Gods Of The Stone Oracle

by Krista Walsh

  Gabe’s mouth went dry and the feeling in his fingers and toes faded, making him feel like he’d stretched across the length of the kitchen. His head swam. The memory of blue zigzags dancing in the otherworldly energy around him made him see spots. Someone had broken into a system that was supposed to be impenetrable and stolen the only software in existence that could detect the otherworldly with just a camera and a simple scan of the room.

  “What do you mean they stole it?” he asked, and this time he couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice.

  “At seventeen hundred this evening it was copied over to an external system, and my version was corrupted beyond the point of recognition. Whatever they did, they had to have used some kind of technological magic. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Percy,” Gabe snapped. He didn’t care if unicorns had infiltrated Percy’s system and speared it. “You’re telling me the software you created, which I warned you was a horrible idea, is now in someone else’s possession?”

  A moment’s hesitation. “Yes.”

  Gabe shoved his hand through his hair and paced back and forth across the kitchen. On his return trip, he found Vera standing in his way, her brow furrowed with concern. He ignored her and scowled at the wall before turning around and heading in the other direction.

  “Who did this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Percy said, and he sounded defeated. “Like I said, I’ve been working to trace it back to whoever broke in, but they covered their tracks well. There’s almost no trace of them. The closest I can get is that they’re out of state, closer to the coast.”

  Gabe halted in his tracks, and the stone that had dropped into his stomach at the news expanded to press into his diaphragm and against his ribs. Mindlessly, he rubbed his fingers together, thinking of the slick mud he’d picked up from Molly’s carpet.

  A string of curses flowed through his mind on a scrolling ticker strip. Percy was right: this was not good, and not even he realized how horrible it was.

  He jumped when a cool hand rested on his arm, and only when he turned to face Vera did he realize how badly he was shaking. Steve and Dana were both watching him with uncertainty, as though braced for him to explode or punch something. He didn’t blame them. Either option was a distinct possibility.

  “Gabe, man, I’m so sorry. I did everything I possibly could to keep that project a secret. I have no idea how anyone could have found out about it. And there’s no doubt they knew about it. It was a pointed attack. They didn’t take anything else. They disabled a lot of my system on their way out, but I’ve been able to recover almost everything except that.”

  The rock in Gabe’s stomach traveled upward to lodge in his throat, preventing him from speaking until he’d finally managed to draw in a few breaths. Not wanting Molly’s family to hear the anger in his voice, he stormed out of the house and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m coming to get you,” he said.

  “What? No, Gabe, that’s not necessary.”

  Gabe clenched his teeth and paced the length of the porch. “It is. We need to narrow down who these people are, and you need to be here to help us.”

  “I don’t. All of my equipment is here, all of my systems. I’m already working on it, and I’m sure I’ll be able to narrow in on them soon. Just let me do this, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Red flashed in Gabe’s vision, and he slammed the side of his fist against his thigh. “Dammit, Percy. If I’m right about who’s behind this, they’ve already abducted a sixteen-year-old girl because she knew the whereabouts of something they need, and have stolen a book that could tear the whole world apart. Do you really think you’ll be safe if they come for you?”

  The silence on the line stretched out as the seconds passed, and finally Percy exhaled a breath. “All right. I’ll get everything together that I need and let you know when I’m ready. It won’t be long.”

  Despite his anger, Gabe could appreciate the sacrifice Percy was making in agreeing to his demand. The man hadn’t left his warehouse fortress in over a decade; everything he needed was kept within the four walls of his server room. Asking him to walk away from that would be like taking a lion out of the jungle and bringing it to the city, but it had to be done.

  He hung up and bowed his head. How had everything gone to hell so quickly? He prayed to the Fates that he and the others would be able to figure out what was going on before they had to sacrifice anything else.

  8

  Lightning flashed overhead, and with each new burst of light, more monsters poured out of the heavy black clouds, raining down over the charred earth below and creating fresh bursts of flame from every dip and crack. Allegra Rossi stood at the end of the barren field, watching the devastation as a horrified bystander. Shadows of familiar shapes stood on either side of her, all of them prepared to run forward, but prevented by the same force that stopped her.

  Lava bubbled around her feet, not burning her but sucking her deeper into the pit growing out of the world. Laughter echoed in her mind from an unseen source, and she covered her ears to block it out, without success.

  The pull of the earth brought her to her knees, covering her in molten rock. Her joints screamed with each movement, but still she fought, struggling to free herself from whatever power held her in its grasp.

  A cold touch brushed against Allegra’s shoulder, and she bolted up in bed, gasping for air. Sweat dripped down her neck and tickled the small of her back. She pressed her hand against her chest to try to get her heartbeat under control and looked around her bedroom.

  Outside, the glimmer of cool, silver moonlight filtered through her sheer curtains. No hellfire, no demons pouring from the sky. She grabbed her robe from the chair beside her bed, pulled it over her bare shoulders, then padded toward the window. The view from her high-rise condo offered the full prospect of New Haven, the city that had reeled her in and kept her trapped for the last five and a half months. The city that had given her the hope of a different life, then stripped it away in a blaze of fire and murder.

  Her chest constricted, and she drew in a slow, deep breath, filling her lungs until the spasm subsided.

  She turned her head into the shadows of her room and made out the faint shape of Matthew Austen’s ghost where he stood beside her. She wondered at what point he’d returned from the walks he took through the afterworld while she slept, then remembered the cool touch on her shoulder and realized he must have been there for the end of her dream.

  He grew more visible, his gray shimmering form taking on the details of his handsome face, the lines of his once-silk shirt and tailored trousers. Everything about him looked as it had at the moment of his death in the kitchen of the Garden Hotel. What felt like yesterday and a million years ago all at once.

  Allegra returned to her window view, not wanting to slip into the memory of losing him again. It had been hard enough the first time around, and the thousand replays that had spun through her mind since then had done nothing to ease the pain.

  Shrieks of draugrs filled her ears through the veil of time, mixing with the cries from her dream. A shiver ran down her calves, and she hugged her robe tighter around her.

  “Another dream?” Matthew asked. His voice was layered by time and distance, but it sounded so present. So real. Even after a month and a half in his company, there were still times when Allegra could hardly believe the truth of what had happened. That a man who had been so full of life — who had made her feel like she was so much more than a demon — could now be just a lingering light.

  Under her pain, a swell of gratitude rose within her that at least she still had that much of him left.

  “They are worsening,” she said, hugging her arms around her middle. “If my dreams are visions, then we are about to enter one of the seven hells without any way to prevent it.” She rubbed her hands over the sleeves of her robe to warm the gooseflesh underneath. “My skin felt so raw, as though it were about to crack. The world was
fire and ash.”

  Matthew’s ethereal hand brushed against her lower back. Instead of shivering, Allegra warmed from her core, his frosty touch converting into an unexpected heat as it passed through her skin, her otherworldly energy responding in a way she’d never experienced before his transformation. All the individual cells under his palm sang with the desire to be closer, and she leaned into him, sinking into the tingle that worked its way through her body.

  “Yesterday at the photo shoot, I nearly snapped Katie’s neck because she used the wrong foundation tone,” she said. Distaste filled her mouth. The makeup artist had made a simple error that, in the scheme of Allegra’s life, meant nothing. Since the events at the Garden, Allegra had discovered a well of patience for both the artist and her production manager, but that patience had been mysteriously absent yesterday. In a flash, her succubus blood had taken over. Her demon side had lashed out without giving her more than a moment to pull it back. “If I had not found my control in time, the results would have been catastrophic, Matthew. My secret revealed, a woman dead who did not deserve to be. My restraints are slipping as these dreams grow more severe, and I do not know how to ease the strain.”

  Matthew leaned in and brushed his lips against her cheek, sending a fresh wave of pleasant chills over her skin. “Take a few days off work,” he suggested.

  She whirled on him. “Me, call in sick? Open myself up to ridicule for displaying the same weakness I accuse others of having? That would do more to damage my career than tearing off Katie’s head, I assure you. At least people would expect that of me.”

  His lips quirked in the corners, belying the concern in his eyes, and Allegra let out a huff at her own fragile state of emotions.

  “You are not wrong,” she conceded. “As things stand, I am not able to continue as I am. Perhaps I could request some sort of leave. Vacation, maybe. I could claim that I am going somewhere warm and as far away from this bland, cultureless city as it is possible to get. That would be believable, would it not?”

  “I think it would,” he said.

  More chills ran through her, but these ones had nothing to do with Matthew’s ghostly touch. “I am afraid of what these dreams mean. I confess it. I look out the window at how the world looks right now, and there does not seem to be anything changing. There are no signs of what is coming. But deep in my bones, I know the threat is already out there, looming over everything, hiding behind these growing snow clouds. People gather for whatever pitiful human holiday is occurring this weekend, oblivious to the fact that they might not survive until the next pitiful human holiday next month. Pathetic, but also strangely sad.”

  “The change is coming, Allegra,” he said, his gray eyes intensifying into pools of silver. “I feel it growing stronger on this side of the world.” Allegra felt her brow crease at his reference to the afterworld — the border he straddled between living and dead. “Every time I leave you, traveling through this new place, I can feel it coming closer. The air is thick with anticipation. There’s only so much more pressure the threat can apply before the barriers snap and chaos breaks through.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” she asked. “I feel like I am being pushed down a path I am unable to see, but I am not prepared to face this fight on my own. I would have no idea where to begin, or how I would succeed. It is ridiculous to think I have some kind of destined purpose to save the world.” She scoffed. “I do not even think enough of it to want to make that sacrifice.”

  While it made no sense why she would have been chosen to fight back against whatever was coming, she could think of no other explanation for why these visions were haunting her. She hadn’t asked for this and all she wanted now was for the dreams to stop and her life to return to some semblance of normalcy.

  Matthew raised his hands so they hovered over her shoulders and tilted his forehead toward hers. “You don’t have to do this all on your own. It’s a big world out there, Allegra. You know you have allies. You’ve been avoiding them because to make contact would make everything you’ve seen real, but the time for denial is over.”

  As his hands drifted down her shoulders to slide across her arms, desire threatened to strip Allegra of the interest to do anything other than lead Matthew to bed and explore the pleasure of his energy combing through hers. She swallowed it down and pressed her lips together, channeling her passion into anger over her situation. The room took on a faint golden haze as her demon surged within her, eager to jump into the fight and tear her talons through the flesh of the unseen monsters that had disturbed her sleep for the last ten months and were now the cause of putting off her simple delights.

  “Perhaps you are right,” she said.

  And yet she hesitated a moment longer. To speak of taking action was different than doing it, and once she moved there would be no turning back.

  There is no turning back anyway, she thought. My options as they stand are action or madness, and I have no time for madness. Even death would be preferable. Whatever it takes, these dreams must end.

  Raising her chin in defiance of whatever gods were laughing at her, she crossed the room and grabbed her cell phone from the dresser. Her thumb rested over the number pad as her desires rebelled against her instincts. To make the call would mean she could no longer hope that someone else would solve the problem for her. It would mean subjecting herself to the company of people of whom she thought very little.

  It would mean she would be able to sleep again.

  Exhaling slowly, she scrolled through her contacts for one name in particular and brought the phone to her ear.

  Matthew watched her as it rang, his expression showing both his approval and his concern. She wished she could put her arms around him and lose herself in the warmth of his body. But his body had been stolen, in part because of this rising threat.

  She forced her thoughts away from the other reason he was standing here a ghost: her own blindness and stupidity for believing the mask of kindness and ignorance in an old man who had proved himself to be as evil as the monsters in her dreams. That man had killed Matthew’s body and left his touch a memory in Allegra’s mind. He had built himself up to be an ally, only to become the enemy.

  It was not a mistake she would make a second time. She might be making this call, but she would not run the risk of trusting any of them.

  The phone connected.

  “Hello, Gabriel? It is Allegra. I wonder if we might speak.”

  ***

  Allegra stared around the small, tasteless kitchen, unimpressed. She’d called Gabe with the expectation that they would meet somewhere quiet and intimate, perhaps with the possibility of convincing him to drop his detachment toward her for an hour or so and enjoy himself in her company.

  Instead, she’d gone back in time, reliving the night that had trapped her in this horrible city in the first place. Annoyed, she smoothed her thigh-length green dress over her skin and sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over the deep vee of her neckline.

  Sitting around the table were most of the people with whom she had spent a twenty-four-hour period in Jermaine Hershel’s magically sealed room ten months ago. At the time, there had been seven of them around the round wooden table. Now that number had dropped to five, the table was square, and the room was significantly brighter, but her companions were still bothersome and showing a remarkable disinterest in their wardrobes. Oddly, however, they no longer felt like strangers.

  Although she’d barely had contact with any of them since that night except for one-time encounters with Daphne, Gabe, and Vera, the connections between them were strong enough that there was no discomfort in once again being together as a group.

  She was disappointed to find, though, that Gabe and Vera seemed to have formed some sort of understanding between them. Even if perhaps that was for the best. Gabe did appear less miserable now than he had at their last meeting.

  She was even less thrilled that she’d been forced to listen to Daphne and the daemelus, Zach
ariel, as they filled her in on everything she’d missed in the last few weeks.

  The orb Daphne and Zach had described was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. No one appeared eager to touch it, though Allegra was curious about the effect it would have on the demon in her head. Would it settle her succubus blood, allowing her to experience the world without the desire for death constantly crawling around her psyche?

  Would it strip her of her beauty and leave her…human-looking?

  A shudder ran through her and she curled her fingers in her lap, farther from the orb. It wasn’t something she was willing to test. Not even peace of mind was worth that cost.

  Behind her right shoulder, she sensed Matthew’s presence, though he remained invisible to the rest of the room. She’d asked him to come along, unwilling to go without his support. As far as she could tell, the others didn’t know he was there, which was fine by her. At least this way, she wouldn’t need to repeat anything she learned later on. Based on what she’d heard so far, there would have been much to relate.

  “If we’re right, and it’s the same people that have Molly and the book, it puts more pressure on us to find them quickly,” Daphne said.

  Zachariel growled. “And how are we supposed to do that when we have no leads to work with? The sons of bitches are mocking us. Leaving clues that we can’t follow, messages that we can’t interpret. They’re messing with us.”

  Gabe nodded. “It does seem that way. But I don’t intend to let that stop me. The demons we dealt with when they were searching for the book were as organized as children in a playground. The hierarchy behind them is likely more competent than the minions at the bottom, but maybe we can use that to our advantage. Trip up the minions so they make a mistake, use them to get to the top.”