by Mel Odom
She forced herself to look away from the dead and not remember that at one time they had been individuals with hopes and desires. At the same time, she hoped that she didn’t get so inured to switching off her feelings that one day they didn’t come back.
Kept warm by the blacksuit, which had now turned white as part of its camouflage technology, Leah trudged through the snow. The motorcycle was seven miles back, parked in the barn behind an old farmhouse. Stealth mode through the hill country didn’t involve a motorcycle that would easily get mired in the deep snow. She gazed at the hills and valleys, and at the snow-laden evergreens butted up next to the stark skeletons of oaks and ash.
The prodigious amount of snow impressed her. She couldn’t recall it ever snowing so much, and it just kept coming. She wondered if the proximity to the Burn caused the amount of snowfall’s increase. Maybe nature herself was trying to strike back at the demons.
A quarter mile farther on, she spotted the Templar scout high up on a ridge. When he didn’t move, Leah thought possibly the man hadn’t seen her. She wondered if she should turn off the camouflage utility on her suit or try to flag the man down.
Then two Templar, one male and one female, stepped from the brush ahead of her. They aimed machine pistols at her.
“Stop,” the female commanded.
Leah stopped and held her hands out at her sides.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded.
“I can remove my mask,” Leah offered.
“Do so slowly.”
Gingerly, Leah touched her finger to her mask and opened the electromagnetic seals. Once the mask disconnected from the blacksuit, it became as limp as fabric except for the extra Kevlar plates over the back of her skull, her forehead, around her eyes, her chin, and across her cheekbones. The constant electric current conducted through the suit “hardened” the fabric to near steel.
“My name is Leah Creasey,” she said. “I’m a friend of Simon’s. I mean, Lord Cross’s.”
The Templar stood still for a moment, then the man waved her forward. “We’ve identified you. You have clearance. Come along then.”
“May I put my mask back on?” she asked. Her breath made small gray puffs. “It’s cold out.”
“You may.”
Gratefully, Leah pulled the hood back on, fastened the electromagnetic seals, and felt the mask “harden” as the electricity was generated by her suit. In seconds, it was once more a form-fitting, bullet-resistant shield.
“Is Lord Cross at the redoubt?” Leah asked.
“Yes,” one of the men answered. “Would you like us to get a message to him?”
“No, thank you. I’d rather surprise him.”
“This really isn’t a good time for surprises, miss.”
“Give it a rest,” the female suggested. “Lord Cross will be glad to see her. And something like this? Well, it makes a good surprise.”
Leah hoped so, but she didn’t think the offer she’d come there to make would get a good reception. Simon Cross was one of the most fascinating men she’d ever met, but when it came to affairs of honor, he tended to keep everything controllable, neat, and honest.
She felt certain she knew what his answer to Lyra’s offer would be. She just hoped that he wasn’t so angry that he tossed her out flat on her arse.
TWENTY-ONE
H ow big do you think it is?”
Warren stared at the buried structure and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Is it Roman?” Naomi asked. She stood beside him at the edge of the ditch dug by the zombies over the past five days.
The irregular ditch sometimes measured four feet wide and at other times closer to ten and even twelve feet wide. The zombies had dug up anything that looked as if it might be part of the structure, but since they didn’t think too well independently, they required constant monitoring.
Warren needed to sleep occasionally, though the way he felt made it seem as if he hadn’t. It had been more like passing out for short periods. And at times he got consumed by what the excavation revealed. The structure was roughly rectangular, sixty feet wide by another hundred feet long. It was, so far, at least nine feet high, but the digging hadn’t reached the bottom yet.
“I don’t know that either,” Warren answered.
“Hasn’t she told you?” Naomi asked, referring to Lilith.
“She hasn’t been around much.” Warren hated admitting that because it made him feel vulnerable so far outside of London. He’d never enjoyed big, wide open spaces. He didn’t have agoraphobia exactly, but he knew where he belonged.
“Why hasn’t she been around?”
“I don’t know.”
Naomi frowned suspiciously. “It seems like there’s a lot you suddenly don’t know.”
Ruefully, Warren admitted to himself that there was a lot he suddenly didn’t know. “Well, that’s one thing I know.”
The zombies continued digging. They still didn’t have any shovels or picks, but they made do with broken branches, rocks, and even their own bones. It was possible that they would have been farther along if they’d actually had tools, but the zombies worked tirelessly. They never got fatigued and continued chopping and hacking into the ground through the night. Every now and again, when Warren was asleep or distracted, one of them wandered off, never to return.
“Have you tried to get in touch with her?” Naomi asked.
“Yes.” Warren tried to mask his irritation, but he didn’t think—according to Naomi’s icy stare—that he succeeded.
“Did you do anything to make her angry?”
“No.” Warren took that back. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“What did you do?”
“Pretty much the same thing you’ve been doing. Asking a lot of questions about this.”
Naomi didn’t say anything, and Warren wondered if she made the correlation. The chuff, chuff, chuff of the zombie’s makeshift tools kept cutting into the ground.
“Who would construct a building,” Naomi asked, “and not build a door?”
“Maybe it’s on the end we haven’t uncovered yet,” Warren suggested.
“Do you know why anyone would build something that big with only one entrance?”
“One entrance would make it easier to control.”
“And why put it so far out here? Alone?”
“For all we know,” Warren replied, “there’s a whole city buried out here.”
“We don’t know a lot, though,” Naomi replied coldly, and she walked away from him.
Warren didn’t mind her inattention to him because it allowed him to focus on his own questions. He believed that Lilith wouldn’t have brought him all the way out in the middle of nowhere just to have him dig up a building with no entrance.
In earlier frustration, he’d had the zombies try to break through the stone walls, but they hadn’t been able to do it. He’d even tried using the arcane forces at his disposal but hadn’t had any luck. So far, the building remained impenetrable.
Warren slogged through the ditch. The melted snow had accumulated under the zombies and turned to treacherous mud.
Writing on one of the walls caught his attention immediately. He couldn’t help wondering how long the wall section had sat there uncovered and no one had drawn his attention to it.
The writing was some kind of pictograph. Beautiful people and garments adorned the wall. Warren held his torch closer and willed himself to read the images on the wall. Simply gazing at them hadn’t made any sense.
Nearly all of the images were of the woman, and several scenes bordered on pornography. Whoever the woman was, she’d had great appetites for nearly every wanton thing ever done.
“Once you learn to read the language, the inscriptions become simple.”
Feeling the heat of someone’s breath on his cheek, Warren turned and found Lilith standing beside him. She looked the same as she always did, but she seemed to have more color. Then Warren realized he’d felt her breath on his ch
eek.
He reached for her automatically, simply trying to put a hand on her shoulder. When his hand met the space her body seemed to occupy, his hand sank through her, but he felt the heat of her and a small resistance.
“Do you know the language?” Warren asked.
“Yes.” Lilith smiled. “I was the one that invented it.” She leaned closer to the pictographs. “The writings are beautiful, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Warren agreed. “They seem to focus on one woman.”
“Me.”
Warren hesitated and checked again, but he didn’t see the resemblance. The woman in the pictographs could have been anyone. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yes. All men see me as they wish to see me.” Lilith looked at him. “Your own desire created the image you see before you.”
“Does that mean you’re not real?”
She smiled at him. “There’s still so much you don’t understand. I’m real, Warren. As real as that hand I gave to you. But you aid in my realness. You help give me form. Without you, I would be just a dream.”
Warren didn’t ask any more questions about that particular topic because it was too confusing. He concentrated on the building.
“Who built this?” he asked.
“I ordered this building built.”
That surprised Warren only slightly. His imagination had already gotten days ahead of him.
“Why?”
“I needed some place to wait.”
“To wait?” Warren directed his torch at her. “To wait for what?”
“Isn’t that apparent? For the Hellgate to open.” Lilith walked farther along the ditch and continued her study of the pictographs.
“I don’t understand.”
“Once the Hellgate opened, I didn’t have to wait anymore.”
“Why did you wait?”
“Because humans couldn’t tap into the arcane energies in the world enough. And because there wasn’t enough arcane energy here to begin with. It had all been diffused as humans stepped away from it and embraced science.” Lilith frowned and said science as if it were something disgusting.
“Humans have always been able to tap into arcane energy?”
Lilith smiled at him. “Of course. You had a lot of natural ability before the Hellgate opened. After all, you killed your stepfather when you were just a child.”
“He was going to kill me.” Even after all these years, and knowing that his stepfather would have killed him, Warren had residual guilt over the act. He’d tried to bury it, but that had been easier when he didn’t think magic existed or that he’d had the ability to do such a thing.
“I know.”
Warren followed her, wondering what she looked for.
“The Templar have always had access to some of the arcane energy because of their beliefs and their nature,” Lilith said. “Other humans had it as well. But they never managed to have a lot of powerful people in one place so I wouldn’t have to wait.”
“You need the arcane energy to manifest.”
She cocked her head and looked at him. “That’s one way of explaining it. It’s too simple, of course, but you’re not prepared to completely understand what I’m talking about. Perhaps you never will be.”
Warren wasn’t sure if he’d been insulted, but he ignored his own immediate anger and focused on the questions he had.
“Demons come from the Well of Midnight,” Lilith said, as if sensing his frustration. “We never lose our connection to it, and the higher you go in the demon hierarchy, the more connected to the Well of Midnight you are. I became isolated here.”
“Because humans stopped using the arcane energies.”
“As you’ve noticed, not all humans can summon those energies, much less control them. Not all demons possess magical natures. Many are simply vicious. However, humans have always been a jealous species.”
And demons aren’t? But Warren didn’t give voice to that question.
“Demons are the most jealous of all,” Lilith said. “Here in this world, humans resented the arcane energy users enough that they persecuted them. They named them witches and wizards and, even though wrongly, demon-possessed. And they killed them.”
Warren thought immediately of the witch trials that had gone on in England, elsewhere in Europe, and in America.
“Using arcane energies became a thing of the past more than seven thousand years ago,” Lilith continued. “The last place that saw any really confluence of it was Lemuria. Atlantis had long since sunk, and the fools in Lemuria ended up triggering the same kind of underground cataclysm and sank their world to the bottom of the ocean as well. By that time, I decided I had to wait.”
“Why here? Why in England?”
“Because I get glimpses of the future. I knew that when the demons came, and that they would, they would first come here. So I had this place built and I had the Book you have made.”
Remembering the female Cabalist that Merihim had given his hand to, Warren asked, “Why didn’t Merihim have his new pawn take the Book from me when he took away his hand?”
“Because he’s forgotten all about it.” Lilith smiled. “I made him forget. Just as I first whispered into his ear that the Book existed and that he should send you to seek it out.”
“You wanted me to receive the Book?”
Lilith regarded him. “You have a lot of potential. Merihim is too egotistical to believe in anything outside himself. Were it not for you that night the Cabalists pulled him through the portal, Merihim would not be in this place. Were he not here, had he not laid his mark upon you, I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with you. All of these things are part of a pattern that we’re still exploring.”
“What pattern?” Warren didn’t know whether to feel threatened or elated. He finally decided that he should probably feel both.
“We’re still exploring that.” Lilith paused and reached out to the wall in front of her.
“Where have you been?”
“There are things I must see to elsewhere.”
“You haven’t ever left me like this before.”
“I wasn’t strong enough earlier. Now I am. And there is much I must do if we’re to be successful.”
“Successful at what?” Warren asked.
“I’m owed a place in this world. That was arranged when I was first sent here. I wasn’t supposed to be here for so long by myself. I was betrayed. When I’m done, I’m going to have my vengeance for that.” Lilith’s beautiful face hardened into an unforgiving mask.
Warren found that threatening. Not because she would direct any of her ire at him, but because he knew she would expect him to stand on the front line of any attempts at revenge she made. He wanted no part of that.
“Our goals, at least part of the way,” she said, “coincide. If you listen to me, if you are loyal to me, you are going to be more powerful than you’ve ever before dreamed of.”
Power wasn’t what Warren wanted. It was what he needed. In order to be safe, he also had to be powerful. These past four years, and even the ones before that, had taught him that lesson.
“It will be all right,” Lilith said in a sincere voice. “I’m not Merihim.”
You’re not, Warren thought before he could stop himself, but you’re still a demon.
“Press here.” Lilith pointed to a section of the wall.
Warren moved his torch and threw more light over the area she’d indicated. There was no difference in any part of the surface that he discerned. He put the silver hand over the spot and felt an immediate connection with something. Startled, he pulled his hand back and retreated.
“It’s all right,” Lilith told him. “That hand and this place are connected.”
Cautiously, Warren put the silver hand back on the spot and pressed. After a moment, something clicked within the wall. Stone grated as a section of the wall moved. The noise repeated within the vault of the room, offering testimony that the area beyond was mostly empty.
Curiosity pulled at Warren. He’d had a hard time not investigating things that caught his attention when he was younger. He wasn’t any less curious now, but he’d learned through bad luck to be patient. But he didn’t step into the darkness that yawned beyond.
“Go carefully here,” Lilith whispered.
“Why?”
“There are death traps all along the way.”
Lovely, Warren thought bitterly. Like I needed another distraction while we’re doing this. But he slowly pushed his hand with the torch into the room.
TWENTY-TWO
I can let Lord Cross know you’re here,” offered the brawny woman at the doorway to the blacksmith. She perspired heavily under the leather smock she wore. Protective goggles hung around her sweat-stained neck. A leather strap tied her dark hair back, but loose hair hung in soaked ringlets.
Leah declined the offer. “Please. Leave him to his work. I can wait until he’s finished.”
The woman smiled at Leah. “Well, I have to admit the view is rather good.” She stared pointedly in Simon Cross’s direction across the room.
Embarrassment stung Leah’s cheeks. “I just didn’t want to interrupt him.”
Simon stood in one corner of the large room in front of a fiery forge that glowed yellow and orange from the heat. Like the women and most of the other people in the room, he wore a leather smock. He didn’t wear a shirt, however. Back and arm muscles rolled under glistening skin slightly reddened by the heat. A small boy, similarly dressed but with a shirt on under his smock, stood beside Simon.
The smell of metal and coal tainted the thick air inside the room. Hammers rang against a dozen anvils in a cadence that almost sounded planned. Leah knew it had to be a subconscious thing, though.
“If you’re not in a hurry, you could wait elsewhere,” the woman said.
“That’s all right.”
That brought on another smile from the woman. “You might be a while. Lord Cross is a lot like the other men when it comes to smithwork. Tends to lose himself in it.”
“I didn’t know you had a smithy here.”
