“We’ve discussed these situations at length with the town council, and we believe that we should hang tight. The worst thing that we could possible do right now is engage in several small civil wars amongst ourselves, over ethnicity or orientation. We would literally destroy ourselves from within. There are many other things for our hands to keep busy with at the present time.
“We still control roughly sixty percent of the remaining Michiana area and its population. Our standing policy is to accept working with anyone of good will who abides by the law, and try to help them if we can. Their refugees are already flooding to us, depleting their numbers–not the other way around.
“We will defend our areas and prevent these other groups from committing raids against us as much as we can, but we will not attack them unless provoked. Let another monster horde invade, and we’ll see how well their stand-alone, isolationist policies work for them. Then they might very well change their minds and rethink their current, political strategies.”
Dirk sat down. A large number of people applauded.
David had to admit, he himself was too young and hot-headed. If it were up to him, he might have used force to bring the others back in line.
Dirk and the other town leaders were older, wiser, and more level-headed. David still had a lot to learn before he could even become half the man and half the leader that Dirk and some of the others were.
The discussion group went on to speak about several related topics at length. A representative from the scientists stood up.
“Our greatest problem remains a lack of electricity. Try as we might, we can’t get motors, engines, or generators to produce and create electric power. Without a consistent source of power, our society is greatly crippled. There’s something we’re missing completely. Something unfathomable about the effects of this dimensional cataclysm has fundamentally made changes in reality and scientific principle that won’t allow our technology to work.”
Other experts shook their heads. “It has only been a short while,” the scientist said, “but until we discover that solution, we still must plan ahead for the worst and mobilize our people to produce food, clean water, and modify our existing buildings and technology to survive the next winter. Otherwise, there will be mass starvation and people freezing to death in their homes. Not to mention surviving the hottest parts of the summer without air conditioning. These are not minor concerns.”
“There have already been casualties from exposure, among the very young and the very old, and sick,” a doctor noted. “Modern medicine has been greatly reduced without electrical energy and technology, and many people who would have normally survived, have perished. There is a limit to what we can do these days. And after the battle, we have many people who are crippled and others who will take months to recover.”
A woman stood up. “What about the ghosts? Hundreds of people have reported seeing spirits, apparitions, and ghosts of the dead moving around or seen in familiar spots.”
A spokesman from the religious community rose up. He looked to be a Catholic priest. “We don’t know what to make of these reports. They have definitely increased, but so much of all of this is new and abnormal. Priests, ministers, and lay persons have formed units with the authorities to investigate these phenomena, and will report back to our leaders and the community.”
The woman was persistent. “Do we have anything to fear from these spirits, Father?”
The priest shook his head and lifted his hands. “We just don’t know at this time. As with all of this, we advise people to use caution about anything strange, and alert the authorities concerning anything unusual.”
Then Jerriel stood up and dropped her bomb on everyone. “Yoor holy men and women will need to use their powers of faith verry shoortly. A demon is nearby, hiding in your town, using its powers to add to the growing hatred and chaos. This is no accident. It feeds off terroor and violence like food, groowing stronger and doing what it can to cause moore. Together we must find and defeat it. It will use all of its abilities to turn you all against each other.”
“Demons?” someone said, reacting with alarm like many others as the crowd murmured. “Now we have to fight demons?”
Jerriel turned to David and looked puzzled. “Yoo do not fight demons in your world, Daeved?”
“Maybe not as often,” David said. “Or as openly. It’s not like it happens all the time.”
“We will hunt down this demon and banish or destrooy it,” Jerriel assured them. “Bring yoor holy peeple with us. Demons can be very tricky, and dangerous, depending on what kind it is. Yoo cannot defeat them merely with normal weapons. Demons are creatures of power and supernatural evil, and are vulnerable to both faith and magical energy.”
She put her hands behind her back and paced across the stage. “This raises another issue. We will need to begin training wizards among yoo. I have tested some. I can test others. Without wizards, yoor people are at a verry big disadvantage. Then they can tap into the strange sources of magic essence we coontinue to find. But first, we must eliminate the plague of this demon.”
Connie stood up again. “In truth, we have received reports that some people have been demonstrating strange abilities. We will continue to investigate and ask Jerriel’s help in determining how to proceed in these new directions.”
All of that only raised more questions, and the consulting group once again came to the point of uproar.
The council called a recess to give everyone a chance to calm down.
Minutes later, Dirk caught David and Jerriel back stage.
“I had a hasty discussion with the town council,” he said. “I’m putting you two in charge of this demon threat as of this moment. Do what you must to take care of it.”
David nodded. “We will hunt this thing down and eliminate it as a threat.”
“Good,” Dirk said. “The religious people are sending a group of their folks to meet with you. Tonight. Not all of them are hip on pursuing this demon angle, especially the Baptists, for some reason. But the ones who go with you will need some guidance. Things are very different after the Merge. All of this weird stuff is now commonplace, and we’re constantly playing catchup. I’m sorry to burden you two like this, but that’s just the way it is. We don’t need any outside forces, supernatural or whatever, making things even worse around here.”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” David said. Although at the moment, he didn’t know what exactly that was going to be.
“Demons are cunning personified,” Jerriel tried to explain. “They will always try to twist everything to their advantage. It is a great misfortune to be foorced to deal with them directly, but it is woorse to do nothing and let them spread their hatred and destroy yoor town from within. And there are many different kinds who woork in different ways.”
Dirk shook his head. “Let us know if we can give you any further assistance. Dave, keep forming that strike force we talked about. Assemble what you need. I know everyone has more than enough to deal with right now after the coups. I’m counting on you.”
They said goodbye and left the auditorium. David admitted to her right up front. “Jerriel, I’ve never confronted a demon before, and I don’t think any of these religious people have either, if I’m guessing right. You will need to tell us exactly what to do and what not to do. We aren’t going to know.”
Jerriel sighed and shook her head. “Verry well. Then you’d better get yoor peeple together, and you’ll all need to start learning fast.”
“Is there some kind of hurry? First thing in the morning we’ll–”
She stopped him with her slender fingertips on his lips. “You still doo not fully comprehend the serious nature of this threat, Daeved. There is no time. We act this night, and we do not stop until our foe is defeated and destrooyed. We hunt it down, and banish it or destroy its physical form–oor we die trying.”
She walked fast. David stopped a trooper and sent word back to Dirk for the religious people to join
them at the Madison and 933 militia garrison station. He had to jog to catch up to Jerriel. “All right. I’m with you. They’ll meet us at the station shortly and we can proceed from there.”
52
Mason studied the healer woman from Elkhart. Marisol Gallegos was about twenty-seven years old with long black hair and dark eyes. She was quiet, small, and plump–about five-foot-one. She had a nervous smile, slightly coffee-stained teeth, and she looked around a lot.
Mason’s initial impression of Miss Marisol was that she was skittish and a bit jumpy.
But they had just transported her from Elkhart across a war zone in a dusty, bumpy carriage, to bring her to a South Bend under siege.
Major Avery welcomed her.
“Where is the Pistolero?” she asked, impatiently. “I was told we were in a hurry. If so, then let’s get started. This is going to be bad enough as it is. I don’t like being here, and I want to go back home as soon as I can.”
She looked Mason in the eyes, as if to silently say to him, Yes, it’s you. You’re him. The one with all the pistols that still work like magic. You’re the one with all the wounds that I need to heal, with the magic I now control.
Everything about Marisol looked and seemed Hispanic in some general way. Even her simple clothing and the way she wore her hair. But her voice barely had the hint of an accent.
None of that really mattered. If she could heal him and get him back to the front, she could look and sound like anything or anyone under the sun.
When Mason looked back at her, his eyes told her that she had guessed right.
She put down her green leather purse and came to him where he sat up in bed. “You need to lie down. Give him something tough to bite down on that won’t break his teeth.”
That sounded encouraging.
“I’m letting you know up front that this is going to hurt both of us, Mister Pistolero. It’s going to hurt both of us like hell itself. And I want you to know–what you feel, I also feel. That is why we cannot use drugs for pain. If I dulled my senses, I would certainly kill you.”
She did not look exactly happy about that, either.
So, she suffered, too, whenever she healed someone. Interesting. Magic always seemed to work in funny ways.
“I want to thank you, ahead of time,” Mason told her.
Marisol glared at him and frowned, the corners of her mouth sinking down. “You’ll be cursing me over the next few days, every time we do a treatment together…and I’ll be cursing you.”
She looked to Major Avery. “There will be two or three treatments each day. Didn’t they tell you? At the very least, your people will have to hold him down. But I strongly suggest that you wrap his ankles and wrists in foam and strap him down to the bed. Hospital restraints work well. This will all save time.”
Avery was about to protest, but Mason barked, “Do as she says, Bill. Get on with it. If the pain’s that bad…it’s that bad.”
Marisol grinned for the first time. “I like you, Mr. Pistolero. But I don’t want you hitting or kicking me, or spitting on me–or trying to bite me or butt me with your head. If you tie him down good, as I say, you only have to hold down the head. That makes everything go much faster.”
“How long is each treatment?” Mason asked her.
The medical people were already restraining him.
“Too long,” Marisol said. “Ten or fifteen minutes that will seem much, much longer. Afterwards, we will both need to drink water and sleep. I don’t advise eating much until after the third treatment of each day. You’ll probably just throw it up. I do not like being vomited on.”
“Very well,” Mason said. “I’ve already skipped breakfast and lunch. They told me that much.”
Marisol gritted her teeth and her face went hard. “Then let’s get started.”
“How much down time between treatments?” Major Avery asked.
She began examining his wounds and his body with her firm hands, wincing and sucking in a breath whenever she touched or passed her hands and fingers over his injuries. “Two to four hours between treatments. We’ll both feel like sleeping in between. Prepare yourself, Mr. Pistolero. Know that the first day is always the worst, by far.”
Major Avery gave him a thick swatch of leather over a chunk of foam rubber to bite down on. Then he pressed Mason’s head back.
“Do your best to try to think of something else,” Marisol told him “Looking and watching won’t help. Close your eyes and try to think of something nice.”
Mason instantly thought of his beloved Tori. The smell of her soft red hair. The feel of her lying next to him with her head on his chest while he smelled her hair and kept his arm around her.
Mason’s eyes suddenly bulged and his body jerked against the restraints.
Someone had just rammed a red-hot harpoon up through his body and out the top of his skull. He bit down hard, and then gasped, and chomped again.
The pain was not only blinding, but it seemed to come in waves and burn from within.
He wept; he sobbed and moaned. His restraints burned his wrists and ankles as he tried to get away.
Within seconds, he was shuddering and drenched with sweat.
Shooting jolts of agony continued to rip through him, as his hips and spine arced up into the air again and again as the pain transfixed him. It was like slowly being electrocuted, but not dying.
The pain and the terror of the next second of the pain seemed to last and linger for hours.
Then the pain subsided without warning and mercifully began to fade.
Through his blurred vision, he saw Marisol, sweating and disheveled as well. She collapsed and fell back into the arms of two medics. The whites of her eyes rolled back up into her head. They laid her out on a stretcher cot and carried her out of the room.
Mason wanted to crawl off his hospital bed and throttle her to death. He cursed her through the gag in his mouth, which he had chewed to bits by then. He wanted that little woman dead and bleeding at his feet for what she had done to him.
It wasn’t rational. Nor feasible. He could barely move and he was close to passing out. He could sense that he was seriously dehydrated.
The medics put him on an IV and gave him sips of room-temp water until he drifted off to sleep. He felt them gently cleaning him up, but he was too far gone to care what they did to him.
As long as those waves of pain were gone.
When they woke him for the second treatment of the day, four hours later, he begged and pleaded with them not to go through with it.
Major Avery gritted his teeth and ordered a new gag put in Mason’s mouth. Mason cursed his friend Bill as well, while he was able.
Marisol came in, her grim face set. She brought hell back with her touch.
She must have learned these techniques from demons in Tartarus itself, tormenting the damned. Damnation. If that was what he had to look forward to for all eternity in the nether regions of the universe, then he’d best get himself some religion, and stay on the better side of it pretty damn quick.
Mason blacked out three times during the second treatment, but was brought back screaming each time as the torment continued.
It did not matter how long the treatment lasted.
One second was too much, and telescoped out into what felt like an eternity.
The only thing that mattered was the sweet cessation of the pain when it suddenly and abruptly cut off.
Ahhh…the mere absence of that pain was heaven itself.
Mason took in more water and slept again.
Three hours later, it was time for the third and final treatment of the first day.
Then the first day would be over.
Oh, hell. There were still two more entire days of this nightmare to go.
If he had one of his pistols, he would have blown his own head off his neck right then and there. Something he never thought that he would ever do.
Miss Marisol was wrong. He couldn’t think of anything pleasant
during that kind of agony. Even his love for Tori didn’t help him when he was in that much pain. Nothing helped.
Just make the pain stop.
Make it stop.
All he could do was beg, scream, and whimper.
Then, it ended. Somehow, it ended.
He didn’t even take water this time.
Exhaustion and sleep rocketed him away from the pain into darkness.
Mason woke up that night when it was dark, overcome by hunger and thirst.
They brought him all of the soup, and stew, and toast, and fruit gelatin that he could eat.
He ate a lot.
He felt some of his strength returning. He flexed one arm, then his legs.
It was so good to be out of those damn restraints.
He considered running away that night, but Major Avery had a score of strong guards posted around the room, inside and out, including Thulkara.
Mason wouldn’t get to a door or a window before she nabbed him.
He dozed off again, and then someone came in. He heard a soft, familiar humming.
He looked up at Donna and smiled. He nearly burst into tears.
His beloved Donna gave him a sponge bath that was as gentle and as soothing as the touch of a thousand angels. Her hands seem to draw even the memory of all of that pain right out of him.
In his mind, Mason felt so great, he could leap out of that damn bed and lick the entire enemy force and all of its mages and armies, with his good right hand tied behind his back.
When she was done, she patted him on the head as if he was a little boy.
“You’ll sleep well now, Mace,” she told him. “I’m so sorry you have to go through all of this.”
Mason licked his lips, very sleepy. “It’s okay, Donna. I want you to go…give Miss Marisol one of your sponge baths, too. Tell Major Bill…that I insist on it.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him, but she didn’t request one.”
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