “It’ll be over real quick, fella. Don’t you worry ‘bout that.”
I let out a deep breath, fighting a strong and sudden urge to cry my eyes out.
To the left, Barbara climbed the gallows steps, headed my way.
She stopped in front of me, chewing her lip and meeting my eyes with an apprehensive, almost frantic look. She didn’t look like the fearless, professional reporter I’d seen earlier.
I felt the flicker of hope.
She shot a look at the hangman, who gave her a small nod and shuffled off to give us privacy—as much as we could hope for in the bustling hall, anyway. Barbara just fidgeted with her hands, eyes downward and distant.
“Aren’t I supposed to be the one shaking in my boots here?” I asked quietly, frightened I might scare her away.
“You’re not wearing any boots.”
A shaky laugh escaped me. “Guess that explains it, then.”
The sound of my laugh snapped her back from wherever her mind had been drifting. She held my gaze for a long second, then stepped forward and threw her arms around my neck.
I held my breath, waiting. Was this it?
The hug was welcome enough either way, I decided.
Then her hand slipped down the back of my neck, lightly fishing beneath my robe, and I had to stop myself from crying out in relief.
“Back in the cell…” I whispered.
Something clicked against my back.
“I had to meet you,” she said, so quietly I almost missed it. “Before I could… I didn’t believe any of it. Didn’t expect…”
She backed out of the embrace, which was probably for the best. A few people were already starting to stare. I was too relieved to care much, though, as I felt the little tug of something sliding off my chest, over my collarbone. Her hands darted furtively to her pockets as she took a small step back, and I knew.
Barbara Sanders had just saved my life.
I let out a long breath, trying not to look like someone who’d just been freed from the scorcher pendant that had been the only thing keeping me helplessly bound. Barbara looked to be doing much the same.
I checked to make sure the hangman was still far away enough for the din of the crowd to cover us. “Do you understand what’s happening here?”
“Not as much as I’d like to,” she replied, just as quietly. “But meeting you convinced me to watch what your friends sent me.” She shuddered a little. “I couldn’t ignore it. Too many things adding up. It’s…”
“It’s a lot.”
She looked at me like that was the first crazy thing I’d said.
“I don’t know what your friends are planning. They just told me to be ready to shoot the story of a lifetime and that if you weren’t sedated, there’d probably be some kind of pendant masking your, uh, power. I don’t understand what in demons’ depths that means, but I guess if you’re all crazy, what does it matter, right? I… Did this actually help?”
I confirmed I could touch my surroundings with my extended senses and felt some rather unheroic tears welling in my eyes. Maybe it was just the pre-hanging jitters, but it was all a bit overwhelming.
“Help? Barbara, you just saved my life.”
Barbara looked less than convinced, but something else drew her eye. The hangman’s impatient shuffling. She waved to indicate we were almost done.
“Maybe if you actually make it out of here,” she said quietly, “you can thank me by giving me the whole story of what in Alpha’s name is going on. Just please, try not to hurt anyone.”
The High Cleric’s words flashed through my head, bringing the first wave of dread back to my gut.
“Barbara, I don’t know what’s about to happen here, but it might be bad. Keep an eye out. And be ready to run.”
She hesitated, clearly wanting to ask more, but the hangman was shuffling again, and one of her crew members was calling her. She looked at me like she was wondering whether I was a blessing or a ticking bomb, then she left to go check in with her people.
Earlier, I’d thought I liked Barbara Sanders for some intangible reason. She’d easily just earned it ten thousand times over.
Once she’d gone, I closed my eyes and began unlocking my shackles with telekinesis, careful to keep my arms and legs pinned to keep anything from falling off prematurely. Somewhere off to the left, I faintly heard Barbara’s voice as she began her broadcast for the WAN. I suppressed the urge to reach out further and check my surroundings. It wouldn’t do to accidentally brush up against any of the nearby raknoth or Seekers.
I’d just finished the last shackle lock when
the bustling hall began to quiet. The light bleeding through my eyelids had shifted blood orange.
Sunset had come.
I opened my eyes to find the Great Hall alive with a dancing swirl of sunlight—warm hues of reds, yellows, and oranges refracting through the duraglass and coalescing throughout the hall with a cheery yet haunting glow. It was beautiful, even if it did mean my time was up.
At least I had a chance now.
But where were the raknoth?
The key pipes lining the head of the hall cleared their throats and let fly one of the Sanctum’s ceremonial tunes, silencing the low din of anxious voices. When I peered over my shoulder, the High Cleric had appeared on the high plateau step from his chambers below.
There was one at least.
He stood calmly at the ledge, looking over the hall as the assembled crowd erupted with cheers and applause. After a minute, the key pipes concluded their soaring song, and the hall fell into reverent silence. I scanned the crowd with an odd swirl of dread and hopefulness. Maybe we had a better shot with just one raknoth anyway. And there was little enemy presence outside of the legionnaires in attendance and the dozen Sanctum Guard lining either side of the hall.
After what the High Cleric had said below, though, I couldn’t believe there weren’t reinforcements lurking nearby, ready to spring the trap.
They meant to crush us here. I was sure of it.
And there, sliding up to the front ranks right on cue, was Al’Kundesha, watching me from behind Adrian Kublich’s dark, stern eyes. Apparently he saw me looking.
“You didn’t think I’d miss the occasion?” his voice came to me.
I did my best to ignore him, in part to deprive him of the satisfaction, but mostly to avoid doing anything that might tip him off to my liberated abilities.
“Citizens of Divinity,” the High Cleric called, his voice amplified both electronically and by the acoustics of the hall itself. I didn’t turn. Just envisioned him in my head, raknoth eyes ablaze and casting a great, long shadow from his precipice.
“I needn’t remind you why we gather here today,” he continued. “Just as I needn’t remind you what is at stake when a demon of the nether manifests itself in this world. We all know the tales of old, of the fiery crowns and the beastly abominations Alpha and his chosen drove into the nether that we might know a good and peaceful existence. But the demon is cunning. Adaptable. It perseveres from the depths, whispering its insidious will to those once pure of flesh and blood. Seducing until they stray, until they find themselves willing vessels to its evil. Vessels like the fallen who was once Haldin Raish, Alpha save him.”
“Alpha save him,” the crowd echoed.
“Listen to them, Haldin,” Al’Kundesha sent.
“Once a vessel has suffered the incursion of a demon, we as servants of the light have but one option available to us. It is our responsibility not only to protect the world from the reach of the demon, but to save the spirit of the vessel as well. What we offer here is not punishment or vengeance. It’s absolution. It’s the love of Alpha, praise be.”
“Praise be.”
“Do you see what it is you’re about to die for?”
I couldn’t listen to any more.
I needed to focus on what I could control—the plan I’d mentally rehearsed a hundred times and yet could hardly seem to recall now. Instead, I was relegated to trying to ignore Al’Kundesha’s blather about the waste of it all. I fretted over what he and his ilk were playing at. I worried about the others. Lastly, most painfully, I couldn’t help but wonder how my parents would have felt if they’d somehow been alive to see all this.
By the time the hall’s hue shift from serene orange to blood red informed me the sun was cresting the horizon, I hadn’t managed to think a single helpful thought at all.
“And now,” the High Cleric called, “with the end of this blessed day, will come the blessed end of this demon’s reign in our city of Divinity!”
“What do you suppose they’ll think at the end?” Al’Kundesha sent.
My heart was thundering too hard to worry about what he meant.
The hangman pulled the noose snug around my throat, the feel of the rough rope against the skin of my neck only jostling the plan that much further from my grasp.
I closed my eyes, trying to find my focus.
“Will they make it as far as wondering why you? Why them?”
The plodding thumps of the hangman’s footsteps vibrated through the planks against my bare feet as he retreated to the antique lever.
“Or will that be left to the rest of Enochia?”
I wanted to scream at him to shut up.
The hangman gripped the lever.
I couldn’t breathe.
Too fast. It was happening too fast.
I stood there, every muscle in my body rigid with anticipation, head spinning in the maddening silence. Perspiration creeping down my brow, down my back.
Then something bit at the edge of my conscious mind, like a boot tread catching dirt after too much ice. Something about Al’Kundesha’s words.
Without thinking about it, I threw my senses out wide in every direction. Just for a second. A wide snapshot I could barely process a fraction of. But it was enough. Enough to feel the hybrids beneath the plateau steps and gathering back in the antechamber—so many of them. Enough to feel what I had to assume were my own allies’ ships approaching the Great Hall from the rear.
The moment stretched before me, and I felt like I was caught at the eye of an enormous, unfolding storm, the pieces falling into place like hardsteel anvils to the lungs.
This wasn’t just a trap to take down a few bothersome rebels.
This was meant to be the spark to the fuel-soaked pyre that was Enochia. An indiscriminate slaughter that would leave the entire planet clamoring and clawing for safety, unsure who or what to trust. Perfectly ripe for conquest.
And we were meant to be the villains in this story.
“Alpha grant you peace, Haldin Raish,” called the High Cleric.
I opened my mouth, panic screaming through my veins.
Then the hangman threw the lever, and the floor dropped out beneath me, leaving me free to the will of gravity.
43
Demons
I caught myself with telekinesis before I’d even dropped a foot through the open gallows door, all thoughts of going along with the act—of trying to make it look convincing—forgotten in light of the nightmare I’d just found myself in.
There were more than a few gasps.
Someone screamed.
I ignored them.
“Evacuate this hall, now!” I shouted, loud as I could. “You’re all in danger! Go! Run! Please!”
They only gaped. A thousand stupefied stares, certain the only danger they could be in must be from the teenage boy floating in midair before them, defying gravity as surely as he’d just defied his own rightful death.
Another scream from the back of the hall. And another.
Al’Kundesha’s eyes glinted red for the briefest instant. But no one noticed. They were too busy turning to see what the screams were about. From my vantage point on the second plateau, I could see all too well.
Hybrids. Dozens of them, charging straight down the dark stone path for the Great Hall.
The crowd went mad.
“Demons!” someone screamed.
“Alpha save us!” cried others. “Alpha save us all!”
“Protect the civilians!” the High Cleric barked from his dais.
The dirty scud-spouting bastard.
“Seize Raish!” he added.
I yanked my wrists and ankles free of the unlocked shackles and thrust my legs out wide to brace on the edges of the trap door while I tugged the noose off. The fit was tight, and the knot hesitant to loosen under my fingers, but I was hardly worried about a little rope burn on my jaw and chin.
Something grabbed my collar just as I freed myself. The hangman. Having followed the Hig
h Cleric’s order quite literally, he stood there, extended precariously over the opening, unsure what to do next. He had this look in his eye, like he was genuinely confused as to why I’d gone and made a mess of a perfectly good hanging.
I shoved him off, dropped through the trap door, and staggered out from under the gallows. The first thing I saw was Barbara, watching me from where she’d been reporting nearby, her eyes wide, both hands held to her mouth, frozen with shock.
A blood hungry roar snapped her out of it, drawing our attention below. The crowd was in a full on panic now—a writhing stampede of screams and wild eyes, pushing their way everywhere and nowhere at once, some knocking their neighbors to the ground, others falling to their knees in prayer or plain shock.
They had nowhere to run. The only exits were through the antechamber. Through the hybrids.
An explosion rocked the Great Hall from above. Then another, and another.
I could barely look away to register them as, across the hall, the stream of hybrids cleared the pathway of columns and spilled into the Great Hall. In the blink of an eye, a dozen civilians were dead, hungry hybrids drinking them dry, more joining them each second.
I started running their way without thinking.
“Haldin!”
Carlisle’s voice.
I looked up in time to see him peering through a neat hole in the duraglass above the first plateau, Elise and Johnny at his side.
To the left, over the main body of the hall, I spotted multiple Legion transports through the translucent ceiling. Those would be the “rebels” who’d been chased out of Sanctuary last night. The ones who’d lost friends and found themselves with nowhere left to go after Al’Kundesha’s treachery. Several of the legionnaires were already heaving more blasted hunks of duraglass aside to clear the way for rappelling lines.
Everything was going according to plan—aside from the army of hybrids ripping their way through a thousand helpless civilians.
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