Hellgate London: Covenant

by Mel Odom

  The man fired the shotgun over Warren’s head. The explosive sound echoed over the marshlands.

  “If you don’t stop right there, you bloody fool, the people you’re with will be carrying your body home.”

  Warren stopped.

  “You don’t have to follow this man’s dictates.” Lilith stood beside Warren with her arms folded imperiously. “You can order the zombies to attack.”

  “We could also try our luck at a more diplomatic approach.” Warren resisted the impulse to blast his way through the men and women gathered there in the darkness. While he’d still be in Merihim’s thrall, he didn’t think he would have been allowed to back down.

  “Showing weakness is a bad thing,” Lilith said.

  “Stopping to discuss this isn’t weakness,” Warren replied.

  “I agree,” Naomi told him. “But I don’t think they’re going to let us pass.”

  “Is there another way?” Warren asked Lilith. “Could we go around?”

  “We could. But it would take longer, and you would lose more of the zombies. You don’t want to be out in this country with no defenses.”

  Warren silently agreed with that assessment. “We’ll lose some of the zombies to these people if we’re forced to fight.”

  “Yes.” The speculative smile on Lilith’s face appeared genuine. “But the opportunity exists to make more zombies. You could raise a whole new army here.”

  The thought sickened Warren slightly. He hadn’t thought as much about things like that when he’d been working with Merihim. He’d feared for his own life too much to acknowledge the lives of others.

  Sometimes, when he was certain he was alone—which was seldom, between Naomi’s and Lilith’s attentions—he felt badly about how things had turned out with his roommate, Kelli. She’d never been a true friend, but upon occasion she’d been kind to him.

  After his first encounter with Merihim, when he’d been burned and scarred by the demon, Warren had usurped Kelli’s will and made her his keeper. Even after she’d died, he’d resurrected her and kept her to watch over him. She had until the day he’d destroyed her when she’d tried to harm Naomi.

  Warren didn’t want to kill the people in front of them. Several were old, and many were not much more than children.

  “You’re soft,” Lilith chided.

  “I don’t have to kill them,” Warren responded.

  “What?” Naomi stepped closer to him. “What did you say?”

  The zombies grew restless.

  Warren addressed the man with the shotgun. “We don’t mean you any harm. We come in peace.”

  “Maybe so, but you’ll go in pieces if you come any farther,” the man grated. “We’ve got our own place out here, and we don’t want anyone from outside coming around.”

  “We’re just passing through.”

  “Not tonight, you aren’t. You’d best just shove off and find another way to get where you’re going.”

  “All right,” Warren said. “Can you recommend a direction?”

  The man hesitated. “Depends on where you’re going.”

  Warren glanced at Lilith.

  Her frown showed she was clearly unhappy with his choice of actions. “Deeper into the marshlands.”

  Warren relayed the information.

  “You’d be better off waiting till morning,” the man said. “Those marshlands can be tricky. Especially by moonlight. And we’ve heard stories about the things that live out there.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “You’ve got predators out there that fight for hunting territory. Wolves and the like. If not them, then lots of wild dogs that escaped from the city or from farms just outside London that were attacked by demons.”

  “Doesn’t sound very hospitable,” Warren said.

  “It isn’t.”

  “We just want passage. A chance to get to some place dry to sleep tonight.”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  Warren sensed danger and turned to look back along the road they’d traveled. He spotted an owl gliding silently by. Curling his silver fist, he concentrated on the owl, then closed his eyes and reached for the nocturnal predator.

  When Warren opened his eyes again, he peered through the owl’s eyes. Everything was in sharp relief, but it was in blacks, whites, and grays now instead of color leached by the silver moonlight. He also felt the owl’s hunger. Hunting victories had been meager of late.

  Usurping control, Warren forced the owl to turn around and fly back along the way they’d come. The bird flew just over the treetops, maintaining a low profile so it couldn’t easily be seen. Its instincts for survival matched Warren’s.

  Only a short distance away, a motley crew of demons—most scavenging imps sent from the city to explore and map the surrounding terrain—moved steadily along the trail left by the lumbering zombies. The grooves carved through the snow were easy to follow.

  One of the imps lifted its arm.

  For a moment Warren thought the demon intended to fire a weapon at him. Heart pounding, forgetting for the moment that he was a separate entity from the night predator, he turned the owl around automatically and sent it winging away.

  Instead of a weapon, though, or at least instead of the pistol or rifle that Warren expected, a snake or eel uncurled from the demon’s arm and leaped into the air. It spread its wings and took flight.

  The owl’s fear became Warren’s. They both tried to elude the impossible creature. Over the course of its life, the owl had never seen anything like the eel-thing. The demon was six or seven feet long, pallid, and had an oversized, muscular head the size of Warren’s fists put together. When the jaws opened to expose serrated fangs that glistened in the moonlight, the head looked even bigger.

  Despite the owl’s graceful skill in the air, and its speed, it proved no match for the flying demon. It swiftly overtook the owl, sailed above, then struck downward.

  Warren felt the demon’s fangs pierce the owl’s neck as if it were his own flesh. Burning poison coursed along his body, reaching and then stopping his heart. Paralyzed, the owl fell toward the snow-covered marshland as the demon tore gobbets of flesh from it and devoured them.

  Returning to his own body, Warren discovered his heart pounded so fiercely he almost blacked out. He staggered and would have fallen if Naomi hadn’t stepped up to take him by the arm. Her strength surprised him, but he knew the demon transplants she’d done had changed her.

  “Warren,” she hissed.

  “Stay awake,” Lilith commanded. “If you don’t move, the demons will overtake us and kill you. Then we’re all lost.”

  “I’m all right.” Although he wasn’t sure if he could stand on his own, Warren shrugged out of Naomi’s grip. She let him go.

  “What is it?” Naomi asked.

  “Demons,” Warren gasped. “We’re being followed.”

  Naomi gazed at him fearfully. “Why would they follow us?”

  “I don’t know.” Warren looked at the people ahead of them.

  “What’s wrong with your friend?” the man with the shotgun asked.

  Warren pointed back in the direction they’d come. “We’re being followed by demons. They’ll be upon us in minutes.”

  Frenzied curses broke out among the men. A few of them were of the opinion Warren should be shot on sight. Their way of thinking seemed to be gaining favor.

  “I can help you,” Warren insisted.

  “You?” the man challenged. “With the dead things you’ve got following you?”

  “I have powers,” Warren replied.

  “Demon’s powers,” someone said. “He’s a demon-lover. One of them that wants to be just like the demons. Ain’t no better than them, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t want to be like them,” Warren said. “They’re my enemies, too. If I were with them, I would wait on them. I wouldn’t have told you they were coming.”

  “It’s a trick,” someone else declared. “He just wants to bring his dead
things among us to slit our throats when we let our guard down.”

  “Fools,” Lilith snarled. “Leave them here to die.”

  Warren wavered uncertainly. He didn’t want to face the imps.

  Naomi looked at him and knew his thoughts. Her dark eyes held his.

  “We can’t just leave them,” she said.

  “Of course you can,” Lilith argued.

  “They don’t want us here,” Warren pointed out.

  Naomi took his arm, his flesh and blood arm, and held it. “If we leave them here, they’re going to die.”

  “They’ll die anyway,” Lilith said. “If not tonight, then another day. They’re too weak to live in this world.”

  “They’ll die anyway,” Warren said.

  “Do you think the demons will quit pursuing us after they slaughter these people?” Naomi asked.

  Warren didn’t answer.

  “Because they won’t,” Naomi said. “The demons will kill these people, and then continue following us wherever it is you’re taking us.”

  Anxiety spread through Warren.

  “Those demons aren’t out here for these people,” Naomi said. “They came looking for something, and my guess is that they’re looking for you.”

  “She doesn’t know that,” Lilith said.

  “You don’t know that,” Warren stated.

  “Merihim could have sent them.”

  Fear quivered through Warren. “I’m nothing to Merihim. Not since he reclaimed his hand.”

  “You shared the demon’s mind,” Naomi told him. “Maybe he fears what you might have learned.”

  Thinking about how powerful Merihim was, Warren couldn’t believe that. He glanced back the way they’d traveled and tried to figure out what to do. His life had never been this hard before. Not even when he was being reared by his magic-obsessed mother and abusive stepfather. Choices in those days had seemed simpler.

  But they were the same, weren’t they? Warren asked himself. Survive or not survive? The stakes haven’t changed. The game has only gotten harder.

  TWELVE

  W hen Merihim took his hand back from you,” Naomi said, “he didn’t expect you to live. It was a miracle that you survived. I saw you.”

  You left me, Warren couldn’t help thinking.

  “She abandoned you,” Lilith said. “Only I saw to your needs. I gave you back a hand. Don’t be swayed by her at this point. She thinks only of herself.”

  Warren looked at Lilith. And who do you think of? But he knew who she was most concerned with. He couldn’t fault her for that, though. He thought mostly of himself as well.

  “Merihim didn’t expect you to live,” Naomi said. “He didn’t expect you to become powerful again. You may be a threat to him at this point.”

  Both of those things, Warren knew, were facts. In the distance, the group of imps stepped over a hill. They stood out darkly against the snowy background under the silver moonlight.

  “She has a point,” Lilith reluctantly admitted. “As powerful as I am, I couldn’t have shielded you completely from Merihim. He may be looking for you as well.”

  “If Merihim wanted to find me,” Warren said, “he’d find me easily enough. And he wouldn’t send imps to do it for him.”

  “Wouldn’t he?” Lilith asked. “You’re not that important yet, Warren. Merihim doesn’t yet know what I’m going to do for you. He doesn’t know how powerful I’m going to make you.”

  Warren clung to the woman’s words. If he was going to survive in the world as it now was, he needed to be powerful enough to do so. There was no other way around that. Even with all his innate ability, with the powers he’d already known, he wasn’t strong enough to do that and he knew it.

  “Merihim could have sent these imps,” Naomi argued. “You can’t take the chance that he didn’t. If you’re wrong, they’re going to keep following us into the marsh and kill us.”

  “I know.”

  “We need to win these people over. Somehow convince them that we’re stronger together than we are apart.”

  Warren fed off his fear, made it so big and so strong that he couldn’t contain it. He’d done the same thing when he’d been a boy living in his mother’s house. Once he was numb, he turned toward the group of armed men.

  “I’m not the one you should be afraid of,” he told them. “Our enemies are there.” He flung an arm toward the advancing group of imps.

  “He’s one of them,” someone said.

  “He’s just trying to fool us,” another added.

  Warren tapped into the power that constantly coursed through him. Now that he knew what it was, he’d realized that the power had always been within him. He’d had it even when he was a child. The power had allowed him to save himself the night his stepfather killed his mother and tried to kill him.

  That night, with his mother lying dead only a few feet away and a bullet that had already ripped through his own body, Warren had seized control of his stepfather’s mind. Despite the man’s intentions to kill him, Warren had forced his stepfather to turn his pistol on himself.

  “I wish you were dead,” Warren had told him.

  He still remembered the incredulous look in his stepfather’s eyes as he’d turned the pistol from Warren to his own temple. Martin DeYoung, his stepfather, had been a small-time drug dealer who hadn’t been able to control his own habit or Warren’s mother’s need to believe in the arcane. That night, while under the influence of the drugs he sold, his will hadn’t been particularly strong. He’d been angry, not afraid. Fear was much stronger than anger. Warren understood that because he couldn’t remember a time when fear hadn’t been part of his life.

  His stepfather had screamed out in fear that night, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. “No! Don’t make me do this! No! Stop! Please!”

  But Martin DeYoung had held the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. The police investigation had ruled the shooting as a homicide/suicide. Warren had barely survived.

  Warren gathered all his power, pulling it in through the silver hand that he wore, and pushed it over the group of armed men. All of their minds felt like padlocks. Some of them picked easier than others. He felt the tumblers falling into place as he pushed.

  The effort of getting past the fear eased once he found the parts of the men that wanted to believe in something greater than themselves. Men, especially fearful men, always needed something stronger and larger and outside themselves to believe in.

  “Those,” Warren said with conviction, “are our enemies. They are who you should be afraid of. Not me.”

  “He’s right,” someone said.

  “I can help you,” Warren told them, and he pushed with all his strength. The imps came closer. Some of the eel-things among them took flight. “I will help you if you let me.”

  “He has powers,” someone said. “There aren’t enough of us to stand against those demons.”

  “Let me help you,” Warren said.

  The man with the shotgun lowered his weapon. “Let them in.”

  “Bixby!” another man shouted in consternation. “What in bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Bixby turned to face his men. “We don’t stand a chance of stopping those demons by ourselves. And if we don’t stop them, they’ll slaughter our wives and children next. Do any of you want that?”

  No one answered.

  Turning back to Warren, Bixby said, “Come ahead.”

  Trying to appear fearless, Warren strode forward.

  Naomi knew the men hated having to trust them. She felt their fear and anger all around her as she took her place among them. The men hated the zombies even more, though, and she held them blameless for that.

  She hated the zombies, too. She suspected that her innate revulsion of them resulted, at least in part, in why she failed to raise them. Some Cabalists specialized in raising newly dead. They called forth bodies of comrades who’d fought at their sides only moments previously. Others only raised th
ose who’d been interred in graveyards and sat patiently by while the resurrected zombies clawed from their caskets and from the ground.

  Warren easily did both. She’d seen him do it.

  She took cover behind a thick oak tree. The broad old trunk hid her and a young man in his late teens. She felt his gaze upon her and knew that he feared her as well as felt sexually aroused by her proximity and strangeness.

  “Do you have a name?” the young man asked.

  “I am Naomi.”

  “I’m Desmond.”

  Naomi looked at him briefly. Before the invasion, the world had seemed filled with such gaunt young men trying to find some way to assert themselves. At one time, she knew Warren Schimmer had been one himself.

  The young man’s coat and hat looked too big for him. He held a single-shot shotgun.

  Since the invasion, Naomi had learned about weapons as well. Her knowledge base had grown in areas she’d never thought about.

  “It’s not just a shotgun,” Desmond said defensively. He gripped the weapon as if embarrassed. “We modified the ammunition. Regular bullets don’t do much to demons.”

  “No,” Naomi agreed. “They don’t.”

  “So we changed what we use.” Desmond plucked at the bandolier of shotgun shells spread over his chest. “These are explosive rounds. Designed to penetrate demon hide and deliver a load of poison. It’s a nerve toxin we got from some of the demon fish that’s swum up from the River Thames.” He swallowed. “They got all kinds of evil things living in that water these days.”

  “I know,” Naomi said. “I’ve seen them.” For a time, when she’d been with the Cabalist sept led by Hedgar Tulane, they’d studied the various demonic creatures that had crossed through the Hellgate. Not all of them had been warriors and savage animals. The Burn had brought a plethora of plant and animal life with it.

  “The fish aren’t any good to eat,” Desmond explained, “but we found out the poison they carry is harmful to the demons.”

  “That’s good,” Naomi said. Man’s ability to find destructive things in nature—any nature—seemed to be one of the constants in the universe. That affinity for self-destruction had been one of the things that had first drawn Naomi to Cabalist beliefs. She’d wanted a peaceful way to live, one more along the lines she thought that nature and God had intended.