by Brian Fuller
Another Old Master, a man with a long gray beard, stood in front of Melody. “This blade was sanctified on April 4, 1620, by my master’s great-grandmaster, Wenna, on the day before she was to ascend. She 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.”
Melody took the blade—a simple shortsword—reverentially. “Thank you so much. It is wonderful.”
One by one the Old Masters relinquished their blades to members of his team, each with the same words. By the time they got to Faramir, the sounds of rotors beating the air pulsed in his ears.
“Thank you,” Helo said, feeling humbled. He didn’t understand completely what this giving of blades meant to them, but he knew enough to reverence the gift.
Oakes nodded. “You are welcome. What would you have us do, Unascended?”
Helo thought for a moment. “Even if we beat Avadan, there will be thousands upon thousands who need exorcism. The world’s going to be darker. Dolorem taught me how Ash Angels were meant to uplift God’s children. Well, we’ll need a lot of that after Avadan. If anyone wants to fight, make your way to Kansas City.”
“As you wish,” Oakes said with a little bow. Melody squeezed his arm.
“Actually,” Magdelene said, “we have about twenty soldiers who could use a ride to Kansas City if the Old Masters are willing to help out with rides.”
“If the Unascended asks it,” Oakes said.
“Yeah, that would be great,” Helo said.
Oakes nodded.
Two helicopters descended, rotors pounding, their Ash Angel pilots’ auras glowing through the cockpit glass. They came down in the field behind the barn, kicking up a swirl of dust as the landing skids sank in the dirt.
“Hueys,” Finny yelled. “And oldie but goodie—if they kept them up. I was kind of hoping for a Blackhawk.”
They gathered their gear and stowed it on one of the helicopters. The young Spade and Martha strode out of the farmhouse followed by a detail of soldiers. Helo jogged over to them, remembering something.
“Spade,” he said, raising his voice above the racket. “I forgot to warn you that when you do the hallow, the light will consume your body if you keep it up long enough. Just thought you should know beforehand.”
“Yeah,” Spade said, now back in his old-man voice. “Nice of you to bring that up. We can both heal, so we’re good. Good luck, boy. Don’t be stupid.”
Martha patted his cheek in a motherly fashion, and she and Spade’s team loaded up for their flight to Detroit.
Helo jogged back, helicopter blades whipping the grass, Magdelene waiting for him. She hugged him. “Keep me posted, okay? You see Cassie before I do, tell her I miss her. Good luck, Helo. I believe in you.”
Helo nodded, grateful for her trust. He turned back to the Huey and climbed in, finding himself between Corinth and Melody. Melody pulled the door closed, dulling the rotor racket. Finny had kicked the pilot out and taken over the controls, Sparks taking the copilot’s seat.
“You ever flown one of these?” Sparks yelled to Finny.
“No, mate,” he said. “But I’ve always wanted to. Does that count?”
“No,” Sparks said.
Finny grinned. “Come on, it’s a helicopter. I got this. Probably. How different can it be?”
“I’m just disappointed it doesn’t have a fifty cal or something,” Sparks said. “That would be a good time.”
Finny sent the helicopter soaring into the sky with greased ease, tilting forward and zooming over the river running darkly beneath them, the hills and trees ill-defined shadows on either side. Helo settled in. In his heart he knew this was the last mission for Sicarius Nox. If they defeated Avadan, there would be no more Shedim for them to hunt. If they failed, there wouldn’t be anyone left to hunt Shedim.
Melody leaned on his shoulder, and he put his arm around her. He turned, finding Corinth staring out the window with a blank expression on his face.
“Hey,” Helo said. “Thanks for coming on this. Full circle for us, huh?”
One side of his mouth raised in a grin. “Yeah. Guess it is.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you and Scarlet, but—”
“I’ll tell you,” he said, a little bitterness creeping into his voice. “You’re too awesome, that’s what’s up. I don’t want to talk about it, okay? And . . . look. I’m not mad at you. I know you and Melody are together.”
“Damn straight,” Melody said, leaning around.
Corinth held up his hands. “I know. I really thought I had found the one, you know? It’s just . . . I said I didn’t want to talk about it, so I’m going to stop talking about it.”
Helo nodded and pulled Melody closer. She snuggled into him. Helo kept his eyes out front, watching the blue-black sky unfold before them, the lights of small cities sliding underneath them. Being in the helicopter surrounded by soldiers took him back to his military days, to the dryness that would creep into his mouth, to the false bravado, dirty jokes, and swearing. To a heart that wondered if this would be the mission where it stopped. To the wandering thoughts about if what they were doing would really make a difference. His squad mates had accused him of thinking too much.
Now he wished he had more time. More time to prepare. More time to understand. More time with Melody. He kissed her hair, and she straightened up a little.
“Finny,” she said. “How long until KC?”
“About an hour and a half,” he called back.
“Great,” Melody said. “Hey, everyone. We need to meditate to . . . prepare . . . for what’s ahead, so don’t bug us unless it’s important—like, really important.”
“Let’s go, big guy,” Melody whispered. “No excuses now.”
He took her hand and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the thump and whine of the helicopter and the noise in his own head. It took awhile, but after his silver sphere collapsed into the sun, the campsite appeared around him. It was night in the little world she’d created, the arm of the Milky Way brighter than it should be. A green aurora played over the tops of the mountains. Their tent glowed, a faint reflection of yellowy light playing on the glassy lake, Melody’s shadow playing on the tent walls.
“I’m in here,” Melody said. “And I haven’t bothered to create clothes for myself yet, so maybe you should hurry before I feel like cooking up an entire squad of Boy Scouts.”
He laughed and jogged over. “It’s a troop—a troop of Boy Scouts.”
“Like you would know,” she said. “Get in here.”
Chapter 44
Gathering Dark
Making love as an Ash Angel was one of the best experiences Helo could imagine, so when Corinth yanked them out of their bliss over an hour later, the horrifying contrast with what waited outside the helicopter’s cockpit window gave him emotional whiplash.
“We’re too late,” Corinth said. “Again.”
They hadn’t quite reached the edge of the city, but what must have been hundreds of thousands of evil spirits floated over the desecration. They formed a hazy cloud of fuzzy gray with red pinpoints of light undulating like they floated on some invisible ocean. While the team watched, they darted down, streaking like comets to the city below, possessing bodies they had no claim to. In the backdrop, a storm from the west blew toward the city, an unnatural storm crackling with lightning.
“Damn,” Helo said. “How long to the first Landing Zone?”
“Three minutes,” Finny said.
“Is there any point to the exorcism anymore?” Sparks said.
“He’s got a point, son,” Mars added from the back. “Gig’s up.”
“The point’s still the same,” Helo said. “The rest of these Possessed can’t relay our position like Legion can.”
Faramir craned around. “Can you do the hallow from outside the desecration?”
“Not if we want to get all of it,” Helo said, explaining about h
is body burning away in the light. “I have to be able to Hallow the smallest radius possible.”
“But wait, Helo,” Melody said. “Faramir and Sparks can heal. We do the hallowing, they heal you to keep your body intact until it’s done. We stay by the chopper. As soon as you’re done, we go airborne in case a mob comes for us.”
“I like it,” Sparks said.
Helo did too. Going into the city was risky. “Okay. Hallow first. Then we grab the Legion Ghostpacker and do the exorcism in the air.”
Finny angled the chopper toward the top of an empty parking garage a couple miles outside the desecration zone. None of the streetlamps worked, but a beat-up blue sedan with one headlight sat on the top level, two glowing white auras and one Ghostpacker waiting by the car. The chopper’s skids dropped lightly onto the asphalt. Melody yanked the door open, and Finny spooled down the engine as they piled out.
A lanky Old Master with dark skin and graying hair left his apprentice next to the greasy old Ghostpacker they had bound with the belts off their pants. They had gagged him with what looked like an oil rag. Tasty. Helo shook the Old Master’s hand, and the Old Master identified himself as Kirk, his apprentice as Shale. Kirk offered him his blade, and Helo Blessed it.
“You want to take a crack at this nut?” Kirk said, the South coloring his words.
“Yes,” Helo said. “But first I need to get to the ground floor to Hallow the city.”
Kirk’s eyes went wide. “You can Hallow the entire city?”
“Yes. It’ll be faster if we can drive to the bottom floor. Can you heal?”
“Yes,” Kirk said, voice awed.
“Then let’s go.”
They left Finny, Mars, Corinth, and Shale behind with the Ghostpacker, cramming six into a sedan that could comfortably seat four. The trip was short, and they piled out onto the ground floor of the parking garage. Already Helo could hear the distant uproar in Kansas City. Car alarms. Sporadic gunfire. Screaming and yelling that sounded uncomfortably close. All mixed with the boom of an oncoming Sheid storm.
“Let’s hurry,” he said.
Hurry and meditation didn’t go well together. After he grabbed Melody’s hand, she appeared to be having trouble concentrating. He couldn’t blame her. He stroked her hair and rubbed her arm, and finally her shoulders relaxed. Once they connected inside, he fell out of the meditation, finding the well of power opening up within him, flowing from somewhere in her to somewhere in him.
He let the hallow flow, feeling his body grow warm, like a fire had started within his flesh. As the light disintegrated his legs, Sparks, Faramir, and Kirk would take turns healing him. Even then, his body vibrated with the power, feeling like it could turn to light and disappear at any moment. He couldn’t be sure how long he needed to Hallow, but after what seemed twice as long as Saint Louis, he ended it, Faramir providing the last bit of healing.
“Amazing,” Kirk said.
Helo helped Melody to her feet. “Wait till you see what I made this time,” she whispered to him.
They jammed themselves back into the car. A few minutes later, they were back in the chopper with the addition of one defiant Ghostpacker whose bleary eyes communicated hatred. But a little fear had settled into those eyes, too. He’d chipped Legion’s confidence during his last session. Now it was time to break it. But he didn’t have the diamond Mars had given him to cast Legion into. It had gotten lost somewhere during all the heart travels and frantic battles.
“Anybody got something to stuff Legion into?” Helo asked.
“Got it,” Mars said, digging into one of the pockets of his vest. He pulled a small velvet bag. Inside was another diamond. “These aren’t cheap, so try not to lose it.”
Helo took it, placing it in his left hand. Melody took his wrist, and Helo put his right hand on the angry man. The Virtus of Exorcism flowed away, and Helo closed his eyes, sinking into Legion’s mind. The weight was there, but so was Melody. They bore it together. Legion offered no snarky insults or promises of destruction now. The minds swirled away, trying to escape his grasp, their whispers frantic, rasping like a hundred snakes slithering across sandstone in the dark.
Like his last session, he focused on finding Legion’s leader, the one who sat at the core of the evil contract that bound so many evil spirits together. He needed to trap a spirit, force it to reveal its leader. Helo stretched out, pouring his energy into snaring one of Legion’s minions. It was like trying to catch a determined fly barehanded. But he got one, pressed it, trapping it with the Virtus in him. The Virtus revealed the evil spirit’s form, a ghastly gray body with piercing red eyes.
Who is your leader? Helo demanded. It squirmed. It yowled. It tried to break free, but it could not resist. In the profound depths of Legion’s collective mind, Helo could sense the direction, see the evil spirit faintly glowing amid a churning stampede of spirits trying to get out of the way of this Ash Angel who had come for them.
Helo pressed toward it, extending the influence of his Virtus at the spirit, not unlike the tentacles of Shedim, only of light. Legion dodged away but could not disappear. It was a chase through a formless void. This evil spirit radiated power, showed a determination Helo fought to match.
Then he was out, lurching hard against Melody, who’d braced herself against the helicopter door. He had been so close to trapping Legion. He had to get back in there, but the scene outside held him up.
“Hang on!” Finny yelled, working the pedals and yoke.
A hard wind gusted, lightning branching in angry streaks across the inky sky. Rain and hail pelted the helicopter. A Sheid storm for sure. The city lights bucked back and forth in the cockpit window as Finny righted the craft.
But something else caught Helo’s eye, or more his heart. “Is that . . . ?”
“Desecration?” Sparks said. “Yeah. It’s expanding. We’re trying to follow the flow of it back to the source. He’s here, all right.”
The helicopter bucked and shuddered as Finny tried to ride out the winds. Lightning blasted across the sky again, the thunder pounding right behind it. The flow of the desecration was more felt than seen. They were no more than a hundred feet in the air, the cockpit glass streaked with water. Another gust of wind pitched the helicopter up and back. Again Finny struggled to right it.
“Set it down,” Helo said, pocketing the diamond. “We’re going to get blown out of the sky.”
“I can handle it,” Finny said, pointing back toward the northeast.
The flash of lightning and boom of thunder arrived together, the instrument panel sparking. Electricity arced through the cockpit. The helicopter pitched and spun, the lights of the city whipping past in the cockpit window, everyone thrown against the walls.
“We’ve been hit,” Finny said, alarms screeching through the cabin. “Hang on.”
Finny worked the controls, hands a blur as he pulled and yanked and flipped switches. But for all his frantic piloting, the helicopter steadily dropped altitude, fishtailing. Helo strapped the Ghostpacker in and wrapped Melody in his arms. It couldn’t end this way! They had enough healers to patch everyone up, but if they burned . . .
A half-empty parking lot sprawled out ahead of them, and the chopper plowed into it, skids scraping and banging before slamming into a clump of parked vehicles. The helicopter tilted, blades chewing up cars and asphalt. Finny yanked it back and killed the engine, the helicopter crunching to a rest at a steep tilt against a car. The rain battered the hull as everyone tried to get off the bottom.
“Everyone good?” Finny asked.
“Nice landing, mate,” Sparks grumped. “I really don’t want to walk this one. What’s the plan, boss?”
“Finny,” he said, “hop out and find a car in the lot. I don’t want to Hallow our entire way. Mars, can you Hallow?”
“You know it,” he responded.
“Go with Finny. Melody and I will see if we can Exorcise Legion.”
As soon as Mars pulled open the door, water cascaded down
like someone had turned on the world’s biggest showerhead. Mars swore, and he and Finny clambered out.
Corinth slammed the door shut after them. “Do all your missions go this way, Helo?”
“Pretty much. Melody, you ready?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I should meditate. You could draw power from me without using your own.”
That was a great idea. He nodded and laid a hand on Legion. Melody got as comfortable as she could. He waited until she stilled, and then he Exorcised. Again he found himself back in the heavy void of an evil hive, Melody’s presence fainter than it had been but still there. With an unending well of power at hand and little effort, he ensnared one of the wandering minds and forced it to reveal the location of Legion’s commander.
Helo let the one mind go free and powered toward the other evil spirit veiled in the midst of the rest. It, too, tried to escape him, but Helo possessed too much power now, and he wrapped the commander’s mind in cords of light, binding him in place. The red, glowing eyes were capable of very little expression, but it wasn’t hard to sense the hatred and fear boring into him.
“Your name,” Helo said simply.
“I have thousands of names,” the commander hissed. “Will you learn them all? Do you have the time to discover all those secrets?”
Thousands of names and thousands of secrets for thousands of evil spirits. Trying to Exorcise them one at a time would take forever, but that thought was wrong. He could feel the deception, the attempt to send him on a time-wasting goose chase. The horde of evil spirits had bound themselves under a single name, and it was that name and that name alone that he needed.
“What is the name of your Legion?”
“It is Legion,” the commander lied.
This was the wrong tack. Goliath had taught him that the names were not necessarily words but the communication of identities, an understanding of character. It was like what Legion was trying to show him about his past, unearthing memories and decisions that had shaped who he was. Asking for a name wasn’t the right question.