A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1)

by Cassy Campbell

  Liv saw a little girl pitch forward into her sand castle, and her skin went cold, her lips numb. Her feet reported contact with the ground from another zip code. The color leached out of the world, and her voice sounded from at least as far away as her feet. “Do you know his name?”

  “Yes. They call him the Wolf. Raul Woolfe.”

  “Oh.” Icy insect feet crawled over Liv’s scalp and down her temples. Black swirled at the edges of her vision.

  “Liv?” Jordan’s voice was far away too, but it was closer than hers had been. His hand on her arm felt like a warm coal. “Jesus, you’re freezing!” His arms closed around her, warm and solid, holding her up. “Liv, what’s wrong?”

  “Liv, you’re fine,” Elachai said, and her chest unlocked so she could take a breath. The fading world leapt back into over-bright sharpness as everything came closer.

  “I’m fine.” She nodded to Jordan and he took a step back, keeping a hand on her arm. She was still floating outside herself on a Novocaine cloud. “You don’t know who he’s talking about, do you?”

  Jordan shook his head.

  “Jordan. I know you don’t watch the news, but you must have heard of Raul Woolfe. The Big Bad Wolf? He shot up a beach and a schoolyard. That was the education center—an elementary school.”

  Her voice shuddered despite her iron grip on it, and Jordan gently squeezed her arm where he still held it. She floated numb above it all.

  Liv continued talking, unable to stop. “The police finally caught him, but he killed something like forty children. He had done them singly until the beach. No one knows how he got away from there.”

  “This happened in your world?” Elachai asked.

  Liv nodded, still looking at Jordan as if holding a lifeline with her gaze. “It was a huge public trial. As big as O.J. Don’t you remember any of this?”

  He shook his head. “This is why I don’t watch the news. I don’t want a nightly reminder that the world is ending bloody.”

  “Well, Raul’s world was the one that ended. He got a lethal injection about a year ago. I watched.”

  “Then this is not the same man,” Elachai said.

  “How many Raul Woolfes do you think have gone out and shot up school playgrounds?” Liv snapped at him.

  “Possibly infinitely many.” Elachai’s voice suggested he was pointing out that the sun was bright, although his expression was sympathetic.

  “Yeah,” Liv said, struck by the infinity of the multiverse as she hadn’t been in years. She put a hand over her eyes. “Shit, that’s true.”

  She took a shuddering breath and continued, “How did he get to Hell?”

  “Liv.” Jordan spoke as if she was made of spun crystal and a single loud sound would shatter her. “It’s not the same Wolf. You said Home World’s Mirror is dead. But his Mirrors would have done similar things in other worlds. One of them could have escaped and gone to Hell.” He smiled bleakly at the feeble joke.

  “You think he’s a Traveler?”

  “He is,” Elachai confirmed. “That is why he is able to hold my family in Hell.”

  “Or,” Jordan continued with another ah-hah expression, then stopped, his face suddenly blanked like a shuttered window.

  “Or?” Liv prodded.

  Jordan sighed. “Remember how I said there were other forms of life in Hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe there are humans in Hell.”

  “So this Raul Woolfe could have originated there?” Liv didn’t like that prospect at all.

  “Possibly.”

  “Great.” Liv blew out a breath. Having something else to think about had apparently started her heart again. She wasn’t frozen anymore. Turning to Elachai, she asked, “He is human?”

  “Looks human,” Elachai corrected.

  “And you want us to do what, exactly?”

  “Help me save my family. I have two young children. I fear what the Wolf may do to them. He holds them hostage to encourage me to turn myself in. But even to save my family, I will not work for the Wolf. I cannot even imagine the horrors he would force me to force on others. I do not force anyone against their will.”

  “Really?” Liv snarled. “We decided all on our own to come for a little daytrip in the middle of a firefight?”

  “How can we help?” Jordan sent a quelling glance at Liv.

  “I believe your whole team will be needed. It was my hope to convince Jordan, who could then convince the others…”

  Liv snorted. “Convince him! It’s wrong to go around pushing people’s minds into new and interesting shapes! Don’t you even know how wrong it is to take away free will?”

  “Yes, which is why I would never normally do so. Even now, I will not push either of you to fight or die for my family, but I need help. I have watched your team on some of your recent missions, and your teammates have the qualities I believe will ensure success.”

  “And those are what—pushability?”

  “No, those are integrity, stealth and combat training, high levels of technology, access to weaponry, and a grudge against the demons.”

  “We don’t have a grudge,” Jordan said.

  Elachai looked mildly surprised. “But they have attacked your team. Twice now.”

  Jordan shrugged. “They attack everybody. We want to stop them, but we’re not taking it personally.”

  “I have noted that you are each very devoted to the others on your team. And you are even now trying to help a world fix their mistake. Can you not understand my devotion to my family? Or if you would not help them, would you not defeat the Wolf to stop the demon attacks and save many other lives?”

  Liv and Jordan exchanged a glance. He turned to Elachai. “When you put it that way…”

  “What do you want, exactly?” Liv asked.

  “Your help. Convince your team to go to the Demon World—”

  “Hell,” Liv said flatly.

  “Hell,” Elachai agreed, “and defeat the Wolf. And release my family,” he finished in a small voice.

  Liv turned to Jordan. “Would stopping their leader stop the rest of the demons?”

  “Maybe. It certainly might derail any conquest plans they have. I mean, we’ve never had this kind of trouble from them before.”

  “Woolfe is…an ambitious leader,” Elachai said.

  Jordan asked, “How do we defeat them?”

  Elachai slumped slightly. “I do not know. That is why I need you.”

  “Do you know anything?” Liv asked. “Where are they? What are their numbers?”

  “They are many thousands. But the Wolf is the one you need concern yourself with. He keeps my family with him in his capital city. I do not know where it is in relation to your world, but I have come here to Desolatia from that city.”

  “Are there any identifying features in…Desolatia…to let us know where you were?” Jordan asked.

  “There is a large rock formation near a bog, where some greenery exists. It is the only place I have ever seen animals; there are some tiny swimming things in the salt pond below.”

  “The rock looks like a tiger if you see it from the west?” Jordan asked.

  Elachai looked bewildered. “Tiger?”

  Jordan looked to Liv for help. “It’s a sort of…big cat, orange and black stripes.”

  Elachai brightened. “Yes, and it appears to have a tail, which is the path to the top.”

  “I know exactly where that is,” Jordan said.

  Liv looked sideways at him. “You do?”

  He nodded. “I came here a lot when I was younger.”

  She frowned at him. With all the places in the multiverse that a Traveler could go, why would he pick here? “Why?”

  His gaze on hers sharpened. “I didn’t have backup like you. If I got into trouble, I had to have somewhere to escape to. This was it.”

  She felt a little ashamed that she had pressed him. Ben had always been her backup, and she forgot that other Travelers had grown up in this all alone.
“Sorry. So where’s this rock?”

  “Teotihuacán.”

  Liv turned back to Elachai. “Where in the city?”

  “You will help me?”

  Jordan said, “We’ll bring it to our leader.”

  “My thanks. The Wolf’s palace is the only stone building in his city. You could not miss it.”

  “We’ll see what we can do.”

  Elachai bowed. “You, Jordan, may Travel at will.”

  He dissolved into swirling atoms and vanished.

  Liv turned to Jordan. “We need to get back to base, now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because he just pushed us again. Both of us. I need the data on what our brains are doing. Now.”

  “What about the others? We left them in the middle of a firestorm, remember?”

  “Of course I remember, Jordan! But this is important.” She bit her lip. What if their team was in trouble? “They could Travel out if they had to. They’re fine.”

  Jordan relaxed. “Probably. Con wouldn’t let anything happen. There isn’t much we could do anyway. Bullets had no effect against those jets.”

  “So here’s what we do. Get to Home World, radio for immediate pickup, then jump back to Demon Rift to pitch in there.”

  “You got it.”

  “On mark.” Liv counted down, relieved to see Jordan fly apart when she said mark. She reached for the void and disappeared.

  * * *

  “This is Dr. Greenwood of T36 calling for immediate pickup. ASAP.”

  “Acknowledged. Is this an emergency evac?”

  Liv glanced at Jordan, who gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “Yes, but no danger on landing. Just hurry.”

  “Acknowledged. Out.”

  * * *

  Liv arrived in Demon Rift already moving, in case the demon attack was still ongoing. It wasn’t. Although smoke danced in ballet pirouettes and flames flickered through wrecked plane windows like Jack-o-lantern fire, there were no demons in sight.

  She tapped Jordan’s arm and pointed to a pile of refuse that would provide some cover. There, they took a minute to inspect their surroundings. Crashed and smoking jet wrecks hulked all around, but there was no movement beyond the dancing smoke and fire.

  Liv tried the radio. “Connor, come in, this is Liv.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Relief washed through her. She’d been worried they’d ditched to another world, or worse, been injured. “What’s your situation?”

  “Secure.”

  “Then we need to get back to base now.”

  “Explain.”

  “Not over the radio. Jordan and I need testing. Immediately.”

  There was a brief silence before Connor answered. “Affirmative. Home World now. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Thanks, Connor.”

  “Out.”

  * * *

  Liv and Jordan arrived in a field filled with morning sunlight. Within seconds, their locators marked the rest of their team’s location as they arrived in Home World. “They’re only about half a mile away,” Liv said.

  Her radio staticked to life. “Liv? Jordan?”

  “We’re here.”

  “We’re coming to you.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Liv and Jordan sat in the long grass—wheat, Liv thought, although she wasn’t very sure about that.

  Jordan said with studied casualness, “So what was that back there?”

  “Back where?”

  “In Safe World.”

  Her stomach turned to a little ball of lead, but she turned to look at him, staring fixedly at the blade of grass he was stripping the seed head from. “You’ll have to be a little more specific, Jordan.”

  He continued stripping the grass stem as if he hadn’t heard her, then suddenly turned and looked right at her. In the slanting golden sunlight, his eyes seemed to glow with blue flame. “I mean, why did you come after me?”

  Liv sat back, startled. She had thought he was going to make her talk about the Wolf. “What are you talking about? You’re my partner. Of course I came after you.”

  “I wasn’t in danger. I could have Traveled out at any time.”

  “As it turns out, no, you couldn’t.”

  “Oh. Right.” He dropped his eyes back to his grass stem. “Well, it was dangerous for you.”

  “And you! That’s the job. We’re in danger every day. That doesn’t mean we don’t stand behind one another.”

  Jordan nodded. “The job. Absolutely.”

  Liv felt obscurely like she’d failed some kind of test, but she couldn’t figure out how it had gone wrong. She felt like something monstrous was approaching, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see what the world looked like after she’d seen what made those gargantuan stomping footsteps.

  Connor stepped out of the trees edging the field, the rest of their team tramping through the knee-high grass after him.

  “Hey guys!” Ben called with a wave. “Thanks for skipping out on us during a demon air raid!”

  Liv glared. “It wasn’t Jordan’s fault, and I had to follow.” She cut her eyes to Connor, waiting to see if this excuse was going to be accepted. Maybe they were really facing disciplinary action.

  Connor’s face was impassive, glacier-green eyes icy as usual. “We saw enough to know you had no choice. Either of you.”

  Jordan said, “Con, Elachai gave us some intel.”

  “Why?”

  Jordan launched into the story, but before he could finish, the SM appeared overhead. They trooped in, and Jordan finished his report.

  Connor sat quietly in thought. Probably weighing the pros and cons of going to Hell, Liv thought. If she didn’t get them tested soon, there’d be no way to figure out what Elachai had done. But if she had that data, she might actually get her machine working, and they’d stand a chance. Mentally, she pushed the jet to go faster.

  “So what happened to you guys?” Jordan asked.

  Liv perked up to listen to the answer.

  “We were attacked,” Ben said with a perfectly straight face. “By demons.”

  Liv rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned.

  “Gin and I saw Jordan disappear and you follow. We were too far away, obviously, and there was no way to follow you.”

  Gin said, “Which we may not have been able to do anyway, because the instant you guys left, the demons started firing on us.”

  Liv looked from one to the other. “I didn’t think those aircraft had weapons.”

  Ben smiled grimly. “They do now. So anyway, we had to get under cover to avoid all the building chunks that were coming down on top of us. Connor and Trent tried to protect the laser, but they had no choice but to leave it when half a building façade fell down on them.”

  Liv nearly leapt out of her seat. “The laser wasn’t damaged, was it?”

  “Hang on, I’m getting there,” Ben said, clearly enjoying the suspense he was creating. “We tried firing on the jets—”

  “We’d have had more luck throwing water balloons,” Gin groused.

  “Right.” Ben shot a frown at her. She smiled and batted her eyes innocently.

  Trent said, “Some of the Rifters were killed by the demon fire and the rock fall. The others got mad and started chucking rocks up at the jets, which gave me an idea.”

  “He threw a star right through one of their engine intakes,” Gin said.

  “The jet came down,” Ben said, “and the Rifters got the idea. Those intakes sucked in rocks and choked.”

  Trent grinned. “Explosively.”

  “So what about the Rift?” Liv asked.

  Ben put up a hand. “I’m getting there. Gin saw the laser was fully charged at that point—”

  “And I pressed the button,” she said with melodramatically wide eyes.

  “And?” Liv asked.

  Gin sat back. “And the laser shot a green beam at the Rift. The color swirl froze, and it started to swell.”

  Trent said, “I was
sure it was going to explode, rip into another world, something horrible.”

  “’Course you were, Nagano.” Ben threw a grin in Trent’s direction. “That’s why you’re the group optimist.”

  “But then the Rift shrank,” Gin said. “It took, like, thirty seconds. And it was totally silent. Very weird.”

  “Try cool. The demons who were still in the air took off across the city when they saw they were trapped,” Ben said. “The Rifters went after them.”

  “But you didn’t?” Jordan asked.

  Ben shook his head. “Mallet asked us not to. They wanted to finish it.”

  “So they’re all dead?” Liv asked.

  “Well…” Ben shifted in his seat.

  “No,” Connor said.

  Liv hadn’t even thought he was listening, he was so clearly deep in his own head.

  Ben glanced at Connor to see if he was going to continue the story and apparently decided he wasn’t. “As we were standing there, one of the downed jets’ fuselages blew open.”

  “And a demon threw itself out.” Gin scowled at the memory.

  “It survived a jet crash?” Liv asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Ben said, “it looked like a victim of the zombie apocalypse. Its wings were burned down to bare bone, it was completely covered with soot, or maybe its skin was that burned.”

  “So they can be hurt, at least,” Liv said.

  “It still moved creepy-fast.” Gin shuddered. “We didn’t even get a chance to fire on it before it scuttled around the building and out of sight.”

  “But you just left them there.” Jordan glared at Connor.

  Connor lifted his head and met Jordan’s eyes with icy impassiveness. “Yes, Jordan. Because we did our job. The Rift is closed. Even if all the demons survived, they can’t get reinforcements, can’t get weapons. They can’t leave. Those people had better weapons technology than we do, and they have access to their own weapons again now. We can’t kill the demons. Maybe they can. All they have to do is hunt them down.”