by Vox Day
“I got bored,” Brien admitted as he walked into the white marbled entryway. “I was just surfing around, and I figured I might as well come over now. So what’s this computer weirdness you were talking about?”
Derek closed the door, and ran his hands through his hair. Then he grinned and shook his head.
“I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me. Come see for yourself.”
Brien followed his friend through the high-ceilinged hallway, then down the stairs into the basement. By the time he was halfway down them, he could hear noise coming from the direction of Derek’s room, busy and staccato, like the radio broadcast of a ballgame with a dial that wasn’t quite set on the right frequency. As he followed Derek towards the bedroom, though, he realized it wasn’t a ballgame. Now it sounded more like a monologue.
But as he walked into Derek’s room, which was cluttered with miscellaneous pieces of computer hardware of varying degrees of obsolescence interspersed with hardcover role-playing books from White Wolf and TSR, he decided that whoever was doing the monologue made Andrew Dice Clay sound like… he couldn’t actually think of anyone…. Well, like someone who didn’t swear quite as much, anyhow.
The voice coming out of the tall, white computer speakers was venomous, filled with hatred and contempt. It spat furious, rage-filled curses that were too serious, too intensely vicious, to be very funny. Brien, taken aback, blinked and looked over at Derek, whose expression clearly indicated the same kind of cluelessness he was feeling.
“So what happened?”
Derek pointed at his twenty-one inch computer screen. Brien leaned forward and saw a web page that consisted of nothing but a horned skull sitting between two candles. The candles flickered with a little three-frame animation, and the skull had a red pentagram painted on the forehead, but that was pretty much it.
“Dubyu-dubyu-dubyu dot darkspellz dot com,” he read the text from the status bar out loud. “What is it? What were you doing there?”
“I don’t know, I was just looking around for some spells, you know?” Derek shrugged. “There’s a lot of online grimoires, spell books and stuff. I thought maybe I’d find some cool stuff that the Nottambuli could use before we meet up with those vampires again.”
“Well, I don’t see what the problem is. Can’t you just click back, or is it one of those stupid sites that trap you in.”
Derek made a twisted face at him.
“Yeah, like I’m a complete idiot, Brien. Of course I tried to click back! It didn’t work, but so what, that’s no big deal, there’s lots of pages like that. That’s not what’s interesting, though. Here, move over.”
He pushed past Brien and placed his left hand on the mouse. Brien watched as his friend moved the pointer, which Derek had changed from the usual white arrowhead to a vulgar one-finger salute, across the screen to his pull-down menus. The white finger entered Favorites, and flashed red as Derek double-clicked on ESPN. Nothing happened. The candles continued to flicker, and the obscene stream of invective continued without pause.
“So maybe you’re just hung. Once a program is in memory, it can keep running like this after a crash, you know. Did you try a soft boot?”
“Nope, not yet. But check it out. Did you see what’s really strange about all this?”
“The candle animation’s only three frames?” Brien suggested. Okay, that was a lame guess, maybe, but he couldn’t see anything else especially unusual.
He was pretty sure that the cheesy animation wasn’t what Derek was getting at, but he didn’t see anything mysterious in all this either. It was probably just a bug in somebody’s Java code or something. But then, as Derek pointed to something on the screen, his eyes widened.
“Jeez, your sounds are turned off!”
Derek had brought up the Windows Volume Control, and Brien could see that the Mute All box was clearly checked. That meant that they shouldn’t have been able to hear anything coming out of the computer at all.
“Right,” Derek nodded. “So tell me then, why are we still hearing this shit?”
“Turn the speakers off,” Brien suggested, ignoring the question.
“They are off!”
“No, they’re just muted.” Brien pointed to the little white cable running from the back of the speakers to somewhere behind the desktop. “Unplug them.”
A creepy feeling started to come over him as he watched Derek reach behind his machine for the stereo jack. The creepiness threatened to graduate into a full-fledged freak-out when he saw Derek jerk the jack out of the sound card and hold it up with a dubious look on his face. Amazingly, impossibly, the obscene ranting continued unabated. It wasn’t possible, and yet there was no denying the fact that he was still hearing what he was hearing.
“Turn it off,” he found himself shouting, and he realized he was scared. “Just turn it off! The whole damn machine!”
Derek, who was looking a little panicked himself, didn’t argue this time. Disdaining a soft boot, he jabbed his finger into the on-off button to shut the computer down entirely. The screen went blank, and for one blessed moment, there was silence.
“Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Both of them jumped, literally, as a burst of maniacal laughter erupted from the speakers. The rage abruptly morphed into cackling insanity, if it was indeed the same voice as before. Brien wasn’t quite sure. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the crazy laughter stopped. But no sooner had it stopped than Derek’s inkjet printer came to life, its green online light flashing and its jets whirring madly back and forth as first one, then two, then three sheets of paper were drawn from the paper feed and spit out, covered by lines and lines of simple black text, into the paper tray.
This was like Poltergeist, only worse, Brien thought, feeling ill. He stared fixedly at the sheets being rapidly ejected from Derek’s DeskJet, counting about fifty sheets in all that were printed before the green light faded and the printer ceased its frenzied activity. The room was abruptly quiet, and Brien found that he was holding his breath and hunching his shoulders, as if he’d been expecting something to leap up and punch him. He waited before daring to open his mouth, afraid that his voice might spark more of this ghost in the machine thing.
“What… the… hell… was… that,” he said slowly, at last. He felt drained, as if the fright had sucked all the energy right out of him.
“I have no idea,” Derek said absently as he picked up the printed pages and began to shuffle through them. “But I think someone is trying to tell us something.”
Chapter 9
The Sweet Taste of a Soul
I would be the one
To hold you down
Kiss you so hard
I'll take your breath away
—Sarah McLachlan, (“Possession”)
Jami slouched in the passenger side, almost totally relaxed, and the rocking motion of the truck as it sped over the highway through the darkness made her eyelids feel as if they were being drawn slowly, but inexorably, downward. At her side, Christopher drove silently down the highway, but there was something about him, a certain inner tension, that prevented her from drifting off into sleep.
Did it have something to do with Rachel, she wondered? Christopher had barely said goodnight to her when they’d dropped her off and Rachel had thanked him for the ride. Actually, he hadn’t said more than ten words to Rachel all evening, although he’d stolen plenty of stealthy glances at her in the rear view mirror. Jami, of course, had pretended not to notice.
“Hey,” she said finally.
Well, that was what she meant to say. It was too much of an effort to really open her mouth, so it came out as more of an wordless grunt.
Christopher glanced over at her. His eyes were open and alert, and he had an inquisitive look on his face.
“What?”
Jami smiled lazily at her brother. It was kind of nice having someone to drive you around, she thought. As she looked at him, she realized that whatever was bothering him probably d
idn’t have anything to do with Rachel. He didn’t look desperate enough for it to be girl trouble.
“You’re so serious,” she told him.
He was, too. She didn’t remember him being this way so much before. It made him seem older. She knew whatever had happened to him last winter had been very different than her own experiences in Ahura Azhda, and although she’d tried to question him on several occasions, he just didn’t seem to want to talk about it.
Not that that was going to stop her from bringing it up. He was her brother, after all, and she had the right to know. She rubbed at her eyes with the palms of her hands, grinding the itch out of them, then remembered, too late, that Rachel had done her makeup before they went out. Oh well, it was dark and they were going home anyhow.
“You look like a raccoon,” Christopher told her as they came to a stop at the Ninety-six light, and the red glare lit up the interior of the vehicle like a school gymnasium decorated for a cheesy dance.
“Oh, shut up, I do not.”
“Okay,” he agreed mildly, in a superior, whatever-you-say tone of voice.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes again, too tired to argue or even care what she looked like. Did raccoons hibernate? That’s what she needed right now, about six months of sleep. She was still sore from the game, and they had church in the morning.
Forget it, she decided wearily. If Christopher wanted to tell her anything, he’d tell her. There wasn’t any point in trying to drag it out of him. She sighed deeply and relaxed, letting her whole body melt into the leather seats. She felt like a puddle, spreading out into nothingness….
The screech of the brakes woke her, and her arms shot out automatically, as she braced for the inevitable collision. Her eyes snapped open, but incredibly, she saw nothing at first but an explosion of red, gold and white. She shook her head, thinking she was seeing things, until she recognized an angelic form pointing a sword of flame towards the side of the road.
Christopher reacted before she found her voice, and wrenched the wheel hard to the right. The SUV shuddered, and for one awful moment, Jami thought they were out of control and heading straight for the ditch. She put her feet up on the dashboard and swallowed a scream, but Christopher, snarling unintelligibly under his breath, managed to control the Explorer’s skid and finally wrestled the truck to a stop on the gravel of the road shoulder.
“What was that!” Jami exclaimed breathlessly. Her heart was pounding so hard that it almost hurt.
“I’m not sure…” Christopher’s voice trailed off. “I think it was Mariel!”
“That’s what I thought too! But what, I mean—”
She never finished the sentence, because as she turned to look at her brother, she saw him raise his hand to his eyes as a bright light began to wash over them. The light sped towards them, like a dragon leaping out of the darkness, with a deep sound like an onrushing wind. It took her a moment to realize just what it was.
“Wheeeeeeeaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrhhhhh!”
The Explorer swayed back and forth as a giant pickup rocketed past them, missing them by inches as it roared down the wrong side of the road. It was so close that she didn’t really see the truck itself, just the three numbers on the side flashing by and branding their silver image into her brain— one fifty. As in F-150, the Ford. It was going at least a hundred miles an hour, judging by the violence of its passing.
“Oh… my… God,” Jami slumped back in her seat.
“Holy cats!” Christopher was breathing hard himself. “He must be smashed! How could you not know you’re on the wrong side of the road? I mean, if he’d hit us, we’d be in freaking orbit right now!”
Jami felt sick. Was it all starting over again? Angels, and demons, and dragons, and blood and magic and death? She didn’t think she could handle that sort of thing anymore, not now that she knew it all was real. But maybe it was just a coincidence? Accidents happened all the time. Maybe it wasn’t Mariel they’d seen. But then, why had Christopher chosen that very moment to pull over? The thought that someone might be after her again was almost more than she could bear.
“Oh, just shut up. I don’t even want to think about it.”
Christopher put his head in his hands. She wondered what he was doing, then realized he was praying. But she was far too shaken to follow his example.
When he finished, Christopher ran his hands through his hair and pressed the button that rolled the driver’s side window down. The night breeze was cool, but it felt good on her sweat-damped brow.
“Hey, I know you’re out there somewhere, Mariel,” she heard her brother cry out into the darkness. “Thanks! Thanks for watching out for us, and keeping us from harm!”
Christopher pressed the button again, and the window rolled up. He turned and gave her an almost defiant look.
“Well, you know she just saved our lives,” he said defensively, as if he was afraid she was going to get on his case. “We were toast there, you know.”
Jami started to laugh, but it came out as more of a hysterical sob. She bit her lip, and the pain helped avert the tears that were pressing at her eyes.
“I know she did, I know she did,” she repeated, trying to erase from her mind the terrible image of the deadly accident that had been intended for them. “But Christopher….”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to talk about it now. I don’t even want to think about it. Just take me home. Please.”
She closed her eyes, desperately hoping he wouldn’t argue with her. There was a moment’s silence, and then she heard his seat creak and felt his finger gently wiping away an errant tear that had escaped her eyelids. His surprising gesture comforted her, a little. Before long, the motor revved, and there was a bump as the vehicle climbed over the shoulder and returned to the smooth asphalt of the road.
The truck resumed its smooth rocking motion, but Jami found no relaxation in it now. She took comfort in only one thing. As they flew through the night, she hugged her knees tightly and listened to her brother’s voice softly reciting that most comforting of Psalms.
“…though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil….”
Melusine circled on the periphery of the small Fallen army soaring high above the parking lot of the suburban Catholic church. It was a big parish, an affluent one, and the parking lot was filled with Audis, Acuras, BMWs, Ford Explorers, and more than a few Mercedes. The churchgoers were still filing in to the large brick building, which was virtually indisinguishable in its architectural blandness from the big public high school just down the road, but the flow of people entering had slowed to a trickle as it approached the time for the evening Mass to begin.
There were a lot of Guardians there too, and by the looks of it, they were alert to the large gathering of Fallen soaring above them. They were positioned at both of the main entrances and most of them had drawn their swords, which from her vantage point made the church look like a wide landing strip lined with orange-red beacons. There were almost enough Divine angels there to make up two full cohorts, which was nowhere near enough to stand against the four cohorts of Mordrim and eight-score Malakim that the Baron had summoned here tonight. In the midst of these lesser demons were also seven huge Kesh’Adai. They were imposing purple-skinned archdemons with great skeletal wings that spanned three times Melusine’s height. They wore enchanted armor made of human bones and carried evil-looking maces adorned liberally with animal horns.
As she floated easily on the cool night breeze, Melusine spied the Assassin, who bore the painful signs of her ‘conversation’ with Lord Balazel. Melusine winced, for Kaeli-Thugal’s back was a truly nauseating sight. From her shoulders to her waist, every vestige of skin had been flayed from her, and Melusine could see exposed muscles moving whenever the tortured angel stroked her wings. She was an object lesson to every Fallen spirit who saw her—don’t you dare screw up tonight! Melusine got the point. She knew what she had to do, and she would do exactly that. This was no
t the time for improvisation.
The last mortal finally finished the trek from car to church door, and at a wave of Balazel’s hand, an imp sounded three blasts on a horn. Melusine flew to Kaeli-Thugal’s side as the Malakim lined up in two long rows above everyone, while the Mordrim positioned themselves behind their captains in three downward-pointing triangles. She exchanged a grim nod with the Assassin when, below them, more flames flickered into life as the remaining Guardians drew their swords, knowing that the Fallen attack was imminent.
The horn sounded again, but this time the imp gave it a single, sustained blast. Immediately, the Malakim began hurling their darts down at the enemy, small but deadly bolts of darkly burning flame. Dart after dart plunged downward, but they were mostly ineffective, bouncing off the armor that lay hidden under the Divine angels’ white robes or slashed to harmless pieces by their fiery swords. Melusine saw two or three unlucky Guardians fall and disappear, struck down as their armor failed them, but for the most part, the rain of missiles accomplished little.
It did, however, spark an answering response flung up at the Fallen by a score of Romakhim slingers who had somehow escaped detection in their position behind the church. The small group of angels braved the darts of the Malakim to leap onto the rooftop and began to hurl their balls of fire skyward. The Romakhim’s missiles were effective, considering their small numbers, and several Malakim burst into flames and perished. But the Baron quickly ordered the Malakim to concentrate their darts onto the rooftop, and the heavy hail of descending darts quickly forced the Divine slingers to flee.
“Now!”
Balazel shouted and the three troops of Mordrim obediently launched themselves towards the ground. With their dark wings furled behind them, they looked just like the Malakim’s darts, only bigger, redder, and more deadly.
“Follow me,” the Assassin cried as she began her descent.
Melusine tucked her own wings behind her back and plunged headfirst in a rapid dive. She saw that Kaeli was following the middle group, which was descending slower than the other two. She felt a tightness in her stomach that she had not known for quite some time; she might be immortal, but there were some things even an immortal didn’t want to experience and one of them was the Beyond. Besides, she was a Temptress, not a war demon. She’d been around for a long, long time, and this was the closest she’d been to a real angelic battle since she’d ridden Leviathan so many ages ago.