The head of the family, Marcos Faust, was apprehensive, although he hid it well beneath his stern demeanor. His hand was dotted with painful black boils and instantly Rochestri knew that this was no deception. Marcos’ body was already being eaten away by exposure to the stone.
Rochestri could feel the fume of anticipation boiling off of his adjunct. Officially, the stone did not exist. All documents pertaining to it had been purged millennia ago and only the Marshals retained any parchment about it. It was an unholy object created by the Grand Arsonist, Damian Riter, an attempt to physically bridge the gap between the material world and the ether the way the mind of a psychic could and thousands of psychics were sacrificed in its creation. It wasn’t just a conjuration tool, it was the conjuration tool. So naturally, the Fausts would have to be purged once the sale was complete.
Beneath his masked expression Rochestri chuckled to himself. He was the only person alive who knew that the stone had been lost somewhere on the ashes of Correll. It was nearly impossible that some geologic surveyor had just stumbled onto it, or traded it from whatever Gunoi tribe may have wandered off with it. The chances of it were astronomical. It was even more unlikely that Rochestri could be fortunate enough to simply buy it back before any of his peers became aware of it. Rochestri silently wondered if perhaps this cosmic good fortune meant that the Luminarch really was with him after all.
With a slow hiss the hot-room sealed itself at both ends and introductions were made.
Marcos approached the transparent wall, his sons and brother flanking him by rank, and awaited Rochestri’s approach. Rochestri left his attendant staff behind him and walked up, breaking straight through both the outer and inner ring without so much as a gesture. Marcos was visibly offended.
“Your customs mean little to me,” Rochestri said coldly, sensing the reason. “They survive only because those in my order tolerate their continued existence. Unless you wish me to reconsider that tolerance, you would do well to set your feelings aside.”
Rochestri watched Marcos chew on that statement for a moment. Anger at the offense mixed with anger from knowing that he was completely impotent to do anything about it. It was an emotion Rochestri loved to see in the people he dealt with.
“I am prepared to offer you two hundred million confederate Taries in exchange for the stone,” Rochestri began, getting down to business.
“Your offer is generous,” Marcos began, a slight tremble in his voice, “but credits will be of little value when the Tyrant sector falls. May I suggest a form of wealth that is more stable?”
Rochestri’s estimation of Marcos went up a notch. Terran credits would be worthless if the war was lost. Still, paying him with confiscated credits from Kall would have been the simplest solution for Rochestri.
“There are hereditary lands on Denosha that belong to a family unworthy of them. It is within my power to appoint a new family to preside over their lands and factories,” Rochestri offered.
“I find your offer very flattering, but Denosha lies far too close to Terra for our purposes,” Marcos explained. Rochestri felt the man’s careful choice of words. What he really meant was, ‘being too close to the destruction of Terra.’
“Perhaps you know of another family whose domain would please you,” Rochestri suggested, indicating that he could invent a reason to dispose of anyone whose lands Marcos deemed worthy. Marcos recoiled slightly at the thought of it and Rochestri relished the daunting nature of true power.
“We have a planet and family in mind,” Marcos admitted, “but we wish to unite our two families, not replace them.”
Rochestri reached in his coat pocket and the Faust family became visibly tense. Rochestri took out his lighter and lit a fresh cigarette. Everyone slowly breathed a sigh of relief.
His adjunct stepped forward and opened a suitcase, revealing a fortune in precious gemstones and platinum bars.
“Would this be more to your liking, Mr. Faust?” Rochestri asked, blowing smoke into the air.
“This appears to be...adequate,” Marcos responded, failing to keep the greed out of his eyes.
Carmen stepped forward and opened up her suitcase, revealing the shimmering stone within. At first the surface appeared red, but upon closer inspection the surface looked like a miniature ocean, rippling with waves and currents of crimson and black. Occasionally faces appeared wearing agonized expressions. It was painful to look at for very long.
The adjunct placed his suitcase in the column and Carmen did likewise. The receptacle housings slid shut and locked into place. Rochestri walked over and placed his hand on the acceptance rune, while Marcos did the same.
Unbeknownst to any of them, at that very moment, thousands of light years away, on a world covered with ash, the first rays of sunrise had just landed on the ruined remnants of the Royal Palace of Correll.
Rochestri’s soothsayer screamed aloud, dropping to her knees and curling up in pain. The air grew thick and heavy, filled with mewing and chittering noises. The adjunct came to the soothsayer’s aid, but her body’s convulsions made it difficult for him to hang onto her.
For his part, Rochestri tapped the acceptance rune and yelled at Marcos to do the same, but his voice was swallowed up in the whirling energies that filled and saturated the room. The Fausts drew their weapons, looking around in terror, as if an attack could come from any direction.
Just as quickly as they had begun, the gyrations stopped and for a moment the room seemed to return to normal.
There was a deep thud, rocky and heavy, the vibrations moving up from the floor into their spines. Rochestri felt his sweat grow cold; he knew this kind of presence all too well.
“A demonic summoning?” he asked his soothsayer, for confirmation, spitting out his cigarette.
The soothsayer lifted her face, blood trickling out from her ears and nose. “An immor’ereal,” she whispered, “summoned inside a body of flesh.”
Another thud, stronger than the first. The whole room seemed to shake. The exit to the Fausts side of the room buckled inward.
“That is not possible,” Rochestri whispered.
The Fausts scrambled about, training their weapons on the weakened door.
Rochestri ran to the exit of his side, but the heavy reinforced door had no handle. “Get this thing opened now!” he commanded his oracle.
“I cannot slice into it, it has no wireless connection,” the oracle responded.
“The door won’t open until the transaction is complete,” the adjunct recalled.
“So, this is a trap, after all,” Rochestri spat.
The door burst apart, large heavy chunks of it sliding across the floor digging deeply into the ferrocrete. Through the smoke and dust, a woman walked in. All marveled for a moment as they looked on her. Her skin was a flawless white, like a bewitching polished stone. Her white hair grew long, down to her ankles and hung around her like a lion’s mane. Her eyes and lips, in striking contrast to her skin and hair, were a bright red. Her beauty was as striking as it was otherworldly. The bullet wound in her temple closed itself as she stood up to her full height, towering over them, easily over seven feet tall. She held up her hands, each finger now ending in a razor sharp claw. Extra appendages sprouted forth from her back, tearing great holes in the dress she wore. The limbs grew hideously fast and strong, thick slabs of muscle lying on top of newly formed bones. They settled into the shape of giant white wings, like a bat. A long white tail grew out behind her, swishing powerfully back and forth.
The Fausts opened fire, their bullets and energy blasts bouncing off her enticing skin. The woman roared, revealing a mouth full of needle-like teeth and leapt onto Brannon, smashing him into the ground with such force that the ferrocrete shattered beneath him.
Smoke and dust were quickly filling up that side of the hot-room. Bodies were thrown around like rag dolls, smashing into the walls and floor. The screams of the humans overshadowed by the unholy howling of the demon itself.
“What
kind of demon is it?” Rochestri asked his soothsayer.
“It is the shunned, the despised, the discarded. None will ever sing praises to its name, or envy its form. It is she who was plucked from the light and cast into the darkness.”
The glowing seal on the monster’s collarbone glowed brightly with demonic energy. Slowly it grew and spread as she fought.
Rochestri’s staff knew what to do without being told. Each of them took out a small silver skull, the symbol of their office and began chanting. Rochestri did the same. As they spoke in the ancient Ashtari tongue the skulls melted away, as if they were made of mercury and flowed forward with a life of their own. On the ground around the demon, a runic circle began to take shape. Ancient and powerful symbols traced along its inner and outer edges. On the ceiling above her, another formed. Each of the four walls grew a circle as well.
The banishment spell completed, Rochestri opened his eyes again. Silver fire thundered from each of the circles, bathing the demon at once from all six directions. The demon bellowed and bayed. Her form scrambled and distorted, like a picture taken out of focus, but did not dissolve.
When the flames finally ceased, Rochestri and his staff fought to stay on their feet. The demon was bent over with pain, breathing heavily.
“It’s still there,” the adjunct said aloud, in amazement.
“Why didn’t the banishment spell work?” Rochestri asked his soothsayer.
“I...I don’t know,” the soothsayer stammered. “It should have sent it back to the world it came from. If it didn’t work that would mean this is the world it belongs in. But...that would have to mean that this demon was born in this world.”
“Impossible,” Rochestri whispered.
The demon looked up, its lustrous red eyes shining brightly from within.
“I’m getting a tight sphincter here, boss,” the adjunct vocalized.
Rochestri drew his pistols. “Prepare for...”
The demon leapt forward, shattering through the transparent wall and column. Rochestri and his staff fired their weapons, but by that time both of his cyber-priests had already been killed in a blur of claw and wing.
“It’s too fast, slow it down,” Rochestri commanded as he fired. His soothsayer planted a stake of pure silver into the ground and began chanting. A sphere of holy energy expanded out, filling the entire room. The blur of the demon slowed down, but it was leaping straight at Rochestri.
Fast as thought, he fired as the beast descended down upon him. The blessed bullets in his pistols dug deep into the demon’s flesh as it crashed down on top of him.
Rochestri was thrown back, but with a command he activated the arcane devices in his boots, which sped up with a whirr. Golden energy encased him and he came to a halt in the center of the room. Dropping his pistols he locked his hands in hers, matching the demon’s strength.
His adjunct flicked his hand and a nearly invisible thread fell from the tips of his prosthetic fingers. He whipped the threads out at the held demon, their tips slicing effortlessly through the ceiling with ancient energies as they came down.
The demon wrapped her tail around the praying soothsayer and tossed her aloft. The adjunct realized his mistake and tried to withdraw his attack, but it was too late. The threads wrapped around the screaming woman and her body simply came apart.
Rochestri yelled in frustration, his pistols were crushed under the demon’s grip, but still he held her back. With a click, hidden silver blades extended from his gauntlets piercing the demon’s wrists. The demon jumped backward and held her wounds like an injured beast. She looked almost human for a moment as she watched in astonishment as the wound spread, her flesh turning to dust and falling to the floor.
“You didn’t really think that we had no weapons to fight your kind, now did you?” Rochestri boasted as he charged forward and slashed with his blessed blades.
The demon sidestepped the attack, only to come under a barrage from the oracle, whose prosthetic arms had opened up revealing a pair of machine guns. The holy ammunition tore into the beast’s body, piercing holes in her wings and carving deep pits into her flesh. The adjunct flicked his threads again, but the demon jumped up, smashing through the ruined ceiling and allowing the wires to bury themselves into the floor instead.
The ferrocrete above the oracle fragmented as the demon crashed through it from above. The oracle fell to the ground, large slabs of stone and metal crushing his legs and torso. The adjunct raised up his arms to whip his threads again, but the demon scooped up a broken chunk of ceiling and threw it at him, striking him in the head. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Rochestri pulled his net launcher out from under his coat and fired. The net picked the demon up off of her feet and fixed her to the sealed door. Mystic energies flowed through the net. The demon roared in pain as it struggled.
Rochestri pulled out his crossbow and loaded it with a special arrow. The shaft was carved from a witch’s thighbone, engraved with Holy Scriptures and the silver tip forged with a single shard of the Luminarch’s armor. It was the Demonslayer. Passed down to him from his mentor, it was truly one of a kind.
“For the Luminarch,” Rochestri chanted as he raised the weapon to fire.
The monster howled and roared, her red eyes blazing with rage as she fought against the net with all her demonic strength. The net held, but the heavy blast door gave way, shattering off its hinges. Rochestri squeezed the trigger, but the beast slammed into him, her needle-like teeth biting deeply into his shoulder.
The crossbow was knocked out of his grip. Rochestri could feel the venom coursing through his body. Instinctively he bit down onto the hollow tooth in his mouth, releasing a powerful anti-toxin, but his vision was blurring and his muscles growing stiff.
The demon whimpered and fell to the ground. It struggled against the net and door, but no longer had the strength to right itself. Its black blood dripped and spattered from dozens of wounds, causing the broken floor to sizzle beneath it.
Rochestri stumbled toward his dropped crossbow. Beads of sweat dripped down his face and his body convulsed and twisted as he fought to remain upright. Finally, with a groan, he fell to the ruined floor, his vision turning dark.
There was an explosion outside and a handful of women in civilian clothing rushed in brandishing weapons.
“What the frak happened in here?” one asked as she looked around.
“By the throne! It’s a Marshal,” another exclaimed.
“It can’t be,” said the first. “No one has ever...”
“Nari!” a third called out and they all gasped in sorrow.
“They...they didn’t know who they were after,” Rochestri whispered to himself. “That’s why the oathstone didn’t sense it, didn’t warn me. But who...?”
The last thing Rochestri was aware of before he lost consciousness was the sensation of being grabbed and picked up.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Prisons of Body, Prisons of Mind, Prisons of Soul
The universe cares nothing for what we think of it. In a few billion years, you and I and this very planet we stand upon, will be gone, scorched to dust when this star explodes and there will be no evidence that any of it ever existed. Will it matter then what you and I believe? No, it won’t. It only matters now. Belief only affects us in the present and my belief is infinitely superior to yours. For, while my belief leads me to benevolence, accomplishment, and honesty, your belief has led you to selfishness, sloth, and fraud.
-Record fragment from the trial of Danzen the Aethiest. Date unknown
“She died again.”
Keiko had to fight the urge to shield her eyes as she walked into the bright confinement center on the Onikano. The walls were lined with explosive bolts, ready to eject the entire room into the void of space at a moment’s notice. In the center of the room was a raised platform, encased by the strongest barriers ever created. Stronger even than those that protected the ship.
Sitting on the plat
form, leaning up against one wall of the barriers, was Nariko. The seal on her collarbone had spread, creating a pattern of glowing violet lines and ethereal words traced all over the polished white skin of her body like a supernatural tattoo.
Keiko breathed deeply, her hair shimmering to white, as she approached the first layer of the barriers, holding a tray of food. The security officers in the observation deck far above brought down the first layer of the barrier and Keiko stepped in. The barrier closed behind her and the inner barrier opened to let her in.
If Nariko was aware of it, she made no outward indication. Only when Keiko walked up close to set the tray down did she notice any sign of life. Nariko’s breathing was quick and shallow, like an animal.
“You should eat something,” Keiko encouraged, as she switched the tray with the untouched one from the previous day.
“I’m not sure I need food anymore,” Nariko responded. Nariko’s voice was so different now. It was sensual, but spiteful and full of subtlety.
Keiko stepped back and the inner barrier came down again. A moment later the outer barrier opened and allowed her to exit.
As Keiko stepped backwards and the outer barrier came back down, she found herself unwilling to leave. Her heart went out to the poor creature in the cell.
“Please try to eat, Nari. For me,” she said, her hair turning indigo.
Nariko reluctantly raised her arm and pointed her katana at the tray of food. The blade grew long, piercing one of the pork buns and then retracted back to its true shape. Nariko opened her stunning red eyes and regarded the bit of food strangely. Her bright red lips parted sensuously for a moment as if to try it, revealing razor sharp needle-like teeth, but then closed again.
Concerned, Keiko tapped the communicator on her collar. “Security, why did you let her take a weapon into the holding cell?”
“We didn’t,” came the response.
Heart of a Traitor Page 42
