by Mel Odom
Daiyu gave the order. With the demon free, they were only too happy to comply.
Kareloth lurched but couldn’t take another step. His arms waved helplessly. Muscles bunched across his body as he strove to fight off Warren’s hold over him.
“You’re at my mercy.” Warren lifted the spear in his metal hand. “I’m going to kill you, and you’re not going to do anything to prevent it.”
Fear glazed Kareloth’s eyes. Both his faces quivered. “You…can’t…do…this.”
“I can.” Warren felt the demon fighting against him. The demon felt immediately more tired, and weaker. Hefting the spear, Warren walked forward and drew it back. If there had been other demons around, his power wouldn’t have worked so well. While he was controlling Kareloth, another demon could have killed him. But in this instance, his power and strategy worked.
Without another word, Warren threw the spear through the demon’s heart. Once more, the obsidian spear burned cherry red. But this time Kareloth’s chest blackened as it was consumed by the heat. In seconds, only the spear held him up.
When Warren retrieved the spear, Kareloth dropped to the pavement. All four of his eyes stared sightlessly.
Trying not to show how scared he still was, Warren walked over to the demon. Warren’s knees quivered and almost buckled under him. He took a shuddering breath and fought not to throw up. It wasn’t the scent of burned flesh that got to him. What bothered him most was how close he’d come to dying.
“The corpse will draw other predators,” Daiyu said.
Warren nodded and kicked Kareloth in one of his faces. The demon didn’t move.
“Harvest it,” Warren ordered.
The Cabalists fell to the task with zest. Horns, eyes, hands, and sections of scaled hide all slid into bags. The demon’s corpse diminished, shuddering as they took what they wanted.
Naomi drew her knife and moved in as well.
Warren watched them silently and tried to keep himself quiet and controlled. He couldn’t help thinking that the Cabalists’ bloodlust wasn’t far removed from the demons.
But they were his people.
Later, back in Daiyu’s lair, Kareloth’s pieces were sorted out and distributed. Warren withdrew from them and found a room to himself. His fear and the energy he’d expended had taken their toll on him.
The room was dark. Night still remained, but not much of it.
Without undressing, he lay down in the bed. He was glad to be alone, but he also wished that Naomi would join him. However, he knew he wasn’t going to ask her.
Before he could give the matter much thought, he drifted off to sleep.
“You spent all our money again!”
Hearing his stepfather’s voice so clearly again woke Warren just as it had all those years ago. When he focused his eyes, he woke on that threadbare couch back in that Manchester flat all those years ago.
Martin DeYoung, his stepfather, sat in the open window and drank from a whiskey bottle. He was a powerful man who was slowly turning to fat. His black skin held a bluish tint. His shaved head gleamed in the streetlights. A short goatee framed his square chin. His nose had been broken so many times before that it was misshapen and gave him trouble breathing and sleeping. He wore khaki pants and a soccer shirt.
“I’m really close to breaking through,” Tamara Schimmer protested.
Warren stared at his mother. She was Jewish and white, with pale skin, dark hair that hung in ringlets, and dark eyes that constantly looked bruised. She often forgot to eat and take care of herself because of her studies.
Get me out of here, Warren thought desperately. This has already happened. I don’t want to relive it again. But he was trapped in the nightmare once more. His eight-year-old self buried his head in the pillow as he had all those years ago.
“I needed things,” his mother continued.
Warren knew her argument wasn’t going to work. It never did. There was no one in the world as right as Martin DeYoung was when he decided he was right.
“The money I’ve spent trying to get in touch with my power isn’t going to matter,” his mother said. “Once I’ve achieved my mastery over the arcane—”
Warren knew bad things were going to happen. When Martin drank as heavily as he did now, bad things always happened. He’d had a bad day at the track, or on the ball games. He was constantly betting. Bookies and enforcers often looked for him. Warren had seen them.
“Mastery!” Martin’s voice was so strong and unforgiving that Warren thought the windows might break. “You can’t even manage a house, you cow! We live in filth!”
The social services people had sometimes told Warren’s mom that, too. They’d threatened to take Warren away from her. Only she’d moved, leaving everything but her books on lore and magic. Those were the things she prized above all else. She’d studied those every moment she had.
Martin continued his rant. “I work hard all day—”
“You’re a thief!” his mother interrupted. “Don’t you go getting sanctimonious with me!”
Anger mottled Martin’s face, turning it even darker.
“I know what you are!” his mother continued. “You and your friends just—”
When Martin stood, Warren bailed off the bed and climbed behind the couch. It was where he always hid anytime they had a fight. The couch wasn’t much of a hiding place. Martin always found him and beat on him, but Warren had always tried to do something to save himself another round of pain.
“I needed that money!” Martin said. “I had it hid! You shouldn’t have gone into my private stuff!”
“You live here!” his mother replied. “I put a roof over your head! What I took wouldn’t even pay your rent!”
“You get this place free through social services ’cause you were stupid enough to get yourself knocked up! You’re getting a free ride! My money is my money! I told you that from the beginning!”
Warren buried his face in the couch, hoping the nightmare would end soon.
FORTY-EIGHT
W arren knew the dream usually ended quickly at this point. Although he didn’t want to, he peered around the side of the couch because his eight-year-old self had all those years ago.
Martin took a large, short-barreled pistol from the back of his waistband. Light glinted on his gold watch and ring, and from the pistol’s shiny silver barrel. Cursing, he trained the weapon on Warren’s mother.
She didn’t move. He’d aimed pistols at her enough over the months they’d been together that she no longer cared. He’d never once fired at her.
Martin rolled the hammer back. White flecks of spit showed on his blue-black lips. Then he squeezed the trigger.
Five thunderous roars filled the room.
Although he hadn’t wanted to, Warren screamed in fear as his mother jerked and started bleeding from her chest, abdomen, and face. She was already dead, but his eight-year-old self hadn’t known that then.
Drunk on the whiskey and his own sense of empowerment, Martin opened the weapon’s cylinder and shook the empty casings onto the floor. He thumbed new bullets into the cylinder and stared at Warren.
“Now you’re gonna get yours, you little ape!” Martin snarled. “I’ve been getting sick near to death looking at you, listening to your mother talk about her ideas about magic and you! I ain’t gonna have to listen no more, though!” He snapped the cylinder closed and took aim.
Warren screamed, but he no longer heard his voice. Martin fired the pistol. The bullet struck Warren’s right hip and knocked him down. Panic filled him when he saw all the blood coming from the hole in his side. He hurt, but he was numb, too.
Martin fired again, but the second shot cored the wall above Warren’s head. A puff of white powder jetted from the plasterboard.
“No!” Warren screamed. He wanted to beg his stepfather not to shoot him, to call the hospital for his mother, but he couldn’t. He tried to talk, but he couldn’t.
“Ain’t gonna do you any good to beg,”
Martin said. “I’m gonna shoot you right in the head. I’ll never have to see you in this life again.” He took aim.
Warren looked at the man and let loose all of the hate he’d held back for months. His mother had said that she’d wanted him to get along with Martin. Warren had tried. He’d always tried to do what his mother had asked, even if it was something he hadn’t wanted to do or didn’t see the need to do.
“I hate you!” Warren screamed. Then in a calm, wishful voice, he said, “I wish you were dead.”
A smile crawled across Martin’s face. “I guess you got some backbone after all. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.” He took aim.
Warren lay helpless on the floor.
Then, incredibly, Martin didn’t fire. Instead, he turned the pistol back on himself. He begged and pleaded for help as he pressed the pistol barrel to his temple.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The crack echoed through the flat. Warren’s nose filled with the scent of charred meat. He lay quietly on the floor, waiting to wake up in his bed. As he continued to lay there, he heard the shouts of neighbors. Someone banged on the door and demanded to know what was going on.
Martin’s body spasmed. Incredibly, the dead man sat back up. In real life, Martin had hit the ground dead and hadn’t moved a muscle. The police had taken his corpse away after a while. Counselors had told Warren that later.
That wasn’t going to happen this time.
This time Martin leered at Warren, one side of his head blown open. Bloody meat and bone fragments clung to his cheek.
“Thought you killed me, didn’t you?” Martin smoothed a hand across the side of his head. “Well, you’re wrong. Whatever power you’ve got, mine’s better.”
This didn’t happen! He’s dead! A voice gibbered in fear at the back of Warren’s mind. He tried to get up. Back then, he hadn’t moved until the emergency services people had arrived. They’d carried him from the flat in a gurney.
Now, he rose to his feet, but his side felt like it was on fire.
When Martin moved his hand from his head, demon’s scales showed there. Patches of his head were missing. A curved horn jutted up from his temple where the wound had been. When he reached for the pistol, he closed a demon’s clawed hand around it.
Martin grinned. “This is how it should have ended, Warren.” He took aim. “This is how it’s gonna end tonight. And you’re gonna be just as dead.”
“No!” Warren whispered in a hoarse voice.
Before Martin could fire, a woman suddenly stepped into the room. Warren didn’t recognize her. She was dark-haired and violet-eyed. She took in the situation at a glance, then launched a kick that caught Martin’s wrist. Bone snapped with a brittle sound. The pistol flew into the air, turning end over end.
The woman spun again, and this time she put a boot in the center of Martin’s face. Flesh tore from his face and revealed a demon’s features beneath. He fell backward and landed hard against the wall. The shelves containing Warren’s mother’s books fell to the floor.
Inhumanly fast, Martin caught himself and launched himself at the woman just as she plucked the pistol from the air. Then Martin hit her, and they went down across the broken recliner Warren’s stepfather had brought home one day.
The pistol changed in the woman’s hand. When the Martin demon tried to sink his teeth into her throat, she shoved the pistol between his jaws and pulled the trigger. The Martin demon’s head exploded.
The woman grimaced and shoved the demon’s corpse from her. She rolled to her feet and walked over to Warren.
“Hey, it’s going to be all right,” she told him. “You’re going to be fine. That thing is dead. It’s not going to bother you anymore.” She held him to her for a moment to offer comfort.
“Who are you?” he asked. “This isn’t the way it happened. You weren’t there.”
The woman pushed him back and looked at him. “You’re not a child, are you? Not in real life?”
“No.”
“Then all you have to do is wake up. Wake up and all of this will go away.”
“What caused this? I’ve never had anything like this happen.” Warren felt terrified. His thoughts were his own. Only Merihim and Lilith had invaded them.
“My name is Leah,” she said. “I’m being held by the demons in some kind of machine. They’re using me—and several others—to gain access to people’s dreams. I don’t know why. I’ve tried to reason it out. Maybe it’s just a fear tactic. Maybe it’s a way for the demons to monitor the humans left in the city. I’ve tried to stop doing this, but every time I close my eyes, I’m inside someone’s head.”
Warren looked at her and saw how tired she was.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“At the Apple store. At least, that’s where I think I am. That’s where I was taken captive.”
Behind her, Martin started quivering again. She must have noticed the distressed look in his eyes, because she glanced over her shoulder and saw the thing’s head starting to re-form. It looked like it was going to be more demonic than before.
Leah turned back to him. “You’ve got to go. Some people didn’t live through these nightmares. You might be one of them.”
“If that’s true,” Warren said as the fear rose inside him again, “then you saved my life tonight.”
Leah gave him a wan smile. “Maybe. Maybe I only saved you from having a really bad dream.”
Behind her, Martin lurched and jerked as he forced himself to his feet. He moved more slowly now. “I’m gonna get you,” he growled in an inhuman voice. “I’m gonna get you both.”
“Go,” Leah said. “You need to get out of here.”
“How?”
“Just wake up. That’s all you have to do. Just wake up.”
Warren woke in darkness, but he wasn’t alone. Lilith, looking young and ravishing now, sat at the foot of his bed. Voices came from down the hall and let him know the Cabalists were still divvying the demon’s body.
“I came as soon as I saw that you’d succumbed to the sleep trap,” Lilith said.
Warren looked at her but said nothing.
“That woman,” Lilith said, “probably saved your life when she interfered.” She smiled. “Of course, she’s also the reason Merihim’s minions are able to reach inside your mind in the first place.”
“What was that?” Warren asked. His voice sounded dry and weak.
“A weapon. I mentioned it earlier, but I didn’t know Merihim had it working quite so well. It’s become quite dangerous lately. Some of the humans die while trapped in their dreams. Others wake up and hurt still more people.”
Warren sat up and held his throbbing head. The ache between his temples was worse than he’d remembered in years.
“I’ve been trying to find the machine,” Lilith said, “but Merihim has hidden it.”
“She told me it was at the Apple store.”
Lilith examined his face. “Do you know where that is?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have to go there.”
Warren couldn’t believe it. “No. That’s the last place I want to go.” But he thought about the woman and felt bad that she was trapped there. He consoled himself with the thought that she was already dead and only her memory was still in the machine. Or that she was just a construct dreamed up by the machine. But he would have known if she’d been lying. He felt certain about that. There’d been no indication that she’d been lying.
“Merihim will be there,” Lilith said in a low voice. “You and I both owe him for what he’s done to us.”
Although he knew what Merihim had done to him, Warren had no idea what the demon had done to Lilith. For her to carry a grudge for thousands of years, it had to have been something.
“It’s time,” Lilith said. “There must be a reckoning among all of us. You have an army now. Heal them. Make them powerful. And we will conquer Merihim once and for all.”
Warren wasn’t convi
nced.
“If you don’t,” Lilith said, “Merihim’s creation will come for you in your sleep again. This time you might not escape so easily.”
That gave Warren no choice. He didn’t want to have to face another night that had Martin DeYoung and his mother’s murder in it. Those nightmares were bad enough when he’d caused his stepfather’s death through his suggestion. But to have to live through nightmares where Martin wouldn’t die was too much.
Regretfully, Warren got up from bed and walked to the door. When he turned back to the bed to address Lilith, he discovered that she was gone. For a moment, he wondered if he’d dreamed her as well.
No, she whispered into his mind. Go. You have much to do.
Warren went.
FORTY-NINE
L yra Darius was back in Temple Church as the Battle of All Hallows’ Eve was just beginning after the Hellgate opened. Demons had attacked the convoy Lord Sumerisle had put together to get his granddaughter out of harm’s way. After the vehicles and the demons had been destroyed, Lord Sumerisle had asked Lyra to escort Jessica to the Underground entrance beneath Temple Church. There would be people there, Lord Sumerisle had said, who would be able to care for her.
Out on the church grounds, demons had massed and attacked. The contingent of guards—other military people who worked with Lyra and whom Templar Lord Sumerisle had sent—had managed to hold off the creatures long enough for Lyra to get Jessica inside the church. They wouldn’t have managed that without Keira Skyler and her Cabalists. All of them had worked together to save the young girl Lord Sumerisle believed would be a major force in the fight against the demons.
“What’s going to happen to Grandfather?” Jessica asked. She was eight years old. Even though she’d been told about demons since childhood, she’d been confronted by monsters tonight. That had left her shaken.
She’s just a child, Lyra thought as she went through the church doors. Why would demons want to harm a child? The whole idea sounded monstrous. But, she supposed, that was exactly the point after all, wasn’t it?
