by Joe Jackson
The demon lightly turned Kari’s swords aside, making an obvious effort to not threaten her, and he took the three additional steps to reach the end of Little Gray’s bed. The little boy jumped back up to his feet against his mother’s wishes, and held his arms out. The demon picked the child up and held him over his head, and then lowered the boy enough to rub his nose against Little Gray’s, just as Kari did. The demonhunter’s swords dropped impotently from her hands as she witnessed the display. Immediately there were calls of alarm from downstairs when Kari’s blades bounced on the wooden floor, but she didn’t have the presence of mind to answer the curious calls of her mate and friends.
The elestram put Little Gray back down, and said something to him in a language Kari had never heard before. Kari was astonished: Little Gray responded in what seemed like that same language, and lay down to go back to sleep. The demon pulled the blankets up over Kari’s son, and then he walked over, moved the reading chair so it was slightly in front of the door, and sat down upon it. Kari realized it had always been the demon that kept moving the chair, and when Eli, Danilynn, and Grakin came up the stairs, she knew why: he could tell who was coming when he sat at that angle. Like with Emma, the elestram’s expression was impassive as he rocked lightly back and forth, his eyes unblinking, holding Kari’s stare.
Eli started to draw his hammer and he gestured for Grakin to stay back, but Kari held her hand up to keep her half-corlyps friend from provoking the demon. “Who’s this?” Eli asked. He started to slip past the demon and into the room, but thought better of it when he fell under the elestram’s orange-eyed scrutiny. Kari was afraid Eli might try to take revenge for the burn scars on his arm on this elestram, but he followed her gestured direction and held his ground.
Kari looked past her friend and met Grakin’s eyes. “It’s the Fuzzy Man,” she said. Eli and Danilynn obviously had no idea what she meant, but Grakin excused his way past them and into the room. The elestram made no move to impede Grakin, and once he slipped past the jackal demon, the priest stood beside his mate. If Kari was surprised, Grakin was petrified, and Kari could see the anger boiling up in him.
“Who are you? How did you get into my mother’s home?” Grakin demanded with force that was uncharacteristic for him. It surprised Kari only slightly that her gentle mate’s protective nature surfaced so quickly when it appeared his son was in danger from a demon. Grakin saw the dead syrinthian woman after a minute, and he looked to Kari for explanation.
She laid a calming hand on his shoulder. “Whoever he is, he just saved my life,” Kari said, and all eyes turned back on the seated elestram. “What is your name, elestram? Do you understand me?”
“I understand you,” he replied. He crossed one leg over the other and continued rocking back and forth in the chair. His accent was strange like Emma’s, but a little different than hers. Kari was simply thankful he spoke the common tongue; she didn’t speak or understand infernal, and she didn’t want Grakin to have to speak with the elestram without Kari being able to help. The jackal demon continued, “I have no name. Among my people I am called The Wraith.”
“Why are you here? And how did you get into my mother’s home?” Grakin demanded again.
The elestram turned its eyes ever so slightly to fix Grakin squarely in that intense orange gaze. “Your mother invited me in,” he responded calmly. If he was at all offended by Grakin’s tone, it didn’t show. He had that same impassive expression and speech pattern that Emma had possessed. “She did so at your child’s insistence. As to why I am here, that is the reason there.”
He gestured toward the dead syrinthian, and Grakin, Eli, and Danilynn looked to Kari for an explanation. “Irressa was really a syrinthian,” Kari told Grakin. “And we invited her into our house. She was about to kill me, but this elestram struck first.”
“Why? What are you about?” Eli asked the demon.
“I am about my master’s business,” he replied simply.
“He saved you?” Grakin asked Kari, confused.
“Who do you serve?” Danilynn asked from the hallway, and one of the elestram’s ears turned in her direction, though he didn’t spin to look at her.
“That, I am not at liberty to say,” the elestram answered. “My master appoints me to a task, and I see to its execution. I do not question his orders or his motivations. It should be sufficient for you that I was assigned to come here and protect you from these syrinthian infiltrators. You should be thankful you are alive, and leave well enough alone.”
Grakin had heard enough. He scooped Little Gray out of his bed and edged past the elestram to take his son out of the room. The elestram made no attempt to stop him, and didn’t move a muscle even when Eli and Danilynn entered the room. Kari picked up her scimitars, but put them back in their sheaths. She knelt beside the syrinthian corpse and checked to make sure Irressa was truly dead. There was little doubt: the elestram’s shadowed blade had gone right through her heart. In death, the syrinthian had reverted back to her normal form, and Kari simply stared at the body for several minutes.
“Do you know Emma?” Kari heard Eli ask, and the demonhunter rose to her feet to see if the question garnered any reaction from the demon.
“I am not here to answer questions,” the elestram said, standing up. “My orders were to safeguard this demonhunter from the assassins. I have been patiently waiting for her to ask the obvious, but it seems to have eluded her.” He turned toward Kari. “There is more than one syrinthian among your Order. You will want to see to that. My time here is at an end.”
Eli moved to block the doorway, but Kari gestured for him to stand aside. There was little point to trying to stop the elestram: he had helped save Kari’s life, and the demonhunter wasn’t sure it was a worthwhile risk either way. If The Wraith, as he called himself, was an assassin in the underworld, Kari had little doubt he was at least as dangerous as Turillia, if not more so. For now, he wasn’t a threat, and Kari didn’t want Eli or Danilynn to risk injury or death to fight something that wasn’t a threat. Kari decided to leave well enough alone; someone in the underworld had ordered this elestram to protect Kari, and he had done that.
The elestram started to leave, but he stopped in the doorway and turned back to Kari. “I envy you,” he said before he pulled the goggles back down over his eyes. Kari wasn’t sure what he meant, but then he added, “You have a beautiful child.”
He disappeared from sight then, and made not a sound as he left the room. Kari never heard the front door open, and she wondered if he had truly left the house. She glanced at Danilynn, and the priestess whispered an incantation before she began to check the house room by room. Grakin was downstairs in the dining room with Little Gray, and Kari and Eli joined him there while the priestess searched the house. Kari held tight to her son, and she could see that Grakin was quite alarmed by what had just happened.
Danilynn found no trace of the elestram, and was at a loss as to how he had left the house without opening a door or window. Kari shivered involuntarily as she considered his nickname was The Wraith, and she simply gave thanks that he had come to protect her. Had he, too, been sent to kill her, she was sure she would’ve ended up dead at the hands of Irressa and the elestram together. What proved even stranger than the fact that he’d been ordered to protect her, though, was that he played with and watched over Little Gray. Kari looked into her son’s eyes, and the elestram’s words about how beautiful he was echoed in her mind. It was so difficult for Kari to understand.
There was only one reason Kari could think of that this would’ve happened, and once again her thoughts circled back to Emma. “I have to go report this to the Order,” Kari told her mate. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but if there are more of them among our cadets, we need to weed them out and kill them before they do any damage. Killing me is probably the least of their orders.”
“Yes, of course; do as you must,” Grakin said. “I will take Little Gray to the temple and tell my mother what happened. She w
ill need to replace the wards about the home to revoke the invitations we unwittingly gave to our enemies.”
“Good. You two want to come with me?” Kari asked Eli and Danilynn, and both agreed to accompany her. Kari kissed Grakin and their son, and gave them both tight hugs. It was amazing to her just how many people looked out for her – friends, deities, and even a demon king or two, it seemed. Unfortunately, such pointed to the demons knowing that Kari was Salvation’s Dawn. As she thought about that, though, Kari realized that Little Gray had been talking about the Fuzzy Man for months; if the demons knew Kari was Salvation’s Dawn, she wasn’t sure why they hadn’t moved against her in Barcon. It also left her to wonder: if she went into the underworld, would they try to capture her, or would she inadvertently start a massive war as some demon kings fought to capture her and others fought to keep her safe?
Kari kept her thoughts to herself, and led Eli and Danilynn to the campus of the Order. She marched them past the gate guards and to the main offices. She passed through to the rear, where her own office sat across from that of Lord Allerius.
Albrecht Allerius was in his office, and he regarded Kari and her two friends with no small amount of surprise. “Lady Vanador, it’s good to see you home safely. And, my word! Mistress Danilynn and Elias, it’s been a long time,” he greeted them.
“No time for pleasantries,” Kari said with a dismissive wave. “We’ve got work to do: the Order has been infiltrated.”
~~~ The End ~~~
Eve of Redemption, Book III
Serpents Rising
by
Joe Jackson
Copyright 2016 by Joe Jackson
All rights reserved
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“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” – G.K. Chesterton
This book is dedicated to the men and women of
10th Mountain
2-14INF A Co. ’06-‘08
and to the memory of
SGT Steven Packer
SSG Joseph Weiglein
SGT Richard Correa
Chapter I – Unmasked
The water was warm, yet it still seemed to draw the heat from Kari’s ebon skin as it rained down upon her from above. Her eyes were closed and she leaned against the wall of the shower stall, letting her wings droop to the floor, all at once completely unnerved and fatigued. The bathhouse on the Order’s campus was quiet; only the pattering of Kari’s shower broke the silence as it echoed off of the wooden walls. She had opted to take a shower rather than assist in rounding up the syrinthian infiltrators, both to wash off the grime of a couple of weeks on the road and to try to collect her thoughts.
Kari reached up and absently touched the place on her draconic chin where Turillia had nearly split her snout in two. The half-syrinthian, half-succubus assassin had been such an antithesis to Kari: a virtual equal in combat prowess, but in terms of goals, morals, and drive, she had been a complete opposite. Killing her had given Kari release; she had fulfilled her Blood Oath to her deity, Zalkar the Unyielding, but at her core, Kari had also felt as though she’d killed a part of herself. It was something she hadn’t quite been able to figure out in the wake of the battle, and hardly had time to while on the road with Eli and with Danilynn.
The hot water did little to relieve the physical reminders of her battle with the half-succubus: Kari was sore all over, and the weeks on the road after the battle hadn’t helped with that at all. She had a saddle sore that extended to her tail from riding the griffon loaned to her by Earl Markus Garant, her knee still bothered her where Turillia had kicked her, the scar on her chin still hurt, and there was a general achiness all through her body that a good shower simply couldn’t diffuse. The thought of having a strong drink, sharing a warm bed with her mate, and sleeping in for a few days seemed like the only remedy for what ailed her, but Kari grimaced.
She would enjoy none of those things in the days to come.
Soon, the campus would have been scoured by the many priests of Zalkar; by Danilynn Stahlorr, priestess of Garra Ktarra; and also by Archmage Gareth Maelstrom and his two children. Any syrinthian infiltrators who still remained in the city will have been rounded up, and the time would come to execute them as agents of the demon king Sekassus the Calculating. Kari had already requested of Lord Albrecht Allerius – still the head of the Order until Kari relieved him of his command – that he allow the syrinthians to live until Kari had time to speak with them. Kari had a suspicion that, based on things Danilynn had told her of the syrinthian people and their ‘service’ to Sekassus, they might be willing to divulge some secrets or at least a bit of information on their homeland. Most specifically, Kari wanted to know if any of them knew the whereabouts of one Se’sasha Aesiasi Solaristis.
Thinking about the syrinthian priestess led Kari to think about the girl’s mother, Se’ceria, and of the tale Eli and Danilynn had woven regarding Se’ceria’s betrayal of Sekassus. Eli had told Kari that Danilynn would be able to fill in much of the subtle nuances of Se’ceria’s plan, but even after hearing the tale from both of her new friends, Kari felt she still had yet to see the whole picture. Se’ceria had apparently been a very complicated woman who’d pursued a very complex plot to expose and humiliate Sekassus, but that couldn’t be the entirety of it. Even in defiance of Sekassus, Se’ceria had bent knee not only to an as-yet unknown deity, but also to another demon king: one who, by all accounts, was extremely volatile and very dangerous.
There had to be more to the story than what Kari had been presented with thus far. While humiliating Sekassus may have been the sole goal of King Koursturaux S’Bakthra – the demon king Se’ceria had apparently truly served – Kari didn’t believe that such would be enough to make Se’ceria commit the deeds she had done or lay down her life. The woman had shown a compassion that was normally lacking among the syrinthian people: risking her plan and possibly her life to the benefit of the czarikk, a people the syrinthian should have cared little for. Eli had said it was likely Se’ceria only worked to release the czarikk so her plan would succeed, but Danilynn assured Kari that Se’ceria felt remorse for killing the lizard-folk. That was compassion, something Kari could easily recognize, though she couldn’t exactly understand where it came from, based on the current information.
Thinking of Se’ceria’s compassion led Kari logically to recognize the syrinthian priestess’ motherly instincts as well: she had died willingly, afraid that returning to the underworld after betraying Sekassus would cost her daughter her life. Se’ceria had asked to be allowed to die to protect her daughter, and asked only that someone – even relative strangers – go and try to find and rescue her daughter from further slavery to Sekassus. That was the task that now sat before Kari, the decision she had already made but not fully considered. The mother in Kari wanted to fulfill a promise made by others to rescue Se’sasha, and at the same time, the demonhunter in her wanted to bring back someone from the underworld who would not only be able, but willing to divulge the realm’s many secrets to the Demonhunter Order.
The enormity of the task sank into Kari’s heart, intensifying the fatigue that had such a firm grip on her. Suddenly the aches and sores from her travels and the battle with Turillia felt so much worse, and that wasn't even taking into account the shock that still sent shivers down her spine over having nearly been murdered in her own home just hours before. Kari simply wanted to lay down under the hot shower and let it numb her for a while. By her best estimate, Kari was nearly forty years old, and though she’d never put much stock in the number, she felt as though the years were catching up with her. She’d told Eli a few weeks earlier that she felt like she was getting too old to be chasing down demons and their plots, and standing under the comforting hot shower she felt that even more poignantly.
Kari lif
ted up her dog tags and felt much of the fatigue begin to dissipate. She was now the head of the Demonhunter Order, only two promotions away from the ultimate achievement: the position of Avatar of Vengeance. With that title would come a direct connection to her deity, an almost limitless ability to tap into his strength at all times, and she would become a champion of champions. All the aches, pains, and sores faded a bit in the face of her accomplishments and the pride she felt in coming so far among the ranks of the Order. The fact that the demon kings saw her as enough of a threat to move directly against her spoke to that as well. Kari had come from nothing: an abused runaway who’d found purpose thanks to a selfless act of a demonhunter, and the meaning she’d found in her life helped fend off the sense of getting old.
She absently flipped the lever that stopped the flow of water, and she stood dripping in the silence of the shower stall as she smiled at her dog tags. While the thought of a trip into the underworld terrified her in some ways, she realized that such a trip was what had set the legendary Turik Jalar apart from every other demonhunter before and after his time. He had walked into the very heart of fear and not only lived to tell the tale, but by his account he had laid a list of demands at the feet of the Overking, the demon king to whom all other demon kings swore fealty. Kari’s own planned mission to the underworld seemed so much less dangerous when she compared it to what Jalar had done, and she took comfort in the fact that whatever she and her companions did in the underworld, it would be quick and subtle.
Subtlety was her brother-in-law Aeligos’ strength, and Kari would once again have his aid in the coming mission. She wondered how many of her mate’s siblings would agree to go with her, both to help her and safeguard her as a member of their family, but she quickly came to the realization that there was no way they would let her go, head of the Demonhunter Order or not. Kari also understood that bringing too many people with her would ruin any chance they had of being subtle. However if she was careful who she asked, she could choose companions who would increase her chances of success. Aeligos was chief among them. Her family would not be pleased with any plan to go to the underworld, but Kari felt she had a duty to her office that superseded the desires of her family, even her mate. It was an uncomfortable decision, but one she had to make if she planned to take the reins of the Order.