A Mystery of Light

by Brian Fuller

  “Who are you?” Helo said, asserting his will. But even that wasn’t right. If they shared a single name, then there was something they shared, some characteristic or idea or experience. “Who are all of you?”

  Legion’s commander struggled against the question, squirmed against the cords of light that held him fast. And images started to flow through Helo’s mind, concepts framed as pictures. A big woman staring at a slender one, heart full of envy for a shape she could never have. A son who had been cut out of his father’s will burning with indignation while a brother got everything. A poor thief stealing a bike out of a yard and feeling justified by his own poverty. A glutton at a feast eating without consideration for anyone else at the table or the beggars at his door.

  This was Legion, a horde of evil spirits, all believing they had been cheated, each drenched in wanting. Each felt entitled to what he or she could not and should not have. It all coalesced into a concept in his mind, that concept solidifying into a name in a language he did not know and could not pronounce. But the name he knew as well as his own. He had the power now, and the squirming Legion stilled. The battle was won. All that was left was to put Legion into the diamond.

  As he went to do it, he was thrown out of Legion’s mind again. A car had rocketed through the front of the helicopter, tearing it open. His pelvis was smashed, his ribs shattered. Melody was trapped beside him, eyes wide, the side of a Honda Accord crushing both of them. The chest of the man Legion had afflicted was crushed, blood dribbling out of his mouth. He was dead. Legion was good at self-preservation. Who had Legion called on for aid?

  Helo couldn’t see Sparks, but Corinth was trapped under a wheel that had crushed his legs. Faramir was lodged between the two seats, midsection a lot thinner than it should have been.

  Rainwater and hail gashed inside the cabin, splattering against the car that held him down. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. Wind roared. The sick feeling of a powerful Sheid washed over him. It had found them, probably with Legion’s help. He couldn’t see Mars and Finny and hoped the Sheid hadn’t cut them to pieces already.

  Helo healed Melody and then Faramir, who returned the favor. He couldn’t reach Corinth. “Strength push, Melody. Let’s get this thing off of us.”

  Together they flared their Strength, pushing until the car tumbled off to the side. Helo healed Corinth, then peered over the side of the tottering chopper. There was Sparks, head mush, facedown in the desecrated parking lot. The Sheid stood about a hundred feet away. A cyclone of wind and rain swirled around it, powerful enough to move cars across the rain-soaked parking lot. The rain came down so thick it felt like standing in a double shower on full.

  Mars and Finny huddled nearby in a pool of hallowing behind an old VW van. Helo jumped down and Hallowed the ground. Melody followed after and healed Sparks. Corinth splashed down beside them. Corinth pulled his blade out of its sheath, but the flying car had bent the hilt and the sanctification was gone.

  He tossed it aside. “Not awesome.”

  Sparks popped to his feet. “Hard to dodge an entire car. Let’s do this.”

  Faramir threw his stuffed duffel over the side of the chopper and clambered down.

  “Incoming!” Mars yelled.

  A gold Honda Civic arced through the air, whirling like an oversized frisbee. They dove aside, the car ripping into the helicopter, both skidding backward with the shriek of metal and glass. The wind-blasted rain muddled Helo’s vision. This Sheid was playing the same game as Whirlwind, hanging back to stay out of hallowing range, keeping a wall of wind between itself and its prey. Would it come for them, or did it just want to pin them down to give Avadan time to do whatever he was doing?

  Lightning flashed, blasting Sparks to the ground with a burning blue fire. And the Sheid could do that.

  Sparks hopped back up. “You’ll need more than that! What’s the plan, boss?”

  If they could lure it toward another C4 trap, they could do the same thing they did at the Foundry. But they had to do this fast. Hallowing was exhausting, and he’d lose half his team to the desecration if he and Mars couldn’t keep it up. Even worse, the hallowing made sure they had to clump together as one, allowing the Sheid to toss lightning and cars at the group of them.

  The Sheid pulled a black Ford Focus into the cyclone, sending it aloft. It sailed at them like it was shot from a bow. Again they dove aside, splashing across the asphalt. The car hurtled by, bouncing end over end.

  “Helo?” Melody said.

  “I got it!” Faramir said. “I need a car.”

  Helo’s vision filled with white, the harsh crack of thunder ringing his ears. Electricity arced around him, knocking him on his butt. Black holes pierced his chest and arms.

  Sparks helped him up. The Sheid stayed where it was, content to let them burn their Virtus and pick at them.

  “I need a car!” Faramir said as a van almost flattened him.

  Helo nodded, and they jogged over to where Finny and Mars had already gotten inside a Chevy Colorado, which allowed Mars to drop his hallow.

  “Get it started and get out,” Faramir said, digging into his pack.

  “What’s the plan?” Helo asked.

  “Kamikaze car bomb,” Faramir said. “It likes cars. I’ll give it one.”

  Finny hotwired the car with experienced ease, the motor humming to life. “Maybe I should drive.”

  “I can drive in a straight line,” Faramir said. “I’m done being the drone guy stuck in the van. Out.”

  Finny and Mars stepped into Helo’s pool of hallow, and Faramir got in the cab, a lump of C4 in his hand.

  “Let’s keep its attention elsewhere,” Helo said, moving the team away from the truck.

  “How about some good old gunfire?” Mars said, unloading his BBR into the swirling cyclone. Everyone joined in. Sure enough, a red Ford F-150 went airborne, whipping at them. It crashed right in front of them, rolling in an unexpected direction. Mars and Melody got pounded hard to the ground by the truck bed as it rolled over them, bones snapping. Corinth escaped its trajectory by diving hard to the pavement.

  Faramir’s Chevy reversed out of the parking stall.

  “Melody,” Helo said. “Hallow you and Mars.” She nodded from the ground, an arm and leg pulverized. Her hallow spread around them. Helo edged over until Finny and Corinth could move inside her hallow.

  “Speed, Sparks. Can you take the desecration?”

  He nodded, clenching his jaw. Helo dropped his hallow, exhaustion already creeping in. At this rate he’d have nothing left to face Avadan with. The Chevy came up behind them, engine growling. It whipped by, spraying water, Faramir on a collision course with the cyclone. Helo and Sparks pulled their sanctified swords and ran after it. It was hard to calculate how far back to stay to keep from getting obliterated by the explosion. Lightning blasted the truck. It swerved and fishtailed a little, but Faramir gunned it and kept it on target. It hit the Sheid’s cyclone, and the wind picked it up off the ground, tires spinning, twisting it midair in a slow arc.

  Boom!

  The heat, light, and pressure should have knocked Helo down, but it was one of the Colorado’s tires drilling him in the chest like a tank shell that dropped him, his sword spinning away. His chest was mush, but he rolled over to get eyes back on the Sheid. The swirling maelstrom had dissipated with the Sheid’s Vexus, which was already re-forming. Sparks was on his knees, blasted down by the explosion. Helo Hallowed so Sparks could use his Bestowals. With a yell the Brit jumped up and poured on the Speed.

  The Sheid re-formed before he arrived, morphed to look like a clown straight out of a haunted house. A tentacle of fire shot right for Sparks’s face. Sparks dropped to his knees, tentacle sailing overhead, his momentum sending him skidding across the pavement. The sanctified sword took the Sheid across the thighs, and it exploded, the sword’s glow disappearing.

  Sparks got to his feet and turned around, letting out a primal yell with flexed arms. “That’s the stuff!”
r />   Helo looked to the sky. The storm wasn’t fading. His heart sank. There was another Sheid out there, probably a worse one. As Corinth would say, not awesome. On the other hand, Faramir was awesome. Helo couldn’t believe he’d volunteered for self-obliteration. Then again, Faramir was all comfy in the White Room while the rest of them got rain-soaked.

  “We got a problem,” Sparks said, jogging over. The exultant look on his face was gone, replaced by some grim realization.

  “What is it?” Helo said.

  Sparks knelt down and healed him. “Just look around.”

  Helo squinted and turned in a slow circle. In the pouring rain everything seemed hazy, but Helo knew what Sparks was referring to. He closed his eyes in frustration. Coming at them from every direction, still hazy in the distance, was a horde of the Possessed. It looked like Avadan had emptied the entire city, their red eyes forming a constricting ring tightening slowly around them.

  Chapter 45

  Rain

  Helo grabbed his still-sanctified sword. He and his team retreated into a beat-up Chevy Suburban littered with pretzels, M&Ms, and scraps of coloring-book pages. It smelled like dirty diapers. Finny ripped the vinyl off the steering column and fished for wires.

  “We can’t drive over them,” Melody said. “Remember what happened to Shujaa? You kill Possessed, you go Dread.”

  Corinth nodded, face sad. “This is messed up. Totally messed up.”

  Mars slammed a magazine into his rifle. “We may not have a choice. This is bigger than any of us. If we have to be Dreads to stop this, we have to do it.”

  Helo swallowed. It couldn’t come down to that. The Possessed didn’t deserve to get mowed down. They hadn’t asked for this, and it struck Helo as wrong that Ash Angels should have to risk their souls to defeat Avadan. There was only one desperate hope. It would be a little unconventional, but he had to try.

  He turned to Melody. “Can you meditate?”

  Melody exhaled. “I . . . don’t know. I’ll try.”

  She closed her eyes, hands on her knees, but her neck was tensed. The engine roared to life. Outside, the horde of red glowing eyes closed in, a noose constricting the parking lot. Finny backed out.

  “The Vexus is being pulled north,” Finny observed. “Faramir, what . . . oh, yeah. Anyone got a map?”

  “On it,” Sparks said.

  Helo rubbed Melody’s neck, his fist clenching as the faces of the Possessed came into view outside the windshield. The wipers beat back the storm but would have to go two times faster to keep up. Water pooled on the asphalt, deep in the low spots, the Possessed marching calmly toward the Suburban, drenched clothes sucked to their bodies. Like the mob they had faced in Saint Louis, the Possesseds’ expressions were absolutely blank, incoherent of anything around them.

  Melody’s neck and arm relaxed. She had done it.

  “What are we doing, son?” Mars said.

  Helo cracked the door open, rain pelting in. His foot had to touch the ground. He kept a hand on Melody’s arm and scooted out far enough to get his boot on the pavement, his other hand inside to keep from falling out. He Hallowed, the pool of light bleeding out into the night, engulfing the mass of Possessed. As he had hoped, eyes cleared, bewilderment dawned, and shoulders hunched against the rain and cold. Now the Possessed would get out of the way of a Suburban about to run them down.

  “Brilliant,” Finny said, putting it into gear and driving forward slowly.

  “Work your way north,” Helo said. “Keep it slow. I may not have much of a boot or a foot left after this.”

  The Possessed made way for the car, and before long they’d cleared the perimeter of the mob, though some ambled around lost in the parking lot.

  Mars’s phone buzzed, and he tapped it. “This is Mars.” What followed was a one-sided report. Mars ended the call a few moments later. “The desecration field is spreading outward. It’s covered nearly half of Kansas and Missouri.”

  “Faster, Finny,” Helo said.

  No one knew how many evil spirits there were, but with more and more under Avadan’s control, he would have enough Vexus to desecrate the entire world. And whoever survived the mayhem would find themselves an unwilling Possessed.

  “That’s got to be it,” Sparks said, the glow of the screen lighting his face. “KC Live!—it’s a concert venue about five minutes from here. It’s practically a straight shot.”

  “Let’s go,” Helo said. A concert hall was definitely Avadan’s style.

  “Keep an eye peeled for Dreads and Shedim,” Mars warned. “Corinth, keep an eye out the back. I’ll watch left. Sparks, take right.”

  Mars and Sparks lowered their windows, the rain pouring in. Corinth spun to face the rear of the car, pointing his BBR at the back glass. “I can’t see squat. Should I knock it out?”

  “No,” Helo said. “We’ve got to keep it as quiet as we can for Melody. She gets knocked out of the meditation, we’re all ash.”

  “Got it,” Corinth said.

  Once they cleared the parking lot and the remnants of the Possessed mob, they rolled down troubled streets, lonely stretches interrupted by scenes of chaos. Here the Possessed killed each other in streets flooded with water now ankle-deep. A group of three men beat on another until he fell, then turned on each other, fists and kicks flying.

  A woman wrestled a boy, trying to force his face into the flooded street. Sparks blasted her with Angel Fire, and she staggered back, allowing the boy time to get up and run. Baseball bats. Knives. Gunfire. Bodies. Violence. The victims didn’t even scream, faces as vapid as their murderers’.

  The Vexus thickened, and the water deepened the closer they came to KC Live!. The Possessed were up to their knees as they splashed through the water, the strong seeking the weak for murder.

  “This is sick,” Finny said. His hands were trembling, and he clenched them harder on the wheel.

  Sparks put his hand on Finny’s shoulder. “Would you rather fight a giant . . .”

  “Not going to work this time, mate,” Finny said. “Let’s just get in there and get this done.”

  A rumble vibrated the car, rocking it back and forth. The light posts swayed, and then the entire city went dark. Lightning flashed, reflecting off the dark, rising water. The shaking ceased, but the stain of a Sheid washed over Helo’s heart. Another powerful one. Getting closer.

  “What was that?” Corinth said.

  “Sheid,” Helo said. “How far to KC Live!?”

  “Not far,” Sparks said. “We’re about to cross over 670, and then we’re practically there.”

  Helo kept his foot to the ground, his boot heel grinding down. He was soaked already, so the water sloshing over his leg didn’t even register. The bridge over the highway waited just ahead, water pouring off it onto the asphalt below. His entire soul screamed with the presence of the Sheid. The tight faces of his team let him know the others felt it now. Helo concentrated and expanded the circle of his hallow to discourage the Sheid from getting close.

  The ground heaved, and the Suburban rocked. “Whoa! Hold on!” Finny yelled, stepping on the gas. The bridge cracked in half, a section the size of a bus collapsing and crashing to the roadway below. Finny slammed on the brakes, tires skidding until the front bumper flirted with the edge. Melody slammed into the seat in front of her and snapped out of the meditation. The hallow died.

  The Sheid slammed down on the other side of the crack like it had dropped from the storm itself, the Vexus concealing its form.

  “Who’s got—” Helo didn’t get the words out, a blinding blast of lightning and a deafening boom of thunder blasting through the Suburban. The windshield shattered, spitting glass inside the cabin. When it cleared, everyone bore blackened scorch marks and holes, including one through each of their hearts. The car died.

  The ground rumbled and shook, the water vibrating.

  “Get out!” Helo yelled. “Melody, Mars, Hallow!”

  The constant need to Hallow to negate the desecration
field was killing them. Helo had barely stumbled onto the asphalt, trying to keep his footing, as the road beneath the Suburban crumbled. In a few moments, it would collapse down onto the 670 below, which was a river of water so deep and powerful it swept cars away. Helo practically pulled Melody out, Sparks, Corinth, and Mars piling out the other side. Finny kept trying to start the Suburban.

  Sparks turned. “Get out, Fin!”

  The Suburban turned over. “I got it!” Finny yelled. The road in front of the Suburban bent downward with the ground, which stopped shaking. Finny clanged the transmission into reverse. Then the Sheid struck. A tentacle of black fire shot through the windshield and burned off Finny’s head. Helo shot Angel Fire across the gap, Melody next to him, her hallow surrounding the team. The Sheid leapt into the inky black sky, invisible in the storm.

  Sparks Strength jumped the Suburban and yanked off the driver-side door, and Corinth grabbed the car’s bumper, but the Sheid came down hard on the hood. The back end bucked up, pitching Corinth backward. Finny, the car, and the Sheid dropped into the torrential water seething below.

  “Fin!” Sparks yelled, stepping up to the edge and scanning below.

  “Wait,” Helo said. “We need to heal our hearts.”

  “Hurry!” Sparks yelled, his voice carrying an uncharacteristic tone: fear.

  Helo sloshed over and healed Sparks. It only took a few moments, and then Sparks dropped over the side. Helo shook his head. They would both die down there, but he knew better than to order Sparks not to go. He returned to Melody, Mars, and Corinth. Mars and Melody were the only ones with sanctified blades. Helo regretted leaving his in the Suburban.

  “What now?” Mars said, wiping the rain from his face.

  “Let’s get across,” Helo said, a pit opening in his stomach. The Sheid was still close, somewhere down the highway. The water on the other side of the bridge looked deeper, but it was hard to tell.