by Brian Fuller
Mars shook Helo’s hand. “Sorry to hear about Andromeda. Got you a couple of replacements for this next push.”
“Corinth?” Helo said, glad to have him along.
“And me,” Mars said. “I’ve had it with hiding in a bunker waiting for bad news. The AAO is on the edge, and I want to see this done.”
“Sicarius Nox is yours,” Helo said. In a way, it was a relief to be outranked.
“It’s ours,” Mars said. “I’m doing this to fight, not because I want to run anything. I’m tired of running things and want to get back to shooting things.”
“Yes, sir,” Helo said.
Magdelene looked into the cell, eyes on the pathetic Ramis. “Such a waste,” she said.
“How long’s he been doing that?” Helo asked, pointing to Ramis and his unending slam dance into the door.
“Don’t know,” Mars said. Mars poked his head around the corner. “Sentry, how long has Ramis been moving like that?”
“Couple hours,” the sentry said.
“We should let him out and see where he goes,” Magdelene suggested.
“Probably up top,” Mars said, folding his beefy, brown arms. “Just like the other Dreads who show up waiting to get burned.”
Phone alarms sounded, marking the coming of dusk, and in a flash, the heart on the floor turned into a dead-faced Shujaa, aura as red as the blood he had spilled with his explosive attempt on Avadan. Immediately, Shujaa turned and walked at the same wall as Ramis, knocking him to the floor. The two kept taking shots at the wall, Ramis getting the worst of it as the larger man shoved him out of the way.
“Hallow it,” Mars ordered.
Helo extended his hallow inside the room. Shujaa flinched and then turned. He studied his hands for several long moments and then sank to his knees, an agonized wail escaping his lips. Ramis added to the misery with a pained groan all his own. Helo swallowed, heart heavy. To see two powerful men brought so low! It was a warning against recklessness and pride, a reminder that no one was exempt from the pull of their darker natures. Avadan could turn anybody.
Shujaa set his forehead to the floor, hands cupped over the back of his head, and wept. There were no words. What could anyone possibly offer as comfort? Helo remembered Aclima. She had changed. It had taken millennia, but it had come. Shujaa could change. Helo wanted to believe it. Shujaa had to.
“On your feet, soldier,” Mars barked, face sour like he smelled a gas leak.
Shujaa hauled himself to his feet, his tear-soaked face a mask of agony. As he got closer to the bars, Helo pulled the hallow back, making it smaller, both to conserve energy and to end Ramis’s pitiful moaning. The former Archus returned to walking into the wall again. Shujaa grabbed the bars and hung his head.
“Shujaa,” Helo said. “What happened?”
“I failed you, Angel Born. I failed,” he said. “I grew impatient. After he changed all those people . . . I had to take the chance. I thought I could do it.”
“What happened, soldier?” Mars pressed.
Shujaa wiped his eyes and squared his shoulders. “I took a sanctified weapon and hid in the restroom on the bus. When he got on the bus, I waited until he was near. I surprised him. I thought I had him. Before he could so much as flinch, I cut him. Sanctified blade went clean through his arm and cut it off. It did not destroy him, but it seemed like it hurt him. The evil spirit squirmed like it was touching a live wire. I went to cut again, and he blasted me with that black torch. I had only enough sense to detonate the C4. That is all I remember.”
“Thank you, Shujaa,” Helo said. “We’ll—”
Shujaa reached through the bars and grabbed Helo’s arm. “You must beat him, Angel Born. You must. If he can’t control me, then I can work to be redeemed. Just like Aclima. Promise me.”
“I will,” Helo said. The pain in Shujaa’s eyes was almost too much to bear.
Helo dropped the hallow, and Shujaa’s face went slack. He turned and rejoined Ramis on his pointless assault on the wall.
“So not even sanctified weapons will kill him,” Magdelene said. “How are we going to win this?”
“It’s the arms,” Helo said. “If we can sever them both, I think he’ll lose his ability to draw on the Vexus and maybe even lose some of his power.”
“We’ve used up all the good sanctified weapons,” Mars said. “There are still some small knives, but you and Melody are probably the only ones who stand a chance at standing toe to toe with that monster.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Helo said. He wished he could say it with more confidence. It was what had to be done. But how? Getting close to Avadan had proved to be nigh impossible. They could create weapons of light, but only if Melody was in the meditation, and he doubted they could lure Avadan close enough to put the weapon to good use.
They had to take Avadan by surprise like Shujaa had. How to do it without hurting normals was the question. They could stun him with explosives, but if he kept surrounding himself with normals, even Possessed ones, they could all end up like Shujaa.
“We’ve about got transportation worked out,” Magdelene said, grabbing his arm. “Just a few more hours.”
Helo folded his arms and nodded. His heart was a stone.
“Hey,” Magdelene said. “It’s fate, right? You and Melody have been given gifts to see us through this hour. Parity plus one, remember?”
“I know,” Helo said. “I’ve never had so much light in my life, but the way ahead has never seemed darker.”
Someone was sprinting down the metallic walkway, and in a few seconds Sparks turned the corner. “You’ll want to see this.” He grinned. “Topside.”
They took the stairs up, exiting out the freezer in the basement of the farmhouse. They followed Sparks outside. The light had nearly drained from the sky. Out on the gravel road, a host of headlights gashed into the night, dust playing in the beams. Helo joined Melody there, threading his fingers through hers. She kissed his cheek, and together they enjoyed the arrival of a parade of Old Masters, Oakes and Lotus in the lead on their motorcycles.
Oakes and Lotus dismounted while a line of old cars and motorcycles piled up behind them. Helo’s heart warmed. The ranks of Ash Angels had thinned a lot lately, and to see this army of Old Masters helped shore up his flagging hope. He forced himself to remember that this wasn’t an army. The Old Masters didn’t think of themselves that way.
He shook Oakes’s hand and introduced her and Lotus to Mars, Magdelene, and finally Ebenezer, who emerged from the house.
Magdelene smiled. “We are thrilled to see you,” she said.
Helo expected to find Mars looking at them like they were a bunch of dirty orphan children, but his face actually seemed to register gratitude, even relief.
“Thank you,” Oakes said. “We’ve come to help. We’ve seen and heard what happened in Saint Louis. We do not like to fight, but we can’t ignore this. Divine rules we thought were unbreakable have been broken. If the time has come to fight, then we will do it. We will pledge our blades to the Unascended. What do you want us to do?”
Chapter 43
Atrocity
Helo spent the better part of the next two hours Blessing blades and meeting Old Masters—and trying to think of how to best use them. He took a quick poll to see how many had the Exorcism Bestowal, surprised to find that 20 percent did—about forty of the nearly two hundred who had come. The stats he had from Magdelene revealed that only about 5 percent of the Ash Angels in the AAO had Exorcism. It reminded him again about what both Dolorem and Spade had hinted at. How you lived as an Ash Angel influenced what Bestowals you received and how long you lingered in the afterlife. Helo guessed that meant he had lived too hard and too fast.
Spade and Martha, now morphed young and trim and ready for battle, hung around on the front porch. It was weird. He liked them better old. Now they just looked like two more soldiers. This place held so many memories, good and bad. The water flowing by had carried a lot of ash, but nea
r those waters he had gotten Aclima back. And it was here that he and Melody had first fought together. He hoped they would see it again after confronting Avadan. He really wanted to make Melody’s dream of living in a place like this come true, but his confidence in beating Avadan sat at an all-time low. All Ash Angels stood a real chance of floating down a river as a lump of ash if Avadan’s power kept growing.
But even that he could accept. What really clawed at his heart was Avadan’s ability to torture and turn Ash Angels into Dreads. It had nearly killed him when Aclima had been turned. It would drive him insane if the cruel Loremaster got his hands on Melody. For about the fifth time that day, he considered finding some way to ditch her back at the farm while he and the rest of the team went after Avadan. He glanced over at her. She was talking to Lotus, who cradled a guitar. Melody beamed, and Helo had to smile. Two musicians talking shop.
Magdelene touched his arm. “Helicopters should be here in thirty minutes. You should get your team ready. You think you can handle Mars?”
“I think he just wants to have a little fun,” Helo said. It was probably true. Mars had never seemed like the type to sit behind a desk.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up. Helo got his out and messaged his team to meet by the southern barn. He had taken a step in Melody’s direction when Magdelene’s arm shot out and grabbed his in an iron grip. She was saying a stream of “uh-huhs,” and “Are you sure?” over and over again, eyes wide with horror. Then she hung up.
“We’re too late,” she said, voice hollow.
“What?”
“It’s Detroit. He just did it there. They’re all Possessed. All except children.”
Helo’s heart sank. “I thought we had eyes on him in Saint Louis!”
“We did,” she said, still not quite focused on what was around her. “One minute he was there in the hospital, then he wasn’t. I get the feeling he doesn’t need cars and planes to get around. The desecration field in Kansas City shrank when he did it, but it’s already starting to build again. We’ve got to find Mars.”
“We’ve got to go!” Helo said. “Any chance those choppers can get here faster?”
“No,” she said. “No. I . . . this is unthinkable.”
They found Mars and Ebenezer in the house in the office, Mars lecturing Ebenezer about what to do in his absence. Ebenezer looked annoyed, but then again, he always did.
“What’s happened?” Mars said, apparently reading Magdelene’s face.
She paced the floor. “Helo, you tell him. I’ve got to think.”
Helo relayed the news, Mars and Ebenezer listening slack-jawed. While he told the story, Magdelene’s phone rang again, and she stepped out to take it. When she came back, she looked like someone had just died.
“Avadan’s got them fighting and killing each other in Detroit. Guns. Knives. Bats. The whole city.”
Helo shook his head. Avadan knew he was losing control of his Vexus, so he was ramping up the violence to get what he needed. “He’s building up Vexus stores. He’s going to do something big. How about Saint Louis?”
“No reports yet,” she said. “It’s still clean of the desecration, so that’s some comfort.”
“There’s nothing to talk about anymore,” Mars said, jaw tight. “Let’s gear up and get to Kansas City. It’s now or never.”
“We’ve got to figure out where to go,” Magdelene said. “Kansas City is a big place. We know that an army of Possessed—probably Legion—has gone into the city.”
“What does it matter?” Mars said, voice exasperated, and to Helo it looked like his eyes were already in Kansas City.
“Because,” Maggie said, “Legion is the best recon force in the world. Their shared mind allows them to instantly report across the city where threats to Avadan are. He’ll know we’re coming. Surprise is the only advantage we have. We lose that, and we lose everything.”
Helo was never more grateful for the levelheaded Magdelene. He hadn’t even thought about that. Like Mars, he was sick of the whole thing and ready to go in guns and Bestowals blazing. “I think Melody and I can Exorcise Legion. We need to capture one and—”
“We’ve got one,” Magdelene said. “Well, Old Masters have been holding one outside the desecration zone in KC. They’ve been trying to Exorcise Legion for days. It’s done more harm to them than good at this point.”
“Then that’s our first stop,” Helo said. “We disable Avadan’s eyes and ears, then find a place to set up in the city.”
Melody caught up with him on the front porch as he was walking out of the house, her face contented, happy. Her hair was down—a rarity—and her green eyes beamed. She grabbed his hand. “Hey, Helo. You know, Lotus reminds me so much of myself it’s like she’s a twin. But . . . okay, what’s going on? You look like someone just stole your girlfriend.”
He stopped and wrapped her in his arms. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s Detroit. He did it again. They’re fighting and killing, kicking up all kinds of atrocity for him to use.”
“Oh no,” she said. “What are we going to do?”
“Plan’s the same,” he said. “Get to KC. Just a little detour first to see if we can Exorcise Legion. It’s up to you and me, Melody. I wish you didn’t have to be a part of this, but you do.”
She pulled back, a wistful grin on her face. “Thinking of ditching me, huh? Never again, Helo. We’re a thing, and this thing we have, well, it will save the world. I know it. Now, you have time for a little meditation? There’s that bed I made in the tent . . .”
He pulled her in again. “That sounds great, but there’s no time. We’re gearing up and going. As soon as the choppers set down, we’ve got to get out of here. But look, Sparks and Martha—they’ve done the meditation. They say there’s still one more mystery for us to figure out. So it’s a date, okay?”
She kissed him. “Okay, but you’re the busy one.”
“I’ll make it, trust me. And one more thing,” Helo said. “I want to give you one more Bestowal. This would be six, and your one-year clock would start ticking.”
He’d wavered between giving her Speed and Toughness. Both would help her escape and survive if everything went bad. He’d landed on Speed. Most of the Dreads were gone, and Ghostpackers couldn’t run worth a damn.
“Then I don’t want it,” she said. “I want more than a year with you.
“It’s Speed,” he said. “If it’s going bad—”
“By going bad, you mean you’re not going to make it. If you don’t make it, then I don’t make it either.”
“You don’t understand,” Helo said. “If Avadan gets ahold of you—you know what he can do. He can take the most innocent—”
Her lips pressed deeply into his. He tried to enjoy it, but his mind kept running down the awful road of Avadan turning her into a Dread.
“A kiss can’t fix everything,” he said.
She planted her forehead on his, her arms going around his neck. “According to you, that’s all we have time for. How about that meditation?”
“Hey!” Sparks yelled from out in the yard. “Wasn’t there a briefing or something? I think you’re the one who called for it.”
“Work, work, work,” Melody teased.
Hand in hand they walked across the yard to the barn where they had told the team to gather. Corinth and Mars stood off to one side, Finny and Sparks stuffing ammo into backpacks by the wall. A single light on the side of the barn shone down on the grass, and Faramir was there, tinkering with a drone. Magdelene strolled up, arms folded, lips in a line.
Helo explained what had happened in Detroit. He introduced them to their new team members, Mars and Corinth, and let them know about the detour to Exorcise Legion.
“It’s going to be a long, messy night,” he said. “When we get to KC, Melody and I will Hallow the ground to keep him from turning everyone into Possessed. Then we find him and give everything we’ve got to put an end to this.”
“How can we beat him?” Faramir aske
d. “We’ve tried. He’s too strong.”
“We have to chop off his arms,” Helo said. “That will sever his connection to the Vexus he’s using to do this stuff. That should give us a chance.”
“Piece of cake,” Faramir said sarcastically.
“It’s what we have to do,” Mars said in his deep, drill-sergeant voice. “So we soldier up and do it.”
“Shujaa was able to chop an arm off with a sanctified sword,” Helo said. “We don’t have those, so—”
“I found you some,” Magdelene said. “They should be here shortly.”
“Brilliant,” Sparks said. And he meant it. Missions always seemed to get his heart pumping, and not even a near-impossible death mission seemed to faze him.
“We still don’t know when and where Avadan will show up,” Helo continued, “so we’ll have to adapt. Any questions?”
“Uh, yeah,” Sparks said. “So, which of you two blokes is in charge of this little party?”
“Helo,” Mars said. “I’m just muscle on this one.”
Sparks nodded. “I’m still second, then?”
“Yep,” Helo said. “While Melody and I Hallow, you’ll be in charge.”
“Even better.”
A group of Old Masters walking toward them ended the conversation. There were seven and their apprentices coming forward, including Oakes and Lotus. Each held a scabbard, a little of the sanctified glow leaking out the top. There were a variety of swords, most of the scabbards old. These blades had history.
Oakes stepped in front of Helo and Melody, extending the scabbard. “This blade was sanctified on June 10, 1811, by my master’s master, Manwar, on the day before he was to ascend. He forged the metal and sanctified the blade, setting it apart to be plunged into the heart of darkness. To you it is given to safeguard and fulfill its purpose.”
Helo took it and examined the blade. It was fashioned after the pattern of a European longsword and had a raw, unrefined look, as if it had no other pretensions than to fight evil. It would do nicely. “Thank you, Oakes.”