by Brian Fuller
Law enforcement was befuddled. Parents were in shock. The whole city was in mourning for what was clearly a coordinated attack, but one that made no sense. The drivers—those they could identify—weren’t terrorists. Many had driven for years, and some even had kids of their own on the buses. It was the deadliest tragedy in the United States since Cain had downed three airliners in his quest for the Vexus needed to embody King.
Corinth ran his hand through his short black hair. “I’ve got to go report this,” he said like he’d rather stick his arm in a wood chipper. Helo leaned against the wall, then slid to the floor, Melody sinking down beside him. Now that he could think, a few pieces started pulling themselves together, something that could help them understand the desecration.
“Can we meditate?” Melody asked.
“Sure.” He could use the clarity of thought.
They faced each other, and she put her hands in his. In a minute or two they were in the meditation, the balls spinning around and around, orbiting opposite each other. It was comfortable and reassuring, his heart and mind settling into a welcome peace, but at the same time a wrongness struck him, the same kind of tantalizing problem the solo meditation had challenged him with.
Would the two rotating spheres be forever separated in their orbits? Could they get any closer to each other or touch?
His eyes snapped open. That was it! That was the question.
Melody’s eyes flickered open, face troubled for a moment, but then, like the dawn, a smile spread across her face. “You know the problem now,” she said.
“I do.”
“About time. Let’s get to work.”
Corinth walked back into the room. It was weird to see him so weighed down, shoulders pitched forward, eyes heavy. “Okay, everybody, the Archai is pretty bummed about what happened, but they’re not blaming us. They’re debating our next move. We’ve got to get back out there and patrol the major roads leading out of Saint Louis. They want to see if the evil parade packs it up and hoofs it off to somewhere else. But we’ve got to figure out this desecration. It’s making operations almost impossible.”
“I’ve got a theory,” Helo said.
“Let’s have it, bro,” Corinth said.
“When we got to the river where the first bus went under, there was Vexus swirling around like it always does at atrocity sites. As soon as the desecration field arrived, the Vexus disappeared into it, like it was absorbed.”
Faramir folded his arms. “Don’t see how that helps us.”
“I’m not done,” Helo said. “When Avadan attacked the camp, I noticed a glow coming from inside his sleeves, and it seemed like the desecration energy was flowing into him when he was transforming the children into Shedim. So—”
“He uses the Vexus to make this desecration field,” Faramir interrupted, and Helo could see the squirrels running wild in his head, “but he can also feed on it, and not only that—”
“It can trap Vexus to use,” Sparks continued. “It’s brilliant, really. Cover cities in a field that makes everyone mental and then collect the Vexus they generate from their violence. Even small amounts here and there would add up.”
“But,” Corinth said, “he wasn’t happy with small amounts today. He created one of the worst atrocities ever. Generated loads of Vexus.”
Helo stood up. “He’s got Legion and Shedim to create as much mayhem and Vexus as he needs to fuel whatever he’s up to. Maybe he’s thinking of cooking up another category-five Sheid to be his personal bodyguard or something. We’ve got to . . .”
The room went silent while they awaited the end of his weighty sentence. Melody stood up beside him. “What?”
“Something Archus Ebenezer said,” he answered.
“Ebenezer said something useful?” Corinth joked.
“Well, not really Ebenezer,” Helo explained. “It was an idea Micah had. It’s called Parity Plus One. Theoretically, the light and dark are evenly matched except the light is always able to prevail in some way—that’s the plus-one part. Avadan has seemingly flipped it to where it’s darkness that has the upper hand. But I don’t think it’s true.”
“We can’t Hallow anything as big as a city,” Faramir said, “so I think maybe it’s true.”
“No,” Helo said, “the point is we don’t know how to Hallow anything as big as a city. The Dreads didn’t either for six thousand years. It’s something Avadan figured out how to do through study and experimentation. The point is, we’re missing a piece of some puzzle.”
“Okay,” Corinth said, tone skeptical, “but what’s it matter when we’ve got to act right now? He’s probably on his way to desecrate and maybe terrorize some other city. I don’t think we have time to put on lab coats and figure this out.”
“For now we do what command says we do,” Helo said. “First job is to figure out where Avadan’s going. Second is to figure out how to stop him. I don’t have a solution, people, just a direction right now that I could use your help thinking about. It might help if we knew what he was trying to get done.”
Andromeda folded her arms. “Easy. Create misery and feed on it.”
“Yeah,” Melody said, “but there’s more to it. He’s theatrical. He gets off on spectacle and drama. He’s like the world’s biggest circus ringmaster. If he’s going to make people miserable, he’s going to do it so they’ll pay attention to him . . . somehow.”
She was onto something. Helo knew Avadan to be crazy, but it was flamboyant crazy with a purpose. Mommy and daddy issues were thrown into the mix too, but would those really influence him after six thousand years? Maybe. But Avadan’s parents had passed on now.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that most people didn’t change much at all, period. According to Aclima, Avadan never felt like Cain thought he was good enough—something Helo could relate to. Avadan felt rejected by his mother, and he had already demonstrated how angry he was about that. Six thousand years and he hadn’t moved on. How did all that baggage influence what he was doing now? It all came down to attention seeking, but as yet the only ones who knew of his “performance” were the Ash Angels, and Helo doubted that was good enough for Avadan.
“Let’s get out there, guys and gals,” Corinth said. “We need to figure out where he’s going next. For now, we have the same game plan. Go after him with everything we’ve got.”
Chapter 33
Detroit
Detroit.
Two days after the bus massacre in Saint Louis, the Dreads, Shedim, and Ghostpackers all headed northeast in an informal caravan. Avadan, of course, was nowhere to be found. Was he going to Detroit, or was he just sending his minions there so the Ash Angels would follow them and leave him free to do whatever he wanted elsewhere?
But Detroit it was. The city hadn’t recovered from the economic wreckage of the market crash of the early 2000s and was a perfect place for Avadan to do his work. Few places in the United States were as ripe for violence and terror. Sicarius Nox followed Corinth’s team through a completely abandoned neighborhood late in the afternoon. A brief rain storm had moved out, the air now thick with humidity.
To Helo, it felt like they’d driven into a creepy postapocalyptic movie. Vegetation choked everything, the new spring growth veiling the dumpy brick-and-shingle houses it surrounded. Grass and weeds ran wild in yards, in landscaping beds, in cracks in the sidewalks. They had their pick of where to congregate, and Avadan’s forces had plenty of places to hide until Avadan called them out of the shadows.
The time spent waiting around had provided Helo and Melody ample opportunities to try to solve the meditation problem—to no avail. If he tried to speed up the orbit of his sphere to catch hers, her sphere sped up. If she slowed hers down to let him catch up, his slowed down. And vice versa. It didn’t seem like they both could exert their will on their own sphere at the same time. It was maddening, but Melody seemed happier than ever, always a bright star in the gloomy sky that was Sicarius Nox. Only Sparks rivaled h
er happiness on the morning Helo gifted him with Angel Fire, Melody doing the same for Shujaa.
At the moment, Melody was clandestinely loading up the hood of Faramir’s hoodie—which was draped over the seat in front of her—with bullets. Andromeda had convinced Melody to do a wardrobe switch from athletic to more inner-city grunge, so now she had jeans with fashionable tears on the thighs and a black sweater, also with a few strategic tears. Andromeda went full punk, morphing her hair short and spiky and adding a few metallic accessories to her ears and nose. Faramir got the hoodie, but nobody else on the team felt like bothering with a new wardrobe. Helo wished Shujaa would change. He looked like a preacher minus the white collar tab.
“Angel Born,” Shujaa said, “are you sure it is wise to invite the Old Masters? They do not have the loyalties we do.”
“Magdelene trusts them,” Helo said, “and I do too. I spent some time with them, and they are good people who want the same thing we do. They just go about it a different way.”
“We’re here,” Finny said. “Looks like Corinth and a few Old Masters beat us.”
Their chosen meeting place was a two-story home with wide white siding. It had probably been built thirty years ago and had a simple A-frame roofline, black shutters, and a concrete driveway warped by the roots of a soaring bur oak that hid most of the front of the house.
Corinth’s ten-person team had arrived in three cars. The rest of the vehicles—an assortment of motorcycles and discolored and dented compact cars—belonged to the Old Masters. Helo made a mental note to spread the cars out. If the cops showed up and saw a used-car parking lot around one building in an abandoned neighborhood, he was sure there would be trouble.
Inside, the home was a dusty, musty wreck with discolored walls, peeling linoleum, and stained brown carpet. A few pieces of furniture remained, but the Ash Angels in attendance stood against the walls talking in low tones, the Old Masters and the members of the AAO in their own separate cliques.
A pair of Old Masters looked familiar, and it took Helo a moment to remember who they were. They were Oakes and Lotus, a pair of female Old Masters who had come through Arizona and visited Dolorem at the Redemption Motorcycle Club. They were motorcycle riders and just as good with the machines as Dolorem had been. They had the do-rags and leather and were morphed to looked stout. Helo walked over to them.
“Hey, I remember you,” he said, shaking Oakes’s hand. She was the master, Lotus the apprentice.
“Looks like you went back to the machine,” she said, meaning the AAO.
“It’s been a bumpy ride but not a boring one,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. What are you seeing out there?”
Oakes folded her arms. She had morphed to middle-age, as was the custom for Old Masters with an apprentice. Her light-brown hair was streaked with gray, her brown eyes a century deep.
“Honestly, we’ve had way fewer problems with Dreads and Possessed than usual. We thought things were getting better until Magdelene called—and then that thing in Saint Louis. I’m still not sure I believe this black-desecration thing, but honestly, I’m more interested in seeing Micah’s book. That’s like scripture to Old Masters. And she said you’re Angel Born?”
“Yeah,” he said, “and Melody. Melody, this is Oakes, and this is her apprentice, Lotus.”
“Nice to meet you,” Melody said, face practically beaming.
“So, what are we doing in Detroit?” Oakes asked.
“We’re trying to keep what happened in Saint Louis from happening here. We need your help. We couldn’t stop half of the buses in Saint Louis from going into the water. You’ve got to understand that Avadan has absolute control over all creatures of evil. He tends to park them while they’re not in use, which is why the Dreads haven’t been giving you much trouble.”
“You know that fighting isn’t our way of life,” Oakes said, looking at Lotus as if to remind her of this fact. “But if we can prevent another Saint Louis here in Detroit, we are with you.”
“Thank you,” Helo said.
Helo signaled to Corinth, who joined him. Then he whistled for silence. The room came to order, and for the benefit of the Old Masters, he talked about what had happened in Kansas City and Saint Louis, about the discovery of Micah’s book, and about the insanity and cruelty of the Loremaster Avadan. He got nervous glances and stunned silence from the lot of them.
“So what do you want to do?” Oakes asked.
“Set up patrols,” Helo said. “We need to know the minute the desecration starts to spread so we can track Avadan down. We have sanctified weapons, and we will attack him as a mob. If the location permits, we will have others at a distance distracting him with gunfire.”
One of the Old Masters’ apprentices, a dark-haired young man, said, “Can anything evil be so powerful?”
“I didn’t exaggerate when I told you about Avadan,” Helo said. “I’m warning you that he can torch with such power it almost took me down, and I am an Angel Born Unascended.”
Every Old Master in the room stiffened. Oakes’s eyes narrowed. “You’re Unascended?”
“Yeah. Now—”
“Magdelene didn’t say anything about that,” Oakes said. “Can you prove it?”
“We don’t have time for that,” Helo said. “We’ve got to—”
“He is Unascended,” Melody cut in.
“It is true,” Shujaa added in his usual reverential tone.
Helo took in the shocked faces in the room. Was he going to get through this briefing or what? “Okay, people, now that we’ve established . . .” His voice trailed off as every Old Master in the room knelt and drew a knife from a boot, belt, or coat. “What are you doing?”
They extended the hilts toward him.
“We ask a blessing upon our blades,” Oakes said, “and they are yours to command until you are taken home again.”
Sicarius Nox and the rest of the AAO operatives glanced at each other.
Sparks rolled his eyes. “Just great. Here’s the rest of your congregation, Shujaa.”
“Get up,” Helo said. “I . . . I will Bless the blades, but I’m not going to force you to act under my command.”
They stood, and he Blessed the blades of Oakes and Lotus first. “Now,” he continued, walking from Old Master to Old Master and Blessing their blades, “Corinth is going to set up the patrol grids. We have no idea what Avadan’s going to pull, so planning in advance isn’t possible. We’ll have to react as the situation unfolds. For those of you who choose to participate, we’ll need to exchange contact information so we can communicate effectively.”
One Old Master raised her hand. “My apprentice is new just this year. Unless you command it, Unascended, I would ask that we not be involved in this mission.”
Helo raised his hands. “Like I said, I’m not ordering anyone to do this. If sitting this out is what you think is best, then do it. That goes for any of you.”
“Thank you, Unascended,” she said with a nod. Then she and her apprentice left the house. The rest of the Old Masters had pulled out their cell phones. “All right, people, let’s get to work.”
Rapture. He and Melody basked in the powerful radiance as long as they could, the meditative scene washed away in the pure-white brilliance. When his vision faded, Melody’s green eyes met his, pure and inviting, and soft, for some reason. They had chosen to meditate in the basement of the house before they headed out on their separate patrols.
“We’ve got to figure this out,” she said.
“What?”
“The answer to the problem. How to get the two spheres to connect.”
He stood and pulled her up. “We’ll get there.”
She sighed and looked to the sky like a teacher exasperated by a slow student. “I want the answer now. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.”
“Melody, we will get it,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “But we’ve got a lot going on, you know.”
She dropped he
r hands to her hips. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said with a teasing grin. “Always busy.”
It was the fourth morning since they had met with the Old Masters, and still Avadan had done nothing. The Dreads, Shedim, and Ghostpackers had infiltrated the city, but they just aimlessly milled about or stayed indoors. The patrols took out what evil they could. Avadan’s apparent delay afforded them the extra time they needed to get more eyes in the area—two more sets of Old Masters and two patrols of six Michaels each. The Old Masters insisted on going out in pairs, each master with an apprentice, but Ash Angels from the AAO went singly to get more coverage on the city. Everyone got a four-hour break at the house, he and Melody choosing the same shift so they could meditate together in the mornings.
Helo squeezed Melody’s shoulders, feeling a stab of guilt. He had been busy, and he hadn’t had a lot of time for her outside of their daily meditations. And it wasn’t because he didn’t want time with her. He did. She was unfailingly alive and warm, and he found it addicting.
“Look, Melody, to make it up to you, I’ll help you play your daily prank. What’s it going to be today? Covering Sparks’s motorcycle seat in two-year-old hot sauce was probably going a bit too far.”
“You can’t prove I did that,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “How about this? We each get to ask one question of the other person, and they have to answer it honestly no matter what.”
He had to think about that. This sounded suspiciously like one of those traps women liked to throw men into to get them to reveal their feelings. Was there really anything he didn’t want her to know? He really couldn’t think of anything, but there was something he wanted to know about her.
“Okay,” he said. “You first.”
Since she was the one who had suggested the activity, he expected that she would have a question at the ready, but she thought about it for a good while, or at least made a good show of it. When she did ask it, he was surprised.