by Mel Odom
Her lungs burned for air, but every time she tried to breathe in, there was nothing there. Heat battered her face as the flames sucked in close to her mouth and nose.
Don’t panic, she told herself. But it was one thing to tell herself that while driving on icy roads or deep in enemy territory with security guards nipping at her heels. It was quite another to be calm while asphyxiating.
“Leah!”
She focused on Simon’s voice. Surely he knew she was in trouble. Then again in the heat of combat, he might not have even known. Her senses swam and she knew from experience that she was about to black out.
She tried to choke out his name and couldn’t. She stumbled toward the rooftop’s edge and hoped there were no more demons.
Movement on her right side brought her around. She tried to draw the pistol at her side, but her hands failed her. In the next moment Simon was on her. He wrapped his arms around her and started back down the fire escape he’d climbed.
She was barely aware of him breaking through the window of the apartment there and grabbing the curtains. Leah was surprised they were still there. Curtains, especially heavy brocaded ones like this one, could help people stay warm during the bitter winters spent with no electricity or coal.
Simon called her name but she couldn’t answer. He wrapped her in the curtain and she knew that he was trying to snuff out the flames. She didn’t know if he was successful because she passed out.
* * * *
“Leah.” Simon pulled the curtains from the young woman cautiously. He thought he had all the flames out, but it was possible that fresh air could cause combustion. She didn’t respond, but the oily substance clinging to her armor didn’t catch fire either. His cursory examination of the lightweight personal armor she wore, which fit her like a catsuit with reinforced contact areas at elbows, knees, sternum, and groin, didn’t appear burned through. That was good. However, the flesh on the other side of the flame-retardant barrier could be parboiled.
“Simon,” Danielle called.
“Yes.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“I know.”
“Now.”
Simon didn’t blame Danielle for wanting to leave, but Leah had put her head on the block for them. He wasn’t going to leave her behind. However, he didn’t want to try to move her if it was only going to cause further injury.
“Go. I’ll catch up.”
“That’s not how we—”
“No, it isn’t.” Simon swiveled his head and glared down at her. He knew she could spot him easily up on the fire escape landing through her HUD. Her suit’s AI would have him tagged to make that even easier. “Nothing out here goes as planned every time. You’ve seen that. Get the team home. Get them safe. I’ll be right behind you.”
Danielle hesitated for only a moment, then she showed the good judgment that he’d promoted her to his field second for.
“If you’re not,” she warned, “and I have to track you down, I’m going to kick your butt.”
Simon grinned a little at that. Danielle was a frequent sparring partner. It frustrated her that he was better than she was.
“Good luck,” she called.
“And you.” Simon watched her for any sign of life. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw her chest rise and fall—slightly—but in steady rhythm.
* * * *
Simon searched the black mask and thin helmet that covered her face for a seam or some locking mechanism that would allow him to remove it. None were apparent. When he saw the headset and ocular built into the helmet, he suspected the suit had built-in circuitry much like his armor’s.
With his hand on the side of her head, Simon said, “Access.”
“Accessing,” his suit’s AI responded.
Feedback suddenly juiced across Simon’s HUD. The imaging feature rolled.
“Warning,” the suit’s AI said. “Shock deterrent employed. Access failed.”
Frustration chafed at Simon. He didn’t know if Leah was critically injured or only passed out from shock. There was no way to know if smoke had gotten trapped in her lungs and was damaging them as she struggled for breath.
And he certainly didn’t know how anyone could know he and his team could be set up through her. Or who would want to.
Tenderly, he gathered her into his arms. He didn’t know what she meant to him in this time and place. She was a beautiful woman, and independent. If they’d met at another time or another place, it might have been interesting to see how things would have turned out.
* * * *
He climbed back to the top of the building long enough to pick up her rifle, then carried her against his chest as he went quickly down the fire escape stairs. With the armor boosting his strength, she was practically weightless.
At the bottom of the steps, the 360-degree vision allowed him to see the zombie lurch out of hiding. Its right arm was missing below the elbow. Its face was a wreck. It drew back the long knife it fisted in its remaining hand.
Effortlessly, Simon spun and delivered a reverse kick that crunched through the zombie’s chest and knocked it to the ground. He stepped close to it and raised his foot, intending to smash its head and put an end to the twisted arcane power that gave it a semblance of life.
The thing’s head suddenly shivered and melted. It reformed almost immediately as new features rose from the bloody mess of diseased, dead flesh.
The new face looked angular and raw. The jawbone was long and ridged with a row of bony scales. The mouth was a knife-blade slash. Black eyes glinted with cold indifference beneath a forehead of twisted horns.
“This isn’t over, Templar,” the zombie said.
The voice reminded Simon of the demon down in the basement. He was certain whoever had possessed the man in the building and raised the zombie was also possessing this body now.
“I will find you again,” the demon threatened.
“Tell me where you’ll be,” Simon replied. “I’d be happy to meet you halfway. Until you have the courage to face me, don’t make hollow threats.” He rammed his foot down and smashed through the zombie’s head. When he turned to go, he didn’t look back.
One more demon looking to kill him in a city full of them wasn’t going to make a difference.
* * * *
Leah continued to breathe all the way to the Bond Street tube station. Simon listened to her, but knew it wasn’t what it should have been.
Bond Street had once been an affluent part of the May-fair District. It had risen to prominence during the May Fair market days, when the annual trade fair was moved there for a time; then it had evolved into one of the most prosperous places in all of London.
Simon had gotten to visit the area a few times with his father. The Templar had invested their money and speculated in the markets. Thomas Cross had dabbled in some of those investments.
As a boy, Simon had enjoyed the arcades on Old Bond Street and, later, watching the pretty young women that shopped along Savile Row. Now he wished he’d spent more time listening to his father. After four years, the pain of losing his father on All Hallows’ Eve while he was squandering his rebellious youth in South Africa remained sharp.
He pushed those thoughts out of his mind as he descended the tube’s stairs. He kept Leah from banging against him.
The tube no longer operated. He was pretty certain that since he’d gotten the train loaded with escapees out of the city four years ago no other trains had moved.
Several of the tube lines led to Underground complexes. Many of the Templar areas remained hidden, but the demons remained on the alert for them. If the Templar hadn’t maintained an interest in the city’s architecture, aboveground and below, those hiding places and underground fortresses wouldn’t have existed.
Those places remained hidden for the most part, though the demons had ferreted out some of them. The sacrifices the Templar had made at St. Paul’s on All Hallows’ Eve had been to protect those resources. By dying in such gr
eat numbers, they’d hoped to lull the demons into believing the Templar threat was gone.
For the most part, the Templar threat was. Except that it hadn’t been eradicated as the demons would have wanted. They’d merely moved more deeply underground to reconvene the war at a later date.
When Simon had seen the proposed plan in action, he hadn’t been able to follow through on it. Too many helpless people had remained in London and merely waited to die. In the end, he had taken his leave of the Templar Underground to follow a more proactive stance in helping the survivors reach the ships that ran the coastline in those days.
Those times were long gone now. Other Hellgates had opened up in other parts of the world. The struggle was no longer just for the survival of London, but of the planet.
Danielle and the others waited in the tunnel. They stood ready and waiting around two ATV trucks that had been specially modified from gasoline-powered engines to electromagnetic springwheel power plants. They were based on the Panther MLV but sported several upgrade packages. As a result of the conversion, the ATVs had more power, ran silently, and supported anti-aircraft guns and cannon. They were only one small step removed from tanks.
“Is she still alive?” Danielle asked as she reached down for Leah.
“Yes.” Simon handed her up. “Be careful with her.” He vaulted up into the cargo area after her. “I need some O2 from the medkit.”
One of the other Templar opened the medkit and took out the O2 tank and a mask.
“Open helmet,” Simon ordered. His faceplate dissolved in front of him as it receded to the reservoirs inside his helmet. He suddenly couldn’t see as well in the dark, and the noises in the tunnel sounded different. The air stank and felt hot and doughy against his face.
Leah’s breathing sounded more raspy and desperate to him, but he heard it with his own hearing, not the amplified sound pumped through his sensors. Her efforts sounded strained, but he could better judge how she was doing.
He lifted her head gently and fitted the face mask over her mouth and nose. He knew from past battlefield experience that the suit wasn’t self-contained like his armor. Her mask filtered out a lot of toxins. He just hoped enough O2 could get through the material covering her lower face offset the smoke she’d inhaled. If he could clear her lungs out enough, they’d resume normal breathing. After a nod to the Templar manning the 02 tank, he listened to the hiss of the gas filling the mask. She started breathing with less stress as the 02 saturated her blood.
The ATV got under way with only a slight acceleration. The heavy-duty suspension, also an improvement over the old design, made progress almost smooth and rapid despite the debris left in the tunnels.
Templar manned the machine guns on either side of the vehicle and over the cab.
As he held the mask over Leah’s covered face, Simon leaned his head back against the side of the truck and tried to relax. Their complex, the one he’d help build with his own two hands three and a half years ago, was miles outside of London. Although the trains no longer ran, the tracks still remained.
While he sat there, he tried to think of the names of any enemies he might have made that would have troubled themselves to put a demon onto his trail. Or who would have been able to.
So far none of the demons had made the war between them personal. But a man, although he didn’t have a complete name, did come to mind.
The first time Simon had met him, he’d cut the man’s hand off. When he’d found him again, the man had been wearing a demon’s hand in place of his own.
Simon wasn’t sure where to go looking for a man like that, and wasn’t certain if that effort would be all that helpful. Whoever the man was, he was powerful and deadly.
Seven
For the last eight months, Warren Schimmer had made his home in an older building that had been a brothel on Old Compton Street in the Soho District in the center of the West End of London. Back before the Hellgate opened and he’d been a part-time college student and full-time employee of minimum wage jobs, he’d walked by the place several times while shopping in Chinatown. The prostitutes and their pimps had cleared out as soon as the demons had arrived. Locals had always claimed the area was going to Hell before, but they had no idea of how bad it would actually get.
The zombies he’d raised as his personal guard sat around him on the fine furniture. The building he’d chosen stood five stories tall, narrow and boxy.
In the early days, human squatters had tried to move in on Warren. But the zombies had stopped all those attempts. And there were occasional demon patrols, but most of them were Stalkers and others with minimal intelligence. The zombie presence indicated to them no human was there. A typical zombie could wander randomly through much of London these days. Warren’s skills kept his in place, preventing another demon calling them away. They weren’t good company, but at least Warren felt safe among them.
The rooms were elegantly furnished in red lacquer and black onyx. Improbable portraits and carvings of Chinese heroes and demons decorated the walls. All of it seemed laughable now. There were far worse monsters moving through London these days than had ever been pictured in Chinese mythology.
Warren had chosen a suite of rooms on the fourth floor for himself. He assumed the room had been for special guests. It had a wet bar, which no longer worked but the alcohol supply was intact, a living area, and a balcony. He’d enjoyed the balcony for a few days until he’d nearly been killed by a demon once and almost shot by a London policeman a few days later.
It didn’t do to flaunt his territory to either side locked in the struggle.
So he’d pulled the steel security bars down and settled in to make the brothel his home. With the zombies he left on guard there night and day, the building was clearly off-limits to anyone human that might want to steal what they could of from the desperate people who lived in such places.
Only Warren lived there now.
For a time, he had lived there with Kelli. She had been one of the three flatmates he’d had before the demon invasion. After Merihim had burned him and nearly destroyed him when the Cabalist contact had pulled him into this world, Warren had used his power to make Kelli his guardian. She’d become his zombie thrall, and lived only to care for him.
Almost a year ago, Kelli had given her life protecting Warren while scavenging for food. An Imp had shot her through the heart with some kind of weapon Warren still hadn’t managed to identify. After Kelli had fallen, all without a sound, Warren had used his power to raise her up again.
During the three years he’d held her in thrall, she’d lost most of her personality. Warren had never believed she’d had a personality anyway. She’d always just been loud and argumentative in the flat. He hadn’t cared for any of his flatmates, and they’d suffered with his presence because he paid more than his share of the bills.
After he’d raised her from the dead, he’d brought her back to the brothel house. She hadn’t fared as well as the other zombies he’d raised. He’d noticed differences in the zombies he’d raised. The ones from the older graveyards, the ones interred before embalming became a staple of most funerals, tended to fall apart quickly. If they were together to begin with.
Since Kelli hadn’t been embalmed, natural decomposition had set in. Magic slowed the process, but she was slowly and quietly going to pieces.
Warren could no longer truly bear the sight of her, but he couldn’t get rid of her either. With his childhood a shambles after the murder of his mother and his stepfather blowing his brains out in front of him, followed by a succession of foster homes where he’d only been a monthly stipend and not anything remotely human, Warren clung to familiar things.
Books and movies were his favorites because both were passports to other places that he’d found far more pleasant than his real life. He had vast libraries of them now, and had found generators that allowed him to play them. The soundproof basement—where “special” services involving whips and chains had been rendered—provide
d a safe place to watch them. But it was also a trap for him if anyone discovered him.
At this point, Kelli’s zombie was a familiar thing, too. He couldn’t get rid of her, but he knew at some point she’d be gone. She sat quietly every day in one of the lower rooms and slowly withered away. He only checked on her every now and again.
* * * *
Seated at the ornate desk in the suite, Warren opened the nylon bag the man had carried the book in. Warren reached inside and took the tome out.
The book was large and thick, eighteen inches by fourteen inches by six inches. The leather binding had been dyed virulent purple, but the result—by accident or by design, Warren wasn’t sure—had left the book marked by lines that looked like blood veins.
Then he felt it pulsing in his hand, like the echo of a heart beating slowly and strongly somewhere deep inside.
Fear touched Warren then. Some books had lives of their own. Some were traps. He’d read about them and heard about them from other Cabalists.
All of the books of power were designed to protect themselves.
He ran his hand, his demon’s hand, over the book. A purr vibrated through the still air at the contact. The book felt pleasing to Warren’s touch.
“Are you alive?” he whispered to the book. Even though he’d read about such things, he’d never actually seen a living book.
An eye opened in the center of the book.
Warren slowly drew his hand back.
The eye bulged from the book’s surface and glanced around. Warren almost expected it to sprout legs to run away or wings to fly off. He wouldn’t have truly been surprised.
A mouth opened below the eye. Jagged fangs and a forked black tongue filled it.
“Who are you?” The voice was deep, somber, and slow.
Warren thought about his answer for the briefest moment. True names often carried power, and Merihim had enough power over him.
