by Mel Odom
When Lilith was completely gone from sight, Warren concentrated on the body he still had hold of. He felt the power within it. It was so strong that there was no escaping it.
Jade fog poured into the room and obscured the surroundings. As Warren watched, the corpse took a breath, inhaling the fog. In the next moment, the dead woman’s eyes fluttered open, and Lilith stared at him from within the desiccated corpse.
“Very good,” she whispered dryly. She stopped floating and stood on the ground in her bare feet. “I…am still…very weak…in this…form. I cannot…allow that.” She looked down at her cadaverous body. “You will…continue…to protect…me. I shall…reward you.”
Warren thought fleetingly of turning and running. Lilith was too frail to pursue him. But as he gazed into her eyes, he felt certain she knew what he was thinking. He also knew that she was far more educated in the use of the arcane forces that he’d only lately started tapping into. Without help, he wouldn’t learn everything he needed to in order to survive quickly enough.
“All right,” he said. He felt Naomi’s eyes boring into the back of his skull and knew that she was opposed to his decision.
The corpse tried to smile, but her lips resembled dehydrated worms. She appeared more horrid than ever. “Good.”
She turned and walked to the wall behind her. Her body was so dry and tight that Warren heard ligaments crack. She touched the wall slowly, arthritically, and a section slid open with a grating crunch.
“Take…these,” she said, waving toward the contents of the hidden space.
Warren took his torch back out and pointed it into the space. A spear made of black obsidian, a leather robe, and a pendant with the horned head of a demon Warren didn’t recognize lay inside. He took all three items out.
“The coat…provides protection,” Lilith said, “from arcane forces…and weapons. The pendant…is a foci…that will enable…you to use…the powers that you…command…with greater efficiency. And the…spear…can pierce…demon hide…like it was…tissue…despite physical…or arcane defenses. Worse than that, it will pull them into the spear and make it even stronger.”
Warren took off his other coat and pulled the robe on. He immediately felt more protection from the bitter cold that filled the underground structure. But he didn’t care for the robe’s appearance at all. He wished it looked more stylish, like a long overcoat.
Almost immediately, the coat altered its look, becoming a dark trench coat.
“It responds…to your wishes,” Lilith said. “So…does…the fit.”
Now that he thought about it, Warren was certain he wasn’t looking for a good fit. He was looking for something that would protect him. But the fit had been so good, he hadn’t even marveled as its changing to suit him there as well.
“The time…has come…for us…to return…to the city,” Lilith went on. “There is…much…we have left…to do.”
Warren wasn’t looking forward to the long walk.
“We aren’t…walking,” Lilith said. “I would…rather get there…sooner.”
“I’m all for that,” Warren said.
Guttural noises cascaded through Lilith’s throat. Her voice sounded like rusty nails being pulled from a two-by-four. When she finished, she gestured, and a glowing, six-foot scarlet oval irised open in midair. It looked like a glowering lizard’s eye, but Warren felt the power it contained.
“What’s that?” Naomi asked.
“A portal,” Lilith wheezed in her rusty voice. “It will…transport us…back to London. But we…must…be careful. Power this…strong…can be…sensed…by demons. They will…rush to it.”
“If we walked back,” Warren reasoned, “we could get back inside the city with no one the wiser.”
“Walking back means trying to pass by that village again,” Naomi said. “The one where you raised all their dead into your own private army? I don’t think they’ll just let you pass.”
Warren suspected that was true.
“Not only that,” she continued, “but Miss Creaky Bones here isn’t up for running for our lives if it comes to that.”
Lilith glowered at Naomi. “You presume…too much, woman.”
Warren stepped protectively in front of Naomi but didn’t say anything.
With a snarl, Lilith whipped her glower to Warren. “You should…pick your friends…more wisely…in the future.”
“I don’t think any of us had a real choice,” Warren replied. “Until something better comes along, we’re going to make do.”
Lilith held his gaze for a moment, then she nodded. “Until…such time.” Then she turned and slowly strode into the portal.
Warren waited to see if there were going to be any ill effects, but Lilith simply vanished. He took a deep breath and started forward.
Naomi pulled him back.
“What?” he asked.
“How do you know she’s not going to put us in the demon world?”
“Because I don’t think that’s where she wants to be.” Warren pointed at the wavering oval. “And if we don’t hurry, that may close. Like you said, it’s a long walk back to London.”
“Maybe it’s worth it. To be rid of her, I mean.” Her eyes held Warren’s. “She doesn’t mean you any good, no matter what you think.”
“I never once thought that.” Warren gripped the obsidian spear more tightly. He felt the vibrant arcane energy in it, and it only made him want more. “I can learn from her for now. I learned some things from Merihim.”
“You’re not safe with them.”
“I’m not any safer with the Cabalists. None of them trust me.”
“I do.”
Warren looked at her and felt sadness at the untruth in her words. But he didn’t say anything. He wished Naomi did, but he didn’t blame her for being unable.
“I could,” Naomi amended. “Given time.”
“You’ll trust me more,” he replied in a flat voice, “when I know more. That’s how this has always worked with you. Now, make up your mind. I’m going.” He held the spear in one hand and stepped into the oval.
Intense heat blazed through Warren. He tried to scream in agony, but he didn’t know if he’d managed that. Electricity vibrated and jerked through his body and he felt his limbs twitching spastically.
However, the spear remained cool in his hand. He focused on it and used it as his anchor. Red light dawned around him, only slightly paler than the oval. In the light, he saw demonic faces stretched and squashed and turned inside out. He smelled their foul breath and heard the threats they made and their cruel laughter.
He searched for Lilith and Naomi, but he found neither of them. For a time, he felt lost. Then the portal suddenly ended, and he was vomited out into free fall.
Off balance, Warren tried to remain on his feet and failed. He viewed a spinning panorama of a city street covered over with wrecked, burned-out hulks that had once been vehicles. Then the rough asphalt bit into the palms of his hands. The impact against the ground, then against the alley wall, knocked the breath from him and caused the wounds on his chest to hurt again.
Only a few feet away, Lilith got to her feet in a painful and disjointed way that held no grace or strength. Warren used the obsidian spear as a brace to force himself to his feet. A moment later, Naomi materialized in midair and tumbled to the ground.
A handful of armed ragged men and women hunkered fearfully in the alley. All of them pointed their weapons at Warren.
“Demon lover!” one man accused in a harsh voice. He squeezed the trigger of his pistol, and the sharp report filled the alley.
Warren barely had time to get his shield up. The bullet froze in midair less than a foot in front of his face, then dropped to the ground. Scared and angry, Warren gathered the arcane energy inside him and pushed at the man. Invisible force slapped into the man and knocked him backward through a pile of debris. When he stopped moving, no life remained within him.
“Run!” one of the women yelled. They
ran, and Warren gratefully let them. He didn’t relish killing when he didn’t have to.
“You should have killed them all,” Lilith said.
“There was no need.”
“It would have served them right.”
“We scared them.”
Lilith shook her head. “They scared themselves. We just became targets of convenience for them.”
“Let’s get home,” he suggested. “I want to sleep in a warm, dry bed for a change.”
“There is much to do,” Lilith said. “Now that I have returned, some of the Dark Wills will hunt me.”
“I’ve got good defenses at my house. You know that. You helped me construct them.”
Despite the nausea her body caused in him, Warren offered her his arm. She hesitated for a moment, then took it. Together, with Naomi in tow, they made their way back to his building along the alleys and side streets of Central London.
TWENTY-EIGHT
L eah struggled between nightmares and wakefulness. Drug-induced fatigue wrapped her brain in layers of thick cotton that kept the world away. She thought she heard the bleating of hospital machinery, but she wasn’t sure. Some distant part of her knew that she should hear such things.
“Breathe,” Simon said.
Some of the anxiety that the nightmares had left with her disappeared. Simon was there, just as he’d promised. If he’d asked, she would have told him that she never doubted him for an instant. But she had.
“Deep breaths,” he told her. “Blow out. You’ve got to get the rest of the anesthetic out of your lungs.”
“Am I going to be in pain?” she mumbled. “Because if I’m going to be in pain, that whole waking up thing doesn’t sound so brill.”
Simon chuckled. “No pain. I promise. The physician who talked to me said you might experience headaches for a few days till your body adjusts, but nothing truly horrible.”
Leah hoped not. It was one thing for her to fraternize with a confirmed risk, but it would be another for her to admit she’d had surgery done by them. But to be able to see again…
“How did it go?” she asked. “Was the operation successful?”
“Everything went swimmingly, I’m told.”
“Do I still look human?”
“Yes.”
Leah hesitated. “Can I see? Am I not still blind?”
“Open your eyes.”
She wanted to, but she was afraid. It bothered her that she was afraid. Fear was one of the first things she’d learned to control, and to use. She knotted her hands into fists.
Simon wrapped her right fist in his big hand. “Just open your eyes,” he told her.
Swallowing hard, Leah told herself it wouldn’t matter if she was still blind. Or if her vision wasn’t as good as she’d been promised it would be. She’d had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
She opened her eyes. Instantly, she noticed how bright the recovery room was. She raised a hand to block the light from her eyes.
“It’s bright in here,” she said.
“To both eyes?”
Leah closed one eye, then the other. She saw through them both. Smiling but still brain-fogged from the anesthetic, she turned to Simon. “I can see,” she whispered. “I can really see.”
“Good,” he said, smiling back. “The next step is going to be getting you back onto your feet.”
Simon stared at the glowing energy field on the lab tabletop. It was roughly oval, about eighteen inches across at its widest point.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” he said.
“That’s an energy field capable of keeping demons away,” Macomber replied. “The Goetia manuscript referred to it as a…Node. It was the most apt name we could agree on.”
“This thing keeps demons away?” Nathan leaned on the table and studied the energy field.
“In theory at least,” Brewer said. “Reality’s yet to be tried.”
“If we can get this energy field under control,” Macomber said, “we can set up areas that the demons won’t be able to invade.”
“They’d have to be awfully short people,” Nathan said dryly.
“This is just a prototype,” Brewer retorted. “Once we understand the forces we’re dealing with, we can build it bigger.”
“How does it work?”
Macomber shook his head. “We believe that it sets up a harmonic dissonance.”
“Sound waves?” Simon asked.
“Yes,” Brewer replied. “A combination of lasers, masers, and arcane energy create the sound waves.” He shook his head. “I have to be honest, Lord Cross, even as technically advanced as the Templar are, we were barely able to create this thing. We’re not certain it even functions properly.”
“You say it creates a harmonic,” Nathan said.
“That’s correct.”
“I can’t hear or feel anything.”
Simon couldn’t, either. He tapped into his suit’s audio field and heard a high-pitched whine that threatened to give him a splitting headache almost immediately. He broke the connection.
“You’re not supposed to hear anything,” Brewer said. “You’re human.”
“Only demons can hear this?”
Brewer nodded. “Without aid, yes. We’ve been able to detect the sound range on other equipment.”
“So it’s like a dog whistle? Hurts the demons’ ears?”
“According to the manuscript,” Macomber said, “this field does much more than that.” He tapped the computer keyboard and brought up a new image on the wall.
Simon studied the image and saw a monstrous demon take shape. The giant creature in the picture confronted a glowing shield. Half of its arm had been melted away. “I don’t remember seeing this in those pages.” He’d studied the manuscript as well.
“The picture was encrypted in the manuscript,” Brewer said. “Professor Macomber found it.”
“I wouldn’t have found it if you hadn’t caught on to the code.”
Brewer shrugged modestly, but he stood up a little straighter. “It was a joint effort. And a lot of work. The code was set up to emulate the points on a graph, which—when connected—gave us this image. Quite ingenious, actually.”
“What’s happening to the demon?” Simon asked.
“As near as we can figure it,” Macomber said, “this harmonic can be adjusted not only to defend an area and establish a defensive perimeter but also can be used as a weapon. Contact with the Node causes the demons to discorporate on a cellular level.”
“Or transports them elsewhere,” Brewer said. “Until we see it actually function, we’re not going to know.” He shrugged. “It’s possible we won’t know then.”
“Is it portable?”
“No,” Macomber said. “You were thinking of using it as a tactical weapon?”
Simon nodded.
“A demon death ray would be a very brill thing,” Nathan said.
“When a Node is built,” Brewer said, “like this one, it locks into the earth’s electromagnetic fields. The harmonic projection depends on the stability of that field. If you move this Node”—he reached through the lights and moved the Node slightly, and the bright energy field disappeared—“even slightly, you will lose it.”
“So when you get to the point that you could build a field big enough to protect people or a structure,” Nathan said, “you’re going to have to make sure the Node is settled in permanently.”
“Yes,” Macomber said. “And it can’t just be one Node. In order to protect something as large as a building, it will necessitate several Nodes working together to create a field large enough to handle the demons.”
“How long before you can create a Node that I can take out and field test?” Simon asked.
Brewer and Macomber looked at each other. “A few days. Surely no more than that.”
“All right. Let me know when it’s ready. We need to know where we stand with this before we spend any more time on it.”
Three days later,
the doctor released Leah from the hospital. She was glad of that because lying abed as a patient had never been easy for her. Simon visited her when possible, but his visits were infrequent and short. And he always seemed distracted. She didn’t fault him for that, though. She knew he had his hands full trying to take care of his Templar and those they’d sworn to protect.
Being ambulatory again meant she could spend more of the day with him. But not all of it. There were still a lot of things that he did without her. That was frustrating, but she understood it. If he’d been the only one at risk, she felt that he would have trusted her. The other Templar wouldn’t have been quite so generous, though.
In the mornings, they had breakfast together and Simon made the rounds of the complex. Then they had lunch, which was generally interrupted by someone who needed information or permission. After that, they separated. Leah worked with the rehab teams to get her eye/hand coordination and depth perception back in sync.
One of the interesting conundrums of having the replacement eye was that it became her dominant eye. Shifting her reactions to that eye took hard work and diligence, but it came quickly.
In the evenings, Leah met up with Simon as he drilled and worked with the young Templar. She didn’t take part in the sword classes because she had no urge to take up the sword. The Agency believed in guns, the bigger the better, and she was trained on all of those. While Simon put his young students through their paces, Leah worked out, regaining strength she’d lost after her initial injury and the follow-up surgery.
Afterward, she and Simon worked on martial arts forms and ran through self-defense sparring matches. Being physical with him felt good and right. He didn’t hold back. He used his size and strength against her, and she knew that he went at her with everything he had because the demons were even bigger than he was. If she couldn’t defend herself against him, she wouldn’t be able to hold her own against a demon.
She got her shots in because she was quick and creative. But time after time, Simon’s prowess in close was too much for her to handle.
“I’m much better at a distance,” she said during one of their rest sessions. “Give me a rifle and you wouldn’t stand a chance.”