Knights and Demons: Season One | Omnibus

by Greg Dragon

  “We? Who else is here with you?” Alysia asked, daring to walk around the disheveled living room to see if anyone else was hiding inside of the house.

  “My darling locusts, sisters of the Bloody Garot; they joined me to remove the distraction from your life, and they have taken them away to a safe place. Like I said before.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had only been walking and thinking for ten minutes when she left Jaime, and that was all it had taken the cloaked man to remove them quietly from the house. Her father had often told her stories of how Special Forces operators could perform frightening miracles like that, but this man was not a soldier. He looked like the leader of a heavy metal band, and he spoke with an accent she could not place.

  “So you came for … my sword?” Alysia asked, trying to push back her growing fear.

  “This silver piece of junk? No, Alysia Knight, I didn’t come for your ‘sword,’” he said, and then gave it back to her as if it disgusted him. “We came for the one that the lost ones named. The one who managed to kill one of their matriarchs.”

  Alysia was puzzled. It had been a team effort to take down the demon. Besides, she didn’t have any sort of super powers that would be cause for a group of creepy, cloaked people to seek her out. “A—are you a demon?” she asked him, and he stared at her without moving an inch.

  “Demon? Is that the name you gave them? You are asking me if I am one of them, the creatures that are corrupted with the taint. My dear, I am not, but I am not like you or your father’s kind. The only thing that you need to know is that you are safe, we have found you, and luckily it was before the V’Kosha.”

  “What do you want from me?” Alysia asked, cursing her luck again for being the one singled out for the special horror of another’s entertainment. “You weren’t there at the fight, so how do you know it called my name? Are you one of the soldiers playing a trick on us? Were you there? Did you follow us out and track us to this house, got your buddies to jump my dad, and then threw on some red sheets to make yourself look like some sort of grand wizard or something?”

  “I knew it wouldn’t be easy with you,” he said under his breath, then walked up to her and punched her in the stomach. “Enough talk. We have a long journey ahead, Alysia Knight.”

  The stomach, always the stomach. She winced and doubled over from the impact. The man scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder as he stepped out into the night air and began to move. He ran very quickly, too quickly for it to make any sense to her, and before long, he was amidst the trees.

  The pain from Alysia’s abdomen made it hard for her to concentrate, but from what she was seeing, the ground was giving out from beneath them and then there was the crunch of branches as the big man ascended. It appeared as if he was whisking them from treetop to treetop using the limbs as his platforms.

  This makes no sense, she said to herself, but she couldn’t argue that what she was seeing was actually happening: the man was running across trees and there were several other people with him.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  The voices were muffled and barely audible, and Alysia could tell they were trying to be quiet. It wasn’t so much that they were concerned she was awake and hearing them, but they seemed to be trying to keep it from someone else.

  “She is the one. You heard what Lord Chaos said,” a hushed female voice said.

  “The hell she is. I think it’s a mistake. She’s old, and she looks too normal to be the one,” a male voice barked back.

  “There’s nothing remotely normal about me,” Alysia replied as she sat up on the stone slab and looked at them, then glanced down at herself. They had dressed her in black tattered robes, and on her feet were tiny black slippers with embroidered red dragons on the tops of them. The girl was an Asian teen of at least sixteen, and the boy was older, dark-skinned, and had dreads in his hair. They both wore beige kimonos with the same dragon on their chests, and on their feet were black sandals.

  The teens stared at her in disbelief and then rushed out of the room. Alysia could see there were tracks below the slab and it looked as if she was in an old subway tunnel of some sort. The walls had been constructed recently, since they looked relatively new compared to the rest of the place, and when she looked above her head at the ceiling she knew her assumptions were right. They were below ground in one of the old subways that the city had sealed off so many years ago.

  “She’s arisen.” A voice spoke from somewhere behind her. She turned around and saw nothing but darkness until a pair of glowing eyes revealed themselves to her. Alysia started and scrambled around to the back of the stone slab, to make sure that it was between her body and whatever it was that stared at her.

  “Demon!” she exclaimed, and held its gaze, waiting to see if it would make the next move. The eyes rose to float about six feet off the ground, and as they moved towards the light, Alysia could see that it was the man who had taken her from the house.

  “Not all eyes that glow mean you harm, girl. In fact, you will find the ones you must fear the most have eyes that don’t glow. You have experienced the cruelty of men, have you not? Plus, we are not all the same. We the children of Yalem.”

  “So you admit that you are one of them?” Alysia spat at him. “You came from the sea with the giants and the kreples. You came to our land to terrorize us, didn’t you?”

  He kept moving forward, and she could see that he was no longer in the red robe he’d worn when she encountered him inside of the house. He now wore the same beige kimono as the children from before, but his had a cape that hung loosely from his shoulders, and flowed down to the floor where it dragged along the dirt from the filthy, subway tracks.

  When he was in front of the slab, he moved so fast that Alysia couldn’t even blink before he had her. She felt her heart stop as his vice-like hands gripped her shoulders, and she felt her body go limp from his touch. Fight or flight, CeeCee, she told herself, but unlike before, her body wouldn’t react. The demon had rendered her helpless and she couldn’t even make a sound.

  “We are Turevila. In your tongue it translates to ‘hunters of the lost’, but we go by the name of Bloody Garot, and we came here to rein in the prisoners of our realm.” He released her and motioned for her to follow him as he walked towards the darkness of the only door, gliding as if he defied gravity.

  Alysia wanted to lash out at him, to demand that he answer her questions and tell him never to touch her again. However, his touch had chilled her to her bones. She felt frightened by him, and she didn’t want to repeat the helplessness that had come over her when he had touched her. She followed behind him silently, his willing slave for now, and he didn’t need to look back to know that she was there.

  “You are trained, and I can see this,” he said. “Many of you here on this plane of existence… you are trained warriors. The savage nature of humanity demands it, doesn’t it? Combat sports, the need to dominate one another to prove who stands superior. You forge crude, ugly weapons—like the one I took from you earlier—and you learn to make fists and lash out with your legs.”

  “Do you all not fight?” Alysia asked. The man got quiet, as if he was thinking, and then he stopped to open a set of large, double doors.

  There were several kimono-wearing children inside a deep hall, lined with lanterns on the wall and long tables with an assortment of food on them. At the far end of the hall was a throne-like chair, and next to it on two sides were smaller thrones. A beautiful, white-skinned girl occupied one. Her hair was a light, silky shade of greenish blue, and her armor was black and red with spikes.

  “Oh, we fight, Alysia Knight, but we do not do it for sport, for establishing dominance, or to show superiority. We fight to keep realms like this one free of the ones that would consume you all. We failed to do our job recently and now your world is facing the crisis that you are well aware of.”

  “Where exactly are you all from? Hell? Or is there somewhere subterranean where you needed t
o come through the deep sea to get here?” Alysia asked.

  “You have quite the imagination,” the man said, and then showed her to a place on a bench in front of the food that sat untouched on the table. “Sit, eat, and relax, Alysia Knight. We have much to discuss, and I don’t want you to lose focus.”

  “The only thing that I can focus on right now is that my dad has disappeared and I am being led to my doom by Satan and his children,” Alysia said.

  “Satan? The horned menace from stories meant to keep cruel humans suppressed,” he replied, rhetorically. “No, Alysia, I am not Satan. I am more like your angel, Gabriel, here to remove the Satans from your world. Now, I am not going to ask you again. Eat, and get comfortable. You will be spending a lot of time here.”

  The tables had an assortment of fruit and pickled cold cuts that were delicious to Alysia’s taste buds. She ate until she wanted to pop and when she could not eat any more, she turned around and sat, watching the man talk to the white woman on the throne.

  “This is Dibolosa,” he finally said, and waved a gesture towards the woman who sat staring at her in her red and black armor. Dibolosa got up from where she sat and did a mock curtsy. “Dibolosa was once like you, a chosen target for the lost. We trained her and prepared her for the legion, and she was able to save her world and send them away for good.”

  “So she’s from a different world is what you’re telling me?” Alysia asked.

  “Yes, a parallel world to ours and yours. She got our training, removed the lost, and then joined our cause to liberate future warriors like yourself from their perversions.”

  “So you and Diaboloso want to—”

  “DIBO LOSA!” the woman screamed at her from across the hall, and the numerous children stopped eating and turned to look at Alysia as if she were in trouble.

  “Dibolosa, Dibolosa, I’m sorry,” Alysia said.

  “Yes, our lady is very particular about her name. The rules are firm in the affairs of the realm, young Alysia Knight. Only warriors from the world chosen can fight them. This means that we cannot interfere with our own, or we would be out there taking the fight to the lost. What we can do is train you to be one of us, and with that training you can start to build yourself an army.”

  “An army.” Alysia whispered to herself, trying to imagine being at the front of a horde of fighters, and unable to visualize the thought. “Is it always women?” she finally asked.

  Chaos got up, sat in front of her and bit into a peach. The lights from the torches that lined the walls put dancing shadows on his face, and he took his time to eat the peach as her question floated in the air.

  “Always,” he said, throwing the pit with keen precision into a metallic bowl that sat on top of the table.

  “Why is that?” Alysia asked.

  “It seems to have something to do with procreation, my dear. Women are the vessels that bring forth life into this world, so the lost ones choose the body of a woman in order to bring forth their leaders into this realm.”

  “How is it that you know all of this? I mean, I get it, like you’re some sort of demon of light or whatever, but you knew it called my name. How would you know that unless you yourself were there?”

  The big man smiled and rubbed his hands together, and as if by command one of the young men ran up to him and handed him a damp cloth with which he wiped his hands. When he was finished, the boy took it away, and a girl came forth and handed him a long, slender, sheathed sword. He had worn the same one when he invaded Alysia’s home, but it was now polished and shiny and he rose and tied it to his waist.

  “We ‘demons’ as you call us are all connected in one way or another. This is why it is easy for us to hunt them, and why we are disallowed from wiping them out when we are outside of our world. We can hear their thoughts, just like they can hear ours. They know that we have you now, and that you will become our weapon against them.”

  “So, it’s like a game of chess between your factions. You can see plainly what the other is up to, but you have to maneuver in a way that will eventually get you the checkmate,” Alysia said.

  “Exactly, young warrior. This means that—”

  “So, this means that I am literally your pawn. The pawn of a demon trying to outwit another demon with the poor citizens of the world being the chessboard that you play upon,” she said without realizing that the volume of her voice had grown to the point where everyone in the room could hear her.

  “Not a pawn, my young human friend. More like a knight.” And he winked at her.

  “SERIOUSLY?” Alysia exclaimed. “I’m glad that this is some sort of cute joke for you. My mother died to one of your demons, and I can’t even imagine how many more of my family, friends, and colleagues. I don’t think it’s funny, not unless you tell me the whole thing will reset if we manage to defeat your lost ones.”

  “You mean some sort of time travel reward for the victors?” the demon asked. He didn’t wait for her to answer, waving his hand dismissively as he rose and looked around. He clapped his hands loudly, twice, and the young people in the beige robes gathered in front of him in groups of four. There had to be about forty of them, and the lines they formed were tight and neat. To a man, they dropped to one knee, and Alysia could see that they all brandished swords that were similar to his.

  “These are my legion of warriors, Alysia, my Bloody Garot, and each of them have over one hundred kills on the ones we call the lost. The enemy can produce new members from the corpses of those that they corrupt, but our order disallows us the advantage of that disgusting practice. They will be your trainers for as long as you need. Then you must prove yourself worthy of leaving this place.”

  Alysia looked around, trying to analyze the skills of the warriors kneeling. “How am I to prove that I am worthy of leaving?” she asked their leader, and he turned to face her, his large hands resting on the hilt of his sword.

  “Why, you have to succeed my dear Dibolosa, of course.” He smiled, revealing a perfect set of white teeth with canines so long that it made him look like a vampire.

  “I must defeat the champion of an ancient world? Sure, no problem at all, mister demon lord,” she said sarcastically.

  “You can call me Chaos,” he said without a hint of amusement in his voice. “Your training begins now.” Without waiting for her reaction, he walked to the large throne and sat down.

  Chapter Three

  James Knight rolled over with a start. He hadn’t realized he had dozed off but when he woke up he was not inside of the house or near it. He was sore everywhere and when he felt around, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, he could feel train tracks below him. Train tracks. The thought of a speeding train rolling through to smash into him made him roll off to the side and he ended up in the rubble and trash that had collected on the side of the tunnel.

  He was in the subway underground, and he knew it immediately when he saw that the dim light came from above his head inside of a depression in the wall. He looked around frantically, hoping to see Alysia, but all he could make out were the bodies of Jaime and Tracy.

  He struggled to his feet and walked over to Tracy. She had blood on her face and she was lying in an awkward position on the tracks. James knelt down and lifted her into his arms. She felt lighter than he remembered and he walked her over to a set of stairs where he set her down and worked at waking her up.

  “Trace,” he said after nudging her for a time. She woke up with a start and flashed him a wicked glance.

  “WHAT?” she yelled at him, upset that he had brought her out of whatever dream it was that she was having at the time.

  “Wake up, baby, we’re not at home anymore,” he said to her lovingly and brushed some of the dirt out of her hair as she looked around groggily.

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” she said. “It was, it was that thing. Did you see it, Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, it was in all red and had a sword. All I remember is that it came at me and the next thing I know, I�
�m dreaming about happier times.”

  “We should wake up Jaime,” she said when she noticed that he was still slumped against the wall near the tracks, asleep. “Where’s CeeCee? Did she get away from that thing, or is she here somewhere?”

  “CeeCee ain’t here, Trace, but I don’t think she’s at the house, either. They called her name, remember? And she kept telling us over and over that they want her. I think they have her kidnapped somewhere. We’ll need to get out of here to find her.”

  Tracey nodded and got up, wiping her eyes. She walked over to Jaime’s body and shook him hard to bring him around. Jaime woke up and went through the same motions the other two had, cursing loudly several times and pacing the tunnel, looking for an escape.

  “Why would they put us here?” he asked after exhausting his search and letting his temper cool down a bit.

  “They put us out of the way so that we can’t find Alysia,” James said. “This was intentional, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re half a state away from where they’ve taken her.” They all grew quiet after he said this and it was as if he had said that Alysia was dead. He took note of their unsettling silence and got up to start searching for his daughter. It didn’t matter that it could very well be a futile effort; he had to do something. So instead of sitting around, he chose to get up.

  He was about fifteen minutes into walking through the cavernous subway tunnel when Tracy caught up with him.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” she said through labored breathing. He held her waist with his right hand and led her over to one of the lights. She looked up at him through eyes that barely hid the pain she was feeling.