Demons of Divinity

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “By dropping me cold with a cheap trick?” I growled.

  “Six has a habit of trying to get cute and having it bite her in the ass. Which is why we’re worried they might’ve taken her too. She’s not responding to her palmlight.”

  On the couch, Johnny paused from his work assembling a cloaking pack. “And you don’t think it’s possible the manipulative assassin lady might be ignoring your calls?”

  Four tilted his head, not completely dismissing the point. “You don’t know her like we do. She crosses lines, but…” He fingered the dark collar at his throat. “We’re bound together by more than most. She wouldn’t have left us here like that. Not without good reason. I’d like to get out there and try sweeping for her myself, but…” He shot a dark glance toward our hallway security, and his voice came to my mind this time. “I have a feeling when it’s time to leave our courteous hosts, it’ll be time to leave for good.”

  I refrained from nodding, knowing all too well what he meant right just then.

  When Four turned back, I couldn’t tell if he looked more frustrated or worried. “As far as we know, helping you get Elise back might be our best bet to help Six too. So here we are.”

  “Well isn’t that touching?” Johnny muttered over at the table where he was assembling a cloaking pack. “It’s almost like you weren’t escorted here by armed guard at all.”

  Four ignored him, but apparently the jab struck Eight right in her well-formed sense of nobility. She stirred, focusing on Johnny.

  “Do not mistake the circumstances of our arrival as proof of anything but a desire to prevent additional conflict. It was your own Legion who bade us remain put throughout the attack. And we were both of us dismayed to hear of the fate of Elise Fields.”

  She remained fairly unexpressive throughout, but I got the feeling her words were sincere enough. Maybe it was just my desperation to get Elise back, but I found myself hardly caring what their motivations might be. Even if Auckus did have some kind of arrangement with them, which I was starting to doubt, I couldn’t see any scenario in which their helping me with the cloaks would be a bad thing.

  The question was whether they could help at all.

  “I assume this isn’t something you can teach in five minutes,” Four said, seeming to read my mind as he studied the piles of practice runework scattered around me.

  “Can you two help me manage the channeling fatigue like Six did back at the canyon?”

  Four looked to Eight, who gave a solemn nod. He turned back to me and did the same.

  That was something, at least. Even if they couldn’t empower the runes themselves, I figured just having two more bodies to share the load with might as much as double the rate at which I could push on from rune to rune.

  Of course, the tiny voice in the back of my mind couldn’t help but point out that it was also wildly dangerous, letting them that close to my exhausted mind, and that this might in fact be exactly what they’d been after all along. But right then, none of that mattered.

  “Fine, then,” I said. “Let’s get started.”

  38

  Stowaway

  Once, during the tyro years, rotating shifts of doceres had kept us awake and running drills for two straight days to impress upon us just how critically our performance could be affected by sleep deprivation. At the end of it, when I’d collapsed into my bed, fully delirious and somehow almost too tired to even fall asleep, I’d been sure there was no way I’d ever experience a deeper exhaustion than what I’d felt that day.

  I’d been wrong.

  It was mid-morning on Haven, and while I was only pushing a few hours past a full day of being awake, the long night of non-stop runework had left me on the stoop of complete incoherence.

  “One hundred,” I groaned, releasing my focus on the lightsteel disk at the center of our circle and letting go of Four’s and Eight’s hands in favor of slumping back against the wall.

  The seemingly intimate contact had long since ceased to be awkward or strange. For the first couple hours, our telepathic meld had been sufficient without it. Then, as the fatigue had built, they’d realized it helped to lay their hands on my shoulders. Eventually, we’d all ended up in a ring on the floor, holding hands like we were attempting to summon spirits from beyond.

  But we were finally done. For the moment, at least. One-hundred gropping cloaking packs in a night, and I could barely see straight anymore. Definitely couldn’t think straight. By the last couple dozen, it had seemed a minor miracle I’d been able to conjure the focus to empower runes at all, but we’d been careful to check each and every one.

  And by careful, I mean it had become a hardwired part of our mostly silent routine for the past several hours. How many hours? I looked at my left palm only to remember the wrist was splinted. I thought about checking my right palm instead, but then I caught sight of the half-empty caffa beside me and my stomach threatened mutiny. It had to be at least the tenth one.

  “Praise Alpha,” Johnny muttered, stumbling blearily over to collect our last cloaking disk. He nearly lost his balance when he bent to pick it up. “You all need to sleep,” he declared, drawing himself up in a wobbly attempt at dignity.

  We all shared a drunken smile. Even Eight’s lips quirked by a sliver.

  Nothing like the most grueling grind of your life to bring you and your natural enemies together.

  I just hoped the hundred cloaking packs would be enough to enable a full strike on Oasis, immediately. The thought of waiting even one day with Elise out there in raknoth hands set my heart thudding so hard I could feel the pulse in my ears—though maybe that had something to do with the caffa and the sleep deprivation as well.

  And hour ago, I’d been both encouraged and worried to learn that scouts had confirmed at least two of Franco and Therese’s potential breeding facility locations to be accurate and active, with decommission operations pending and several more targets likely forthcoming. As good as the news was, I couldn’t help but worry that the sudden perception of having strategic choices might distract the Legion from the urgent need to assault Oasis.

  “Maybe we should do a few more,” I half-said, half-slurred. “Just to be sure.”

  I’d be damned if I was going to see the Oasis campaign delayed for something as simple as not having sufficient cloaks. Maybe I was actually more worried about the fact that we still had no idea where Elise actually was. But I wasn’t ready to stop. Not yet.

  It was only then I noticed the Seekers were already standing.

  “We require rest,” Eight said.

  “That’s an understatement,” Four added, fixing me with a serious dark-eyed stare. “You should get some sleep too. At least an hour or two. You probably don’t need me to tell you you’ll be of more use to everyone that way.”

  “Yeah, well maybe I’m just not equipped to walk away when people are counting on me.”

  The words, in all their tired snippiness, were out of my mouth before I’d even thought about saying them. Not that the Seekers didn’t deserve far worse for everything they’d done in their lives. I was still pretty sure it had been unwise to let them sit front row to ninety-two iterations of everything I’d discovered about rune creation. But I’d been too tired to care properly. And after the night we’d just shared, despite whatever terrible things they’d done, I still felt just like just a little bit of a beardsplitter for letting my temper slip.

  Johnny and Eight were both slightly tensed, apparently expecting a rapid and violent break in our momentary truce, but Four seemed to understand. He waved Eight on, something passing between them, and settled back on the floor with me as she turned her enormous frame hesitantly for the door. I watched him warily, in no mood to be preached to by a professional killer.

  “I’m not going to pretend what we’ve done is right.”

  “Good.”

  The shadow of a grin touched his lips. “Maybe I’m just tired, but for some reason…” He shook his head, seeming to rethink his dire
ction. “How did you feel when you first realized you were… gifted?”

  “I’d just seen my parents murdered by the High General of the Legion. How do you think I felt?”

  He inclined his head in a conciliatory fashion. “But what did you do when you first glimpsed that something had changed in you?”

  “Carlisle taught me how to use it. And to be on the lookout for people like you.”

  He bobbed his head. “Exactly. And what if Carlisle hadn’t found you?

  “I imagine your friend Garrett would have killed me.”

  I could have hit him for the satisfied look on his face as he continued casually nodding along. “At your age, it was a definite possibility. But while you’re imagining, why don’t you go a step farther? Why don’t you imagine how things would’ve been if you’d lost your parents at twelve instead of seventeen. Imagine you hadn’t had Carlisle to show you the way or teach you to control your gift. Imagine it was the clerics of the Sanctum who’d found you living in whatever alleyway hole you’d cobbled together for yourself.”

  “I get the point.”

  “Imagine,” he continued, shaking his head as if to say there were no worldly way I’d gotten the point yet, “that those clerics took you off the streets and clothed you, fed you. Imagine they one day taught you, with the utmost solemnity, that the trauma you’d been through had bestowed you not with a gift, but with a gaping wound through which demons of all shapes and sizes might invade—already had invaded, in fact.”

  I said nothing.

  “Imagine the holy authorities you’d been told all your life to listen to above all else one day told you that you were a monster and that the only way to ever find your way back into Alpha’s grace was to use your curse to shield his blessed children from other monsters like you.”

  “Okay.”

  He shook his head. “Imagine they stripped your cursed name from you, put a whip in your hand, and told you to cleanse yourself in the holy fire of pain until you were ready to accept that truth.”

  My mind flashed to the impossibly dense network of scars on Siren’s bare back. I felt sick. But Four was clearly not done.

  “Imagine they outfitted you with a wearable death sentence,” he sent, fingering the slender collar at his throat, “and told you that, for your own safety, you and your fellow demons would all be killed at the press of a button if any one of you ever stepped too far out of line.”

  “I can’t help but notice you’re still alive.”

  Maybe I was too tired to process everything he was telling me. Maybe I just didn’t want to.

  “We’re not some band of evil murderers, Raish. No more than your Carlisle was the Great Demon our old High Cleric led us to believe.”

  “But you have murdered.”

  “Every bit as much as any legionnaire who’s ever killed on command,” he agreed. “Though I’m fairly certain none of them have ever faced decapitation by explosive collar should they refuse to ob—”

  His mind and voice abruptly vanished from my senses, only to return again a few seconds later. We’d grown used to the telepathic flickers throughout the night—a quirk of having multiple cloaking fields shuffling about, spheres of influence intersecting, overlapping, and apparently forming discrete bubbles within bubbles where one cut into another. I looked around and confirmed this most recent telepathic pocket must’ve happened as the legionnaires carted out another load of the cloaking packs.

  “Anyway,” Four sent, rising to his feet with a slight groan of exhaustion. “I think that’s enough story time for now.”

  That suited me just fine. I couldn’t spare the brainpower right then to worry about what the Seekers might or might not have been through. I certainly couldn’t spare the time to really think about how easily things might have ended up differently if Carlisle hadn’t found me when he did. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder…

  “Do you still believe what they told you? That you’re a monster?”

  He was already halfway to the door, and I was thinking he wouldn’t answer at all when he paused, not turning back.

  “A decade’s instruction is not easily forgotten.”

  I waited a few seconds, but he said nothing else.

  “You and Eight could make a real difference in the coming fight, you know. If you weren’t so set on making your escape.”

  He turned his dark-eyed stare on me, and I was surprised to see a faint grin tugging at his lips.

  “You’re a bit of a condescending beardsplitter, did you know that?”

  For some reason, that put the beginnings of a smile on my face. “I may have heard a rumor or two.”

  “Eight and I have a lot to discuss about our plans moving forward,” he sent, turning back for the door. “For now, I’m going to ask these kind soldiers to guide me back to my bed, and I highly recommend you do the same.”

  I watched him go, wondering if maybe—just maybe—the Seekers weren’t all quite the evil demons I’d always believed. Probably, it was just the sleep deprivation talking. Probably.

  “For the record, man,” Johnny said, appearing in front of me and offering a hand up, “it’s creepy as scud for us bystanders when you mind whisperers just sit there staring longingly into each other’s eyes.”

  I scowled up at him. “Longingly? Seriously?”

  He shrugged and tilted his head toward the legionnaires putting the finishing touches on the last of the cloaking packs. “Creepy either way.” He waved his waiting hand. “Come on. Time for bed, young man.”

  “And you call me creepy,” I muttered, ignoring the hand. “Just a few more. I need to be sure we have enough.”

  “Well, Glenbark already sent her compliments along with a request for the rest of the packs, so I’m thinking that’s probably a good sign. Says she won’t talk to you until you’ve had at least three hours’ sleep, though.”

  “Well, thanks to Siren, I at least still need a new pendant. And what is it with everyone telling me to get some sleep?”

  He scrunched his face. “I dunno, man. Probably has something to do with the fact that you look like I feel.”

  “Ginger?”

  “Har har. But we both need to sleep before we think about entering an active warzone, mystical powers otherw—”

  “Raish. She’s back.”

  Four’s voice cut in through Johnny’s words a second before the ordo prime of the 51st Boars opened the door with a knock and stepped into the entryway. “Another one to see you, Citizen Raish.”

  “Siren,” I hissed.

  The ordo frowned at my apparent precognition. “I don’t even wanna know what club these people are all hanging out in, but the names…” He trailed off at the look on my face. “You want her out of here? Raish?”

  I was already on my feet, moving for the door.

  “Hal?” Johnny said behind me. “What’s going—Siren’s back?”

  “I need to speak with her,” I growled at the ordo prime blocking in my way. Pissed as I was, I barely restrained myself from fighting my way out until I had Siren’s treacherous throat in my hands. But I needed the Legion behind me, now more than ever.

  Arriving at some similar compromise, the ordo’s stern scowl eased a fraction. “You stay in this hall. Understood?”

  I nodded and moved past him as he relayed the command to his troops. Through the doorway, I turned, and there she was, held up at the end of the hallway by the two-fireteam security checkpoint right next to Four. She had a wild look I’d never seen on her—her clothes torn, her face scraped and dirty, and her golden-brown hair tangled and unkempt. Her eyes widened when she saw me stomping down the hall toward her, her hand tracing to the pendant at her breast. My pendant. She’d dialed it in to keep me from attacking her.

  As if that would protect her.

  I was reaching out to wrap her cloaked form in a telekinetic cage and yank her to me when Four’s voice came to me again.

  “She knows where Elise is."

  I drew up short, fists c
lenched tight, trembling with rage.

  At a command from the ordo behind, the legionnaires let the two Seekers past, and they approached me slowly, cautiously until they were within easy speaking distance. Siren refused to meet my eyes, keeping her gaze riveted to the carpet, looking pathetically guilty.

  “She came back to tell you what she’s found,” Four said, glancing at Siren as if wondering what in demons’ depths had compelled her to think that was a good idea. “Just hear her out.”

  “I should kill you for what you’ve done,” I finally managed through a tight throat.

  She just nodded softly, keeping her eyes down, looking on the brink of tears. “Maybe you should. But for what it’s worth, I know where they took her, and it’s not Oasis.”

  Somehow, her obvious guilt only made it worse. I wanted to scream. Wanted to tell her that they wouldn’t have taken Elise anywhere if it hadn’t been for her. But I was too tired, too desperate for this to just be over and done with.

  “Where is she?”

  “That bitch One, the one you call Frosty, she has her at a hybrid facility. A decommissioned hydroelectric plant north of New Amestown.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, stepping closer.

  Four started to take a protective step forward, but Siren laid a hand on his arm. “I followed them over the wall and stowed aboard one of their transports. That’s why I needed your cloak.”

  I tensed, anger swelling, but she pressed on, keeping her eyes averted.

  “I laid low until we were there. I watched them take her inside. Followed them in and saw Frosty. And…” Her face fell at some memory.

  “And what?”

  “And I felt Garrett there too. I think. I couldn’t—”

  I silenced her with a raised hand, not caring one bit in that moment about Smirks or anything else besides Elise.

  “What does Frosty want with her?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head, eyes still averted. “They were chaining her up when I had to run.”

  I was trembling again, my eyes drifting shut of their own accord, terrible images flashing behind my eyelids. “And why the scud,” I growled quietly, “should I trust a single word you’re saying right now?”