by Brian Fuller
“Down you go,” Helo said. “Use Toughness.”
Sparks nodded numbly, and his aura flared. Helo dumped him down the trapdoor, turning just in time for the next Dread to send a red wave of torching energy toward him. He gunned him and the next one down. The Dreads didn’t appear to be armed, which was a mercy.
Without Toughness, a leap down a trapdoor into the unknown might get him busted up, but he found a smooth metallic ladder leading down. There was a light shining down there. It was about thirty feet to the bottom. He took the sides of the ladder and slid downward, but he had only gone a little over halfway when some kamikaze Dread—aura flared—fell on top of him, separating him from the ladder. They hit the dirt floor so hard Helo was surprised there wasn’t a crater. Helo Strength tossed him off. A shotgun blast tore through the air, hitting the Dread in the back and sending him to the ground facedown.
Since there wasn’t a hole the size of a softball in his back, Helo had to guess the Dread had Toughness. The Dread rolled over, eyes rabid, and Helo Angel Fired him.
Sparks extended his hand, eyes looking clearer. “Gotta go.”
Helo took the hand, and Sparks pulled him up. They stood in a roughly excavated room about ten-by-fifteen feet. A single fluorescent tube light buzzed above them. A hallway chiseled out of rock stretched away before them, more fluorescent lights spaced ungenerously on the ceiling, making for patches of dark and light. Dread boots clanked on the ladder rungs. No doubt the Sheid would follow.
Helo took point, and they hadn’t gone far when they encountered the first alcove in the wall. Jail-cell doors faced each other across the hall. On one side the cell was dark, on the other an Ash Angel stood, hands gripping the bars. His eyes widened. Helo didn’t recognize him, but they stopped.
The Ash Angel opened his mouth, but a monster of a torching blast unfocused his eyes, and he slumped down. Helo spun, finding Sparks fighting it off, staggering against the wall. A Dread now stood behind the bars of the other cell. Her aura flared, and she pulled at the bars, bending them outward, the metal complaining.
It was Aclima. But it wasn’t Aclima. Her dead eyes regarded him as nothing more than a bug to be squashed. She wore an old pioneer dress the color of a Nebraska morning, no doubt Avadan’s doing.
Sparks raised his gun at her, his aim unsteady. Helo pushed the gun aside, and a shotgun round chipped the wall.
“Cover that shaft, Sparks, or I’ll drop you right here,” Helo said.
Aclima stepped through the bars, and as she cleared them, Helo Hallowed the ground. A Dread dropped out of the shaft, then pinned himself against the wall where he couldn’t be seen. Then another. Sparks got off an ill-aimed shot that went wide. The Sheid’s taint strengthened. It was coming.
“Helo?” Aclima said. “How’d you find this place?”
“Long story,” he said, pulling her to him against the wall. The Dreads seemed content to wait, though. “We need some help, here.” He handed her the BBG at his hip.
“Are you crazy?” Sparks said, still unsteady.
“Cover the shaft!” Helo said.
“He is crazy,” Aclima said. “Are you two it? There are a lot of Dreads here.”
“Got most of them,” he said. “Ash Angels are coming. What’s down this hall?”
“More cells,” she said, “then a ladder up to an old apartment complex. More Dreads.”
A Dread dropped into the room and bolted for the cover of the far wall. Aclima fired just before Sparks and took the Dread in the face, dropping him. Sparks’s shot went wide again.
“We’ve got to burn her,” Sparks said, rubbing his eyes.
Helo kept a wary eye on Sparks’s gun. “No.”
“You can’t Hallow her forever,” Sparks said. “And that Sheid’s going to eat us alive in this hallway.”
Helo gritted his teeth. He was going to lose her. Sparks was right. He didn’t have enough Virtus to Hallow her for even a few minutes. Once his hallow ended, she would fight them tooth and nail and force them to put her down. If he crippled her so she couldn’t fight them, the Ash Angels would get her. If he got her heart, he would have to get away from the Ash Angels before they took it from him and burned it. And even then, he couldn’t Hallow her all day and night. He’d have to find a way to imprison her.
Another Dread dropped out of the shaft only to have Aclima take its head off and Sparks blow a hole through its middle. She was a good shot.
“I could do this all day,” Sparks said.
“Helo,” Aclima said, face sad, “you’ve got to let the Ash Angels have me. I’d rather die and go to hell than do Avadan’s bidding.”
“No.”
An idea sprang into Helo’s mind. The Ash Angels would hate him for it, but it was the only way he could save her. And if he wasn’t careful, he would kill her. He had to hurry before his Virtus was completely gone.
“That Sheid’s almost here,” Sparks said, pulling out his sanctified blade. “Those Dreads are going to wait till it gets down here and then rush us.”
“Yep,” Helo said, pulling a brick of C4 from his cargo pants. It wasn’t a big one, but he hoped it would do the trick.
“That’s the spirit,” Sparks said.
Helo didn’t know what Sparks thought he would do with the brick, but he armed it and smashed it into the ceiling above him. With the last of his Virtus, he flared his Strength, grabbed Aclima by the dress, and flung her down the hallway. Head over heels she tumbled, skidding a good thirty feet on the uneven floor.
Sparks spun, face twisted. “What are you—”
“Toughness,” Helo said. “Now.”
Sparks’s aura brightened. Helo grabbed him by the shoulder and shove-walked him forward toward the room with the shaft and the waiting Dreads. Just before pressing the detonator, he spun Sparks around to use him as a shield. Boom! The force blew them forward like a cannon shot. They sailed into the room riding on a wave of fire, then skidded across the floor. The fluorescent light flickered and died, the entire structure rumbling and shuddering as rock pounded down and sealed the hallway behind them, Aclima safely on the other side. The guns on their tactical lights cast noisy cones of dusty light. Helo got to his hands and knees.
The Sheid landed off to their right. Virtus gone, there was no Hallowing anything. There was no Angel Fire left. The sanctified dagger in Sparks’s hand was no longer sanctified, its blade dented. Sparks had come to a crouch, but the Sheid let loose a powerful torch before desecrating the ground.
A Dread with Speed rushed them. Helo squeezed off a shot, but the Dread slammed into him. The gun went flying, its light spinning wildly. Helo’s back hit the wall, the Dread’s shoulder plowing into his stomach. Helo drove the Dread’s head down, hooked his arm under the Dread’s armpit, and brought his knee into the Dread’s face, over and over.
The other Dread went for Sparks, who fell backward and somehow had the presence of mind to blast a hole in the Dread’s center mass. Twice. Sparks was tough.
The Sheid’s arms turned into tentacles of blistering, black-and-orange fire. Helo spun the Dread he’d grappled around and put his forearm around his throat, keeping the Dread between him and the Sheid. Sparks was trying to get his feet underneath him.
The Sheid, now morphed to look like President Lincoln, turned its void gaze on Helo. There was nowhere to hide. With the ground Desecrated, Sparks couldn’t use any Bestowals. Helo didn’t even know what he could do. A tentacle flashed. Helo tried to lean out of the way, but the burning whip lopped off the arm he was choking the Dread with. It took off the Dread’s arm, too.
With a sideways swipe, the Sheid sliced Helo and the Dread in half at the waist, both collapsing to the ground. Helo shoved the Dread off with his one remaining arm, craning around to find Sparks leaning against the wall, still a little woozy from the torch, the desecration letting him feel all the bruises from the explosion.
Raising a tentacle, the Sheid turned on Helo.
“Down there,” a voice said from ab
ove them. Shujaa. A flash of light shone down the shaft, and the Sheid spun around. Then all two-hundred and fifty pounds of Shujaa, aura flared, dropped out of the shaft and hit the ground directly in front of the Sheid. He didn’t even get off a shot before the Sheid cut him in half, both arms slashed at the elbows. Shujaa groaned in agony as the desecration brought his wounds to life.
The Sheid stood beneath the shaft, sending its tentacles up it. Crane fell awkwardly down, one of his legs first, then the rest of him. The cracking of his bones made Helo’s skin crawl. Crane’s screams joined Shujaa’s. Shots rained down the shaft, doing little to disrupt the Sheid’s slashing arms. The ground shook, more rock from the ceiling raining down.
Sparks crawled across the room over the Dreads’ fallen bodies. For a minute, Helo thought he was going for Shujaa’s discarded weapon, but instead he grabbed Helo’s lopped-off arm. Clenching his jaw, face an angry scowl, Sparks rose and swung the arm at the Sheid’s back like a baseball player trying to knock a ball out of the stadium and into the parking lot.
The Sheid exploded into a cloud of Vexus, Helo’s arm absorbing it. The desecration disappeared. The screaming stopped.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Sparks said, then tossed the arm aside.
“I told you,” an armless and legless Shujaa said. “He is the weapon.”
Sparks grunted. “He also let Aclima go, but we can still get her. There’s a Dread hideout at the other end of that collapsed tunnel. More Dreads to kill.”
“Leave her alone,” Helo said, trying to get himself propped against a wall.
Crane sat up. “This is Crane. Have Faramir get a drone up to look for a bunch of reds leaving nearby buildings.”
“Where’s Finny?” Sparks said.
“Up here!” came the reply from up the shaft.
“Missed all the fun, Finny,” Sparks said. “As usual.”
Then Rapture.
It wasn’t as strong as he was used to, his mind and body a mess, but it was nice to have his legs and arm back. In the momentary bliss, he prayed for Aclima’s escape. If she got away, he could ditch the Ash Angels and go after her before the trail got too cold.
“Sparks,” Crane said, “grab a gun and keep Helo down here. Kneecap him if you have to. Shujaa, let’s get topside and find the other half of this Dread hideout. Leave the Stingers so they can burn these Dreads.”
“I want to fight, sir,” Sparks said, “not babysit.”
“Stay here,” Crane said. “The rest of us would like to get more than just a participation trophy in this rodeo.”
Sparks glared at Helo. “Yes, sir.”
Crane and Shujaa ascended the ladder, the clanking of their boots against the metal rungs fading above them. Sparks kept his shotgun trained at Helo’s head. Helo eyed his own shotgun on the floor a few feet away, sturdy tactical light illuminating the face of a grimacing Dread. There was no way he could get it before Sparks took his head off.
“I’ll say one thing for your Dread girl,” Sparks said. “She can shoot. Fashion sense is a bit dated.”
“She can be saved.”
“I don’t care,” Sparks said. “She wants to die. I want to kill her. Sounds like it’s meant to be. I haven’t taken down a Loremaster yet. Anyway, grab these Stingers and burn these guys.”
Shujaa had left two. Helo got two from his pack. Four was all he needed. The Dreads who still had a voice begged for their lives. Helo burned the first and eyed the shaft. Sparks had Speed to go with his Toughness and who knew what other Bestowals. Reasoning with him was pointless.
“So what’s your Dread-kill count?” Sparks said conversationally.
“I don’t know,” Helo said.
“I’m at forty-three and six Shedim—well, seven now. I don’t think you should get credit for all those Dreads up there. That was even easier than this one time I burned this Dread in an alley who was faking a piss for some reason.”
Some rocks tumbled down the collapsed hallway followed by a weak “Help!”
Helo had forgotten about the Ash Angel in the cell. The collapse had almost completely covered the bars.
Sparks waved his gun. “Go help him.”
“One sec.” Helo burned the last Dread, the one without a head, and nothing but piles of clothes and dirt littered the floor. He grabbed his shotgun.
“Put it down,” Sparks said, leaning forward.
“I need the light,” Helo said.
“I’ve got light duty,” Sparks said, eyes narrow. “Drop it.”
Helo set the weapon down, and Sparks shined his tactical light at the collapsed ceiling and the Ash Angel’s hand sticking out. The man was morphed to his twenties, with light-brown hair and big doe eyes.
To free the man, Helo pulled the rubble away, the explosion having already unhinged the bars. The dusty, dazed Ash Angel stepped out. Avadan had dressed him in an old-style, long-sleeved, gray-and-blue prison uniform made from denim. His number was 92991.
“Am I free?” he said. “Is Avadan dead?”
Helo led him toward the shaft. “You’re out. What’s your name?”
“Grail,” he said, looking around like he expected Avadan to materialize at any minute. “There’s more in those cells back there. He’s got Dreads. He’s got Ash Angels. People. Possessed. He’s insane.”
“Yeah,” Helo said. “I know. You AAO?”
“Old Master,” Grail answered.
Sparks stepped forward. “When’s the last time you saw Avadan?”
“Two days ago,” Grail said. “He’s not dead?”
“Not that we know of,” Helo said.
Grail shuddered and folded his arms. “I want out. I want out of here right now.” He walked toward the shaft and grabbed the ladder.
Sparks grabbed his arm. “Not yet, my friend. Still cleaning up reds out there. The commander will want to talk to you.”
“I can’t stay down here,” the man whined, tears coming to his eyes. “You don’t know what he did. What he did to all of us. I’ve got to get out.”
He started up the ladder, but Sparks pulled him back down. “No. Wait here.”
Sparks was close. His knee was right there. His concentration on the agitated Grail. It was the best chance Helo had. If worse came to worst, he’d be a prisoner of the Ash Angel Organization, and he already was.
Helo flared his Strength and kicked Sparks’s knee. With a satisfying crunch, it snapped backward. Sparks went to a knee, and Helo yanked his gun away before he could recover. After a quick step back, Helo reversed the shotgun and blasted Sparks into the White Room before he could report over comms.
Grail had shrunk against the wall.
Helo pulled him around. “You want to get out of here?”
Chapter 12
Legion
Grail handed Helo a cup of coffee and slid into the booth of the Saint Louis gas station’s convenience store. It was Thanksgiving morning, and the place brimmed with travelers on their way to see family and friends for the holidays. It had been so long since Helo had “acted normal” for more than a few hours a day it was hard to get the Gabriel habits back. Blink. Breathe. Shiver when cold. Sweat when hot. Swear if you stubbed your toe.
To ease his escape from the Ash Angels, he had morphed to an old man, which required hunching, walking without a soldier’s vigor, and letting people do things for him. Grail, an Old Master, had aged himself about the same—just a couple old guys out and about—but Helo feared Grail’s aura would put the Ash Angel Organization on their scent. He had no idea if the AAO was even looking for them, but he was sure Sparks wasn’t going to take getting his head blown off gracefully.
Grail’s Old Master contacts had scrounged up clothes, money, phones, and fake identifications. They would part ways today. Grail was off to Philadelphia to rejoin an apprentice he had been training before Avadan’s Dread goons had captured Grail and sent him to the Red Angel Theater a year ago. Helo wasn’t giving up on finding Aclima. The Old Master who had provisioned them had
been informed through the network that a large contingent of Dreads had shown up in Denver, so to Denver it was. Avadan probably had another house of horrors somewhere in the Mile High City.
A mobile phone slipped from a teenage girl’s hands and cracked loudly on the floor. Grail flinched and looked over his shoulder before turning back to his coffee. Helo took a sip of his own. He hadn’t had the courage to ask Grail what Avadan had done to him down in that tunnel, but whatever it was, Rapture wasn’t enough to erase it completely.
“Look,” Grail said after a few moments, “I’ve put the word out to our contacts to look for this Dread Loremaster of yours, but I can’t promise you anything. I doubt she’d travel in the open, especially if she’s being, you know, controlled or what have you. I’ll contact you if I hear anything. Thanks for getting me out.”
Helo nodded. Escape from the Red Angel Theater had been easier than he had hoped, with Crane and company completely distracted hunting down the fleeing Dreads in a building a block over. He and Grail had slipped into Chicago unnoticed and found an Old Master before lunch. As always seemed to be the case, the Old Masters were more than happy to help someone ditch the AAO.
A car honked outside. It was a gray minivan packed with kids and one impatient husband trying to encourage someone inside the store to hurry up. The air was cold enough that exhaust steamed out of tailpipes, but the sun was up and promising unusually decent weather for late November.
Helo smiled an old man’s wistful smile, and not a fake one. These little reminders of real life filled him with an odd longing from time to time. There were Ash Angels who tried to live their afterlives in the same way they’d lived their mortal ones, taking the opportunity as a second chance to experience the world without fear of death, disease, or accident. It sounded like a nice idea sometimes, boring and naive at others.
Helo turned back to his coffee. He’d lifted his cup halfway to his lips when a blinding white light wiped out his vision, body trembling. It was a vision. Another one. This was his third in almost as many days. And like the one before it, this one was like standing behind someone saying a prayer. It was a young woman this time, huddled in the corner of her bed in her underwear, hands bound with duct tape. A smudge of mascara darkened eyes that were squeezed shut, and her greasy blonde hair framed a gagged mouth that barely moved as dry lips whispered the silent supplication, but the words were as plain as someone yelling right into his mind: please, please, please.