A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1)

by Cassy Campbell

  The demons dropped them in an empty holding area and searched them. It was just as repulsive as Liv had anticipated it would be. The demon pulled the brain ray from its loop and her heart sank. No chance to complete the mission now, unless she could get it back in her hands in the next two minutes. Or find it again and somehow get back here.

  When they were done stripping the team of all equipment and weapons, the demons threw the six of them unceremoniously through one of the cell doors. Liv landed on her hands and knees, and the door slammed behind her as she struggled to her feet.

  She looked around to make sure her teammates were okay. They were all on their feet, at least.

  One of the demons snarled from the door, “You will wish for death after a visit with the Wolf. Maybe we’ll be the ones to oblige.”

  Their ear piercing pig-squeal laughter trailed off down the hall as they walked away.

  “So they speak English now,” Trent said.

  “I guess they’ve spent some time with their captives.” Jordan didn’t look pleased by the prospect.

  “Guess we won’t be digging our way out with a spoon,” Ben said as he looked around. The door was made of metal bars, but the walls were covered with solid steel plate.

  Connor asked, “Everybody okay?”

  He got varying degrees of positive response. “Safe World on mark.”

  Liv obediently reached for Safe World, but as before, she couldn’t get out of this world.

  “Fuck!” Gin said. “It doesn’t work!”

  “Why not?” Connor asked, staring at Liv. The others turned to her as well.

  “How the blue blazes should I know? Maybe they have a brain ray too.”

  “They never gave us commands,” Trent pointed out.

  “Think, Liv,” Jordan said. “How would they be able to stop us?”

  Liv rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes, trying to ease the ache behind them and focus. “Okay. Travel requires will. It requires concentration. There must be release of hormones and neurotransmitters to activate the areas of the brain necessary to take us where we will. An interruption at any of those steps could trap us here.”

  “And that interruption would be delivered how?” Connor asked.

  Liv shrugged absently. Her mind had engaged the problem now, and she was in deep thought. “Toxin. Infection. Electrical impulse. Some form of radiation, like the brain ray.”

  “Is there radiation here?”

  “I don’t know. They took all of my equipment.”

  “Well, how do we get around the interference?”

  “Connor! I don’t know how they’re delivering it. Short of breaking the device or blocking the signal, I have no idea.”

  He turned to the walls and began to methodically inspect every square inch of their prison.

  Jordan nudged Liv. “It got you a little bit.”

  “What?”

  He tugged at her collar and she winced in pain. She glanced at the blood running down the front of her shirt.

  “With its claws.” Jordan inspected the wound. “Doesn’t look too deep. I wish they hadn’t taken my bandage stuff.”

  “I’ll be fine. I didn’t even notice it until you said something. What about you?”

  He shook his head. “Just bruised.”

  Her gaze roamed past him to their surroundings, and she wasn’t inspired by hope. Their cell was a small box, adorned only by a steel cube ‘bed’ along the left-hand wall and a hole in the floor in the corner that, from the smell, must be the toilet.

  Connor finished his inspection of the cell and shook his head as he sat on the ‘bed.’ “We’re not getting out of here until they let us out. Unless you can block the no-Travel command.”

  He looked hopefully at Liv, but she only shook her head. She was still turning the problem over in her mind, but she simply had no clue to how they had done it.

  Following Connor’s lead, the rest of the team made themselves as comfortable as they could. Liv found herself seated against a wall between Ben and Jordan, well back from the toilet hole.

  “Did anyone else see the computer?” she asked.

  Gin scowled. “Yeah. Old school tech, but still, what the hell’s it doing here?”

  “Pun intended?” Ben said with a laugh.

  Gin ignored him, waiting for Jordan’s answer, but he shook his head. “I’m surprised by the level of all of their technology. Architecture, materials manufacture, electricity,” he gestured to the fluorescent lights overhead, recessed behind thick steel bars.

  “How did that come about?” Trent asked.

  “Woolfe’s a Traveler. He could be pushing their advancement,” Jordan said.

  A door in the hallway slammed, and they jerked their heads toward the cell door. A moment later a demon appeared and pointed at Jordan. “Woolfe wants to see you.”

  The team leapt to their feet but there was nothing they could do. The demon pushed through them, heaved Jordan up by the shoulder and left, slamming the door behind it.

  Liv ran for the door, peering through the bars, but Jordan was already out of sight.

  “We have to do something!”

  “Like what?” Connor asked. His voice was overly mild, always a sign of his temper boiling beneath the surface. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  Liv wracked her brain, but there was no way out. She slumped back down in defeat next to Ben.

  “He’s tough,” Ben said, with a friendly bump to her shoulder. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Why take Jordan?” Gin asked.

  “Why not?” Ben asked.

  “No, really,” Gin said. “He’s not the leader, he wasn’t the one with the brain ray, there was nothing to single him out. Why him?”

  Trent said, “Maybe they want to know something. He’d be the one with the most knowledge of demons and of other worlds.”

  “But how would they know that?” Liv asked, dread twisting her stomach.

  No one answered.

  Chapter 23

  Perhaps an hour later, the slam of the cellblock door again came from the hallway, followed by the clomping of demon feet. It sounded like three or four at least.

  Five demons appeared at the door. Jordan wasn’t with them.

  “Why are they back without Jordan?” Ben asked.

  Liv sat frozen under a giant wave of fear. Jordan was dead; why else would the demons come back without him?

  The demons entered the cell. Each grabbed a human and hauled its captive out the door.

  Liv’s demon grabbed her by her already-wounded shoulder. Fresh blood dripped from her collar bone and the burning pain shot down her arm and radiated into her chest. She forced herself to breathe through it.

  The demons hauled them back up all the flights of stairs to the hallway where they’d been captured, then through the door at its end.

  From her vantage point, dangling from her shoulder with her neck all but paralyzed, she couldn’t see Jordan.

  She twisted her whole body to get a look around the room, but although the demon’s claws dug in deeper, she didn’t even get a glimpse of him. Maybe he was hidden by the demons’ bulk.

  There was also no sign of the Wolf.

  One of the demons thrust its face inches from Connor’s and held up a wildfyre grenade. “What’s this?”

  Liv tensed. Where had it come from? All of their equipment should have vanished minutes after being removed from their possession. And if the demon pressed that button they’d be toast. Burnt toast. If she just knew where Jordan was, she’d be fine with that.

  Connor’s expression was bored. “Sampling container. For Safe World. Now.”

  Liv caught the command and reached for Safe World, but still couldn’t Travel. As, presumably, the others couldn’t, since no one vanished.

  The demon snorted and tossed the wildfyre grenade over its shoulder. Liv breathed again.

  Woolfe entered the room from behind some screens in front of them. “Welcome friends! Welcome, welcome, welcome!” H
e sang the words in a cheery warm baritone, washing Liv in a new wave of dread. A vicious charismatic leader was one thing, but if Woolfe was insane, there would be no reasoning with him.

  The demons presented their captives like 4-H lambs, albeit ones with their arms pinned behind them. It made Liv nervous to have the demons invisible at her back, and her shoulder protested by sending a fresh wave of blood down her shirt, but at least she could finally see the room.

  The first thing she saw was Jordan, standing calmly between two demons, each of whom held an arm. She nearly cried out with relief.

  “Hi guys,” he said. He was very pale, nearly green, but showed no obvious injuries.

  “What’s up?” Ben asked in an equally casual tone.

  “Oh, you know, just having some fun with my new friends. They’re trying to rip off an arm.”

  Jordan smiled sadly at Liv as she gasped in horror, but the sound was covered by Woolfe’s laughter.

  “Hardly! It’s just that you needed some convincing.” Woolfe turned to the rest of the team. “In fact, that’s why the rest of you are here!”

  He clapped his hands, and a demon stepped out from behind the screen, leading a woman and two small children by ropes attached to collars at their necks. The children clung to her dress, tear tracks shining on their cheeks, highlighting the bruise on the boy’s jawline. The girl’s eyes were big enough to swallow her whole face.

  Rage washed over Liv.

  Woolfe gestured expansively, including the whole room. “If you give me the information I require, I will gladly let you go. All of you.”

  “What kind of information?” Connor asked, eyeing the boy’s bruised face as if he was picking a piece of fruit at a farmer’s market.

  Liv felt a surge of mad glee at his feigned boredom, proof of his underlying fury. Woolfe was dead. He just didn’t know it yet.

  The demon holding her crushed her arms tighter together, and she realized she had been unconsciously straining to reach Woolfe. She immediately relaxed, trying to get a better grip on her emotions.

  Woolfe said, “I want to know about your Home. Where are the power centers? How is the power structure organized? Who is the most powerful, and where may I strike to bring him low?”

  Ben looked horrified, only some of it an act. “You want to come to Home World? Why?”

  “You live in a world without demons, hellfire, and most important, a strong leader. It’s fractured and weak. But rich. When I take control, I will reap it from one end to the other.” Woolfe’s smile was smug and expectant.

  “We aren’t going to tell you anything.” Connor’s voice was as calm as Jordan’s had been.

  Without warning, Woolfe struck the woman in the face. She cried out and fell, choked by the collar and leash that the demon still held. The children cried harder and the woman struggled to her feet, hampered by their clinging. Woolfe lifted his hand to strike one of the children.

  “Stop it!” Ben shouted, lunging against the demon holding him. It was the most distressed Liv had ever seen him.

  “Ben,” Connor said mildly.

  Ben looked wildly around, but stopped struggling at Connor’s expectant look.

  “Interesting,” Woolfe said, looking from one to the other.

  Connor stared impassively back. “We won’t tell you what you want to know. But I’ll tell you this: you’re dead.”

  Woolfe laughed, a manic light in his eyes. “Promises, promises.” He suddenly turned brusque. “But no matter. These worthless things are not the ones I want to conquer.”

  The light in his eyes kindled again, and he turned to stare unwaveringly at Jordan. “This one didn’t even make a noise when my pets tore his arm half off. He proved to me that you are very strong, individually. But I think that together, you are weak. Perhaps the pain of these weak things will not break you. They are nothing to you, after all. And I might break you each to pieces alone with no result. But if you watch me break him into pieces, I’m sure one of you will break.”

  Liv’s stomach lurched.

  Woolfe gave a signal, and the demons holding Jordan began to wrench his arms out to either side. His face contorted into a horrible grimace of pain and he fell to his knees, but no sound escaped him.

  “No?” the Wolf asked with a broad grin. “This is not the one you will protect? Or we have simply not yet given him enough pain. We must hear him scream, no?”

  He turned to the demons holding Jordan. “Take off an arm.”

  Liv’s heart raced, her legs tingly with adrenaline. She saw her panic mirrored in Ben’s eyes and the set of Connor’s mouth, but there was nothing they could do.

  The demons tearing Jordan apart doubled their efforts, and Liv heard a loud pop. Jordan groaned in pain through his clenched teeth, his face now gray.

  Before Liv even recognized her intention, she lurched forward. “No! Stop!” She fell to her knees as the demon holding her let go. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, just don’t hurt him anymore!”

  The Wolf smiled more broadly. “Ahh, good. I knew you would break.”

  Ben cried, “Liv, no!”

  Connor said, “Liv, you will say nothing. That is an order!”

  There was a shuffle and then a grunt from behind her as someone else was struck. Gin.

  She fell against Liv, and her hand scrabbled at Liv’s back. Suddenly something metal was thrust into her hand as Gin’s weight was heaved off of her. The demon holding Gin growled, “Do that again and I kill you.”

  Liv threw a glance over her shoulder and saw Gin hanging in the demon’s grip, glaring defiantly at it.

  She pretended nothing had happened and crawled awkwardly toward Woolfe, keeping the knife against her palm with her thumb. She glanced at Jordan, on his knees, head hanging, body only held upright by the demons who each gripped an arm. Now that she was armed, her mind raced through possibilities.

  “Let him go, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  Woolfe nodded, and the demons released Jordan. He fell to the ground with a soft thump. He didn’t make a sound, and Liv was almost struck mute with terror. Then she saw the line of concentration between his eyebrows and knew that he was aware.

  Careful to keep her expression from changing, she looked back to Woolfe.

  She started talking, ignoring Connor’s warning, “Liv…”

  “Our president is the most powerful man in our world, and our country is the most powerful. He has a seat in Nevada, where our DEPOT base is.”

  “I have heard,” Woolfe interrupted, “that the president’s seat is in Washington.”

  He glared at her with such malice that Liv’s mouth instantly went dry. She hid her panic and hoped that was the limit of Woolfe’s knowledge. “He has one in both places. He needed to have a second seat of power near the DEPOT. He wanted to keep the power of Travel close to him.”

  Woolfe’s eyes lit. His expression said it was what he would do, what he had done. Liv knew the rest of the team would act as if her information wasn’t a surprise.

  “We have many corporations working directly for the president,” she lied, trying to figure out how to get close enough without alerting the demons holding her teammates.

  “The corporation heads are called CEO’s, and they have control over all the workers of their company. Each CEO is the president of his company, but they all report to the president of the US.” She shifted her weight slightly to get her feet under her, keeping her face blank and defeated.

  “What are the president’s defenses?” Woolfe asked, his expression avid. He leaned unconsciously toward her, waiting to hear her answer.

  “He has an army with incredible weapons.” Liv hoped her action would distract the demons long enough to let her team free themselves. She flipped the knife in her hand, surged upward, and plunged it into Woolfe’s chest. His gaze dropped from her face to the rounded back of a two-inch throwing knife protruding from his chest. She gave it a last shove and spun to face the demons who would attack
her back.

  * * *

  Jordan lurched into motion as Liv did. The world went gray as he rolled onto his bad shoulder and a monstrous wave of pain roared through his chest. When the demon had tossed his wildfyre grenade carelessly aside, it had rolled toward him. He had no idea why it hadn’t disappeared, but he wasn’t going to question his good fortune.

  Now, he lunged forward, grabbed the grenade in his good hand, hit the timer, and launched it at the nearest demon.

  The wildfyre canister snapped open and its contents exploded into fyre and splashed onto the demon. It screamed as it whooshed into flame like gasoline-soaked kindling. It stumbled and weaved, either unable to see its surroundings or driven insensible by pain.

  As it flailed toward him, Jordan gave a monumental effort and staggered to his feet. You will not black out, he told himself grimly, and the waves of gray subsided.

  He dodged clumsily aside as the flaming demon stumbled his way.

  * * *

  Liv’s team had freed themselves, or the demons had let them go. She turned to make sure Jordan was okay and registered the ear-splitting noise when she saw the screaming demon burning to death on its feet. As she watched, the moving pillar of flame stumbled too near a second demon and it caught fire like crepe paper.

  The wildfyre clung to the demons just like the pygmies’ fire had clung to Ben’s clothes in Fluffy Bunny World. The second demon panicked and flailed at the flame, stumbling into a third demon. The wildfyre leapt from one to the other like a starving animal.

  As the third flaming demon stumbled forward, Liv caught sight of Jordan, sidling out of the way of the flames. Liv let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  She turned back to Woolfe, who still stood spluttering, blood pouring down his chest. He coughed out a fine spray of blood, his face still frozen in a look of surprise. A device dropped from his hand, bouncing away as it hit the carpet.

  The remaining demons milled in panic as the three demons-on-fyre stumbled and flailed, spreading flames. The first finally fell silent as it dropped to the ground. The fyre leapt hungrily to the plush carpet.