by Jenn Stark
She began reciting the words of warding she could remember, her hands held high, her focus intent upon the first of the demons who stepped past the witches, swiping for her, raking the air in front of her face with its long talons. But it came no farther. It screamed as it faltered, but Angela could no longer see it, nor could she see the Serbian witches. Instead, she saw what she always saw when she invoked the words of that terrible night—words, symbols, glowing in the darkness, leaping off the page. Billowing outward with crackling, hissing smoke.
“You dare,” the red-haired witch seethed. Angela hadn’t just been imagining it—there was real smoke in the corridor. The demons cowered, screaming in frustration and pain, but the women stood firm.
“Me?” Angela raged right back. “Who the hell are you to be doing this to any living creature on this earth? Your pact with the horde is to summon them to do your bidding. Your bidding, not the commands of people who would use these creatures to kill for personal gain. I don’t know what code or creed you aspire to, but there can be no honor in what you do. You shame your order and you shame your sisters.”
“You know nothing of what we do and why we do it,” one of the shorter, paler women retorted, her voice cold as steel. Her hands were down now, her arms spread wide, almost as if she was trying to balance herself. “The horde has overrun the world above, and only we can stop them.”
Angela gaped at her. “What are you talking about? The horde isn’t overrunning the world. You are, by helping AugTech turn them into supersoldiers.”
“No,” the witch gasped, her hand fluttering to her neck as she shook her head. The other two did the same. Smoke billowed all around them, and the demons continued howling in rage and pain. If anyone reviewed a video feed of this corridor, would they assume the witches were doing their jobs?
“How long have you been here?” Angela demanded. She spoke in Serbian, she realized with surprise. It had been the language of her captors when she’d been held as a child, the language the demons knew. Were these women the same ones who’d held her all those years ago? Surely not—and yet…
“It has been fifty years since the horde overtook the light and everyone died,” said the red-haired witch, her voice ringing with truth. “Fifty years that we’ve fought to regain control. The demons here are our servants, a lone outpost to turn the creatures against themselves, now that the enforcers have abandoned us.”
“Not fifty years,” Angela countered. “Try a few months. And the enforcers did come. You tried to kill one of them right here, in front of my eyes. The demons went after him rather than remain in your control.”
“False,” the women all said, their voices almost mechanical. The hand of one of the shorter witches fluttered again to her neck, and Angela grimaced. They were bound in some kind of neurological thrall, and together, they were stronger than her. She might have been able to stop the demons from reaching her—she had the same spells they did, and more strength with the fire of Gregori’s healing upon her, but she…
She blinked. Was that the answer? Could she take the energy Gregori had given her, the energy of the empath, and turn it on these women?
“You’ve been lied to,” she said quickly, putting all the emotion she could into the words as she still felt the surge of energy from the Serbian spells whirling around her. “Your sisters are crying out for you, believing you to be dead. Don’t you remember the fires of Ahriman? Don’t you remember the horde ripping through your homes, your families? That wasn’t some long-ago memory from a barely remembered time, that was just months ago. Months when the attack of Ahriman foretold for centuries finally came to pass, and you gave all you could to withstand him.”
“Death—so much death—” moaned one of the short, pale witches.
“But you weren’t killed. You were terribly hurt. Taken, held against your will, poisoned with lies and pain. Your beautiful words twisted to serve a darker purpose, the demons that you called bent to hideous service.”
“No…” the women said, almost as one, but their hands shook, and the demons edged closer—to the witches, not Angela. The women noticed, and fear slid across their faces.
“The pact of demon and witch has lasted throughout time,” Angela said. “Yet now you need technology to hold them to your will? Since when was that required?”
“False,” the red-haired witch hissed, but the others seemed more uncertain.
“You can escape,” Angela said. “You only need to break through the hold AugTech has on you. You can do it. I can help you. I can…heal you. Take your pain as my own.” She had no idea if she could or not, but she reached out for the women, and the nearest one grabbed her hand.
Angela staggered back. The pain was overwhelming, dirty and dank, filled with shame. She hadn’t realized that was the key, but it was with these witches. On some level, they’d known of the atrocities they were committing against their will. They’d always known.
“I forgive you,” she whispered. “Fly.”
The witches turned and raced back through the throng of demons—while the demons themselves fled forward, past Angela toward the potential exit at the top of the hall.
Holding her breath, Angela dashed up the corridor, following the demons, trying to vault over as much of the blood as she could, though the floor was coated in it. She faltered on something wet and slippery, and her stomach lurched again, but it wasn’t her own blood she skidded through. Instead, pools of black goop glistened on the concrete, the thick spatter of sludge tracking chaotically all around. Gregori had definitely been here. She didn’t think any of the demons had been ordered to turn on themselves, which meant it’d been him standing alone against all of them. How had that even been possible? Just how fierce was the mighty demon of the Syx?
Steeling her guts, she started moving down the hallway—tentatively at first, and then with greater speed as she realized the throngs of demons were rapidly diminishing. Was this seriously an exit for them? Or if not, where were they all going?
There was only one answer, of course. They were going after Gregori. There must be something that AugTech wanted from him that was worth losing their precious army…or, worse, they’d figured out something else to use against him.
“No,” she whispered. She passed doorway after doorway, instantly knowing that Gregori had come this way. Each room she passed looked as if a tornado had blown through it, and the wreckage left behind crackled and burned. The smears of demon goop continued as well, and ahead of her, the fleeing demons shifted away from the walls and danced across the floor. Clearly, they were aware of the danger they were racing toward, and yet they couldn’t stop. The control that Filmore and the witches enslaved by AugTech exerted over the horde overrode even their inborn drive for self-preservation. How strong that must be! And how in the world could anyone break an instinct like that?
She stumbled past the next room, then stopped abruptly, startled to see it was occupied by a woman roughly her age, wrapped in the same woo-woo scrubs as the witches who’d attempted to hold her. The woman turned as soon as Angela hesitated, and her eyes caught Angela short. They were far darker than they should have been, given her skin and hair color, and her hands seemed to be smoking.
“Witch,” gasped Angela.
The woman swayed. “I…I don’t know what’s happening,” she whispered. Blood stained her clothing. Slight and almost translucently pale, with soft blonde hair cut brutally short, she kept blinking those jet black eyes that threw off her whole appearance. “But I…I was told your name. Told to come for you. To protect you.”
Gregori? Angela wondered, then immediately doubted herself. More likely another trap laid by Martin Filmore.
“Why should I trust you?”
The woman smiled sadly, wincing as she raised her hand to rub her neck. “You shouldn’t. I think a demon, um, forgave me up in the corridors above, so clearly I’ve gone insane. I was supposed to control the electronically enhanced demons there, but…but instead, I was sent down
here to get you. I do know the way out, though. Beats getting attacked down here.”
Something in her voice made Angela exhale. It had to be Gregori she was talking about. But she also knew something the woman didn’t.
“First things first.” She dashed over to the trashed medical cabinet, searching and finding what she needed: a scalpel. When she turned back to the witch, the woman’s eyes were wide.
“You want to be free? Free of whatever’s inside you?” Angela demanded.
“I can now. I didn’t…” The woman shook her head. “None of that matters now. But I can take the pain. There’s a spell we used at the beginning, before we lost the sense of ourselves—”
“Then use it.” Angela moved toward her, gripped in the thrall of Gregori’s abilities—Gregori’s, not hers, which allowed her to see the woman as a creature of light and beauty, with one very unbeautiful anomaly in her neck, beeping and gyrating like a living thing. She didn’t hesitate but sliced through the woman’s skin and popped the device free. It fell on the ground, quivering, and the woman stomped on it, her hand going to her neck as her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth moving quickly. A second later, she opened her eyes again, and they seemed far clearer, sharper. Aware.
“Come now—quickly,” she said, and raced from the room.
Together, they ran up the hallway, and with each step toward Gregori, Angela felt better, stronger. They blew right past the elevator and instead followed the tracks the demons made up an access staircase, the trailing goop proving far more resilient than the demons themselves.
To Angela’s surprise, the witch didn’t hold back and instead joined the ranks of the demons, who shifted and shuddered away from her. “What are you—”
“No time.” The woman waved her off. “Shh.”
A moment later, the crowd of demons slowed down, even as their excitement ratcheted up. Angela strained forward and noticed something else. There was something different about these demons. They retained their human forms even though their brethren would have long since converted to their demon forms. But though they appeared human on the outside, she could see, smell, breathe the heavy pressure of demon around her.
“What are these things?” she muttered, and the witch beside her turned, her gaze flashing an expression of utter despair for the barest moment before shifting back to flat resolution.
“They’re the Possessed,” the woman said. “They’re humans, but taken. An abomination that should never have been allowed.” As she talked, she continued pushing through the crowd. The creatures started huffing, shifting back and forth, their howls and moans building.
“Why aren’t they bothering us?” Angela whispered. They passed more of the Possessed, and the nearest man turned to them, his nostrils flaring as his wild eyes tracked them. He was practically quivering with excitement, but he didn’t move.
“Their instincts are being overridden twice over. First, they’re not attacking us, though we’re fresh meat and in better condition than some of the humans they’re possessing. Second, they’re way too eager to tangle with a Syx. Except a Syx is the only thing that can hurt them.”
“But they did that before,” Angela said. “The regular demons were attacking Gregori even though they didn’t stand a chance against him.”
“That was different. Those demons were controlled by AI and had made the realization that there is, in fact, a fate worse than death. This group is human at its core. The host doesn’t understand what a Syx is, but its demon does. They’re not being controlled by AI, they’re being controlled by witches and…”
The woman stopped so abruptly, Angela swung her gaze to her. “What?”
“They’re human,” she breathed, stricken. “A Syx can’t kill a human, even one rotting from the inside due to its demon controller… Shit. This is bad.”
The witch fell silent as they finally reached the door and squeezed through, and Angela realized they were on the first floor of the facility, the doors opening onto some kind of lobby. Escalators, tiled floor, and collections of sitting areas belied the frightening scene that unfolded before her. Gregori, standing in the center of the group, surrounded by demons that were not quite demons, all of them huffing and stomping, building themselves up to an attack. They growled, they yowled, they pressed toward him, while Gregori stood in the center of the group—and bent his head forward, lifting his hands wide in apparent absolution of his soon-to-be attackers.
Martin Filmore’s voice broke over the crowd.
“Now,” he said.
The creatures rushed forward.
26
Gregori pounded through the last set of metal doors, then skidded to a stop, his arms windmilling to slow his forward motion enough for him to get his bearings. He was in some sort of lobby—on the first floor, thank everything holy, and he would have wept to see the sun again if he’d had time. The nightmare he’d seen belowground at this facility had made him wonder if there was anything but darkness left in the world, but as it had since the world had first begun, the appearance of the sun restored hope to a faltering soul.
Even his.
He turned, coming to grips with this new battlefield. It was filling rapidly, and he could tell at a glance that the humans had learned as quickly as he had from the demonstration below. There were virtually no true demons in the crowd that faced him, augmented with artificial intelligence or otherwise. Instead, he faced a throng of Possessed, their eyes wild, their breathing labored. Some had clearly been possessed for a while, ground down under the weight of their demon infiltrator, but some were freshly taken. Both types were dangerous in their own right. A newly Possessed was erratic, impossible to predict, particularly if the human host continued to resist. A worn-down Possessed moved like it was broken, but in truth, it was stronger than steel, willing to subject its body to startling pain at the urging of its demon. It would have grown numb to everything but the will of the evil that possessed it.
It was that will that Gregori would be facing now.
He’d done so many times before, but never alone. With the Syx at his side, he could dispatch even this horde with relative ease—doing some damage, inevitably, but far less damage than the horde would inflict if allowed to stay inside their human hosts. But that wasn’t an option with this group. He couldn’t betray any information about the Syx to these humans. And, though the archangel remained silent and apart, Gregori knew why.
So far, the humans didn’t know anything about the Syx other than what they’d been able to pull out of the demons they’d interrogated—demons they could torture eternally and not kill. But demons knew nothing but lies and would say anything to avoid pain. They also could manipulate the humans who were torturing them. Eventually, the humans here would have figured out that their intelligence was useless. The witches would provide them with more data, but their data was also hearsay—the covens and the Syx interacted very rarely. Which meant that if the humans wanted legit intel, they had to take down Gregori.
That wasn’t going to happen.
He eyed the Possessed surrounding him, knowing what was to come. They would rush him all at once. It was their only move. The first ring was largely made up of the more long-term enslaved, those humans that could be pushed into a roaring blaze without much effort, but the second consisted of the wild-card Possessed, those new to control. Gregori had to be prepared for them to attack at once, clawing through the first ring to reach Gregori and destroy him.
And that was their goal, he realized. Their goal, not their human overlords’. The humans wanted him alive but incapacitated, but the demons didn’t so much care about that. For the first time in their existence, they had a chance to kill a Syx. And they would sacrifice their human hosts in a heartbeat to do so.
Fire of God, this was going to be tricky. He had released his own summoned demons after the destruction of AugTech’s labs was finished, but…he might be needing them again.
Something shifted in the distance, and Gregori stiffened, knowing
immediately that Angela was there. Angela and another human, damaged but not possessed. The knowledge that two of God’s children still stood against their oppressors made him straighten with pride and hope, renewed energy pouring through him. He might not survive the coming trial, but he had done this, at least. Two of the blessed now stood shoulder to shoulder, their fire and resilience reaching him over the hunched and shuffling backs of the Possessed. He couldn’t kill a human, but he could set them free to fight their own battles, even as he fell.
“Now.” The order came through the overhead speaker, and the effect was immediate. The entire group rushed forward, the long-term Possessed quickly overtaken by the humans more recently violated, their panic and pain much more intense as it swept over Gregori well in advance of the bodies hitting him.
Born of long habit, his initial reaction was to remove the demons from the Possessed and cast them across the veil, and he was able to do that for the first several that attacked. Black goop flew as humans toppled, their screams of horror and bewilderment cresting over the howls and yammering of the other Possessed. Some of the horde naturally strained back, their overwhelming compulsion toward self-preservation momentarily overtaking their orders, but with a crackle of electricity, they too joined the fray, the renewed frenzy of their attack pushing the closer lines forward until too many spilled into Gregori’s reach for him to attack quickly.
At that point, he knew what he had to do. There was nothing for it. He had no option but to do the unthinkable, what Angela had offered up with the guilelessness of a human who had ever and always been one of God’s beloved children. Among all his other treasured gifts, the Father had given humans the power of his own almighty grace, a grace they so rarely used.
