Demorn: Soul Fighter (The Asanti Series Book 3)

by David Finn

  A sensor pad fell off his forehead. Iverson blinked back to reality. He was lying in a narrow hospital bed. A slender Sympath girl was beside him. She was young with a kind face.

  ‘Is Natalia dead?’ Iverson asked, the words dry and sticky in his throat.

  The Sympath put her hand on his head, her touch cool and smooth. ‘We don’t think so.’

  Iverson caught her hand. ‘I’m burnt out.’

  She brushed a smooth hand over his rough face. ‘You’re young. We can take years off, baby. We can clean you up.’

  Iverson looked up at the hospital wall. Blue ships sailing into the distance. He wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real. ‘Do it and help me find Natalia.’

  The Sympath’s calm eyes dazzled with energy. Falling stars descended on him. We can take years off, baby. We can take years off.

  ‘Wow, you look better,’ Lydia said, appreciative. ‘Hawt damn!’

  Iverson rolled his eyes. He rolled a shirt over his upper body. His hair was shorn short and the beard was gone. It felt good to have ditched the jumpsuit for jeans and a shirt. His skin felt smooth to the touch and his mind was clear.

  ‘I’m sure it’s all just irresistible, Lydia.’

  Lydia gave his ass a playful slap. ‘Just barely resistible! I have to remember I’ve got Susan at home!’

  He laughed, putting sneakers on his feet and slinging the Batman cap on his head.

  ‘So what do we have and why am I here?’

  Lydia laid a photo on the counter. A huge guy dressed in a classic red, ceremonial dragon power suit. The user didn’t wear a helmet and his scarred, chunked up face was on display.

  Iverson whistled. ‘Quite the eye-catcher.’

  He picked up the photo, noting the suit design.

  She said, ‘We think it’s Prussian designed, old school. Original make. Look at this shit. These guys fought the Xaniath invasion waves, held the aliens back for years. This is modern era, but the suit probably came direct off the line at Old Fort as the lizards were bursting from the sky.’

  Iverson raised an eyebrow at Lydia, who was playing with her phone, avoiding his eyes. ‘And?’

  ‘They call him Dead Kingdom. Or Kingdom and the New Heaven.’

  ‘Sounds like a cheesy new wave group.’

  She shrugged. ‘Word is he didn’t die with the rest of his Corp. Word is he has a private bolthole, that’s how he survived the invasions, why he still packs a punch. But the insects did take a chunk of his face when they took the city. He’s a soldier of fortune now. Real loose cannon. Usually plays deeper south than here.’

  Lydia looked at him with flat cop eyes. ‘He’s been hanging with the Court and the Duke for a month or so now. But Josephine has his number and they’ve been meeting.’

  Josephine. Half a memory. He tried to chase it and failed.

  He caught a glimpse of himself in the read out mirror of the display on Old Fort. Graphics of the lizards A couple of pounds lighter, a lot healthier but his face was still too pale. You couldn’t lose all the ghosts in those eyes.

  An alert message swept across his implant, feeding direct into Iverson’s brain.

  WARNING—YOU’VE BEEN ALTERED IN THE LAST 12 HOURS—YOU’VE BEEN ALTERED IN THE LAST 12 HOURS

  He shut the warning down. It didn’t worry Iverson. He’d needed it. He knew Lydia had done something. None of it mattered. None of it came even close to the importance of finding Natalia. Lydia stopped him at the door. Her hand was warm on his shoulder.

  He wished she wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t try to run this play on him. He didn’t need it or want it.

  She said, ‘We recovered these while you were sleeping. Photos and videos. I fed it into the data stream.’

  ‘Play it.’

  The door became a digital readout. The burning desert sands, somewhere in the Glass. The huge armoured suit of Kingdom, his helmet off in the blazing sun. Blurred images. A thin, dark haired women Iverson knew from just her side profile, stumbling inside a crystal wave shield with several other blurry figures, guided into a huge jump ship.

  He looked for markings, it was black and generic. His mind was racing. Private military, counter-insurgents, it all added up to money. The jump ship closed up and accelerated into the sky, vanishing as the giant red armoured figure trudged to a safe distance.

  Iverson smashed through the images with an open fist, losing control. Lydia held him tight as the images scattered.

  ‘Where did the ship go?’

  ‘We don’t know but Kingdom will.’

  Iverson fist was clenched. Forget about inner peace. ‘He’s fucking mine.’

  Lydia said, ‘William, the jump ship is a slaver craft. We have to be careful, he will be connected—’

  Iverson was leaving the hotel room even as she spoke. Lydia shuffled after him on her robotic leg, her voice raised as he ran down. ‘Don’t kill him! I need him!’

  Iverson was running, ignoring Lydia’s words. He couldn’t care less what she wanted or needed. She had said enough and played him long enough in the short time since he’d touched down. All he could think of was Natalia’s long dark hair hanging over her enchanting face, caught in that dreadful space between grief and false hope in his heart, lost there for too long, trapped in the limbo where the missing go.

  He was running down the street when he heard his phone buzzing. It was Lydia. Iverson paused, sweating like crazy in the heat rolling through midday Bay City without mercy. His heart was beating like crazy.

  ‘What, Lydia?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to the site.’

  ‘That was two months ago and a hundred clicks into the Glass. What do you really think that will achieve?’

  He flagged down a hansom cab, the eerie undead horse coming to a stop. ‘Maybe nothing, but Natalia is my wife, Lydia. I have to find her.’

  Lydia’s sigh was epic. ‘There’s nobody there. It’s an empty space, I’ve already swept it. Meantime, the Lady Josephine has a business associate. A friend of yours, I believe. He frequents the College.’

  Iverson paused. ‘How do you know all this, Lydia?’

  ‘I’m a lot more about protecting interests than enforcing interests these days, William. That’s the way of life in the Bay. We’re a gambler’s town. He goes by Wolf, you should go—’

  ‘Oh, I’ll go to him,’ Iverson muttered, shutting down the connection. Wolf was a long-term Order asset, given a lot of room to move in this arena. He hadn’t spoken a word about Kingdom and Natalia in the Glass. If he was concealing knowledge, that might be their relationship, burnt in the wind.

  Iverson climbed into the cab, flashing an insincere smile at the undead driver, nervous and keyed up as they kicked off. His sneakers kicked at the seats as he gave directions for the Palace. An unwelcome and unfamiliar anger rolled through Iverson in waves and he tried to think of something else in order to stay calm. His mind rested on a baseball movie he had caught recently about pitching the perfect game. He replayed it over and over in his head, every curveball, every slider, teasing the batter, leading and misleading.

  ‘Nice weather, hey, chum,’ cackled the skeletal driver.

  Iverson grimaced. One of the supposedly endearing features of Bay City was the Bone drivers, animated skeletons that operated the fleets of cabs running through town, elegant hansom cabs pulled by death horses. It was a small necromantic spell that the tourists loved, but the horrors he had seen on the Northern Front made such charms seem super hollow. Such deals hung on threads which always came undone. He closed the window between them. His annoyance took his mind off more immediate problems. The wind was soft and turned slightly cool, lulling Iverson into half-sleep as the cab drove toward the College.

  The skeleton driver didn’t try again. His kind knew when the humans hated them. He hustled the undead horse up the steep climb on narrow concrete roads, breaking through the humid, sweaty smog of the lower city, clinging higher into the bright and merciless sun, into the
beautiful views of the old crumbling estates, plantation houses and the mansions of the once-mighty, the rising and the fallen. The skeletal driver hummed an old dirge for the dead, singing for the spirits passed beneath, and those trapped, still roaming this city of hustlers.

  End Interlude

  Part 3

  1

  * * *

  ONE YEAR AGO, CERON CITY

  Santos would not take off the Golden Helm and it was pissing off Demorn. He’d never been one to stand on ceremony and she’d never been one to have much patience for it. But in the meantime, she was sitting cross-legged in his empty throne room while the Baron sank deep into his throne, occupied with his phone and increasingly morose mood. He had sent everyone else away. The room was lonely. Worn-out couches. Tacky promo posters on the walls from when he was riding high on popularity and hope. They seemed so cheap now when they were fighting for existence.

  ‘Seriously, are we really doing this, Santos? Do I have to beg to get an answer?’

  He waved a tired hand. ‘Not at all, Demorn. I just need to be alone.’

  ‘No, you want to be alone. It’s selfish and it’s hurting the War. So be it on your head, mighty Baron. I’m splitting.’

  Demorn got up with a low, very fake, reverential bow. She shifted the scabbard on her back, and stalked toward the door.

  ‘DEMORN! STOP!’

  The voice shattered past her. Demorn shot him a sneer. ‘The voice doesn’t compel me, Baron. I’m going back to the Front unless you give me a good reason not to.’

  ‘What about saving me?’

  Santos took off the Helm. His face was a ruin and his eyes were blinded. He slumped forward on the throne. Demorn rushed forward to catch him. The stench up close was putrid, making her dry retch, but she held on.

  Santos looked at her with pus-filled sightless eyes. ‘A Death Dealer came to me, in the ruins of Ulihurin. He infected me.’

  A chill fell down Demorn’s back. ‘With what?’

  Santos laughed as he put his Helm back on. The stench subsided. He straightened slightly.

  ‘Why would you play a Death Dealer?’

  Santos coughed. ‘It was just my life for all those we lost there. Think upon that, Demorn. All those we lost.’

  Demorn snarled, ‘That’s dread sorcery. I would not trust the Dealer even if you won!’

  He rested his armoured hand on hers. ‘Easy to say, Princess of the Swords. But we do not have that luxury. I lost the hand, as we lost Ulihurin, and the War surrounds Ceron. Now we fight over ashes with the wolf at our door.’

  Demorn fell back, awestruck at how stupid he had been. How vain, how proud, how certain. But it was how he had always led the city and led her. By example and by courage.

  She sighed. ‘Tell me what I have to do.’

  Santos placed the helm over his ruined face. She could see the magic fizzing off the gold, providing some balm for his injuries.

  ‘The War hangs in the balance. Our alliances are as brittle as paper and will not survive my passing. The seers foresee this.’

  ‘Screw the seers, they get the weather wrong.’ Demorn cursed. But deep down she knew he was right. Baron Santos was an expert at managing weak forces into a stronger force. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Santos was deadpan. ‘Steal my life-card back.’

  Demorn laughed. ‘Oh, you’re serious!’

  Even in his current state, she could feel him smiling behind the Helm. ‘Quite serious. Have you heard of the Soul Tournament? It’s big down South.’

  She stopped laughing. Her left fist balled up involuntarily. Santos barely ever asked her about her past. He’d taken her in when she was fighting in the street for coins, strung out on a high life that had cost her too much. The miniature soul skulls dangled underneath her shirt, forty-seven at last count.

  ‘I fought in the Tournaments for years, Santos. You know this.’

  ‘I’m sick, I forget. Then you know the stakes. The whole operation is mostly funded by Bankers, some of who reside in this city. Dimensional death dealers who pay their taxes and live quiet, below the radar.’

  Demorn whistled. ‘I’m sure some of them live quiet and cheat on those taxes.’

  ‘I have a plan. To save this city, to save you and me.’

  I’ll survive, Demorn thought with a sharp, savage edge. If this all ends, I’ll survive. But she did like Santos. She was different from the person she had been when he found her. She had stayed, she hadn’t roamed. There was nothing sexual between them. He vaguely indicated on occasion he preferred Asian women but she couldn’t remember seeing him with one. He seemed happiest running the war or lost in his simulations. Sometimes he reminded her of Smile, her brother back in Babelzon.

  Demorn sank to the floor, cross-legged. ‘I’m listening, oh Mighty One. Dish.’

  His chuckle was sincere. As he spoke, golden globes of light filled up the room behind the throne, rising into the air. Demorn watched, curious, as the globes filled out, each a miniature world. She could see the differing continents and vast oceans covering many of the globes. As her eyes focused she was drawn deeper, and saw cities, death pyramids rising to the sky, a population crying out—for some being, some presence beyond the corporeal, an image stamped and engraved into the blood temples and the floors of the ocean itself, on rock carvings, on the soul of the world.

  She slumped to the ground with a cry. The connection broke off. ‘What is it? Where is it?’

  Santos was unmoving on the throne. She couldn’t even see his eyes through the Helm. For a moment she wondered if he was dead.

  ‘What the hell is it, Santos?’

  His voice was heavy. ‘It’s a God World. The whole planet belongs to the creature they are chanting for. He owns it all. All their souls.’

  The chanting was like shouting inside her head. But the name was blurred. ‘Who?’

  ‘Sar-Gorthi, the Ruined One. His line was one of the Ancient Houses.’

  The chanting reverberated in her head. Old Asanti Source legends came back to her, words recollected from a life before. But even on Asanti it had been just shadow memories. She was quiet and she felt afraid.

  Demorn said, ‘Sar-Gorthi. I thought the Ancient Houses were long destroyed in the God Wars and the Old Races were extinct. That’s what my mother taught me on Asanti.’

  His laughter was light. ‘Perhaps she wanted you to sleep without nightmares. In a universe or two, sure, they were banished. But the primary line of the true Ancients resides in the place between dimensions. In vast other worlds, connected by a line of junction points. They ate whole cultures, Demorn. The teeth of Sar-Gorthi have savaged all the mighty pantheons you know. The Norse Gods of the Varangians fought his serpents at the gates. Zeus fed Sar-Gorthi bastard children to sate his cruel hunger, to preserve his Kingdom from the storm.’

  His voice dropped a register. ‘Even Adolin Mars knows his teeth. Even she felt his mighty fury. Ask her, Princess, ask your goddess.’

  Demorn’s ruby burnt on instinct under her shirt. She felt the ground rumble. Xalos twisted to be free, singing for a vengeance out of reach. Her eyes burnt like stars as she gazed at him. Emotions surged without control, and she hissed her words.

  ‘Don’t tempt me, Santos! Don’t anger me! The Blade cries out for blood at the mention of his name. I fear my sword will kill you where you stand if you continue!’

  Her left fist was metal and she was crushing the window frame. ‘And I won’t stop it,’ she breathed. I won’t stop it. He will die by my hand if the insults continue!

  Santos grasped one of the shining globes in his armoured hand. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t break the world, Demorn. The Fracture Event cracked the dimensions wide open and loosed the prisons these horrors were bound in. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Sar-Gorthi and all his ilk, they strain against the boundaries of time and space, they hunger . . .’

  A chill went down her back. Nobody ever spoke about the Fracture Event. Most of the population
were docile sheep who didn’t even know anything had happened. Those who knew or guessed about the tumult in the heavens were terrified. But Santos had always done and said as he pleased. Once, that had made her happy.

  Her eyes kept drifting to the shattered cityscape outside the Palace. The bombings had taken their toll. Large segments lay in ruins. Laz cannons jutted from the skyline. The Victory Coliseum, erected hastily when Santos had taken Ulihurin and some of the frontier Prussian cities in the early days of the War, now lay in ruins that dominated the immediate skyline. The shield covering the city was too thin to stop the first bombs.

  There was a grimy military feel in the air. A freaked out, zoned out calm. They hadn’t lost but they hadn’t won. Everyone had been fighting too long. Militaristic banners were slung up all across the city with the Baron’s crest, some weird tropical bird she didn’t know the name of. If this was to be his legacy was there anything to still be happy about? Demorn controlled her breathing and her hand went back to flesh. She brushed her ruby heart with suspicious fingers.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  Santos released the globe. It went back to spinning with the others in an oval symmetry around the throne. He took off his golden helm. His face wasn’t ruined anymore. He was young and his eyes sang.

  ‘Apart from your fighting skills and your blessed sword, do you know why you’re so valuable to me, Demorn?’

  ‘My lovely long hair?’ she said with a laugh, running her hand through it.

  Santos held up a red leather volume. The clasp was undone. He rapped on the red cover.

  ‘This is your bible. “The Demorn Prophecies,” the librarian calls it. I’ve been reading it. Adding to the text.’

  Demorn rolled her eyes. ‘Great. Creepy much?’

  ‘You don’t read the Prophecies do you?

  Demorn smile was a sneer. ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse. A couple of my girlfriends read the comics they make. The art is cool. They don’t make me look like a stripper. But they get everything else wrong. It’s embarrassing.’