by Mel Odom
For a time, the Cabalist research had focused on improving personal health and well-being, using energy like the Reiki healing processes. Even then, though, some Cabalists had worked to master the more destructive arcane powers.
“Just hope it’s enough.” Desmond gripped his weapon and glanced fearfully at the approaching demons.
The imps spread out across the marshland. Although they came from a hothouse world, which was what the Burn was converting London into, they didn’t show any real discomfort with the cold wind and snow flurries.
Without making a sound, the imps suddenly charged. They brought their weapons to bear and lit up the darkness with bright blazes and beams.
The ragtag group held their ground and returned fire. Naomi knew that bravery didn’t make the villagers stand and fight. It was fear. They’d obviously learned over the years that if they broke ranks before the demons, they would only be hunted down separately and killed.
The explosive rounds used by the villagers did surprising damage. The demons obviously hadn’t expected the attack. They dropped when they were hit by what would have normally been only a flesh wound. The poison in the rounds acted swiftly. Even in the blunted moonlight, Naomi saw the demons’ skins become mottled, then turn a bilious yellow-green as festering sores erupted in seconds.
Urged by their commander, a wide-bodied imp carrying two pistols, the wounded demons tried to get up. Most of them failed and fell back onto the snow. The ones that did manage to get to their feet didn’t stay there long before they succumbed to the poison’s effects again. Those stricken quivered and foamed at the mouth for a short time, then went still.
Summoning her power, Naomi focused it and stepped forward. She spread her hands and unleashed a blast of energy. Immediately chain lightning erupted from her horns and blazed across the distance separating them from the demons.
The lightning tore through the demons, arcing from the first five it hit to seven behind them and three behind those. Flesh charred and fell from splintered bone. Dead demons collapsed in pieces.
“Set the zombies on them!” a man screamed. “Have the zombies attack!”
The zombies knelt in front of the trees and formed an undead barrier between the humans and the approaching demons. Naomi knew that Warren had learned a lot of military strategy from the games he’d played before the invasion. He’d learned more since.
Naomi felt sudden heat push across her as Warren stepped forward. He didn’t set the zombies on the attack or respond to the demands of the men around him.
Holding his hands, one flesh and blood and the other gleaming metal, away from his body, Warren formed a triangle of his thumbs and his forefingers. Then he blew his breath over his hands.
Flames shot out of the triangle formed by Warren’s hands. The swirling fireball plopped down in the middle of the imps and exploded.
THIRTEEN
D renched in fiery masses, the advancing demon line crumbled just as the villagers poured another volley into them.
“Reload!” Bixby yelled. “Ready! Take aim!”
In the end, though, Naomi felt certain only a matter of time remained before the demons routed them. Too many demons stood before them. They swarmed again, driven by their dark master. Their weapons blazed once more. Caught by one of the blasts, Desmond stumbled back with half his head gone. He dropped to his knees and boiling blood hissed against the white snow.
Naomi summoned her power again and unleashed another lightning blast. This one drained her, and she knew she wouldn’t have the reserves to do anything like that again for a short time. By then the demons would be upon them. She knelt and claimed Desmond’s weapon and spare cartridges.
As the demons closed on them, the zombies lurched awkwardly to their feet. The undead battled the demons without any skill, using strength and near invulnerability because they stopped fighting only when they suffered damage to their heads or spines. The wave of demons washed up against the zombies like an incoming tide striking reefs.
For a moment, the zombies held the line. Bixby and the other villagers battled fiercely, only giving ground when their lives were certainly forfeit if they didn’t. Explosions of gunfire—single shot as well as auto-fire—punctuated the night.
Demons blew apart as the poison-tipped bullets weakened their flesh. But they came through the line of zombies bearing grotesque trophies.
Holding a pistol in one hand, an imp swung a zombie’s head at Naomi with the other. With the shotgun set firmly at her shoulder, Naomi pulled the trigger. The recoil drove her back a half step and bruised her shoulder, but the shotgun slug burst against the swinging zombie skull and splattered over the demon. Instantly, the imp’s skin caught fire. But the demon kept coming.
Desperately, Naomi swung the empty shotgun like a club and battered the imp aside. One of Bixby’s men fired a round through the imp’s head and killed it.
The man grinned at Naomi for just a moment, obviously pleased with himself, and started to say, “You gotta look out once you’ve fired—”
Then his words died stillborn in his throat as one of the small, flying demons landed on his shoulder and chomped on his neck. Panicked, the man screamed shrilly and yanked the demon from his throat. A chunk of flesh came away as well. Blood fountained from the neck wound as the man tried to throw the creature away. It bit one of his fingers and held on.
Another man shot the demon with a shotgun, but he ended up blowing the man’s hand off as well. The blood, demon guts, and human flesh blew over Naomi. Some of the poison splattered on her as well. Her skin tingled and burned, but she didn’t have time to worry that the poison might kill her because another imp swung a knife at her eyes.
Naomi blocked with the shotgun and stepped back. Warren joined her, suddenly appearing at her side. He gestured at the imp, and it froze as though its joints suddenly locked. Wrenching violently, baying out in fear and pain, the demon exploded.
Naomi didn’t bother trying to thank Warren. He wouldn’t have heard her. And it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d saved her because it suited him. The effort hadn’t come through any kindness.
She fumbled with the shotgun and managed to get it open. Holding one of the fat cartridges tightly, she shoved it into the barrel and closed the breech. When she pulled the shotgun up to her bruised shoulder, she fired immediately. A new wave of pain tore through her arm, but she made herself break open the shotgun again.
“There are too many!” Warren called to Lilith. If anyone else on the battlefield heard him, they showed no signs of it.
The imps ranged deeply within the forest now, and they laid waste to the humans. They lost numbers as well, but they tried to kill everything before them.
Warren felt their bloodlust. It screamed and twisted through him as it found a resonance within him. He didn’t know if his own feelings came naturally, or if Lilith somehow influenced him. Over the past few days, she’d gotten stronger.
But so had he.
“You can’t run,” Lilith said as she walked among the imps and remained untouched.
Warren believed some of the demons felt Lilith among them. They shied away from her at times. When she’d walked the earth all those millennia ago, when the human race struggled through infancy, demons like the imps had bowed down to her and recognized her as their cruel mistress. All the stories Warren had read of her agreed on that.
Some trace of her power must have clung to her astral self. Warren only wished that she could fight their enemies as well.
“If you try to run,” Lilith went on, “the imps will track you down and kill you.”
Aware of all the death and maiming around him, Warren believed her. He gathered his power and struck again and again. Handling the force blasts and fireballs was second nature to him. So were the shields that he raised and lowered in an eye blink as he needed them.
One of the small winged demons darted at him. He caught sight of it from the corner of his eye, gestured at it, and saw it explode into bloody b
its of flesh and scale. He didn’t try to separate the humans from the demons. If they were in a struggle together and anywhere near him, he blasted them all.
He told himself that he needed to survive no matter what, and that it wasn’t his fault he was so much more powerful than Bixby and his friends were. He also told himself he wouldn’t feel guilty, but he struggled to keep those feelings at bay.
Despite his best efforts at shielding himself, Warren became covered in gore—human as well as demon. Thankfully little of the blood was his.
As he fought and weaved among the combatants, he threaded the minds of some of the demons. They became his puppets and turned on their fellows when they failed to resist his control. Once they were in his thrall, the demons became like the zombies and fought independently of him.
Slowly, the tide of the battle turned. Sickness tightened in Warren’s stomach as he lurched over the dead at his feet. Nearly all of the humans had been killed in the assault. Some of them had broken and run, causing some of the demons to chase after them.
If it weren’t for the demons in my control, Warren realized, we’d have already been overrun.
Maintaining that control cost him, though. His head pounded from the effort, and his lungs worked like a bellows to keep flooding oxygen to his lungs. Although he focused as much as he could, double vision twisted everything before him.
An imp fired a weapon at Warren, but Warren lifted a shield into place. The ricochet speared through one of the few remaining human men. The victim dropped onto the blood-covered ground in halves. The man’s death was so sudden he didn’t have time to scream.
Warren changed the shield into a projectile in the space of a heartbeat and fired it at the demon. The energy bolt decapitated the demon. Before the creature’s body fell, Warren summoned another shield. He used both hands separately and together, channeling all his reserves.
He fought as much against impending unconsciousness as he did against the demons. He didn’t know which one of those was going to win out.
“Who are you, human?” a demon demanded as it battered at Warren’s energy shield.
Warren didn’t have the energy to answer. He felt the demon’s blows against his shield as though they struck his body. He concentrated to keep his right leg under him because it felt weak and almost buckled several times.
“Where did you get that hand?” The demon slung its rifle and reached over its broad shoulders for a double-bitted axe. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll have it from you soon enough.”
Warren’s stomach lurched at the thought of losing the hand. It had already happened twice, and there was no way he could get inured to that. The panic overwhelmed him, and he lost control of his shield for a moment. The demon’s axe slammed against the Kevlar vest Warren wore under his long coat. Although the blade didn’t cut through, the force cracked one or more of his ribs. Breathing became painful as he jerked back from the imp’s follow-up blow.
“Where are you going?” the demon taunted. “We’ve only now started to play.”
Focus! Bloody hell! Focus, or you’re a dead man! Warren tried to bring the multiple images of the imp swimming before him into one identifiable being. The task eluded him. Having no choice, he thrust his hand out and somehow managed to lock on to the axe blade with his metal hand at the last minute.
Metal grated as the keen edge slid along Warren’s palm. He tightened his grip and halted the axe. The demon yanked on the weapon and almost got it free.
“You’re stronger than you look.” The demon brought up a taloned foot and aimed the claws at Warren’s throat. “Not that it’s going to do you any good.”
Warren unleashed the power within him and channeled it through the axe into the demon. The imp locked up, talons grazing the skin of Warren’s throat.
Fear and pain filled the demon’s eyes as Warren kept feeding the raw power. The demon’s flesh turned to liquid bags that ruptured and burst. The vile smelling mess oozed from the demon’s bones in a handful of seconds, leaving only the creature’s skeleton behind. Then the bones shattered into dust.
Gasping, unable to find enough air or the strength to stay on his feet, Warren sank to his knees. His metal hand hissed and melted through the snow. He worked to keep it from touching his leg in order not to burn himself.
A handful of zombies, most of them missing limbs and one of them dragging only its upper body because its legs were missing, formed a protective circle around him. Three imps joined the circle and killed other demons that tried to get through their defenses.
“You’ve got to get up,” Lilith told him. Effortlessly, she stepped through the demons and zombies. She tugged on his metal hand and he was surprised that he actually felt it.
Warren willed himself to get up, but he didn’t have the strength. The cacophony of death screams sounded all around him. His eyes closed and he couldn’t open them again.
Terrified that Warren had at last been brought down, Naomi fought her way to him, relying heavily on one of the assault rifles she’d picked up from an unanimated corpse. Before the invasion, she hadn’t known much about weapons. She’d learned, though. Everyone had.
As she got close to Warren, the zombies and controlled demons turned to her. She pulled up only inches away as they bit and slashed at her.
“No. Stop. I’m here to help.” Naomi stared at Warren lying on the ground. Blood smeared his upper lip and he jerked in convulsions. “He needs help. Get out of my way.”
The zombies and demons maintained their holding positions. Naomi turned the assault rifle on them and would have shot them if she’d been certain she wouldn’t have accidentally hit Warren.
Frustrated, she stepped back. Only then did she realize that the sounds of the battle had lessened. Stunned, she gazed around at all the dead covering the ground and realized that they’d won the battle.
Not won it, she told herself as she caught sight of the few humans left alive. Most of them were wounded. We survived it.
Now all that remained to be seen was if this group of demons was the only one.
FOURTEEN
D espite the fatigue that filled his body and the yawning black hole created by dreamless sleep, Simon roused. He wanted to sleep more. His body craved it. Over the past four years, he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep unless he’d come in wounded and had been made to sleep by the Templar healers.
As a child, he hadn’t slept much most nights. Usually he’d stayed in bed no more than five or six hours. That hadn’t always been a good thing. His father had enjoyed his own sleep, and raising Simon by himself hadn’t helped that.
The painful absence of his father filled Simon then as he lay still. The feeling haunted him often. When he was younger, he’d been restless to be away from his father, to get out and see the world for himself.
Thomas Cross had had too many rules. The Templar had had too many rules. Some days Simon had felt like he was growing up inside a straitjacket. That sensation had been unbearable. As a result, he’d often fought with his father. Even when Simon was railing against Templar rules, he’d fought against his father.
Thomas Cross had always been there.
Now he wasn’t.
And Simon had never needed his father more than he needed him now.
Through training and experience, Simon pushed the panic and fear away. There was no going back. He couldn’t undo his father’s death at the hands of the demons any more than he could undo the arrival of the Hellgate. He didn’t accept that, though. He merely denied any other alternatives.
Templar training didn’t include wishful thinking or berating the world for being unfair. That had been strictly the purview of the rebellious teenager and younger man he’d been. Neither of those two traits helped him now.
Wearily, knowing he wouldn’t get back to sleep, Simon threw the covers off and sat up on the edge of the bed. His body ached from everything he’d suffered the previous night. Discolorations showed red and angry beneath his skin. In a few days,
he knew from experience, he’d have riotously colored bruises.
He pushed himself up from the rack, grateful that it was his turn for the lower bed. The concrete floor felt cold underfoot. Although it was a blessing, the redoubt hadn’t been set up with long-term living in mind. It had been designed as a waystop during emergencies.
Only a soft incandescence lit the room. Bright lights weren’t allowed in the sleeping rooms unless there was an alert going on. Most of the other beds held sleeping Templar of both sexes. That told Simon that it was still “night.”
Naked, because Templar didn’t worry about nudity since the armor had to be worn that way, Simon took two steps away from the bed and began a series of tai chi exercises to oxygenate his blood and loosen up cramped and bruised muscles. After a few moments, the kinks unwound and he felt physically more prepared.
He stepped into the armored legs and felt the suit’s AI automatically cinch him up. He pulled on the upper armor, and it sealed seamlessly. The helmet attached to his hip through covalent bonding, held at a subatomic level. Until the AI told the helmet it was a separate piece of equipment, it would remain immovable.
His weapons were already clean. He’d taken care of that before he’d gone to bed. His father had trained him to do that, and he kept up the practice not only for the good of the weapons, but to have a touchstone to his father as well. At the end of every day, before he went to bed, cleaning the weapons reminded him that he was grateful to be alive, and grateful to his father for training him to keep himself that way.
Ready for the day, Simon headed out of the sleeping quarters to find breakfast.
Seated at a breakfast table that had required new seating because it hadn’t been designed with armored Templar in mind, Simon stared at his helmet on the table before him. The wireless connection between the helmet and the suit allowed them to interface. The faceshield also served as a computer monitor.