by Mel Odom
“Stop,” Lilith said.
Calmly, Warren froze where he was and watched her. She’d changed. She looked more real than she had before. Her color was back. More than that, she actually left footprints in the snow.
As he watched her, she stretched out a hand and crooned in a strange melody that beckoned to Warren at the same time it frightened him. Movement darted in the brush ahead of her. After a couple of moments, a fat rabbit hopped across the snow-covered ground and came to a stop at Lilith’s feet as she coaxed it to her.
Still singing, the demon leaned down and tentatively stroked the rabbit. In the next instant, she grabbed the rabbit by its scruff with one hand and took its head in her other. She twisted violently.
The sharp crack of the rabbit’s neckbones pierced the cold air. For a moment, the rabbit kicked furiously, then it was still.
Before Warren figured out how he was supposed to react, Lilith tore the rabbit’s throat open and drank its blood. He heard Naomi cursing behind him, then throwing up.
When she’d drunk her fill, Lilith cupped a handful of snow and washed the blood from her mouth. She looked at Warren with too-bright eyes.
“I haven’t eaten in thousands of years,” she said in a slurred tone. “I’d forgotten what the taste of blood was like.”
Warren didn’t know what to say.
“Come on,” Lilith coaxed, shaking the dead rabbit at him. “I’ve got breakfast waiting. She can eat, too. There’s enough, and I’m feeling generous.”
For the first time, Warren noticed the smell of cooked meat hanging in the air. His stomach growled in spite of what he’d just witnessed.
She led him to a windbreak she’d arranged in the brush. A cheery campfire burned there. The overhanging branches defused the smoke and disappeared against the leaden sky that promised only more snow.
Three rabbits hung on spits near the fire. The flesh was cooked and browned. Warren salivated when he saw them and smelled them. It had been weeks since he’d had fresh meat, and he’d had to barter with one of the survivors still hanging about London.
“Sit,” Lilith encouraged. “Eat. If this isn’t enough, there are more rabbits.”
Warren had never eaten rabbit before, and he’d drawn the line at rats caught inside the Metro area. He wouldn’t have eaten rats anyway, but he knew that many of those in Central feasted on dead humans that had recently been killed or succumbed to injury, sickness, or starvation.
Rabbits don’t eat meat, he told himself. They haven’t eaten anything foul. He brushed the snow from a fallen tree, folded his coattails under him, and sat. He took up one of the spitted rabbits and pinched flesh from it. The meat fell off the bone, and it tasted divine.
Although she’d looked appalled, Naomi sat beside him and picked up one of the rabbits as well. She ate tentatively at first, then more hungrily. Grease dripped down her chin.
“Have you rested?” Lilith asked.
“Yes,” Warren answered.
Naomi said, “Yes.”
Lilith didn’t look at Naomi. “Do you think the interior of the tomb is safe for you to go into now?”
“Is that what it is?” Warren asked. “Your tomb?”
“I haven’t died,” Lilith pointed out. “I only fell into near-death. My death, as long as I stayed protected, was still a long way off.”
“Are you flesh again?”
“Not yet,” she said. “But soon.” She tore the rabbit’s fur from its body and consumed it raw. When she had the meat from its bones, she broke the bones and sucked the marrow.
Repulsed, Warren turned away from her and concentrated on his own meal. That was hard as he listened to her crunch the bones.
TWENTY-FOUR
S imon stood beside Leah’s bed in the surgery. From the tightness round her good eye and her elevated respiration, he knew she was nervous. He didn’t need his armor to tell him that. Round them, the OR team prepped her for surgery.
“I never much cared for hospitals,” Leah admitted.
“Neither have I, but I’m glad we’ve got a good one.” Simon felt awkward standing there as the other people worked round him.
“The surgeon’s done this before?”
“He’s the one that put Eoin’s eyes in.”
“Can they match my eye color? My eyes aren’t exactly off-the-rack, you know.”
Simon did know. Those violet eyes sometime haunted his thoughts.
“They’ll match,” he told her. “The nanobots pick up color from the DNA and push it right into the new eye they build for you.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said. “I’ve always been a little vain about my eyes.”
“You’ve got lovely eyes,” Simon told her.
Some of the tension in her face went away as she smiled at him. “You’ve never told me that before.”
“No.” Simon suddenly felt awkward.
“Are you trying to hit on me?” Her tone was playful.
“I was going to wait until they anesthetized you.”
“Maybe you should. It would be less painful that way.”
Despite the tension of the moment and all the bad things that loomed before them with the dwindling food supplies, Simon laughed. Leah joined him. Everyone working on the prep stared at them.
“Well now,” a matronly Templar woman that Simon had known since he was a boy said, “look at the two of you. Like you’re out on a lark.”
“Not quite,” Leah said.
“Scandalous is what it is. My name’s Jenny.” The woman inspected the machines hooked up to Leah and made a notation on the digital notepad she carried. “Everything here looks shipshape. Can I look at your eye, luv?”
Since she’d been in the bed, Leah had made the OR personnel keep her voided socket covered with a towel. Simon knew she hadn’t wanted him to see her.
“After Lord Cross leaves, you may,” Leah said.
“Well then, Lord Cross,” the nurse said, turning to Simon, “I believe it’s time to say your good-byes.”
“All right.” Simon focused on Leah. Her hand sought his and held it for a moment. “Quite the death grip you’ve got there.”
She frowned at him. “I’m nervous. The thought of miniature robots crawling through my brain creeps me out.”
“Oh,” Jenny said without turning around, “if those robots crawl through your brain, the surgeon’s doing it all wrong.”
“Lovely thought.” Leah grimaced.
“I wasn’t the one that had it. Let’s get a move on, you two.”
Simon looked into Leah’s good eye. “You’re going to be fine.”
“When my new eye is built, what happens to the nanobots?”
“They deactivate and get flushed out with white blood cells. After your eye’s repaired, using your body’s building blocks and some of the wiring the nanobots will string, there’s nothing left for them to do.”
“You’ve seen them do this before?”
“I’ve had them work on me. Two years ago, while fighting with demons, a Blade Minion skewered me.” Simon tapped his chest. “The blade ruined my heart. I was barely alive when Nathan and Danielle brought me back here. The suit kept me stabilized, kept my heart and lungs going, but I would have died if I’d gone to an OR like the ones you’re used to. The nanobots saved my life and repaired my heart.”
“If they’re so good, why didn’t the Templar turn them over to the rest of the world?”
“Because it’s easier to provide the rest of the world with new armor or new weapons than it is to give them new medical technology,” Jenny said sourly. “That’s the way it’s always been. New technology, new procedures, and new medicines all mean corporations, insurance agencies, and politicians get involved.”
“A trifecta of terror,” a young male nurse stated.
“Exactly,” Jenny said. “Corporations fight against anything new if they don’t have a version of it, too. Insurance agencies have to rewrite policies, and they don’t like doing that. And
politicians use emerging technology and the threat of science to win or intimidate voters.”
Simon shook his head. “The Templar made the breakthrough in this field while I was in South Africa. It’s new.”
“Given time,” Jenny said, “the Templar would have given the technology to the world. We just never got the chance to do that.” She frowned and looked at Simon. “And you’ve really got to be on your way.”
“All right.” Simon squeezed Leah’s hand a final time. Then he bent down and kissed her. “Sweet dreams. When you wake, you’ll be back to normal.”
“Aren’t knights in shining armor supposed to kiss sleeping damsels awake?”
“Don’t go confusing them with princes,” Jenny said. “They aren’t that. And enough of them have overinflated opinions of themselves as it is. They don’t need any encouragement.”
Simon grinned, mirroring the one Leah had.
“Wake me,” Leah said, “after I’m out of surgery.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” Simon stepped back and left the room. He told himself again that Leah was going to be fine. The surgery handled much harder cases on a regular basis. Replacing arms and legs with cybernetic units had become something of an everyday occurrence.
The only thing tricky about this procedure was whether or not Leah would regain her vision. He stood at the doorway and watched as the OR team trundled the bed down the short hallway.
“Have you known Lord Cross long?” Leah asked the older nurse. She tried to concentrate on the questions running through her mind so she wouldn’t give in to the panic that threatened to tear her apart. She was more scared now than she’d been while waiting to hear from the physician after the attack on the demon weapons plant.
“I’ve known Simon since he was a boy. I knew his mother, too, before she died.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Jenny.”
“Why yes,” the nurse said brightly, “yes, it is.” She checked off something on her digital notepad as they rolled down the hallway. “The two of you seem to be close.”
“We’re friends. We’ve fought together off and on over the past four years.”
“You’re sure it’s not anything more than that?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because he didn’t kiss you like a friend.”
“Friends kiss.”
“Friends also become something more than friends.”
Leah felt uncomfortable. “Maybe this isn’t a good time to have this conversation.”
Jenny smiled. “Oh really? You don’t think talking about possibilities like this won’t give you something to look forward to? Something to get you on the other side of this operation?”
“No. What you’re suggesting could possibly be more trouble than Lord Cross or I can handle.” Still, her mind traveled down pleasant avenues that, she had to admit, it had traveled down before. It was hard not to remember that Simon Cross was a good-looking man.
“I think you and Lord Cross can handle a lot.”
“Besides that, I’m quite sure Lord Cross has other friends among the Templar that are much more suitable.”
“If he does,” Jenny said, “I don’t know about it. And trust me when I say that I would know.”
“He’s good at keeping secrets.”
“Oh, I’ll grant you that he’s good at keeping things to himself. Better than most men. But I also know that any friend he was friendly with wouldn’t keep her mouth shut. Plenty of women have noticed that Lord Cross is a handsome man. There were plenty of them that noticed that before he left us all those years ago. None of them were shy about it then, and Lord Cross didn’t mind spending time with them.”
A wave of jealousy shot through Leah, but she quickly got control of it. She hadn’t gone without a few friends herself before the invasion.
“Well aren’t you the busybody,” one of the male nurses asked.
“I’m just saying, is all,” Jenny said. “It would be good for Lord Cross to have something for himself. All he does is near kill himself every day trying to take care of this place and these people.”
“Maybe you should tell him that,” the male nurse said.
“Maybe I will.”
Leah stared up at the high-powered medical lights above the operating table. She folded her arms across her chest as they transferred her from the bed.
Waves of fear radiated through her. She thought she was going to be sick, but there was nothing in her stomach. She concentrated on being numb inside, using all of the training she’d received.
In just a couple of moments, they attached her to all the computerized equipment necessary for the procedure. It had all been explained to her the day before, but she didn’t know if that was a good thing. She honestly felt as if she knew too much now.
Thinking about the nanobots being injected into her eye almost drove her out of her mind. Images of runaway robots tearing through her mind kept her on the thin edge of terror. They weren’t clunky or awkward-looking the way they were in the movies. Several of them could fit on the head of a pin.
Like angels, Simon had said.
“All right, Miss Creasey,” the surgeon said as he leaned down to address her. He was probably in his early thirties and calm. “We’re going to give you something to help you to relax. Then we’re going to see about giving you two good eyes. All right?”
Leah nodded. She liked the surgeon’s gung-ho attitude, but she’d been around enough bad things in her life that she knew things didn’t always turn out that way. She was already lying on this hospital bed minus one eye.
Jenny fitted an oxygen mask over Leah’s lower face. A burning sensation flowed along her left arm. Then she breathed in.
“Count backwards from one hundred,” the surgeon said.
Leah tried, but it didn’t work for her. She spotted Simon above her in the observation deck. It was funny. She hadn’t even noticed the deck earlier.
On her second breath, she reached ninety-two. Then her head spun, and she was gone.
TWENTY-FIVE
S omething clicked beneath Warren’s left foot. He knew that couldn’t have been good. Since nothing had immediately happened, he left his foot where it was and scoured the darkness with his torch. The dying batteries gave off weak light.
“Stay back,” he told Naomi.
“What is it?”
“I appear to have stepped on something.”
Naomi backed away slowly.
They’d already found three booby traps in the vault and disarmed them. All of them had been nasty things with spikes and sharp blades. Whoever had finished off the vault for Lilith had possessed a sadistic mind and a thirst for blood.
Warren figured the man—or woman, for that matter—had been disappointed by using such elaborate cunning but then not being able to know if anyone got caught up in them. At the moment, Warren hoped the nasty mastermind had gotten caught in one of his own twisted traps at a later date and had a horribly agonizing death.
“Lilith,” Warren called.
She didn’t answer. Since they’d returned to the building, she’d gone off exploring. Evidently her present form interacted with the physical world, but that was by choice. She still walked through walls, and she didn’t set off any of the traps.
“Can I do anything?” Naomi asked.
“Besides come up here so that we can both be killed?” Warren asked sarcastically.
“I wasn’t offering to do that.”
Warren didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have, either. Gingerly, he knelt and took a closer look at the stone beneath his foot. In their exploration of the first two levels, there were five in all, none of the stonework had been loose.
Unless it had been part of a trap.
The torch burned just bright enough to show that the stone beneath his foot had slid down a fraction of an inch. It had to be a pressure plate. But what was it connected to?
“Well?” Naomi asked.
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“It’s a switch.”
She cursed.
Focusing on the positive—that he wasn’t already dead—Warren tried to figure out what he was supposed to do. You can’t stay here, he told himself.
“Perhaps you can jam it,” Naomi suggested.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Can you slip a knife blade down between the stones?”
Warren looked, but the torch’s dying light wasn’t good enough to show him if he could. Even if he had a knife blade thin enough, he wasn’t able to see well enough to do the job.
“No,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Then you’re going to have to move.”
Warren knew that was all he could do. He was lucky he’d heard and felt the click. The first time they’d had no warning. He’d nearly ended up skewered on a trio of spears that had suddenly jutted from the wall. If his reflexes weren’t as fast as they were, if he’d been only marginally slower, he’d have been a dead man.
Now…was he fast enough again?
The decision to be made was which direction he should take. What would the trap maker have thought? Warren blew out a breath. He would have thought no one would have been fortunate enough to notice the pressure switch.
“All right,” Warren said as calmly as he could. “I’m going to jump for it. Watch yourself.”
“I will.”
“On three,” Warren stated. “One. Two. Three.” He leaped forward as far as he could. A rustling noise sounded above. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a great shape swinging down at him.
The next room was twice as tall as the one above. That explained a lot about how the first floor had been constructed and hadn’t stepped off the way he’d thought it should have.
Warren didn’t have any time to think about that, though. The large object turned out to be a spike-laden hammer that swung toward Warren without a sound. In the darkness with the torch failing, he saw that the hammer was brutal and ugly.
Turning at the last second, he managed to let the spiked hammer whip by him. His chest stung. He hit the floor on his hands and knees and scuttled forward. Knowing the hammer would come back toward him, he hugged the floor.
