Hammer Down: Children of the Undying: Book 2

by Moira Rogers

  Devi grasped his hand and rose, keeping her fingers tight around his. She could only imagine how much harder it must have been for him, having to keep his animosity in check while dealing with the man who’d fathered him.

  Zel didn’t look at her again, but he squeezed her hand as he studied Aton. “Will we find out what you want with us over breakfast?”

  “You and your guests,” Aton assured him as he turned away, waving one hand behind him. “Come.”

  Outside, the demons had already begun to gather, some whispering in low tones and staring as Devi and Zel filed out of the house behind Aton and his guards.

  Aton led them across the uneven, broken pavement, toward a large house that showed some sign of repair. Zel eyed the neat piles of discarded furniture and detritus, stacked next to salvaged wood, and his grip on Devi’s hand tensed. “It looks like you’re settling in.”

  “This particular collection of houses has advantages which could make it a useful base camp.”

  “And what advantages are those?”

  Aton shrugged. “Access to water, the roads are in surprisingly good shape, smaller cities with a healthy trade ripe for the picking—no offense, Devindra—and… Well, good neighbors.”

  “Good neighbors.” Zel’s voice was flat. “Is that what we’re here for? To strike a truce?”

  Aton didn’t react to the disbelief in the question. “Not primarily, no.”

  Zel opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again, his jaw clenched and his shoulders tight.

  More guards stood in the house’s entryway. They averted their eyes when Devi and Zel walked in behind Aton, almost…

  Almost as if they were afraid to look at them.

  That single notion was more chilling than anything else that had transpired in the camp, but it slipped Devi’s mind when she caught sight of her friend through an open doorway to the right. “Juliet.”

  Her friend looked up from where she sat on the floor, her eyes huge in her pale, shadowed face. “Devi? Shit, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ll leave you to reassure yourselves about the safety of your companions,” Aton murmured behind them. “When you’re ready, please join me in the dining room. The guards will show you the way.”

  With that he withdrew, pulling a freshly restored door shut behind him.

  “Jai.” Zel’s voice held an edge of rough tension, and it brought the halfblood seated next to Juliet to his feet. The man was beautiful, with curly black hair and dusky skin made all the more striking by his sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. He was dressed like Zel, in leather that was more armor than clothing, and he looked every bit the warrior in spite of his beauty.

  A nervous warrior, though. He spoke without waiting for Zel to ask a question, so fast that the words tumbled over one another. “They were on us before we could send out a distress call, and the ADS barely worked. It was cranked high enough to make my teeth rattle, and they didn’t seem any more bothered by it than we were. I know there wasn’t time to explain things to her—”

  Zel held up a hand, effectively silencing the avalanche of words. Then he turned to study Juliet, his eyes narrowing. “I can’t feel her,” he said finally. “Not even a little bit.”

  Jai’s hand hovered over Juliet’s shoulder, like he wanted to pull her into his side—or push her behind him, out of the path of Zel’s assessing gaze. “None of the halfbloods can,” Jai replied, rough emphasis on the word half.

  Something changed in Zel’s expression. “I see.”

  Devi took a deep, careful breath. “I don’t, not at all. What did he do?”

  Zel glanced from Jai to Juliet again, his narrowed eyes still impossible to read. “Jai had a halfblood mother and a demon father. Sometimes he can sense things the rest of us can’t. Like the fact that your Juliet is a summoner.”

  Summoner. Devi knelt. “Juliet.”

  “I didn’t know,” she rasped. “I swear I didn’t know. My mother, she had summoners in her line, but it passed me. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Hey.” Devi wrapped an arm around her. “This isn’t the time to beat yourself up about it.”

  “I can’t help it.” The words were muffled by Devi’s shirt. “What if that’s why that checkpoint opened up on us, why we got attacked during our haul?”

  But Devi had no answers. “Shh, later.”

  Jai appeared, kneeling down to drop a comforting hand to Juliet’s shoulder. “Hang in there. I told you—we’re gonna get you a big fucking gun and you can shoot whoever the hell you want with it.”

  She raised her head and leaned toward him a little. “They don’t make guns big enough anymore.”

  “Then we’ll have Trip design something new.”

  The halfblood hovered protectively, and Devi looked up to meet Zel’s gaze. He shrugged one shoulder and answered her unspoken question obliquely. “Back off on the protective instincts, Jai. The leader seems fixated on the urge, and I’d rather not get him in the mood to test how far we’ll go.”

  Juliet shook her head. “He wants something. I heard—” She bit off the words with a quick glance at the guards.

  It didn’t matter. “We’ll know soon enough, anyway,” Devi whispered.

  “We need to know now.” Zel extended his hand. “Ready?”

  She was loath to release her friend, but she didn’t have a choice. Besides, Jai was there, looking fiercely ready to tear apart anyone who might come too close.

  So Devi took Zel’s hand, but only long enough to stand. “We’ll be back,” she promised as the guards moved to lead them outside.

  The room they ended up in had probably been meant for formal dining. It was the cleanest of any area they’d seen yet, scrubbed down and holding sturdy furniture—a long wooden table and two rough-hewn benches. One side of the table held a simple meal, and the other…

  The other held an array of computer equipment.

  It looked like the sort of stuff Cache would kill to get her hands on, the kind for which she dropped every bit of credit and trade she earned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Aton tilted his head. “Do you find the technology or the breakfast unsatisfying?”

  Devi rubbed her pounding head and shifted her gaze from the equipment to the man—the demon—standing at the end of the table. “Just…tell us what you want.”

  “You won’t understand. Not yet.” Aton gestured to the opposite bench. “Sit, both of you. Please.”

  Zel’s hand slid to Devi’s back. “What needs to happen before we’ll understand?”

  “Talk. Nothing more.”

  She sat—again, as with so many things these days, because she had no choice. “I’m not hungry.”

  Aton glanced at Zel, who had settled next to her. “And you?”

  “Would you eat food offered by an enemy?”

  “So we are still enemies?”

  The muscles in Zel’s arm tensed. “We’re not yet allies.”

  Aton shifted his gaze to Devi. “Do you consider me your enemy, Devindra?”

  “No,” she told him honestly. “I don’t know what you are yet.”

  “None of you seem to know what we are.” He leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “What is it that you call us?”

  “Demons.” An unfair label, perhaps, one fraught with theological meaning to which Devi herself didn’t particularly ascribe. They were beings from another realm, allowed entrance to their own through a rift between worlds, but that term seemed too neutral. “I’d call you demons.”

  “Yes.” His eyes were an endless black. “Your ancestors called us gods.”

  “Summoners, maybe. Magic users who dragged you here to fear and worship.”

  “Humans,” he countered. “You were less skeptical back then. You lived so bright and fast, so beautiful in your ignorance. You worshiped summoners as priests in one season and burned them as witches in the next.”

  Zel sat silently beside her, but it didn’t matter. Aton seemed to be speaking
to her, and her alone. “They also thought the world was flat. Now we know better.”

  “You know what it pleases you to know. Less than you should.” For the first time, the demon’s voice carried a tinge of frustration. “So little that it would take years to educate you. You call me Aton but you don’t understand. A son of Ares has bonded your summoner. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Ares.” Zel’s rough voice betrayed a hint of something wild. “An ancient god. The god of war.”

  There was no mistaking the pride in Aton’s face. “A god of war. Hardly the only one. My Sora has taught you well. I should have known she would not leave you ignorant.”

  Devi laid a hand on Zel’s arm to check his anger. “And Aton was an Egyptian god of the sun. But those are mythological concepts, abstracts, not people. Not real gods or demons.”

  “Are you so sure, Devindra? Or are you once again trying to tell yourself that the world is flat?”

  The last thing she wanted to do was frustrate him further. “All right, then what changed? Why don’t we still worship you as gods?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, a graceful, careless gesture. “Some of you do. Your New World here is cut off from the rest of the humanity. You huddle in your underground caves and play games that exist only in your minds, but not all the world is like this. The gods have returned to Greece and Rome. My brother once again roams the banks of the Nile.”

  Talking to you is exhausting. She wanted to say it, but she knew she couldn’t. “So you’ve been hanging around here for thousands of years?”

  An innocent question, but it provoked tension, a tightening of Aton’s eyes that must have evidenced itself in something only Zel could feel. Next to her, he shifted uncomfortably, pressing into her side as if he wanted to squeeze his body in front of hers. “You’re not immortal. Demons die.”

  “Death is a human concept.” Aton’s words all but shook with false bravado. The balance of power in the room had shifted subtly. Zel leaned forward and his father eased back, his next words quiet. “But things have changed. You are not human. And I—I am not what I once was.”

  Maybe that was why he’d been obsessed with humanity, as Sora had said, and family. An immortal man would have no reason to worry about a son, or about continuing his line. “You’re becoming more human.” But why?

  “I’m becoming less godly. A distinction that matters in this case.”

  “Not to me.” Zel’s eyes lit with the fire of a predator, one who sensed weakness in his prey. “Tell us why you’re here. What you want.”

  Aton reached out and laid his hand on the small, compact server to his left. “It took three years to find this, and the lives of some of my best warriors to secure it. The answers I need are here, but the Templars have grown craftier over the centuries. Only someone mortal-born can enter this network and traverse the security. You, Devindra, are perfect. Human.”

  She stared at him, unable to make his words make sense. “You want me to crack a VR system?”

  “Enter it,” he corrected. “My warrior who understands human technology has assured me that once you are inside, a competent human with a mastery of network technology can use your presence to breach security. I believe your Marinella will suffice.”

  Cache. Her lips felt numb as she spoke. “I wouldn’t expect her to be cooperative. A demon killed her lover, almost killed her.”

  Something stirred behind Aton’s utterly pleasant gaze, a dark reminder that he was far from human. “Then I suggest you convince her. I’ve allowed your transparent games thus far because your reckless fearlessness intrigues me. Mated to my son, you’d produce a line of warriors worthy of my blood. That will not stop me from destroying you.”

  Zel snarled and rose so fast the bench scraped across the floor. “I’ll drive my knife into your other eye first.”

  Even her hand on his arm wouldn’t hold Zel forever, but Devi tried. She kept her gaze locked with Aton’s. “What information are you after? If it’s something you plan to use against humans, I won’t do it.”

  “The opposite, actually.” His hand drifted out to touch the server, fingers gentle. Reverent. “I hope this might tell me how to return home.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cache’s private room formed around him with an uncomfortable shock that felt like the Global’s ADS. Zel schooled his features, but not fast enough. Cache winced and dropped into her chair, fingers pounding on the keyboard. “I can’t do anything about it. The only way to get you two this far out was to piggyback on the Global, and I can’t filter out the ADS.”

  “It’s fine.” An annoying buzz, but not as bad as day-to-day life inside the network. He flexed his fingers as Devi appeared beside him. “Is Trip coming?”

  “I’m here, mostly.” Trip’s voice materialized, but that was all. “The rest of me will be along momentarily.”

  Instinctive fear skittered up his spine at the sheer damn creepiness of it. Trip’s voice, maybe, but whatever lived inside the network wasn’t entirely his friend. Zel shifted his weight, inching closer to Devi. “You okay?”

  She glanced at him. “What, you mean Trip? I caught the circus act when he piped himself through the vault control panel and unlocked it for me.”

  “Not nice, guys.” Cache shoved back and rocked to her feet. “At least Trip is human. I don’t like this. How do we know this demon bastard is telling the truth?”

  “Because he has no reason to lie,” Devi answered shortly. She’d gone cold, analytical. This must be the side that had kept her alive for so long when most haulers had a brutally short life expectancy. “He could make us do this, and he knows it. He doesn’t have to lie to keep us cooperative.”

  Cache capitulated with a soft sigh and waved her hand at a glossy black door on the opposite side of the room. “Trip is hooking us in now. I don’t think this system was meant to be accessed without a terminal, but we’ve got it rigged. Going through the door should drop us into its…” She made another vague gesture. “Waiting room, I guess? But what’s after that, I can’t even guess.”

  “Could be anything,” Devi told her. “I don’t think Aton has a clue.”

  “Did he really say it belonged to the Templars?”

  Cache’s voice held a hint of awe that stirred unease in Zel’s gut. “Not in so many words. He said the Templars had become craftier.” It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but her curiosity made him wonder. “Does that mean something to you?”

  The girl hesitated. “Have you ever heard of the Templars? The historical ones, I mean?”

  “An order of knights.” Devi shrugged. “They formed around the time of the Crusades, I think, as a militant arm of the Roman Catholic church. They were disbanded fairly quickly, but there have been rumors about them ever since.”

  Cache nodded sharply enough to send her bright purple hair flying. “But you know how it is in the network. People appropriate to make themselves sound badass. They say their little cabal is an offshoot of the Templars or the Illuminati, or that their great-great-grandpa was Bill Gates or descended from Turing or Babbage or Cleopatra. No one takes that shit seriously. Except…”

  She trailed off, uncertain enough for Zel to prompt her. “Except?”

  “Well, there are secret groups. Anyone who’s spent enough time poking around the far edges of the Global knows that. And hiding by letting everyone think you’re too absurd to exist isn’t the worst strategy ever.”

  “So why would a group commandeer the Templar name?” Devi asked. “What’s the point?”

  “Maybe they didn’t.” Cache crossed to the black door and pressed her hand against it, fingers spread wide. “Maybe for every hundred people who’d tell you they’re Templars, there’s one who wouldn’t say a damn thing…because he really is one.”

  Devi rubbed her temples. “But why? I don’t understand what connection the group could have to the Templars. What are they crusading against, the demons?”

  The edges of the door flare
d suddenly, light shining around it like sunshine into a dark room. Cache slid her hand down to a thin black knob and glanced over her shoulder. “Guess we could go find out?”

  It wasn’t like they had a choice. “Let’s do it.”

  Cache nodded and pushed open the door. Light flooded the area, so bright it almost blinded Zel. He blinked through tears and stepped forward, driven by instinct to take the lead. Whatever lay on the other side of that door held answers to questions he’d never thought to ask. Information was power.

  Devi fell into step beside him as they walked down a long stone hall lined with doors. “No handles,” she murmured, nodding at the arched wooden doors.

  Zel veered to the left and reached out. An inch from the smooth surface electricity sparked, arcing from the door to his fingers. “Fuck!”

  Cache eased up beside him and pressed her small hand against the exact spot he’d tried to touch.

  Nothing happened.

  “Weird.” She pulled her hand away and shrugged. “They said the system doesn’t like demons. Maybe it’s got some sort of ADS.”

  “It could be focusing the Global network’s anti-demon signal,” Devi mused.

  Whatever it was, it wanted him to keep his hands to himself. Terrifying, considering what had happened to Trip, what might yet happen to Cache and Devi. The network had always been safe. Consequence free.

  Not anymore. Claustrophobia closed in, and Zel backed away from the wall. “Let’s get this done.”

  The long hallway spilled out into a sweeping circular room with misty walls, the boundaries better defined by the tall columns that rose from the floor and vanished into the blackness of the indistinct ceiling. As soon as Zel crossed the threshold, light exploded from the middle of the room in a glimmering pillar.

  A form took shape in the center. A man, tall and garbed in an old-fashioned tunic belted with wide leather. A sword crossed his back, the hilt poking up over his left shoulder. When he stepped forward the column of light faded, leaving the man looking as solid as the rest of them. “Welcome to the Temple.”

  Instinct urged Zel forward, in front of the women. “Who are you?”