by Chloe Garner
And silence.
The echoing, gaping silence.
Demons talked. They growled. They hissed and spat and fought.
Underground, even in damp soil that sopped up the marshy water like so much sponge, those sounds would make it to her. There was nowhere else for them to go.
And nothing.
She sloshed through a section of the tunnel that was actually underwater, shoving a glowstick into the wall to keep the path lit. She was at the end. She had no more light with her. If she’d brought her backpack, she would have had her lantern and her flashlight, but that was a regret for the after review.
Still, there was nothing but the sound of her feet in the water and, now, dripping. The walls were slick mud, the ceiling a surface she wouldn’t touch for fear of bringing it down on her own head. She was stooped.
She should have turned back.
The air was heavy and damp, muggy, and probably still stank. Down here, there was nothing to blow the smells of death away. It would just sit until the bacteria feasting on bodies died of starvation, wave after wave of them processing the flesh until nothing was left.
She reached a large room, one where she could stand full height. The floor here was churned like a stockyard. With the last vestiges of light from her last glowstick, Samantha saw a set of red eyes. They closed, and there was nothing.
<><><>
She’d waited.
She’d waited as long as she could stand it, listening, on guard, unmoving.
Nothing had happened.
Nothing.
She’d gone back up, collecting glowsticks behind her and looked for other branching tunnels, going down several until reaching their dead ends, and found nothing. More bodies, signs of demons everywhere, but everything was empty.
Demons with the power of splat demons couldn’t glitch. They’d physically left.
They’d be miles away, now, swimming through the swamp and potentially even tunneling underneath things they didn’t want to cross. If Samantha had been the one to organize a retreat like that, she’d have kept a bubble of psychic protection on them, to keep them covered. Sam might be able to find them, to follow them, but it would be risky.
She regained the surface to find Bane sitting, facing the water.
“They aren’t down there,” he said.
“No,” she answered.
He stood up, brushing off his pants and his shearling jacket and heading out toward the boat. Samantha looked back over her shoulder.
They’d done this before.
She’d cleared them out, and never asked the right questions.
That woman was still out there, just setting up to do it again, no doubt in Samantha’s mind.
And she’d spiked Sam.
Samantha wasn’t going to let her walk.
Not this time.
<><><>
Kelly was sulking.
It was what Doris had always called it, though he wasn’t sure he understood the word clearly. He sat in the back of the Cruiser, staring out the window and waiting for Jason and Kara to get back.
He didn’t have anything to say, so he didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have anything to do, so he didn’t do anything.
He wasn’t sure why that was complicated, why humans thought something else should have happened.
It was something about mortality, something about freewill that eluded him, but he was beginning to get it.
Jason whistled. He tapped his fingers. He twitched his feet and itched at his fingernails. Kara and Sam both played with their hair. Kara watched people. Sam read. Samantha saw everything. She read everything. She chewed her lips and she sang.
Humans fidgeted. They filled their time. Minutes and hours of it.
Doris had called it sulking, what Kelly did. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t understand eating. He spent his time listening.
The world was full of many things. The powers of the world, the light, the dark, and the human, mingling and singing and playing. Angels who spent their time here could listen to the noises that those powers made and know. Kelly didn’t know what they knew, but they knew. O’na Anu’dd knew. Heaven’s angels didn’t understand. Nor did Kelly, but Kelly’s lack of understanding was more tactical. He knew that the angel of death knew things that Kelly couldn’t have formed words around, things that the sounds of power told him. To Kelly, it was just the noise of creation, like wind or water.
He understood that insightful humans could tell a great deal from the sound of the wind. He imagined that was what it was like, for O’na Anu’dd. My Friend. The name Samantha had given the angel of death. After all the time he’d been an angel of death, this one human had given him a name and it had stuck. Something about freewill.
“Come on, man,” Jason said, throwing himself into the driver’s seat. “It isn’t that bad. Maybe next time you can come.”
“If you’re as good as he says you are,” Kara said, getting into the passenger seat, “I don’t know why he doesn’t let you come, now.”
“Oh, he’s that good,” Jason said. “He just can’t do the human stuff.”
“Humanoid,” Kelly corrected. “Ghosts are humanoid.”
“Right,” Jason said. “But you can’t do the human stuff, either, can you?”
Kelly looked at the back of Jason’s head.
“No,” he said. Something about freewill.
He didn’t understand, but he knew he couldn’t touch. Not them. Humans were special. In all the planets in the entire universe - Kelly could feel them all, when he listened to the sound of power - men had free will. Cacophonous, chaotic, entirely bipolar. Free will.
“It’s okay,” Jason said. “We’ll find ourselves a badass demon and set you loose.”
“I got a text from Merlin,” Kara said.
“Dammit,” Jason answered. “All I want tonight is a beer and a shower.”
“Minnesota,” Kara said. “Disappearances.”
“Vague,” Jason said. “Chin up, kid. Maybe this one’s a demon.”
“You shouldn’t be hoping for that,” Kelly said. Demons were always bad.
Always.
You didn’t hope for them, you didn’t root for them, you certainly didn’t invite them to your wedding.
Jason had told him that if Kelly had breathed a word to Samantha or Sam about his misgivings about the demons packing out the wedding, Jason would find a frisbee.
Kelly wasn’t sure what a frisbee was, at that moment in time, but he understood well enough that it would join the infernal ball that Jason kept throwing.
He knew it wasn’t real.
He was just helpless to ignore it. No matter how many times he told himself that Jason was lying. That he was a liar. Kelly had to chase the ball.
A frisbee might be worse.
So he’d kept it to himself, stood at proper attention as Samantha had walked down the aisle and completely ignoring the fact that the front row was populated by two of the most powerful demons Kelly had ever heard of.
And they were smiling.
Demons shouldn’t smile. It was confusing. They shouldn’t have any happiness, any satisfaction. Anything but perpetual anguish. The idea of existing without light. It hurt him. It had been the first great shock of being on this plane.
The first of many.
“I’m always hoping for a good showing, kid,” Jason said. “Makes what we do worth it.”
“Would you do it, if it wasn’t fun?” Kara asked. Jason shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. If I was doing it, it would be fun.”
Kara laughed. Kelly mistrusted Kara. Not in the way he mistrusted Maryann - that was instinctive, a survival-level reaction to the wisp of a demon. He mistrusted Kara because while he’d become accustomed to Sam, Samantha, and Jason, Kara seemed to be intentional with her unpredictability. Like she enjoyed putting him off-balance.
A few days ago, Kelly had left a bar bewildered, unable to make any sense of her behavior, when Jason had
clapped him on the back.
“She’s flirting with you, kid,” Jason had said. Kelly didn’t know what the word meant, but anything foreign followed by those words, with you, made him uneasy. She flashed a bright smile, now, all noise and freewill and confusion, laughing at something Jason had said, only he hadn’t said anything. The amount of communication that passed between the two of them without words was astonishing.
Like Sam and Samantha, but without the bond.
“How can anything involving demons be fun?” Kelly asked.
“Oh, kiddo,” Kara answered.
“Come on,” Jason said. “Don’t lie to me. You enjoy ashing them even more than we do.”
“I never lie,” Kelly said.
“We’re gonna work on that,” Kara answered with a sideways grin that bespoke layers of meaning. “Everyone should know how to tell a whopper or two.”
“You’ve never told anyone you weren’t an angel?” Jason asked, sitting up in his seat to look at Kelly.
“Why would I do that?” Kelly asked. Jason shrugged.
“Just figured it would have come up, at some point.”
Kelly frowned.
“No.”
“Fair enough. I guess not,” Jason said. “What do you want for dinner?”
“I’m not eating,” Kelly said.
“Wasn’t talking to you,” Jason tossed back, looking at Kara.
“I know you want steak,” Kara said. Jason grinned.
“You know it.”
Kara shook her head.
“I’m going to gain weight, traveling with you.”
“Just gotta work it off,” Jason said. Something about his tone. Something discordant. Off. Kelly didn’t understand.
He looked out the window.
He sulked.
<><><>
Sam was tracking the herd of splash demons as best he could, with a bubble of psychic protection over them. Samantha wondered which psychic the demon woman was trying to protect herself from: Sam or Abby.
Everyone knew that Abby was Carter’s psychic, and that she was powerful. It had been common knowledge for long enough that Samantha wasn’t surprised to find high-level psychic protection around various demonic enterprises. It had kept her and Sam alive the entire time they’d thought Jason was dead, she’d realized later. They were on a suicide mission, killing as many demons as they could get a weapon on, but the strongest ones were all able to keep Sam from finding them, psychically, and so they’d self-filtered themselves down to the demons who were much less likely to kill them.
She was grateful for that oversight, in retrospect.
But if the demon woman knew Samantha, knew about Sam, that was something else.
She didn’t know what that would have meant, and it frustrated her. She didn’t like not knowing.
Sam, relieved that she was home in one piece, poked fun at her frustration, and she mentally snarled at him - mostly in fun - in reprimand to focus harder. She didn’t want to make it home and then have him get spiked while he was being careless.
He shook his head.
“I can’t find them. It got dark, and then they’re just gone.”
“Dark?” Samantha asked. “Are you okay?”
She couldn’t feel anything wrong with him, and she probed harder. He pushed her away.
“I’m fine,” he said. “The sun went down.”
“Ah.”
He nodded.
“Yeah. So I can find all of the edges of the protection. It’s huge. I…” His brow creased as he tried to find words. “I can feel them in there, swarming around, and then it gets dark and…”
He shook his head again.
“I lose them,” he said. “I don’t see them come out, but I don’t know that I would, in the dark. They don’t just vanish. They kind of… fade away. I don’t know. I wish I could show you.”
Samantha nodded.
“It’s okay. We’ll keep looking. They have to pop up somewhere.”
“It’s a big country,” Sam said. “If they even stay in this country. It’s a bigger world.”
Samantha shook her head.
“No, odds are strong they stay.”
“Why?”
“Hard to explain. Part of it’s just culture. They adapt to survive in a specific culture, and they tend to stay there. Language is part of it. Language has more power than people think. So it’s partially logistics and tactics - keep in mind that the little ones can’t glitch and they can’t swim, well, not really. They aren’t going to swim to Spain, for instance. She could go anywhere she wants, but if she wants to keep her little goblins…”
She stopped.
Why would she? Why would the demon woman keep them?
Samantha hadn’t seen any ash, down in the tunnels, but you wouldn’t have to ash them there. Ashing them one by one out in the swamp would mean all of the ash would sink or float away and Samantha would never know it.
“She killed them,” Samantha said. “Has to be. It’s probably easier to just get a new batch than try to sneak them out and accidentally leave a trail for us.”
“So she could be anywhere in the world?” Sam asked.
“No, there are still more reasons that she would stay here. I’d bet she’s bound here,” she answered, though she mentally added that, technically, she had no data to go on other than what normally constrained other demons, and clearly this woman wasn’t like other demons.
“Texas and Montana, then?” Sam asked.
“Not really,” Samantha said, drifting away mentally down the rabbit hole again of why the woman was so comfortable with the elements. “Sorry. No. It isn’t America, really, though there is a significantly increased chance that she will stay in the country, proper. It’s Argo’s, Mitch’s, and Spake’s territorial boundaries. We set up to match them.”
“And those are?” Sam asked.
“Haven’t I shown you?” Samantha asked. “Sorry. I forgot. Argo has maybe half of Mexico; it wanders a lot depending on how the group down there is holding up. Mitch goes all the way up through Alaska and the Yukon, though I suppose Ian has part of Canada as well, like Vancouver and that area, and Spake has the eastern part of the country, not including Greenland.”
“Greenland isn’t part of Canada,” Sam said.
“It went back and forth for a while, historically,” Samantha said. Sam raised an eyebrow at her.
“No, Greenland hasn’t ever been a part of Canada,” Sam told her.
“I mean for our regions,” Samantha said, exasperated. “Greenland is part of the Norse contingent of us. If you trace where the Vikings had their settlements, you’ll find all kinds of boundaries that wobble back and forth, depending on whether history or present has more power. The Vikings were lightning rods for power.”
Sam stared at her.
“You aren’t kidding,” he said. She frowned. Why would she be?
“No. I can tell you exactly where the major Viking settlements were, artifacts or not, by the power currents. Water, land, major civilization corners. I’ve explained all of this to you before.”
“Doesn’t mean it made sense,” Sam said. She glowered and he grinned. “Sorry. I’m glad you’re back. What’s next?”
“I tell Bane we’re done, and we go home.”
“What about the woman?” Sam asked, giving a mental shudder at the memory of her.
“We’ll find her,” Samantha said. “I’m not going to let her go that easily. I’ll do some research and see if I can’t find a way to track her down.”
“Will Nuri know?” Sam asked. Samantha shook her head.
“I doubt it. Mist demons just don’t have enough contacts with the rest of demonic society.”
“You say that like…” Sam shrugged. “Like polite society.”
“Hardly,” Samantha said. “Get packed up. Do you mind calling Jalice and letting her know they’ve moved on?”
“Will do,” Sam said, getting his phone out. She nodded, turning away to go outside
to find where Bane had wandered off to.
“I’m going to find her,” she muttered. “That’s not up for negotiation.”
<><><>
They’d barely gotten back to Eloin, into the front room and sending Trigger out to get the bags - the poor kid got all of the grunt tasks, simply because he always had - when the doors to the front room flew open.
“Sam, I’m done with him,” Abby said, looking over her shoulder as Carter followed her into the room, looking at his nails. “I swear, if he so much as opens his mouth, I want you to kill him.”
“As if she could,” Carter said without looking up. He went to lean against a wall as Abby continued her charge. Samantha glanced at Sam as she relaxed her arm mid-draw. He hadn’t warned her, nor had Maryann. She wasn’t used to people showing up without someone warning her, not when they weren’t here to kill her.
“What happened?” Samantha asked.
“He’s gone completely insane,” Abby said, motioning emphatically at Carter. “I haven’t slept in three days. He won’t let me go home. He won’t let me eat anything but…” the woman looked menacingly at Carter, who raised his eyebrows like he was going to look up, but didn’t.
“Eelpath krav,” Carter said.
“Whatever the hell that is,” Abby said. “It isn’t food, I’ll tell you that much.”
“I know what it is,” Samantha said. He’d made her eat it for weeks, at one point. It had enough nutrients in it to keep you going, but otherwise was pretty much a magic purge. Anything that wasn’t absolutely attached to you, at the core of your identity, would strip away under a diet of eelpath krav. It would substantially weaken most magic users, because most magic users adopted a lot of external magic touchstones, as it were, which gave them abilities that weren’t native to them. As far as discipline went, though, it wasn’t bad for you, because you tended to rebuild with much stronger symbolic magic, having lost all of your lifetime-accumulated crutches.
“I don’t know why you came running to her,” Carter said. “It’s not like she can do anything about it.”
“Like hell she can’t,” Abby thundered. “Everyone knows if anyone can do anything to you, it’s her, and if she’s going to do it for anyone, it’s me.”
“Everyone knows,” Carter mocked, standing up. “Hello, Samantha.”
“Aspen,” Samantha answered. The room was empty and Sam had heard her call Carter by his first name before. It was just enough to needle him, not so much to actually make him angry. Carter gave her a tight little smile.
