Demorn: Soul Fighter (The Asanti Series Book 3)

by David Finn

  ‘Sorry about that, Dee. I told her not to.’

  Her left hand was steel. ‘Oh, fuck off, Iverson. If you come in for a hug, I will flatten you.’

  Iverson gave her an uncertain smile. ‘She was worried you would kill her when she’s so close to the goal.’

  Demorn brushed herself off. The burns on her skin were light and would heal quickly.

  ‘Smart girl. What goal? The goal of handing another dimension over to the demons? I’d say she’s pretty fucking close, yeah.’

  Iverson said, ‘Like I told you, things have changed. I spent the morning with Josie. She called me this morning while you were still asleep. Parallel 37 was gone as of a few days ago. Josie had zero to do with it. But she has a plan that could be a solution.’

  Demorn smirked. ‘So it’s Josie now? Must have been quite the lovely chat over a glass of wine for you two, while I was being strung up.’

  Iverson was dry. ‘I had a coffee, Demorn. We talked business. Can you get your head in the game or do you need a minute?’

  Demorn laughed. ‘Ok, she hung me up on a wall, forgive me for being a bitch. So why is she here? To get a selfie with a Dark God for this damn art exhibition? Because that would look just lovely next to Ceron City being nuked.’

  Iverson gave a wry look at the surroundings. Empty of life apart from the two of them, the selection of pieces was indeed eerie. Huge panelled wooden walls filled with apocalyptic visions that seemed to vibrate and grow in power.

  He said, ‘I agree, it’s weird, but Josephine’s head is in a weird zone. This whole weird building is another piece of the Fort, but it’s more than a Ruby Room. It was a gallery that belonged to Fate. This was his personal collection. Even as he stirs, the pictures grow more insane.’

  Ice down her spine again. The knowledge which her magic eyes knew and her brain was just starting to confirm. Somehow she knew the Iverson was right. This crazy exiled bitch had somehow stumbled onto a lair of the gods. She murmured an Asanti oath and prayed to Adolin Mars for the first time in years, aware of how vast the gulf was.

  ‘Do you see now? Josie has seen multiple worlds die and she has the Order and me chasing her across the multiverse, through the Parallels. Nobody believes her, not even Baron Santos, not even you.’

  Demorn said, ‘I’ve never been a politician.’

  ‘And she’s an exile, Demorn, not a terrorist. All her worlds are dead. Even the saintly Baron Santos kicked her out—after taking his moments of pleasure, no doubt.’

  Demorn held up a finger. ‘One, he’s not a saint. Two, I’m not a politician, Iverson. So stop lobbying me like I’m in the fucking Senate. Let’s say I believe you and let’s pretend I trust her. What the hell is the plan?’

  ‘To track Ultimate Fate back to his lair.’

  Demorn’s eyes flashed bright green. The wild hope. This thing Demorn had longed to do, always out of reach, a goal that receded into the distance.

  ‘How?’

  ‘‘She’s seen Ultimate Fate in the flesh. She has the code to his Master Room.’

  Slowly Demorn broke into a smile that lit up her whole face.

  ‘How sure are you about that?’

  ‘Damn sure. I’ve had a mole in her organisation for months. Playing real deep cover.’

  Demorn paused for a moment, savouring this information. Everything she knew about Asanti, everything she remembered, ended when the Fracture Event aftershock destroyed the planet. No Spire recreation had ever told Smile or herself where Fate was located or the entry codes to get in.

  Demorn said, ‘So she knows where the Reset Pyramid is, and she knows where Fate rests? This is pretty relevant information I’m getting right now, Iverson.’

  Iverson shrugged, and shook his head. ‘There was always an outside chance Josie might be useful. A chance she might not be the traitor.’

  The Wolf came down the stairwell, shaky, his beard grey and white. He had aged at least twenty years since Demorn had last seen him. His eyes looked almost gone, but he was holding onto some fragile last piece of himself. Nothing made sense. She kept picturing her arrival in Bay City, his carriage greeting her after the long, weary ride across the Glass Desert. A trip that Josephine had then altered for her own mysterious and annoying reasons.

  ‘Jesus, Iverson. He looks like he can barely make it down the stairs. This is your secret weapon?’

  ‘Don’t let appearances deceive you. He’s been through the reality machine too many times. We had an incident back on the Reality Prison, Gologatha.’

  ‘What kind of incident?’

  Iverson said, ‘He got stuck in a version of the Repeater.’

  Wolf spoke, his mouth trembling, hesitant at first then building courage. ‘I went with Josephine . . . beyond the confines of this world . . . we quested for the Source Core, a God world . . .’

  Wolf stumbled and almost fell. Demorn rushed to catch and steady him. The Wolf felt like a skeleton, bones sticking through his skin.

  ‘Did you find it, Wolf?’

  His vitality and energy were sapped, his breathing laboured and shallow through damaged lungs.

  He was whispering something, over and over. She bent her head to listen. He wasn’t slurring his words, just speaking super quietly. ‘How’s Winter? Is she alright?’

  Winter? Demorn laughed in surprise. ‘Oh, come on! He’s asking for Winter! My masseuse friend! How the hell does he know her?’

  Iverson had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, she was a contact point. It felt natural. They both liked playing video games and smoking weed. It’s a friendship.’

  Demorn couldn’t help but be amused. She’d never been into ownership, people shouldn’t own people. Whenever she’d tried that type of relationship it hadn’t worked, falling apart by virtue of a heaviness of intent that the participants couldn’t match, only mimic. Nonetheless, she liked Winter and didn’t mind a slight pang of jealously pinging somewhere in her heart as she thought of the girl she left behind in the Bay.

  ‘It felt natural, but I recognise the strings of an Investigator.’

  Iverson was watching her with careful eyes. He’s not sure how I will react, Demorn realised. That’s my ace in the hole.

  Demorn helped Wolf to a chair. ‘I didn’t even know she smoked weed.’

  Iverson replied, ‘Does she know what you do for a living?’

  Demorn cracked her neck, considering. ‘She knows I was a Soul Fighter in the Tournaments. She knows I’m a bad girl but she doesn’t know about all this.’ She gestured at Wolf, asleep in the chair. ‘What does she think he does?’

  ‘As of about a week ago, and prior to Wolf ageing thirty years? Winter thinks he’s a minor league sales guy taking some classes at the same business college she goes to. Ex-military, which explains the scars. He’s got a bad back and shoulder that responds well to treatment.’

  Demorn smiled, remembering Winter’s hands on her own body. ‘I bet he does.’

  Demorn realised she didn’t know about the business classes either. I know so little about other people’s lives, even those I claim to like or even love. They are locked vessels to me, she thought. Winter and she had just come off a couple of the most relaxing weeks she’d had in years, filled with passion and a level of strange security that didn’t feel like it was going to end in broken hearts.

  She popped a piece of gum.

  ‘Oh well, you take off the years he’s kinda hot. Anyway, I don’t know why we’re standing here like it’s junior debate club. Let’s go.’

  Iverson demurred. ‘One thing. I can’t come with you, but he can.’

  Ha, one thing. The kicker. You could never trust an Investigator. Her grin was savage. ‘Why not, Iverson? Problem with your contract?’

  Iverson looked regretful and distant. His eyes were glassy and he looked exhausted, close to passing out, face ghost-white as he forced out words. ‘It’s the Order, Demorn. I don’t have a choice. They only let us see a part, never the whole. Where you’re g
oing you might see everything and I already know too much.’

  His palms were bleeding, fingernails pressed tightly into the skin. Demorn gave Wolf another look. It felt like only yesterday he’d met her outside of Bay City when she came across the Glass Desert, thirsty and burnt out. But this Wolf was thirty years older. A rough, bad thirty.

  She shrugged. She didn’t need Iverson’s gun.

  ‘Fair enough. Is Wolf up to it? He looks long gone.’

  ‘Wolf’s ok. He’s just been through Josephine’s reality machine a few too many times.’

  ‘Sounds ominous. What’s that?’

  Wolf spoke. Haltingly at first, finding a flow as he kept talking. He looked vacant and lost. ‘It’s what she uses to travel between worlds and dimensions. It messes with your head. It blurs you. It’s why the prison almost destroyed me. The security codes saw through me. I’ve spent years wandering with her. I’ve seen Ceron City and the Bay burn so many times in so many different ways . . . You start to forget where you are and where you came from.’

  Demorn clicked her fingers in front of his face, snapping them loudly. ‘That’s great, but time to get in the game, Wolf, or stay behind with your boss and evac off this rock. I don’t have any intention of being burnt alive by a comet with all the other chumps.’

  Wolf started and gave her a weak smile. ‘I want to help.’

  She could see the man who’d picked her up was still there hidden beneath the lines criss-crossing his face. But his hands were shaking and Demorn needed a steady gun hand if they were going to stick this landing. The last few steps to get to the Pyramid would be tough; she knew it in her heart. She needed some muscle.

  Demorn pressed her hand around the pain locket. The power and pain shuddered into her body, making her gasp. Her eyes glowed with wildfire. Demorn wrenched her hand onto Wolf’s neck, her other hand still vibrating around the locket. She was like a conduit, but all that flowed through her was pain. The hand around his neck phased from flesh to steel and back again. As the power flowed from the locket of the death god through Demorn and into Wolf, he writhed on the chair, but her grip wasn’t letting him go anywhere. Inch by inch, year by year, his age rolled back, lines disappearing with the weird, savage agony that was flooding through Wolf’s body.

  Finally, she withdrew her hand, light-headed and nauseated. A single white scar glowed on Demorn’s cheek. She stumbled away and Iverson caught her. The locket felt depowered and her body was weakened. But at least Wolf wasn’t 75 anymore. He looked young and strong, big muscles underneath his collared shirt, a stylish vibe. She could see why Winter would enjoy his company as he flashed her a smile.

  Wolf said, ‘I feel great but man that hurt!’

  Demorn replied. ‘It’s a one-off, kid, don’t get used to it. You carrying a weapon? It’s likely to get hot when we cross over.’

  He patted his sidearm holster. ‘Colt M1911. Had this with me since I was with Ceron City Special Forces.’

  Boys and their guns. ‘Cool, as long as it can shoot straight and you don’t miss.’

  ‘I’m reasonably capable. What do you carry?’ Wolf eased off the seat. He looked far larger now that the ageing was reversed, an aura of control and easy command flowing through him. That tattered army jacket suddenly housed the real thing, unbowed by the years. She noticed Iverson’s assessment of him, the flicker of concern turning into a calm pride.

  She had a strapped leg holster. ‘I’ve got an Athena gun, hon. Blessed by a Goddess. I’m a regular fancy pants.’

  Wolf nodded, all business. This was another mission for him, as he had done countless times before. She felt awkward suddenly, knowing that Wolf and Iverson needed a moment. Unfinished business rippled like a live creature through the air between them.

  She looked around the empty art installation. Huge golden doors covered one wall. A spiral staircase led down to more bizarre art. She saw frozen warriors from long forgotten medieval wars. For them, the war was ceaseless, staying in formation long after death. How perfectly horrible, she thought.

  ‘I better go find Josie.’

  Iverson gave her a quick hug. She could feel a feverish heat on his skin, a clammy burning. ‘I can monitor you from the Moth, my ship. I’m sorry about not coming on this leg.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it. Just keep an eye on the sky and the other on my back. I don’t want seven demon gods on my ass while I fight seven more in front of me.’

  Iverson gave her a look tinged with admiration and amusement. ‘You want me to blow the rock, don’t you?’

  ‘You said it yourself. That world is dead out there. It’s desolation. A fake ghost business district city and a whole lot of nuked ruins. Watch from your ship. If the Triton sigils hatch, and they might, get off the planet and pull the trigger.’

  Iverson said, ‘It’s not just the planet that will go up, Demorn. There’s a whole reality that’s been infected.’

  ‘And I’m real sad about it too, babe. But guess what, we don’t have the luxury of crying into our soup. Where’s Lady Josephine?’

  Iverson pointed to the golden doors. ‘Through there.’

  ‘Of course she is. I’ll leave you two guys to hug it out and exchange promise rings and all that jazz.’

  Wolf chuckled as she walked away. Iverson doesn’t run me and never will, Demorn thought. She hoped that was now fairly obvious. He might have chased her to the very edge of reality, and she appreciated his calm under pressure, but she would never be his agent, only an ally. Nobody owned her, they just hired her sword. And she had never sold it to an Investigator and their dread Order in the sky.

  Brave thoughts, Dee, Demorn laughed to herself as she reached the huge golden door. Brave thoughts. From her necklace, she took out the golden key Sinatra had given her and inserted it into the massive lock, turning it with an ominous click.

  4

  * * *

  In her dream, which she felt was a holy vision, Josephine soared above a burnt world. The red sun above was swollen and infected. Below her, the planet was caught in the spasms of destruction. The idiots were nuking themselves into Armageddon.

  Her dress felt like a wisp, barely on her. Smoke tendrils clogged the air. The heat baked upward, soothing her reptilian skin. She drifted toward an ominous pyramid that lay on a huge chunk of floating rock. She could hear the backroom chanting of some forbidden song of the Imprisoned, the Plague God, his unspeakable name known to her, emblazoned across her mind, from frantic readings in the libraries when her mentors had not been looking, a quest that began as curiosity and become obsession.

  Small rivulets cut through stone ran down the sides of the great pyramid, glinting red and misty. At first, Josephine thought it was blood running through the narrow spaces, feeding into the overwhelming structure. As Josephine landed on the rock, the paved stones of his domain, she was acutely aware of her own fear. In all her dreams and visions she had never touched the surface of the holy rock.

  I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING UNUSUAL ABOUT YOU, FLICKERING DREAM IN THE SKY, SOOTHING ME AS I AWOKE.

  The voice came from both the ground and the towering monument. Josephine prostrated herself. The ground was hot, soothing her, burning through the dress. She liked the heat. It was what had drawn her to Ceron City in the early days, a perfect mix of sex and sun, before they had betrayed her, the treacherous Baron casting her once more into exile, a thousand passionate midnight promises thrown aside.

  Josephine said, ‘I come to serve you, Imprisoned One.’

  A slow rumble of sound.

  DO NOT ADRESS ME AS MY JAILERS WOULD.

  Her heart pounded through her breast.

  ‘What shall I call you, my Lord?’

  I AM THE GOD OF PLAGUE WHO WAS NEVER FLESH I AM THE INFECTION WHICH SHALL CONSUME ALL—

  The voice boomed, crashing into her brain. She felt the heat on her skin, soothing, as his presence pushed against her mind.

  ‘I am the creature they banished to the Void, locked into the Reality Prisons, connec
ted to Grave Dimensions. I should be dead. I should be forgotten.’

  The voice had stopped booming. Now it was a man’s voice, with a slight accent. His skin was sallow, a sickly yellow. He wore black pants and a garish yellow shirt. His eyes were a bloodshot mess, hair askew. He grinned up at the red sun, putting dazzling green sunglasses over the wreckage of his eyes.

  ‘But is this death? Because I feel strangely alive. And you have sought me out, lost one, you have journeyed far to find this God Pyramid of plague and death. Why have you come to me?’

  Josephine had never felt so mortal. It didn’t matter that the dress covered her, she was as naked as the day she hatched. The years of living on the run, hunted through Parallels, Parallel versions of the world she had lost so long ago. Worlds that she never dreamt or imagined would have come to pass became havens or terrors of their own. His form shimmered like a ghost under the red sun. Coldness and fear lay in her heart. Josephine was suddenly not so sure this was all worth it. She wished she could remember the words to wake from the vision, but that was forgotten, so deep had she fallen.

  ‘I am the Lady Josephine, leader of the Set of Necromancers, magic city of Malisk, where you were worshipped by most.’

  The ghost who was a god suddenly held her by the throat. He dragged Josephine off the rivulet of red misty water. His grip was iron, and her legs dangled.

  YOU COME FROM A DEAD CITY IN A DEAD UNIVERSE.

  ‘Yes,’ she choked. ‘I am a supplicant. An exile! I escaped!’

  He dropped her into the red water. The concrete on the narrow sides banged against her scales. The water was cold, the sickly sweet scent of blood. Her first impressions from the old dreams were correct. He seemed to grow form and substance. Strange scars littered his face. She couldn’t place his age or race, if any. He was alien, transcendent. A pride-filled love for him filled Josephine’s heart.

  HOW ARE YOU HERE? WHY DO YOU WEAR THIS CHEAP BAUBLE MAGIC DRESS? WHY DO YOU HIDE YOUR NATURE? ARE YOU EVEN A WITCH? DO YOU HAVE POWER?