War Within (Death's Contract Book 2)

by KJ Harlow

  My eyes slid down back towards the soldiers. They were spread out about 30 men wide. The first row had bulletproof shields. Soldiers crouched in the second-row shot through strategically placed gaps between the shields. After they finished their round, they would swap out with the third row, which had reloaded and were ready to swap in. It was relaxing to watch in a strange sort of way. The way that the soldiers stood meant that we couldn’t see the Conflicted they were shooting. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it, anyway.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to sneak past them?” Agatha asked as we withdrew back into the alley.

  “Shouldn’t be an issue,” I said, absent-mindedly rubbing my thumb along the barrel of my Lucent Gun. “There are about 25 yards between us and about the same distance from their position to the entrance to the road leading to the fort. They’re distracted enough. We can sneak past them.” Something in the tone of my voice betrayed me.

  “What’s wrong?” Agatha said. My thumb stopped midway along the barrel.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Except?”

  “Well… those soldiers are going to run out of bullets eventually. We know that they can’t stop the Conflicted. Should we help them?”

  “Absolutely not. Out of the question,” Agatha said flatly. “We might as well put ourselves in their firing line.”

  “So what do we do? Leave them so that the Conflicted finish them off?”

  “They’re soldiers, they can take care of themselves.”

  “Argh, damn.” Silas swore under his breath. There was a brief pause in the rhythmic gunfire from the soldiers. My stomach dropped. “My cover’s been blown. The roof gave out and I slipped. Some soldiers are coming towards me now.”

  I didn’t think. I just ran out of the alleyway straight towards the soldiers who were advancing on Silas.

  “Rose, no!” Agatha shouted.

  They noticed me running towards them. Twenty soldiers turned their rifles towards me. I brought up my arms in self-defense, waiting for the world of pain to slam into me.

  “We can kill your enemy,” Tor shouted. He had Soul Stepped in front of me. The sun finally made an appearance, breaking through the heavy, gray clouds that had been threatening to rain all day. Despite being draped in his shadow, I felt warmer than if the sun had shone directly onto me.

  The soldiers held their position, pointing their weapons at Tor. I looked up; Silas was peeking down at us from his vantage point on the roof. His gun was raised, unsure of where to point it.

  “We can kill your enemy,” Tor repeated, taking a step forward.

  “Don’t come any closer!” One of the soldiers commanded.

  “Jennings, it’s OK.” one of the soldiers holstered his weapon. He stepped forward and stood 10 feet away from Tor. He was over six foot tall but still at least three inches shorter than Tor. He looked Tor up and down, sizing him up.

  “I am Captain Roger Keaton of the 51st Infantry Brigade,” the soldier announced slowly.

  “Tor Scarland, formerly of the Norwegian Brigade Nord,” Tor said calmly.

  “Norway?” Keaton scoffed, “You’re a long way away from home, Scarland.” Tor didn’t respond to this. Keaton walked up to Tor and stood three feet away from him.

  “Sir, be careful, he’s armed!” A soldier called out.

  “At ease, soldier. Scarland here says that he can kill our enemy,” Keaton said, his mouth twitching up at the corner. “I take it the sniper up there is one of yours?” He said, gesturing up to Silas.

  “Yes, my apologies if he caught you off guard.”

  “Me? Off guard?” Keaton snorted. “No. I knew he was there.” I was frozen behind Tor as I listened to him speak with Keaton. I risked a glance back down the alley. Agatha was nowhere to be seen.

  “And sister, I know you’re in the alley too. Has Scarland here taken you hostage?” Keaton said. There was no movement behind me but eventually, Agatha poked her head out.

  “What if he did?” Agatha said as she came into full view. Keaton looked at her, smiling faintly. In a heartbeat, he had drawn a handgun and pointed it at Tor’s head.

  “No!” I shouted, coming out from behind Tor. A dozen of the soldiers pointed their guns at me as I came into view. “Enough! The… beings you are shooting won’t die when you shoot them but they will by our guns.” Keaton cocked his head to one side, looking at me curiously.

  “Look, I’ll prove it to you,” I stomped past the soldiers, who followed me with their guns. “Order your men to stop shooting and I’ll tell mine on the roof to kill the Conflicted.”

  “The Conflicted?” Keaton said, perplexed. I clucked and rolled my eyes, gesturing impatiently towards his initial targets. I glared at him until he gave the order.

  “Cease fire!” He shouted. The soldiers immediately stopped firing and huddled behind the shields. I walked and stood between the shielded soldiers and the Conflicted. Their wounds rapidly closed right before my eyes and in seconds, they were whole again. It didn’t take long for them to see me. They rushed at me weaponless, intending to tear me apart limb by limb.

  “Silas, now!”

  Silas’ sniper rifle rang out five times in the space of two seconds. Five Conflicted stumbled and crashed to the ground, the one closest to me falling right at my feet. Keaton watched in silence as the Conflicted started disintegrating right in front of his eyes, black ash rising into the air. I turned around and looked at the other soldiers. Their eyes flicked uneasily between the disappearing Conflicted corpses and me. There was a ripple of anxiety amongst them and suddenly I felt very vulnerable.

  “Arrest them,” Keaton said, his eyes narrowing. As the soldiers gathered around me Tor charged, skittling half a dozen of them like bowling pins. Before I could blink, he had put himself between me and the soldiers, his Lucent Gun drawn and ready.

  “Tor!” Agatha barked. “Do not shoot!” Tor was circling me as 100 armed soldiers surrounded us. Did he intend to take on this many people and make it out alive?

  “Tor, it’s OK,” I whispered to him. “I’ve got an idea.” I walked out in front of him and towards Keaton. “Captain,” I drew my Lucent Gun out slowly from its holster. As 100 weapons prepared to shoot me, I shot a sharp look back at Tor. I bent down and put my weapon on the ground, stepping back from it and putting my hands in the air. “I surrender.”

  “Jennings, pick up the weapon,” Keaton ordered. I looked at Tor again. He was staring at me incredulously, gun still cocked and ready to blaze a trail of destruction.

  “We can’t surrender our weapons,” Tor whispered.

  “We can’t shoot humans either,” I responded. “With any luck, they will take us straight to Andover.” Keaton walked towards us, his men opening a gap in their formation to let him through.

  “Tell your sniper up there to come down and surrender his weapon too.” Tor’s eyes were blazing angrily as he tried to stare down the British captain. “Scarland, you would do well to follow the actions of your woman here. Surrender your weapon.”

  ‘Your woman’? I almost felt tempted to take Tor’s Lucent Gun out of his hand to give the Captain a piece of my mind. Instead, I clenched my jaw and looked at Tor again, gesturing at his gun. He was gripping his gun so tightly that his knuckles were white. One of Keaton’s men approached me from behind and locked a hand cuff on my left wrist.

  “Wait!” I snarled, wrenching my hands away. Keaton leaned back slightly to avoid being hit in the face by my handcuffs. I put one of my hands on Tor’s wrist. His hand immediately relaxed, color returning to his knuckles. With the other, I gently prised the Lucent Gun out. Looking up at him, I nodded encouragingly. “Trust me,” I mouthed. His face became less contorted with anger as I took his Lucent Gun and gave it to Keaton.

  “Thank you…” Keaton said, trailing off as he looked at me with a question in his eyes.

  “Rose,” I said, wincing slightly when the soldier cuffed my other hand. “Rose Eaving.”

  “Ah… ‘a rose by any ot
her name would smell as sweet’,” Keaton said theatrically. I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. Now, where had I heard that before?

  We had been walking for the last 15 minutes, soldiers surrounding Agatha, Tor, Silas and I on all sides. When a soldier had approached Agatha to cuff her, she just about bit their head off. As a result, she walked freely, though she did have her hands behind her back like ours, maybe in solidarity. More importantly, though, they had assumed she was an ordinary nun and hadn’t taken away her Lucent Gun.

  “What are you going to once we arrive at your headquarters?” I asked Keaton. He was silent for a while.

  “You leave that to me,” he said dismissively. I smiled to myself; it looked like my plan had worked. We would be taken straight to where the Tormented were planning to attack. If we were lucky, we could arrive there before them, steal our guns back and defend the fort. I thought about Walter and Tracy. I wonder if they had found anything that would help us stop Mortimer.

  “Jennings, take some men and go on ahead to notify Andover that we’re coming back with prisoners,” Keaton commanded. Jennings saluted and ordered a dozen men to follow him. Together, they marched double time back towards Fort Andover.

  “So, what are you exactly?” Keaton said, looking at me curiously. Now it was my turn to be silent. Was it against the laws of the Deliverers to tell humans about our existence?

  “Don’t answer him,” Tor told me.

  “I didn’t ask you!” Keaton barked at Tor.

  “We’re ghosts contracted to the Angel of Death,” I said wearily. “Our job is to kill those zombie-like beings we call Conflicted you saw before, as well as to defeat the Tormented,” I said casually. Even if I did tell him the truth, I didn’t think he would believe me.

  “Who are the Tormented?” Keaton probed. I looked at him in surprise. Was he just humoring me? Surely he thought I was crazy. Just as I began to speak, a voice came through Keaton’s walkie-talkie.

  “Captain, it’s Jennings.” Keaton irritably pulled the walkie talking from his waist and shouted into it.

  “Can you not even do something as simple as notify Andover that we are coming back?”

  “It’s not that, sir. Commander O’Leary… he’s…”

  “Just spit it out, man!”

  “He’s dead, sir,” Keaton stopped dead in his tracks. “That’s not all,” Jennings said, a tremble creeping into his voice. “There’s a note here, written in… blood.”

  “What does it say?” Keaton said slowly.

  There was silence on the other line before Jennings spoke. “‘Thanks for the helicopters’.”

  Nine

  The platoon had all but sprinted back to Fort Andover after Jennings shared the grisly news. Keaton barked out a few commands and the men dispersed. Keaton shifted between his feet distractedly as he watched his soldiers try to deal with the situation. He raked one hand over his shaven head irritably as he chewed his thumbnail on the other.

  Tor, Agatha, Silas and I stood off to one side as we watched the chaotic scenes. One of the soldiers who was part of our platoon scrambled around a corner and stopped in front of Keaton.

  “Sir, the armory, it’s been emptied.” Keaton’s eyes popped out of his head, apoplectic with rage.

  “What do you mean, ‘emptied’?” Keaton roared. He grabbed the helpless soldier by the shoulders and shook him fiercely. I closed my eyes. Damn it, we were too late. By the time we arrived, the Tormented had already brought Fort Andover to its knees. They did go through with raiding all the fire arms and had stolen some military helicopters to boot. The Tormented were two steps ahead of us.

  “Rose, we need to go back to London, now,” Agatha told me tersely. “Who knows what Mortimer is going to do with those helicopters.”

  “Where are our Lucent Guns?” Silas said, looking around the room. It was a good question. In the commotion of realizing that their Fort had been compromised, we had lost track of the soldier who had our Lucent Guns. I didn’t know what to do. I looked at Keaton. He wasn’t a model of inspiration right now. He had finished shouting at the man who had delivered the bad news. He walked around in a circle suddenly lashing out at a chair and kicking it into the wall. Tor started walking towards him.

  “Tor, what are you–”I trailed off as I remembered his knack for choosing moments to connect with total strangers. Keaton was so absorbed in the situation that he didn’t notice Tor standing four feet away from him.

  “Captain, we knew this was going to happen. We were sent here to try and prevent it but we were too late,” Tor said. Keaton stopped pacing around in circles and glared up at Tor.

  “Are you saying that you know these people who did this?” Keaton said, flinging his arm angrily around the room. “Are you responsible for this?” He said, pointing a finger accusatorially at Tor.

  “We know who did this, but they aren’t people,” Tor said evenly. “They are the Tormented that Rose spoke of before. The only reason they have raided your armory is to defeat us.” Inexplicably, Keaton started laughing. Soldiers glanced nervously at him as they hurried by. He laughed for more than 10 seconds, eventually wiping away a tear.

  “If you’re all ‘Ghosts contracted to the Angel of Death’, what does that make them?” He said, stifling a snigger. “Minions from hell?” He burst out laughing again. ‘Minions from hell’ wasn’t a bad way to describe them, actually.

  “You saw us shoot them earlier,” Tor said. “Your guns couldn’t do anything. That’s because the Conflicted are souls trapped in corporeal flesh. Only our Lucent Guns can sever the tie between the Overworld and Underworld. Your guns won’t work.” Keaton was laughing even harder, doubling over and clutching his stomach. I’d had it with this joke of a captain. I stomped over and stood next to Tor.

  “Listen here, Keaton,” I said stabbing my finger into his face. “You know what you saw. I know it seems like magic and fairies to you, but it’s real. Now we need our Lucent Guns back so that we can save London. Where are they?” I demanded. Keaton’s laughing subsided quickly as he looked at me. He suddenly looked like he had aged 10 years. He heaved a great sigh and turned his back on us.

  “Come with me.”

  He led us through the maze of the fort. He stopped to speak to some men, nodding at them encouragingly before continuing on. Just as I had started to suspect that he was taking us towards a jail cell, we turned one more corner. Carpet led into a hall with portraits of military leaders on one side. They stared down at us regal and intimidating as we walked past them. We got to the end of the room. The name ‘Commander O’Leary’ was emblazoned on a plaque on the door.

  “Wait here,” Keaton said before slipping into the door. I looked at Tor, who stared straight ahead at the commander’s door. Not long later, the door opened again.

  “OK, you can come in now, but be prepared. Whatever your ‘Tormented’ did to Commander O’Leary is not pretty.” He opened the door up and stepped aside for us. The office was proud and ornate, with tomes of military history and strategy lining the shelves on either side of the room. We all stepped into the room and stared at the Commander.

  He was crudely bound to his high-back, leather swivel chair with thick rope. His head was bent down, staring lifelessly at the floor. On his torso, someone had meticulously written the letter ‘M’ with bullets.

  “That bastard,” I whispered under my breath.

  “Are our Lucent Guns in here?” Tor asked Keaton.

  “Yes, I had Jennings put them into his drawer.” Keaton walked on over to the right side of O’Leary’s desk.

  “Here they–” Keaton jumped backward as O’Leary suddenly lurched towards him. In a flash, he had drawn a handgun from his holster and shot his commander in the head several times, emptying the magazine. O’Leary paused as if to think for a moment. The gunshot wounds disappeared in seconds, as O’Leary launched himself in the swivel chair towards Keaton again.

  “He’s a Conflicted!” I shouted. O’Leary was inches away from Keaton wh
en three shots rang out from our right. Agatha’s Lucent Gun was smoking in her hand as it pointed at O’Leary. The Conflicted slumped still in the swivel chair and started disintegrating right in front of Keaton’s face. Hyperventilating, Keaton crumpled to the floor and crawled towards us as black ashes filled the room. Agatha holstered her weapon and looked down at Keaton.

  “So Captain, do you think we could get our guns back now?”

  “If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to call on me,” Captain Keaton said, stiffly sticking his hand out.

  “The best thing you can do is stay out of our way, Captain,” I said, shaking his hand awkwardly. “The Conflicted and Tormented are dangerous. You can leave them to us.” We stood at the front of Fort Andover.

  “Wait, how are you getting back to London?” He asked. I froze then relaxed. I’d already told him the truth. There wasn’t much point lying.

  “By foot,” I said, zipping up my vest. I looked towards Tor, Agatha, and Silas. They nodded at me. Just as we were about to get going, Keaton spoke again.

  “Once all this is over, do you think we could have a drink sometime?” He said, trying to hide the hesitance in his voice. Agatha looked back at him incredulously. Tor’s jaw clenched as he tried to hide his anger and even Silas couldn’t help but chuckle. I smiled to myself.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said flatly.

  “If I was too forward we could just –”

  “I’m a ghost, remember? I’m not even here.”

  Before he had a chance to respond, we Soul Stepped across the English pastures back towards London, leaving a thoroughly confused Captain to try make and make sense of what had just happened.

  Seconds later we arrived. If I thought that London was a mess when Tracy, Agatha and I were here together, it was nothing compared to now. Glass crunched beneath my boots as I slowly stepped through Oxford Street. Most of the windows in the stores that lined the street had been smashed in. An overturned car was on fire. I instinctively covered my face as the gas tank exploded, sending debris soaring into the air.