Demorn: City of Innocents (The Asanti Series Book 2)

by David Finn

  ‘What’s the news of the world?’ Demorn asked.

  His face flickered in the glass, ghostly with the bad connection. ‘Aggggrh, great tales of woe and tragedy, my liege lord, my beloved sister!’

  She laughed richly. ‘It’s the same all over then. Are you fighting corpses in the streets like I have been?’

  He shrugged, his voice quiet suddenly, his eyes flashing behind the pretty Halloween mask. ‘Nah, it’s all cool. The Tyrant rules Babelzon. The Club is turning a tidy profit. The clubhouse got a paint job and I got a bigger room.’

  ‘The Innocents are OK?’

  His voice was unusually somber. ‘The Innocents miss their Queen.’

  Demorn laughed. ‘A Queen? Did I get a promotion?’

  Smile’s golden teeth pouted, looking fake sad. ‘It’s been almost two years, Sis. Most people think you’re dead.’

  She smiled her scary smile.

  ‘Well, isn’t death kind to reputations?’

  He pulled a face. ‘I could be partly to blame, Sis. There’s some bootleg footage I got off a satellite. It looks like you’re fighting zombies with your sword.’

  ‘Close enough,’ she said wryly.

  ‘Maybe I leaked it last Xmas Eve. Maybe it blew up big.’

  The lights flickered in the bathroom. Smile faded from the glass. For a moment she thought she had lost the link.

  But the watch shone suddenly strong and he reappeared in full, looking totally different, handsome and confident. He was wearing a cool X-Men comic t-shirt. It seemed like a different day, the sun was bright behind him.

  Demorn smiled, her heart hurting, for the past, for comics, lazy afternoons geeking out with him. ‘I miss you so much!’

  ‘Come home then!’ he said, a touch exasperated.

  ‘I’m trying. The Grave made it hard.’ She sighed.

  Smile looked at a small viewing tablet in his hand, glowing upon his shifting Halloween mask, turning him into some sort of futuristic, digital clown.

  ‘I can never get a solid read on you in the Dead Dimension. But now you’re close. Shimmering and abstract . . . but close. Where are you?’

  ‘Alex found me. I’m at Duke Pain’s holiday house.’

  He looked up, startled, eyelashes sparkling. ‘Really? THE Duke Pain? The MYTH? Living AND breathing?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, slightly shocked. ‘He’s kinda nice actually.’

  He smiled, his teeth dazzling and golden. ‘I bet! Is he like all TANNED, with short hair, flashy suits, and y’know, with a kind of enigmatic yet KIND way of speaking?’

  ‘Um, he has a nice suit. I’m sure he was hot once?’

  He raised an eyebrow above his clown mask. ‘Once? Is he really REALLY old?’

  Demorn glanced away. ‘No.’

  Smile took the top half of his mask off, showing his cute, innocent face, pretty tinted green eyelashes and ageless teenage porcelain skin.

  ‘Oh no, sister dearest! You’ve got the WRONG Duke!’

  She looked at the bathroom doorway, a flicker of tension in her gut. ‘What?’

  He raised his hands to his face. The mask became a flickering image of skulls and red fire. His fingers fluttered with urgency around his neck.

  ‘Are there needles? In his skin? Into his neck?’

  She strapped her pistol to her ankle holster. ‘I don’t think so.’

  The gold in his smile faded to nothing. ‘What is wrong with him then, Demorn? I know he’s not normal, I can see it in your eyes.’

  ‘He’s kinda dying . . . slow, rotten, cursed . . . whatever.’

  Smile shook his head. ‘You’ve got the wrong version, the worst version! People should always avoid the Dying Duke, Sis.’ His voice throbbed with sadness, music hummed around her.

  ‘Well, I’ve been stuck in a Grave for two years. My reception sucked. I missed a ton of news.’

  ‘I’m a member of his fan club. He’s all twisted up inside.’

  She was quiet. ‘He was an Innocent member once, y’know.’

  His left eyebrow raised. ‘The Duke? I didn’t know that.’

  She nodded. ‘Before our time. The clubhouse was his home, years before us. He led them for awhile. My room would have been his room.’

  Smile sounded puzzled. His mask flickered with flames in the glass. ‘Just be careful, Sis. The Duke over-reaches. He is too confident, he plays his people like pawns. He’s a magnet for the Ultimate Fate.’

  A chill ran through her.

  He glanced at his tablet. ‘Or at least that’s the working theory. That’s why in 17.1% of the dimensions where he lives past thirty, the Duke and his world go Dead.’

  His smile suddenly blazed and dazzled. ‘But flip-side to that, in over 20% of the dimensions he makes full Tyrant!’

  Demorn laughed. ‘You’re in love. He’s sure not the Tyrant in our world.’

  His smile slid out to maximum, dazzling and beautiful. Demorn felt the warm, pleasant vibes, feeding through the glass, such were his powers of positivity.

  ‘You never wanted to really believe in the alternate dimensions, Demorn.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I believe in the alternates. It doesn’t mean we should gaze too deeply into them. You wind up fighting reflections.’

  Smile looked sad and put on his glittering golden mask.

  ‘Is Kate really gone?’

  Demorn nodded slowly. ‘I think so. She’s on a ghost ship . . . she’s a skeleton. She’s not somebody I can really touch.’

  ‘Let her go, Sis,’ he whispered.

  With his magical fingers, Smile burnt an image into the glass, a heart of dripping gold. She sighed, drawing over the golden lines, inscribing Asanti words and phrases from a love poem in Asanti, something from their childhood, so long ago.

  ‘Come home,’ he said.

  ‘I’m close. Love you, bro,’ she said.

  ‘C’ya soon,’ he whispered, and he faded away.

  She kept looking in the mirror for another minute or two, wishing she was young again and everything wasn’t always so big and didn’t hurt so much.

  The golden heart symbols phased into a formula on the glass. A timer, counting backward.

  The Duke walked ahead along the cliff face. The waves echoed in the night. He smelt classy and nice, as they slowly worked their way up the hills overlooking the bay. They moved in a comfortable silence, and she let her mind wander, didn’t go too far ahead. She stayed in the moment.

  ‘How long have you searched for her?’ he said casually. ‘How many worlds have you traversed?’

  Demorn’s lip curled in a semi-snarl. He didn’t know her, didn’t know what she had gone though. ‘A few.’

  He chuckled softly as he stopped to look over the dark bay. ‘I wasn’t trying to save anyone. My wife was dead with my world. This place was so normal, so quiet . . .’

  ‘Yeah, it was,’ Demorn breathed.

  ‘How long did you get with her?’ he asked.

  Demorn kept her voice steady, would not let it crack or break, no matter how much her eyes filled with tears and broken feelings. ‘Ten sane minutes in a café in Chicago. We had a coffee and talked about classic movies. Marilyn Monroe, Bogart, Star Wars . . . The big ones. She liked old movies, old songs. Kate was like me that way.’

  ‘Did she know who you were?’

  Demorn was quiet. ‘No. Then it turned into Dead Day.’

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘That’s nowhere near long enough. Not even to talk about old movies over coffee, let alone to sweet-talk a lover.’

  She agreed, smiling.

  She looked into the night water and she could see the ghost ships circling and winding around the bay, half in this world, half somewhere else. All this death, still circling in the bay beneath them. None of it boded well.

  ‘So . . . How did you imprison the Dark God?’

  He laughed. The water beneath them began to churn.

  ‘Barely. With sleight of hand magic tricks while Wrecking distracted him.’<
br />
  Sleight of hand, she thought. That’s thin.

  ‘Sometimes I look down into the water and I wonder who is the prisoner . . . him, beneath the waves, howling there in the core of the earth, or me, dying slowly above them.’

  On bare instinct, horribly positive something terrible was about to happen, she slid a small blade down her wrist into her palm. It was an old favorite blade, and Demorn flicked it across her hand.

  He looked at her. His face was movie star perfect again. But his eyes were reddened and somehow dead inside.

  ‘You know this is just a prison, don’t you, Demorn?’

  She was sober and empty. ‘What?’

  ‘We are all just prisoners, this whole dimension is a fucking write-off.’

  His face was a full skeleton, without flesh, and his skull eyes glowed red. ‘I’m the one who wrote it off.’

  Then she was back on the rocky ground while the Duke killed her, and the ocean screamed.

  The electricity coursed through her. Visions of Kate flickered in and out of her eyes like a mirage. Cold ached in her body. For a moment she thought she was in Winter Park, sneaking cigarettes and flirting with Kate in the icy morning, on their very first dates, back when it was so bittersweet and filled with promises.

  Demorn threw the blade at him, slashing across his rotten face. He staggered backward, the knife bouncing away down the rocks, gone.

  She drew her Athena gun, fired twice. Duke Pain vanished, jerking like a doll as the bullets struck home, vanishing.

  All was silent for a single moment.

  Dead? There was no marking on the ground and Demorn knew it wasn’t over, nothing was over.

  The skull tower was massive now, risen from the dark sea. Something inhuman howled from the very bowels beneath the water.

  She was glad it was not yet daylight because she knew that savage dark magic would be written upon the bone castle, vile enchantments to entrap her eyes.

  There was a sudden churning of the earth as she saw him come up again, his face more ruined than before, suit tattered and torn.

  Madness lay in his eyes.

  Demorn swept his leg out from under him with a vicious kick. Her chest heaved and the flaming Xalos issued forth, burning purple, weeping unholy fire.

  She dug the burning blade deep into his back. His eyes slowly dimmed and lost their magic.

  Shallow breath hissed through his teeth, and his weak, rotten skin trembled beneath the blade. Her muscled arms held him firm.

  ‘You played it both ways, didn’t you, Duke?’

  ‘You don’t know . . . the sacrifices I made . . .’ he gasped.

  She looked into the water, the huge skull tower, corrupt and ancient and evil. Glowing icons and tokens blazed from the bones, horrific and evil.

  She averted her eyes, knowing the potency of the voodoo witchcraft.

  ‘Are you talking about your movie star looks?’ she sneered.

  The water churned and the air reeked of plague and death.

  ‘You bargained with Zaltuth, didn’t you? You wanted this!’ she said with disgust, staring at his ruined visage. ‘You sought to free the Plague!’

  Behind all the rotted flesh the Duke looked scared, still trying to squirm from the embrace of death. ‘Do not speak his name aloud.’

  She wrenched the blade from his back, slapping him hard across the face, past caring, her heart ablaze.

  ‘WHY! The world is already dead! You failed, and lied!’

  She pushed him back right across the ledge.

  ‘I was trying to save us . . .’ the Duke gasped.

  ‘Maybe. But you’re the type who is best at saving themselves,’ she hissed softly.

  The awful skull tower was fully risen from the water, a nightmare painting from the furthest recess of some insane mind.

  ‘Look at what evil is. Look at what you allowed to live. You were an Innocent.’

  He slumped like a rag doll and his decayed face held no more beauty. He looked like a sick fighter at the bottom of his game, a touch away from the end.

  He sighed, his voice drifting off, desperate and old. ‘It wants to eat everything, the whole world, and everything beyond it . . .’

  He raised one shaky hand to his throat. He brushed his neck and she saw thin steel needles slide out from under his skin, digging into his throat, filled with some substance she could not even guess at.

  The needles seemed to stir him from his stupor. His gaze fixated on her.

  For a shining second the decaying skin healed, and she saw how the Duke looked before, an old-fashioned movie star, with tanned perfect features, white teeth and great hair . . . his visage ruined only by one huge bruised, black eye, the remaining mark from her blows.

  He spoke clearly and almost casually. ‘We’ve all had our Kate, we’ve all lost our hearts to beautiful things . . .’

  Rage flowed through her, the burning sword searing her with a holy pain. She slashed him wildly, tears running down her face. When it was over, she dug the burning sword in his gut.

  He smiled through the blood.

  ‘Replay the level,’ he whispered, hand grasping the amulet around his neck.

  Demorn tore the amulet from him.

  ‘Let the darkness claim you then!’ she cried, kicking him without mercy toward the violent waves and the towering castle of Bone which rose from the bay.

  As he fell, twisting in the air, blood streaming from his rumpled suit, she saw the needles still attached to his neck, and the red-blood horror in his eyes. Then he was lost in the darkness of the rolling waves and the blackness of the night.

  Her eyes were wet. Nobody got to say her true love’s name, nobody.

  The katana burnt in her hands. She could see iron bars in the water, just beneath the surface. This whole pocket dimension was a prison. Just a prison to hold an insane god and his rotting keeper.

  She heard a sound, faint to her ears. She looked up.

  A blonde girl was walking along the narrow cliff, humming an old song which she knew so well. Her heart surged with excitement and crazy love. It was Kate, it was Kate.

  A smile broke out on Demorn’s face and she ran from the cliff edge, her heart alive and mad with hope.

  As she ran, the girl got closer and Demorn looked away as her heart ran raw with grief. It wasn’t Kate. Kate was still dead in the Grave, an Athena bullet in her skeleton.

  Demorn sank to the ground like a physical hurt.

  Alex stood there, compassion in her eyes.

  Her fist glowed with a golden fire.

  ‘I thought I might have to beat him up for you,’ Alex said, almost embarrassed.

  The sword flickered away in Demorn’s hands, the flames disappearing back into her chest. ‘I knew it wasn’t a happy ending,’ she whispered.

  Alex put a hand on her shoulder, steady and calm. ‘C’mon, Demorn. We’re both gamers. We know bonus levels are kinda bullshit. They’ve never been a place to stay long.’

  Demorn shrugged. ‘I left a bomb in his bathroom, Alex. I knew I couldn’t stay, no matter how quiet and nice it was, no matter how much I wanted to. I always knew I would have to blow it all up.’

  She held the amulet up. Classic Innocent insignia was all over it. A unicorn and a serpent.

  ‘It makes it worse somehow, to know that in his sick mind, the Duke thinks he had stayed true to the cause.’

  Alex sighed, more cynical than Demorn. ‘Causes come and go, luv. Just like logos.’

  Demorn looked into the dark waters where he had vanished.

  ‘Promise me if I ever start talking about how a Dark God has a valid point of view . . . put a bullet straight through me, no matter how much I beg.’

  Alex winked. ‘I’ve shot at you for far less, Holy Leader.’

  Demorn flicked open the amulet.

  Alex was surprised to recognize the design. ‘A teleportation rig. Groovy.’

  Demorn nodded. ‘Yep. It’s obviously how he got here. It’s totally out of juice, which pr
obably explains why he stayed here. Luckily we have a few friends who miss us.’ She replaced the worn out core of the rig with the fresh one Wrecking had given her.

  The amulet hummed to life, small sequences of numbers flashing on the readout. She punched in the symbols Smile had just given her on the mirror in Asanti, her mind synching back to the computations of a lifetime ago. They clicked around and the amulet flashed with a go code.

  She smiled, saying a silent thank you to her brother.

  Demorn grinned brightly at Alex. ‘I’m not even sure what’s supposed to happen now. I think we go home. Hopefully we don’t die.’

  ‘We won’t die, we never die, not really.’

  Demorn looked wistful.

  Alex touched her face. ‘But if we do, do you think you’ll keep the scar in the next life? It’s kind of sexy.’

  Demorn smiled, despite everything inside her being broken and Kate farther away than ever. The skull tower howled like a banshee across the wild sea.

  ‘Nah. I never do. It’s my Dark Universe action figure scar. Cool for an episode or two, but never a season.’

  As Alex laughed, Demorn triggered the bomb. A frozen white light exploded out from the mansion, and the sky seemed to dance with strange images upon the leaden clouds, as the explosion refracted mechanically through the air. The noise was an electronic howl, blocking out the screams from the skull tower.

  She gripped onto Alex at the very last moment. The booming white light flooded across them, disintegrating everything with a singular blind pain, so for a single heartbeat Demorn felt she saw the true void, which lay beneath everything, magnificent and totally hopeless all at once.

  Then they were far gone from the dead dimension. It imploded upon itself, becoming the void.

  Interlude 4

  Replay the Level

  The shattering pain of transfer, her mouth open and hollow in a silent groan.

  Electric blue stars span in a black sky.

  Wet sand to her hands. Howling bitter wind. Crashing violent surf.

  Demorn sucked in the cold air and it burnt her lungs. She leapt to her feet.

  The kimono felt impossibly thin. The portal sparkled pink, vanishing behind her. She moved, tripping over a large body.