by Brian Fuller
Corinth led the woman away, but before she disappeared, she turned and puckered her lips at Helo, blowing him an obscene kiss. Legion. That was going to be a piece of work. Helo resolved to practice on some non-Legion Possessed before attempting it again. He hadn’t even intimidated the indomitable pack of evil spirits.
Corinth returned, face set. “You ready to get to work?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Helo said. “Any sign of Avadan or the black desecration?”
“No,” Corinth said. “Over here, guys and gals.” He beckoned them to the table with two laptops. “We’ve set up patrols out there, the Blanks going into the areas with the highest concentration of baddies.” He pinch-zoomed the map out to where the entire city of Saint Louis was visible on the screen. Several semitransparent shapes overlaid the map, dividing the city into six chunks.
“The shapes,” he said, “are zones owned by the teams I set up. The two red zones are where most of the Ghostpackers and Dreads seem to be hanging out. So far, that’s all it’s been. They’re all being good boys and girls, not trying to attract anyone’s attention. We pick them off if they get stupid.
“Since we can’t Exorcise Legion, we’ve had to settle for incapacitation or calling the cops on them to get them detained for loitering or drugs or whatever just to get them off the streets. It’s kind of working, but it’s going to take a long time to deal with all of them, and if we can’t Exorcise Legion, they’ll just keep coming back.”
“This is a setup for something,” Helo said. “Avadan’s going to benefit from it somehow. Maybe he’s gunning for more Vexus or he’s going to desecrate Saint Louis like he did Kansas City.”
Andromeda nodded. “World desecration tour.”
“We should make T-shirts,” Faramir quipped.
“What we need,” Sparks said, “is to figure out what cities he’ll select, both here and worldwide.”
“Seems like he’d choose cities with a lot of crime and violence,” Faramir said. “If he’s still interested in Vexus, then that’s got to be where he would go. Let me do a quick search for cities with high violent-crime rates . . .” He tapped and swiped his phone. “Well, Saint Louis is one. There’s Detroit, Atlanta, Stockton, Cleveland. Detroit’s the worst. It’s about eight hours from here. Cleveland’s about the same.”
Corinth sat down and put his hands behind his head, the pose and his tight-blue T-shirt showing off the beach bod he was always so proud of even though getting one as an Ash Angel was as easy as normals wished it was.
“Doesn’t matter where he goes, right?” Corinth said. “We don’t have a way to beat him. I mean, we can point our guns at him all we want, but we’re just shooting blanks as far as he’s concerned.”
“True,” Helo said, “but we haven’t seen what sanctified weapons can do yet. Command sent us with about fifteen for our teams to share. If anyone spots him, we’ve got to converge on him fast and give it our best.”
“But the black desecration,” Corinth said. “None of my people have been in it, and I hear it’s as bad as a torch.”
“Not as bad,” Helo said, “but close. The good news is you can get above it. It seems to flow down like water, but it can’t go up.”
“Good to know,” Corinth said. “While we wait for Avadan to play his hand, I’d like you to . . .”
White light burst into Helo’s mind, and he was dimly aware of his body taking a trip to the hard stockroom floor. It was a vision, his first in a while, and the worst he’d ever seen.
Chapter 31
Bus Driver
In his mind’s eye, he stood at the corner of Breezeridge and Middleview Streets in the early morning, surrounded by middle-school kids. They looked at him funny. He wasn’t a regular, and their stranger-danger radars were going off. Even stranger, he was alone. No other Ash Angel, not even members of his team, seemed to be around. The black desecration carpeted the ground in all directions.
Most of the kids ignored him, their faces buried in their phones. He glanced at his: 7:58 a.m. Other kids cast suspicious sideways glances at him, probably wondering if they should go get one of their parents. It didn’t take long for him to know why he was there. As soon as the bus pulled around the corner, he could see it: a Ghostpacker in the driver’s seat. His mind spun with what the Ghostpacker could be up to. If Avadan controlled the Ghostpackers . . .
The vision faded, and he was on his back, staring up at ceiling girders and pipes. His nose didn’t seem to be in the right place on his face. He was pretty sure he’d fallen facedown, but someone had pulled him around onto his back. He sat up and probed his nose, bones grinding from side to side.
“Stop that,” Melody said.
“Yep,” Sparks said. “You took the trip face-first.”
His second in command put his hand on his shoulder and healed him, his nose firming back up.
Corinth crouched down. “Well, what did you see, bro?”
Helo explained the vision to them.
“And none of us were there?” Andromeda said, sounding a little offended.
“No,” Helo said. But he had a thought, and its implications sickened him. “I think we’ve got a bigger problem than one bus. As bad as that is, if Avadan is trying to put on a big show and create Vexus, there might be other buses out there.”
“This is Saint Louis,” Corinth said. “That’s a lot of buses and bus yards to cover. We can’t possibly—” His phone rang. “One of my team leaders. Give me a sec.” Corinth tapped the screen. “What’s up?” After a brief conversation, he hung up. “Avadan’s here somewhere. The black desecration just started.”
“Tell your people to get up out of it,” Helo warned. “Get them in cars or on the second floor of a building. Sicarius Nox, let’s get in the Expedition. Grab a sanctified weapon and small arms. Corinth, give us a best guess where it’s emanating from, and we’ll drive over there and see if we can spot him.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and Helo hoped he hadn’t stepped on any toes. This was Corinth’s mission. They all rifled through the trunk of sanctified weapons—knives, mostly—and chose something they could easily conceal. The BBGs they left in the back.
“Sure wish I had the Angel Fire Bestowal,” Sparks said as he passed by.
They piled in the car, Helo taking shotgun next to Finny, and drove off into the clear spring morning.
Shujaa leaned forward from the second-row seats. “Helo, we must be allowed to kill Possessed. If they are driving school buses, we cannot stand by and do nothing.”
Helo turned toward him. Shujaa had no mercy for the Possessed. To him, they had made their choice. Shujaa didn’t seem to care that there was life on the other side of possession and that they had to give them a second chance if they could.
“ROE remains the same,” Helo said. “We try to save them alive. If there is no choice, only then do we take lethal action. That’s the way it’s always been.”
“But Legion—” Shujaa began.
“If we kill a host, Legion will just find another host. It’s better that we expose as few people to Legion as we can. Now settle in. We need to be sharp.”
They drove back onto I-70, the traffic thickening. It was just past seven o’clock, and he wanted to be on that street corner in plenty of time to save those kids from whatever their evil bus driver had in mind.
Helo’s phone rang—Corinth calling—and he picked it up.
“Talk to me, Corinth.”
“The desecration seems to have started from somewhere near the arch.”
“Got it,” he said. “You might want to have your team disperse and check buses. We’ll see if we can track Avadan down.”
He hung up and was about to tell Finny to head to the arch when Faramir spoke up. “Helo, you can’t do both. You can’t be at that street corner by 7:58 if you go to the arch, especially with traffic. In fact, if you’re going to go to that intersection, we need to get off at 270 right now.”
“Do it, Finny,” Helo said. “Sparks, I’m leaving you
in command. I’m going for the school bus.”
“Take me with you,” Melody said. “No unnecessary solo missions.”
“You weren’t in the vision,” Helo stated matter-of-factly, then his mind went back to Aclima. She had been in the vision, but he’d shut her out. That had earned his head a vacation from his body. But Melody. Dolorem wanted him to make her strong, but the look on her face said she already was and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “But it might be nice to have backup.”
Her face flipped from defiant to surprised to happy. “Great!”
“Wait a minute,” Faramir said. “We’re the ones chasing Avadan! We can’t have both the Angel Borns off saving a school bus. What if we actually find Avadan? What, then?”
“Buck up, Faramir,” Andromeda said. “We got this, Computer Boy.”
Helo twisted so he could see his team. “If you find him, don’t attack. Follow. We’ll want to coordinate with Corinth’s team. We need a lot of Ash Angels with sanctified weapons before we ambush. So track but do not engage. Got it? Use the drone. Don’t get too close. If we’re right, he’s probably heading to Detroit or Cleveland after this. We can ambush him there. We don’t need to get him today.”
“Got it,” Sparks said, nodding. “You know, you’re not half bad at this. I thought you’d be worse than Argyle, but Finny believed in you, didn’t you Fin?”
“From the start.”
“Thanks,” Helo said. “Melody, we can’t take any weapons on this one. I don’t think you could hide a BBG in those yoga pants, anyway.”
A few minutes later, Finny pulled into a neighborhood of upper middle-class homes and found the corner of Breezeridge and Middleview. At 7:50, none of the kids had arrived yet. Finny pulled the Expedition to the curb, and he and Melody hopped out.
“Keep me updated,” Helo said. “Get moving.”
Sparks took shotgun, and the van pulled a U-turn and sped away.
“I think the kids won’t come here if we’re hanging around,” Melody said.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Let’s move off a bit and come back.”
They walked down the street like they were out for a morning stroll. All they lacked was a dog, or maybe a baby stroller.
“Thanks for letting me come,” Melody said. “I thought for a moment you were going to shoot me down. I know you’re my commanding officer and all, but . . . well . . . thanks.”
He nodded, still not sure he should have caved, but he was determined not to make the same mistakes he had with Aclima. Aclima had told him not to try to protect Melody but to help her grow. He couldn’t do that if he kept sending her away. Besides, he liked being with her. The lows didn’t seem so low when she was around.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked, giving him a gentle bump.
“A lot,” he said.
“How can I help?”
He smiled at her. “You help all the time. Look, you’ve been great, and I haven’t made it easy. I know I can be distant, but none of that is you, okay? I really don’t deserve the friendship you’ve given me, but thanks for giving it all the same.”
Melody looked up at the sky, her green eyes twinkling in the morning light, the sun highlighting her hair. “You’re welcome,” she said. “I don’t want to sound creepy, but the more you let me in, the better both of us will be.”
Had he really been keeping her out? He didn’t feel like he had been trying to. She wanted more of him, and he wondered if she still had some superman vision of him that simply wasn’t true. She had dreamed about him her entire life. Who knew how real those dreams were or how her mind had filled in the gaps around what she didn’t know about him.
“I’m trying,” he said, though he really didn’t know what he needed to do to satisfy her. “We’d better head back.”
As soon as they turned around, the black desecration rolled toward them, engulfing the bus stop and then washing past them. It was still hard to believe that a desecration could extend so far and be permanent. The torching effect was there in the back of his mind, and Melody stumbled a couple steps before setting her jaw and focusing forward.
“It’s getting easier to ignore it,” she said. “Just pinch me if I’m zombie-eyed staring off into nothing.”
Three kids waited at the bus stop now, all absorbed in their phones. Helo remembered he and Brandon turning the bus stop into stupid contest time pretty much every day. Who could throw or kick a rock the farthest? Who could hit the stop sign with a rock the most times in a row? Who could walk on their hands the longest? And on and on. These kids were comatose by comparison. Two other kids had left their houses and were making their way over. On a side street somewhere, the sound of squealing brakes signaled that the bus would be there any minute.
“What’s the play?” Melody asked as they approached.
“Get the Ghostpacker off the bus as gently as possible,” Helo said, trying to think of a scenario where that could actually happen. It’d be tough to get a non-Possessed bus driver to get out. But a possessed driver who might be Legion? “I’ll try Hallowing first. That makes it harder for the evil spirit to control the host. If I can get him to walk away, great. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just haul him off. Last resort, we cripple the bus somehow. Ripping the steering wheel off would do it.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Be alert,” he said. “Visions aren’t complete. There might be other threats we don’t know about on this bus. If this is part of something bigger, this could go south fast.”
The bus rounded the corner. Through the oversized windshield, the unnatural red point in the eyes of the Ghostpacker appeared full of malice. Not until the bus got closer did Helo notice how full it was. Three more children darted out of nearby houses, running full tilt for the bus stop, their backpacks bouncing up and down.
Helo stepped in front of the kids. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got to talk to your bus driver before you get on, okay?”
Those who actually paid attention just shrugged and went back to whatever they were doing. The bus’s stop sign flipped out, lights flashing as it squealed to a stop with an oily odor of diesel that brought back memories. Helo interposed himself between the kids and the bus, Melody beside him, and it stopped, door scissoring open.
The Ghostpacker was a dumpy woman with greasy brown hair and a puffy face. She looked like she hated her job, and by the unchecked noise of chaos rolling off the bus, he couldn’t blame her. The spectral form of the ghost a parasite on her body, she stared through Helo like she didn’t even care that two adults were standing there. Her expression reminded him of the robotic stare of the Dreads at the ticket counter of the Red Angel Theater. Avadan was heavily controlling these Ghostpackers. He wondered if the evil spirit was part of Legion.
He took the black steps up to the top, Melody standing outside the door to keep the kids from getting on. He kept his eyes fixed on the Ghostpacker’s red ones, wondering if a torch attempt was coming. But her face remained a vapid mask right up until he Hallowed the floor.
Her eyes blinked, then her splotched forehead wrinkled. “Who are you?” she asked like she was addressing a cockroach.
“Get off the bus,” he said. “Right now.”
“No,” the driver said. “Now get out of the way. I’ve got a schedule.”
Great. He was going to have to do this the hard way and preferably in a way that wouldn’t scar the delicate psyches of a busload of middle-school kids. As yet, only the first few rows seemed aware something unusual was happening.
He leaned in close to the driver’s ear. “I said get off this bus. We can do this the hard way or the easy way.”
She shoved him. “Get off!” she shrieked, and the bus went dead quiet, a sea of surprised faces now pegged to the action.
Well, if he couldn’t convince her, there was another way to do this. “Hey, kids,” he said loudly. “We got a message from dispatch that this bus has a leak in the exhaust system that might be filling the cabin
with carbon monoxide. I need you all off the bus. We’ll send another to get you.”
“No!” the driver yelled, red eyes frenzied. She turned toward the kids, pointing a finger backward. “You stay on this bus!” She leveled her malevolent gaze at Helo. “You get off! Now!”
From somewhere off to her left, the bus driver produced a little club. He was Hallowing, so this attitude came from the driver, not the evil spirit. She was surly.
“You’re endangering these students!” he said. “We’ve got to get them off. Now!”
She put the bus in park and undid her seat belt. “I said get out!”
With all the force she could muster, she pounded him with the club, which did nothing to his Ash Angel body. It did give him the excuse he needed to throw a punch across her jaw and send her to the ground in a heap. Some of the kids gasped. Some screamed. A few were outright crying. He killed the hallow to conserve Virtus.
“Sorry about that, kids,” he said as he grabbed the driver. “We’ll get another bus and driver over here in a minute.”
He carried the driver off the bus and laid her next to it.
“Melody,” he said. “Could you use that great voice of yours to convince the kids to get off the bus?”
She threw him a worried glance and walked up the steps. “Hey, kids,” she said sweetly. “We really do need to get you off this bus. It will be okay. Everything is all right.”
There was a soothing quality to her voice, something that seemed to settle even his heart. When she said, ‘Everything is all right,’ he believed her. And so did the kids. One by one they filed off the bus, gathering on the sidewalk and the lawn, each glancing at their unconscious bus driver lying in the gutter.
Helo’s phone rang. Corinth. “What’s up?”
“Helo,” Corinth said. “It’s worse than we thought. Your team and mine have caught sight of at least eight buses being driven by Ghostpackers and Dreads. One was a Sheid.”
Helo’s heart sank. “Just took care of one here. Any idea what the plan is? They’re not taking them to school, are they?”