Exile (The Oneness Cycle)

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  And then he stopped pretending.

  All at once, they were his family, and he was home.

  He was Oneness. He saw it again—the grid, the threads running through everything, connecting it all, the layers and layers of meaning and purpose. His spirit swelled and encompassed the universe, touched a million hearts, contracted back down to his own body but brought it all along.

  Mary looked at him and smiled slowly, and he heard her voice in his mind. Welcome, Tyler. Angelica turned startled eyes on him, but in her eyes too there was nothing but welcome.

  And it was enough.

  He lacked nothing.

  He was marching to his death, and he was absurdly happy.

  * * *

  Chris parked the truck two warehouses away, over a chain-link fence and across two parking lots from the one they were targeting. They were in a hurry, but there was no sense in giving away their presence too soon. He and Reese got out and crossed the distance at a slow run, keeping to the shadows. It was a Saturday night, close to eleven o’clock, but a few of the yards were lit and some even showed signs of activity.

  “Should we alert someone? Ask for help?” Chris said in a low voice.

  “No.”

  “Because …”

  “Because we are going to deal with demons and no one here stands a chance. If any of them are vulnerable to possession we’d just end up with more enemies to fight.”

  “Oh.” He hesitated, pausing mid-jog in front of the chain-link fence. “Am I vulnerable to possession?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Demons can’t just come in. They need permission.” She smiled wanly. “You’re not exactly ripe for giving it.”

  He nodded uncertainly. “Good.”

  “You don’t have to come,” she said abruptly. “There may not be much you can do.”

  “Some of those people in there are just people. With human bodies. I can land a few punches. Or bullets. You handle the spiritual side.”

  They crossed the fence through a gap in the chain link and stood in the parking lot in back of the warehouse. Industrial lights glared lines across the asphalt, allowing them to see. The fire escape, slightly rusted but solid, wasn’t more than fifty feet away.

  “Deep breath,” Chris said, staring at the massive tin building. “Do you think we’re in time?”

  “We have to be,” Reese said, her voice very small. “Come on.”

  * * *

  Hammer-man and Kelly laid Tony out next to Richard. Both were breathing but thoroughly unconscious, which Tyler still thought was a good thing. He and Angelica stood on either side of Mary, both towering over the smaller woman.

  He had never felt so proud to stand with anyone.

  To die with anyone.

  His thoughts were all over the place, and ridiculously light, which made him feel foolish. The Oneness had expanded him, and he was surprised at the peace that came with it. When he drew close to Mary he realized he knew her, to an extent he had never known anyone; he knew the integrity of her spirit, the gentleness, the depth of her leadership. He sensed the sadness in her past and the love that made her strong despite it. The others too; if he concentrated just a little, it was like parts of them crossed into him, forming bonds of mutual trust and understanding instantly. It made him happier than he had ever been, but he was going to die, and in that one reality he grew sad again—he would have liked much longer to know what it was to be Oneness.

  But then he remembered Patrick, whose experience of Oneness had apparently not been cut off by death. He might just have a long time after all.

  Was he grinning?

  Apparently yes, as David stepped out of the shadows and snapped, “Stop smiling! What’s wrong with you?”

  The man’s sharp eyes appraised Tyler in an instant, and his expression turned to disgust. “Oh. Well, let me spare you the disappointment. It wears off. And all you have left is the bondage.”

  “Love is not bondage, David,” Mary said.

  “Not until you don’t want it.” He stepped back and regarded her with interest. “You’re where it all began for me. A twenty-year journey of regret.”

  “It’s not too late for you,” Mary said. “Even now, it’s not too late. Let go of the bitterness—come back to us.”

  “I never left you,” he said, his voice raw and caustic. “That is the problem.”

  He held out his hand, and one of his flunkies placed a gun in it. Tyler scanned the men who stood all around—braver now than he had been before, more able to face the reality of other beings behind their eyes. He could see the demons lurking there and sense their conflicted emotions—hunger, eagerness, and fear.

  Fear?

  David cocked the gun. “This was all supposed to happen sooner,” he said. “We’ve needed more power. What I did to Patrick and Reese can only carry us so far. The demons were supposed to kill that girl of yours, and you were supposed to find her dead and come running to me for help, and I was supposed to kill you precisely here. I should have known better than to let demons handle it—they didn’t want her blood on their hands. But I have you where I wanted you in the end. You’ll die here and give more strength to the core, and I’ll keep expanding the hive until it rivals the Oneness in its size, and then we will destroy you all. They can’t do it on their own—they’re too stupid and too scattered. But with me leading them, they’re learning to operate as one.”

  “You’re insane,” Mary said.

  “You told me that.”

  “You’ll destroy the world.”

  “That is the point.”

  Mary stepped forward. Tyler and Angelica tensed, both ready to spring to her aid—not that they could do any good. She held her hand out. “David, come home.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said. “I’m only sorry we can’t make it more of a ceremony. But I’m in a hurry—and we have witnesses.”

  In the shadows all around, eyes began to appear, glimmering, leering at them. Bodiless eyes that made Tyler shiver. The sense of their presence—presences—grew. There were dozens. A hundred. Hundreds. Eager and afraid to witness the death of these who were Oneness.

  The sound of a gunshot echoed through the warehouse, ringing off the tin walls and roof. David stared at the gun in his hand in momentary surprise.

  Behind him, Hammer-man dropped.

  Tyler wasn’t exactly sure where the impulse came from, but he and Angelica sprang forward in exactly the same moment, simultaneously tackling David. Tyler barrelled into the man’s chest and wrapped his arms around him while Angelica threw her weight against his ankles. He fell. Tyler tried to reach for the gun without letting go of David’s arms, but the man was too strong. Angelica kicked the revolver out of his hand just before he burst free of Tyler’s grip, turned and got on his knees, and landed a solid punch to Tyler’s gut. Tyler curled up involuntarily, gasping for air while willing himself to get back on his feet. David scrambled back up and ducked a roundhouse kick from Angelica. Another gunshot from somewhere in the warehouse dropped Kelly. Mary was standing over Richard and Tony in a protective crouch. Two of David’s goons rushed her, and Tyler watched in fascinated horror as she drove her sword into one, then the other. Shrieks burst out of both men, and they crumpled to the floor and writhed as a dark cloud leaked from their mouths and noses—dispossessed.

  There were still two more. Tyler managed to get in two good breaths of air and get back to his feet. He balled his fists and went after the first one, hoping to rush the man before he could draw a gun. Angelica was still keeping David busy. Another shot—from above?—dropped the third one, but Tyler’s target met his rush with a blow to the face, and Tyler was on the floor again, sure that his entire right eye had just caved in. He couldn’t see—blood in his eyes or fainting, he wasn’t sure which was blurring his vision. His legs were going like a dog chasing its tail in his sleep, but he was still on the ground, an easy target.

  He felt something in his han
d.

  He couldn’t see, and the pain splitting through his head was distracting, but there was something in his hand. It was hard and hot and pulsing—and in a moment he realized what it was.

  A hilt.

  A sword.

  It came with a burst of inspiration. Still mostly blind, he drove it straight up just as the thug appeared over him. The blade went deep into the man’s chest, and an ear-splitting shriek—a wail of shock, of anger, half-human and half-demon—emitted from his mouth. The rush of dark cloud from the man’s mouth and nose smelled of sulphur, and his body twisted and shook. Tyler pulled his sword back in horror, his vision clearing just enough to see—much to his relief—that the blade had left no wound in the man’s chest. There was no blood, no laceration—not even his clothes were torn. He would recover.

  A phrase popped into his mind. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.

  Mary was still standing over the unconscious men. Angelica was standing in a defensive posture in front of them. David had backed away, half into the shadows. The thugs were down—

  But the warehouse was far from emptied of threats.

  All around, a growing stench thickened the air. The eyes were back—and beginning to grow faces and bodies around them. A high-pitched sound filled the warehouse, rattling the tin.

  David laughed.

  From behind, someone grabbed Tyler. He was about to throw a wild punch when he realized it was Chris, engulfing him in a bear hug. The next moment Chris shoved him away.

  “Glad you’re alive,” he said.

  “Thanks for coming,” Tyler answered. Chris had a gun. The source of the shots. He cocked it and pointed it at David. Angelica had picked up the rebel’s gun after she kicked it away, and she too pointed the muzzle at David.

  “We’re not both going to miss,” Chris said. “I already dropped your men. Now call your demons off.”

  “You seem to forget who’s outnumbered here,” David said.

  “Yeah, but your goon squad won’t bleed. You will. Call them off.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” David said. His tone spoke great enjoyment. “You’ve made them hungry with all your killing.”

  Chris didn’t flinch. “I did what I had to do.”

  “You’ll notice your companions haven’t killed anyone,” David said. “For good reason. They know the price of blood. All you’ve done is hand yourself over to the darkness, my young friend. And whether or not you kill me, they are going to tear you to pieces. Just a word from me, and I win no matter what you do.”

  Beside him, Angelica faltered in her aim, but Chris held steady. “You’re bluffing. You can’t afford to die—you said it yourself. These creatures won’t hold together without your leadership. You die here, your whole plan fails.”

  David took a step forward, into a strip of light falling from a lightbulb overhead. “You’ll be killing one of the Oneness. Do you have any idea of the consequences of that act?”

  Chris sniffed. “Someone’s got to do it. You don’t deserve to live, Oneness or not.”

  “Chris …” Mary said from behind him, warning.

  “Don’t you take his side!”

  “Go ahead,” David said, taking another step forward. “Look me in the eye and shoot me in cold blood. You’re not sniping the enemy from above this time, boy. You’re shooting an unarmed man who is ten feet away from you.” He stepped forward again and stopped with his arms folded smugly across his chest. “And for what? For killing someone? No, I didn’t do that—the only killer in here is you. For trifling with some girl’s emotions? Maybe the demons won’t tear you apart. Maybe they’ll let you be found with a gun in your hand and everyone else in here dead. You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life, however long that may be. You can try all you want to tell the police that you were only trying to combat a warehouse full of demons, but I don’t think it will help you much. Shame to bring so much embarrassment to your mother. Who, I notice, is not here.”

  Chris stared hard at him, the gun still steady, both hands clamped around it.

  “Listen, kid, take a page from her book and look out for your own best interest. You can’t save the day here. You can save yourself. I don’t have any quarrel with you. You’ve been smart enough to keep yourself out of the Oneness. Now be smart enough to get yourself out of their business.”

  Chris pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  The gun was empty.

  David laughed, a slow chuckle that built up to a guffaw. On every side, demon bodies took ephemeral shape. Chris slowly lowered the gun.

  “Chris, get out of here,” Tyler heard himself saying. “I don’t think they care about you.”

  Mary spoke calmly but loudly enough for everyone to hear. “It’s good advice. Take it, Chris. The rest of you take it too. We can’t win this fight—there are too many. But we might be able to run. The farther we get from this warehouse, the weaker they’ll get.” She nodded toward the goons Chris had dropped. “They’ve got car keys—we get them, we get outside, and we drive away as fast as we can. Understand? That’s the whole strategy. Run.”

  “Do we split up?” Tyler asked. He could feel pressure growing in his hand again, and the sword took shape as he spoke. A longer, more deadly looking blade had already formed itself in Angelica’s hand.

  “No,” Mary said. “Keep together. Our strength is in Oneness.”

  Slowly, a laugh began to sound in the warehouse. It grew, hundreds of voices joining together, until the horde of demons mocked their intentions with a single voice.

  Mary crouched low, her sword ready. “Now.”

  Chapter 17

  When they were boys and Tyler was still battling grief and all the demons grief brought with it, Chris had made up a game. It was called “Berzerker.” The boys would go outside with their stick swords and pretend they were heroes being attacked by a gigantic army. And they would both swing their swords and howl and scream and leap around like maniacs and just fight and fight and fight and fight until Tyler found relief in exhaustion. Tyler didn’t realize until much later how much wisdom Chris had shown in making up that game. Maybe even Chris hadn’t known what he was doing—after all, he was only twelve when Tyler lost his parents.

  But one thing Tyler learned from that game was that fighting was not actually all that complicated. The carefully choreographed routines in the movies were misleading. Talk of wartime strategy was inspiring but not all that useful in a backyard game of Berzerker. Real fighting was just a matter of swinging and hitting and not stopping until you won or dropped dead, and the other side would do the same thing.

  In the warehouse, Tyler played Berzerker. The demons came in a swarm like wasps, and Tyler all but closed his eyes and just fought his way forward. The sword was powerful; the demons were only half-solid. Their only real advantage was in their numbers. Their presence darkened the warehouse so that Tyler felt he was fighting through a cloud, a thick shadow that made it almost impossible to see anything but eyes and spectral faces, but he knew where he was going, roughly, and he followed Mary’s advice in bludgeoning his way to the door.

  He reached the exhaust-stained, artifically-lit air of the outside world with a burst of triumph, his body scratched and aching, his face swollen from the punch. He stumbled through the warehouse door and ran for the car, realizing he’d forgotten to get the keys and hoping someone else had them.

  And then he stopped.

  He was the only one who had made it out.

  He waited a few antsy seconds and then went back through the door. From the outside of the demonic cloud he could see a little more clearly, so the centre of the attack was visible.

  The others hadn’t moved.

  Angelica was standing over Tony, and Mary was standing over Richard, and Tyler knew in a rush that they weren’t going to move. Either they were taking their unconscious friends with them, or they would all die together.

 
; He couldn’t see Chris.

  For some reason his eyes were drawn to the floor, and it seemed the thirty feet between him and the others closed up and he could see as though he were standing right there. Richard’s eyes were opening. He was staring up at the ceiling …

  … or at something else high up there.

  And Tyler heard his voice, rasping and coming with effort but coming nevertheless.

  “Reese,” he said, “get out of here!”

  Tyler looked up. Reese was there, frozen on the iron stairway coming down from the catwalk above. The look on her face was stricken.

  And then she jumped.

  And landed on David, taking him down to the ground.

  The attack momentarily eased away from the Oneness on the floor.

  Reese’s sword was drawn, white-hot, and she was holding its point in the hollow of David’s throat.

  * * *

  Reese stared down into the man’s face, lit by the heat of her own sword—a sword that could kill him, for he was Oneness, and Oneness was supernatural and vulnerable to the weapons of the Spirit.

  Richard’s words sledgehammered at her soul.

  Get out of here.

  Go.

  All the grief of rejection rose up in her throat and choked her, and almost blind with it, she pressed the sword farther. She was dimly aware that the battle had paused, drawn back to watch—that her grief was, for the moment, the focal point of the war.

  She stared into the face of a man she had trusted and followed for most of her life. A man who had done more than slander her—who had projected onto her the darkest, most hidden parts of his own soul so that no one could see who she was, so that those she loved distrusted and rejected her, so that she was made to carry the weight of guilt for the death of a friend and to see herself as the enemy of all that she loved, of all that she was.

  Her eyes blurred with tears. She did not move the sword.

  Richard was saying something … trying to yell something at her. She couldn’t discern the words.

  “It will save them all,” David croaked. “If you kill me.”