To Beat the Devil (The Technomancer Novels Book 1)

by M. K. Gibson

  The rest of the cell had been modernized by someone with a horrible sense of cliché. Instead of bars there was thick clear Lucite with small circular portholes. It looked like Hannibal Lecter’s holding cell. I could see my cell was part of a hallway of cells. Ambient light was coming from the end of the hall, but I could not see the source. The hall turned at a right angle to what I suspected was a larger torture room. Father Grimm was standing in his cell opposite mine tapping on the Lucite.

  “How long have you been awake?” I asked as I got to my feet.

  “Not long. A few minutes ahead of you,” Grimm said, inspecting his cell. His voice was muffled from his cell to mine. I took a few deep inhales, picking up as many scents as I could. Metal, blood, piss, shit, and fear sweat. Many people had been made to suffer down here. From the smells I could tell there were wood and metal devices down the hall. I could smell embers and stone, bile and teeth. Well, let them try, I thought, I’m not going down like that. I began checking my cell as well.

  “How long do you think we have been down here?” I asked as I ran my hand over the jointing area where the Lucite met the blood wall.

  “Hard to say,” Grimm replied, doing the same in his cell. “I can sense it is well past morning. Probably around noon. Don’t you have some sort of gadget in those bracers of yours that tells time?” Truthfully, I didn’t. I was so busy fulfilling comic book fantasies when I built them, I never once considered a watch a priority. I relayed that to Grimm, who just laughed. Grimm’s laughter was rare, a short bark and then gone.

  “Well, when I get around to version 2.0, I will add a watch,” I said as I pushed a little against the Lucite. I was pretty sure I could break it using the mass accelerator. Only problem was, I was hungry. Now that T had me wired directly to supply the power to my bracers and weapons, the overuse made me tired and hungry. I made energy, apparently, but I still needed to fuel my body. And I was still reeling from last night.

  “What are the odds these eyes in the cells are relaying our actions to some hellion?” I asked Grimm as I poked one of the ever-moving, never-blinking eyes.

  “I would say very probable. As are the cameras above the cells and at the end of the hall,” Grimm said. I looked, and kicked myself for not noticing them. I guess the grotesque walls of teeth and eyes had thrown me off enough that I didn’t notice something as anachronistic as the cameras.

  “What do you suggest then?”

  “We wait. It will give you time to rest and recharge. Maybe they will bring us some food. It also gives us the time to discuss a few things.” Grimm sat down, legs akimbo.

  “Sure, why not?” I said, sitting down myself. It wasn’t easy; the wall tusks seemed to quiver if you got too close. And I smelled something like venom coming from them. Upon inspection, I saw a yellow pus ooze out of the tusks. Gross. Leave it to Hell to create a toxin- producing holding cell. “What about listening in?” I asked.

  Grimm muttered to himself and I felt the air pressure change. He had dropped his sound dampener between the cells. When he nodded, I knew our conversation was secure. I just hoped they had no one listening who could read lips.

  “So Abraxas was telling the truth, I guess? He wasn’t the one who sent the troops to your home? And since the colors didn’t match, it was not his cohort of troops who attacked Midheim.”

  “No, it was not him, and he was telling the truth,” Grimm said. “Damn. That means another player in this game, and I do not care for the unknown.”

  I had to laugh at him. “I do not care for the unknown,” I mocked, badly imitating Grimm’s tone and speech pattern. “Grimm, bud, you have to lighten up.”

  Grimm stood and looked more than a little pissed. “Lighten up?”

  “Yeah, lighten up.”

  “Salem, I know you are much younger than I; however, you are old enough and must appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

  “And you, my overly dramatic companion, need to stop taking things as seriously as you do. We should be dead, but we’re not.” I dug into my coat. They seemed to have ransacked nearly everything. But a good lightrunner knows how to keep a few pockets hidden. I found my emergency waterproof tube of supplies. I always kept a few smokes and matches in there for emergencies. And the stress of this freaky room counted as one. I lit one up and appreciated my situation. I was trapped in the dungeon hold of a demon archduke. But more than that, there was knowledge present. Puzzle pieces to put together.

  I took a deep drag off the smoke and breathed out with a cleared mind. “Look, the way I see it, if Abraxas wanted us dead we would have been killed when Pazuzu knocked us out. Remind me to shove a grenade up his invisible ass. But anyway, the point is, we are still breathing, and we now have more knowledge than before about what the fuck is going on. So, are you cool now?” I asked.

  Grimm nodded in his cell. Good.

  “We know Abraxas is getting souls. How, we don’t know yet, but he has a steady flow going to his throne, which he is projecting to his court. The question is, is this an anomaly, or is this happening all over New Golgotha? Or even in the other supercities?”

  “Then my worst fears are coming to pass,” Grimm said to himself.

  “How so?” I asked. I was going to chide him for being ultra-dramatic again, but figured what’s the point?

  “When the demons came, they came armed with power brought with them from Hell. Souls. But when they came, they also lost the ability gain more soul power.”

  I saw what Grimm was getting at. “So, after two long wars and many years after, they should be running on empty.” And that was the problem. They weren’t. They had found a new source.

  Grimm echoed my thoughts. “Yes, but it seems the demons have found a way to replenish their supply.”

  “Using the ritual you discovered back in Whitechapel,” I thought aloud.

  “Yes. Using that ritual. Or one like it, on a grander scale.”

  I nodded. I recalled seeing the waves of energy flowing to the throne in the grand hall. That energy source must be the siphoned souls. I relayed what I saw to Grimm.

  “Then the source must be coming from within the citadel,” said Grimm.

  “The call is coming from inside the house!” I said, quoting the old horror movie. Grimm just gave me a look and I chuckled anyway. At least I knew I was funny. Snuffing out my smoke, I flicked the butt at the tusked wall. The tusks quivered and chomped at the movement. Man- eating walls. Leave it to demons.

  It was quiet for a few minutes. Both of us knew what was coming next, so the silence stretched. Neither one of us wanted to say it out loud. I lit another smoke and decided we just needed to air it out.

  “We know our friends betrayed us, Grimm. Ricky must have informed Abraxas of our movements and convinced Theresa to put the tracker in our drinks. Which really sucks, by the way. I liked Dante’s. I don’t know if I can ever go back there. Well, other than to punch Ricky in the mouth.”

  “Yes. And all that time he was berating us, he was in fact stalling us, waiting for the authorities to arrive and take us in,” Grimm said with a shake of his head.

  I felt betrayed by Ricky, having known him for as long as I had. I could not imagine the betrayal Grimm was feeling. But then I thought about it some more.

  “You know, I’m curious. Why the separate forces? If the isotope tracker was for the Cyberai, why the shock troops? Anyone who had been tracking us would have known run of the mill troops wouldn’t stop us. Hell, it wouldn’t even be a real drain on our resources. Unless . . .”

  “Unless,” Grimm picked up the thought, “the shock troops were not meant for us at all.”

  “Damn. Ricky, the Spinolis, Jensen. Damn damn,” I said. “It serves Ricky right to be captured, even Theresa to a point, but not Cat and Jensen.” I was getting frustrated. And I was still starving.

  “We also know from Kuma that the Techkuza were not behind the attack on you when Kitsune and his hit squad came knocking,” Grimm noted.

  “Which bring
s us back to the other player in the game.”

  “Indeed.”

  Even though Grimm’s spell muffled sound like a dampener, I still heard the faintest muffled sound of a woman’s scream from down the cell hallway. The spell didn’t block out scent, and my nose picked up a new smell, perfume. And it was a perfume I recognized, because I had been in close and caught a whiff earlier tonight.

  “Grimm, drop the spell!” I ordered. Grimm complied and then we both heard a woman scream, but my extra sensitive hearing also heard the sound of squealing metal and the wet pop of rent flesh. I knew the scream and I knew the smell.

  Theresa.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Take the Abuse

  I pounded on the clear plastic that comprised my cage. Not with all my strength, but enough to get a feel for it. Acrylics had always been durable, even in my time. It was going to take a lot out of me to pound through this. My strength wasn’t an issue and neither was the mass accelerator in my tech bracer. It was the energy to run it all. The bracer’s remaining charge was still decent. But the generator, me, was dangerously low. I smacked at a few more spots, looking for the weakest place.

  I heard Theresa scream again, and I heard hellions laughing. I knew she sold me out, and part of me thought she was getting what she deserved. I immediately kicked myself for thinking it. Bitch or not, few people deserve torture from a demon. I started getting myself pumped up. I could feel the adrenaline flowing upon my command.

  “Wait!” hissed Grimm. “That much noise and they will know we are coming.”

  “You prefer she gets pulled apart?!” I growled at him through clenched teeth.

  “No, fool, of course not. Just wait a moment,” Grimm said. He backed away from his cage, and I saw his eyes begin to glow a deep blue-white. Grimm simply melted away into shadow and reformed outside of his cell. Just like he had at my lair. He looked at the camera at the end of the hall and again at the eyes in the cells. I could read his mind and we both knew there was nothing we could do about that. Anyone watching would see we were breaking free.

  Grimm came to my cell and began to run his hands over the plastic wall, and where he touched it became cloudy, as he was super heating the plastic. His hands produced a magical fire that was like an acetylene torch. The bright light forced me to switch my eyes back to normal vision. The smell of burning plastic was horrible. Worse, it was noticeable. It was a catch-22. If the torturer smelled it, he would know we were coming. If he didn’t, Theresa would continue to be mutilated.

  “Hurry!” I harshly whispered. “The smell is a giveaway.”

  “Damn the smell, the eyes in the cells are probably reporting all of this. When you are free, we move fast. No time for thought, remorse, or quips. Understood?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. I started crisscrossing my arms and hopping from one foot to the next. Getting limber and ready. In a few moments, Grimm had cut a hole big enough for to crawl out and I scurried through. We moved quickly and quietly down the hall, toward the light. When we got to the sharp turn, we held up and turned the corner slowly. There was another short hallway lined with eyes, which opened to a large room.

  The room was straight out of hell. It was hard to describe. It was, in application and function, a torture chamber. In reality it was something to make me hate God for ever leaving us to the mercy of these beasts. Instruments of pain lined the walls and work benches. Devices, mechanical and crude, hooked and barbed, were everywhere. This place was only meant to bring pain. It was lit by a central fire pit and smaller braziers as well as lit sconces scattered around the room.

  People—or what was left of them—were skewered, pierced, disemboweled, mutilated, hacked, and ripped apart all over the floor and along the walls. Bits were hung from rafters on chained hooks. Human fluids congealed on the floor and were then squeegeed down drainage holes by hellion workers. I saw sub-rooms dedicated to healing. No doubt to bring a prisoner back to full strength before starting the torture again.

  Additional holding cells lined the second and third floors of the massive room, all connected by a series of interconnected steel mesh walkways. People were in there. Many wept, some screamed. But it was the main floor that held my eye. There were no living humans left on this level of the chamber.

  Save one.

  In the center of that nightmare I saw Theresa.

  A mottled brownish-purple demon, some sort of mutt from his coloring and diminutive wings, was straddling her as she was strapped face down on a wood slatted table. She was naked from the waist up and the demon was licking her neck and ears while holding a fistful of her hair. Her cybernetic arm had been ripped away, tossed casually away like a snot-soaked tissue. A fire brazier was next to the table, with hot coals and a metal poker. The skin from the socket wound was puckered and blistered where the demon had used the poker to cauterize the wound closed. The rest of her was cut, beaten, broken and bruised. Deep lacerations covered her exposed skin and she freely bled and wept. She had been tortured. Badly. But since they had Grimm and me, it was needless.

  They did it for pleasure.

  The demon was working himself into an erotic frenzy, grinding as he straddled her, and Theresa just whimpered. The demon cast a glance over his shoulder, smiling at a cell behind him. I followed his gaze and saw Caitlin on the second-floor walkway in the same type of cell Grimm and I had been in. She was pounding on the plastic front wall of her cell screaming her sister’s name over and over. The demon turned back to Theresa and slowly began to rip away her leather pants.

  Oh, fuck that.

  I moved without thought. The brutish hellion workers saw me as I came into the open and began to howl. The master torturer didn’t turn. Maybe he thought they were cheering him on. With a growl, I sprinted towards the table. The hellions were too slow and too stupid to stop me. When one managed to get a claw on me or get in my way, I snapped the clawed arm or broke their necks. Behind me I had a vague awareness of Grimm engaging the remaining hellions. I smelled the scent of metal and oil. He must have had a few extra blades hidden away. I had to trust him to have my back.

  As the torturer got Theresa’s pants off, exposing her bare skin, I leapt the remainder of the distance and tackled the demon, pulling him to the ground. We both hit hard and rolled in the muck and guts. I didn’t have the time or energy for a long fight. In the past, I had always held back. Like during the fight with Kitsune. I had always been afraid of what would happen to me if I was ever seen, or worse, recorded, performing at the levels I was capable of. But that was no longer the case. It wasn’t about me. Not anymore. I was sure some human-wired cameras were in here for the demons. Fine, let them watch.

  The demon was a big boy. He came to his cloven feet quickly and stepped at me, snarling, swinging a wild haymaker with his clawed hand. To me, it was watching slow-motion replay. Before the demon knew what had happened I had already slipped the punch and was behind him, wrapping my arm around his throat. I popped the blade in my right tech bracer while holding his head in my left. I kicked the back of his thigh hard, driving him to the ground. I ran the blade across his throat, opening it and letting the blood flow. And then I just simply pulled. I was rewarded by the sounds of tearing muscle and the wet ripping pop the demon’s throat made as his head came off. Black blood fountained and sprayed. I was coated in it and I didn’t give a shit.

  Elapsed total time: seven seconds.

  I wiped the ichor from my eyes and turned to see Theresa staring at me. She was smiling and crying at the same time, her body shuddering. I ripped the restraints from Theresa, freeing her from the table. She rolled to her side and shivered and continued to cry. I removed my tech bracers so I could take off my jacket. I covered her with my coat and put my bracers back on. I knelt beside the table and laid my hand on her head and brushed the hair out of her eye. She continued to cry. I saw Grimm moving about, examining everything. Hellions lay dead around the room. He gave me a nod, and I knew we were OK for now.

  “Shhh,”
I said. “It’s OK. It’s over.”

  “So, so sorry. So sorry,” she kept repeating with her eyes closed. I kept my hand on her, making reassuring tones.

  “It’s OK, ’Resa. It’s OK. Shh, rest.” I turned to Grimm. “Find a lock release for those cells, get Caitlin down here, and free the rest of the prisoners.”

  “Got it,” Grimm said. He looked around and saw the release lever on the second floor. Grimm didn’t bother with stairs; he leapt to the steel mesh walkway, his magical power propelling him. He landed by the lever and pulled the release. That section of cells opened; the plastic wall slid away, and the living victims staggered out. Grimm made his way around the level, releasing the cells, and then moved to the third level, releasing those. The chamber quickly became filled with the voices of scared yet hopeful people. One voice stood out.

  “’Resa!” Caitlin screamed, her voice raw. She pushed her way through the freed prisoners. Caitlin rushed to her sister’s side, shoving me hard out of the way.

  “Reesy, oh fuck, Reesy,” Caitlin wept. Caitlin tried to mouth words, poignant meaningful words, but nothing came out. Only slow, moaning sobs. Caitlin held her sister and the two of them rocked and sobbed. I could only watch as Theresa’s eyes went wide and glassy.

  Theresa exhaled once and died right there in her sister’s arms, deep within the archduke’s citadel.

  Her body had given out from the mutilation and torture. Perhaps there was a sense of kindness or closure that she could be with her sister when she died. I felt a growing lump in my throat, and my eyes started to water. The demon blood on my face stung where the salty tears flowed freely now. I came over and put my head on Caitlin’s shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, Cat,” I said. Caitlin turned with a snarl and backhanded me with her cybernetic left arm. The impact rocked me back a couple of steps and split my lip.