A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1)

by Cassy Campbell

  His expression broke her control. “Because it always does! Look at Nathan. He was wonderful, an idealist, a Traveler, we went everywhere together, worked in the lab under the same professor as assistants, his physics complementing my neuroscience. Then Nathan changed, and he was really this greedy, arrogant bastard. We broke up, and it was horrible having to work with him after that.”

  “So you’re comparing me to Nathan Blank? You think I’m pretending to be somebody you’ll want to be with?”

  “No! But I just couldn’t stand it when it ends.”

  “Why do you assume it will end?”

  “Something always happens. I just…” She looked at him. “You’re the last person I should be talking about another man with.”

  “I’m the only person you should be talking about another man with. Spill.”

  She thought back, choosing her words carefully. “I…Nathan was wonderful, dashing, exciting. Attractive. I was so in love with him.”

  She checked to see what kind of effect that had, but Jordan just made a moving on gesture.

  She took a deep breath. “I ignored the signs. He wasn’t a model lover even before he changed. Caught up in his work, ignoring me for himself. I was too blind to see it. When he became, presumably, the person he’d always been, I wanted to be surprised.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “No. He was a selfish, self-centered, greedy, using bastard. And I was in love with him.”

  “So now you don’t trust your feelings.”

  “I never have since.” She came up short. That was a news flash to her. She’d never thought of it that way.

  Liv’s radio gave two rapid clicks, the signal for Is it safe to talk?

  “Liv, that’s so unfair on so many levels, to yourself and to me. Give me a chance here.”

  She tapped her radio with a finger and continued to stare over his shoulder. She didn’t want to see disappointment in his eyes.

  He heaved an exasperated sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Fine. This isn’t over.”

  She depressed the radio button. “Go ahead.”

  Gin’s voice crackled through. “We’ve taken care of the security suite. Sort of. You guys are on your own up there for now. We’ve got a little…situation. We’re heading to the lobby.”

  “Do you need backup?”

  “No, we’re fine. You figure out what they’re here for. Before the security suite was demolished, I got a look at the scrolling search they were doing. I think they want something specific.”

  “Any idea what it might be?”

  “I don’t know. You guys are the scientists.”

  Jordan asked, “Did you see any evidence of people?”

  “No, you?”

  Liv said, “No.”

  “Well, see if you can find anything interesting.”

  “Will do.”

  Jordan said, “You heard the lady, let’s go find something interesting.”

  “How are we going to find out what they want?”

  “We can search the lab floors first. That’s where the research is.”

  “And the missing people?”

  “We’re already going floor to floor. We’ll run across them sooner or later.”

  She frowned, deeply uneasy about the lack of any signs of the missing workers. The DoD had sent over a list of twenty-seven people who had signed into the building today and never signed out. Something was wrong here, even more wrong than a building full of demon invaders from another world would ordinarily suggest.

  “You feel it too?” Jordan asked.

  “Yeah, something’s wrong here.”

  They took the elevator to fifteen, the highest lab floor. Both drew their guns as the elevator dinged, and when the doors opened, they went through as one. The hallway was snot-colored cinder block with yellowing linoleum, and deserted.

  There was a thud from around the corner. They exchanged a glance and slipped silently down the hallway. A glance around the corner proved the next hallway was as empty as this one. Another thud. This time Liv could tell it came from one of the labs. They continued to the lab door and crouched on either side below the window. Liv slowly reached for the handle.

  A growling voice sounded directly from the other side of the door, speaking the demons’ language.

  “Take those and let’s go,” Jordan whispered in translation. He silently counted down, and Liv spun the knob and pulled. He whipped through the door with her on his heels. They each spun to the side, covering their half of the room, but it was empty.

  It was an anteroom to the lab, packed like a storage closet with pieces of equipment set haphazardly on the worktables or floor and covered with semi-transparent plastic. A large window in the opposite wall looked into the lab itself, although most of it was blocked by a huge centrifuge and a small refrigerator.

  Both the anteroom and the lab were deserted. Liv and Jordan moved through the room in a crouch to the far door, using the machinery and worktables for cover.

  At the door, Liv grasped the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. Locked, she mouthed.

  Jordan pulled out his lock picks. Liv barely had time to wish she was half as good before the lock clicked. Jordan pulled the picks and stowed them.

  They repeated their previous entry, but the lab was silent and still. Something had been moved recently, judging by the dust tracks on the floor. Liv relaxed when she saw no signs of demons. She saw no signs of a computer that the demons could have accessed either.

  “What the hell?” Liv asked.

  Jordan studied the tracks on the floor, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’re looking for something. They pop in, look around, and pop back out. They’re not breaking door locks.”

  “Why the hell not? There’s no one here to stop them. How are we going to know where they’ve been?”

  Jordan shook his head.

  “And what did they mean by ‘take those’? It had to be data. Nothing else would Travel with them.”

  Jordan dropped his hand as his eyes widened.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Travelers would Travel with them.”

  She stared back, her stomach turning to ice. “You mean Blank’s employees.”

  “It’s the only other thing they might be after.”

  “You think some of them were in here?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “No. We would have heard people, wouldn’t we?”

  Jordan shook his head. “I don’t know. What else could they want?”

  “It could be anything.”

  “How many floors of this building are labs?”

  “Eight.”

  “Let’s get searching.”

  She turned back toward the door, now filled with two snarling demons.

  “Shit.” Liv’s hand dropped to her hip holster as Jordan reached for his guns, but she knew how futile gunfire would be. And how dangerous wildfyre would be.

  Both demons launched themselves forward with creepy-incredible speed.

  * * *

  Connor strode out of the elevator on level seven and into a darkened hallway that looked exactly like the one thirteen floors above, except that it was decorated with cheaper carpet and fake potted plants. He peered through the nearest doorways and turned to Trent, who spoke at the same time he did. “Offices.”

  “Why this level, sir?” Trent asked. “We’re still awfully high up.”

  “I didn’t want to draw demons to the levels Liv and Jordan are searching. And if the building’s not there, we’ll have time to Travel back before we hit bottom.”

  “Cool.”

  “On my mark. If you’re falling, instant Travel back here.”

  They appeared in the middle of what looked like a huge warehouse. There were boxes and wooden crates and stacks of machinery everywhere. The ceiling was two stories above.

  “Good floor choice, Commander,” Trent said with a wry smile.

  “Thank you, Petty Officer.” Trent was his bes
t friend, but Connor could count on one hand the times Trent had called him by name. Connor gave him a gentle dig about it whenever he got a chance, but Trent was as unflappable in his formality as in all other things.

  Connor scanned the piles of equipment. “Come on, let’s look around.”

  They walked toward the nearest mountain of cardboard boxes. “Trent, do demons make cardboard?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Jordan.”

  Connor opened a couple of the boxes and they peered inside. In one, they found strange plastic guns. Another held some sort of metal canisters. Connor didn’t understand the language, but he recognized the picture of a skull. A third contained sterile gauze bandages.

  Trent pulled the plastic sheet off a shapeless mound to reveal a huge telescope, semi-dismantled. The cloth-shrouded mound next to it turned out to be a Gatling gun, sitting on a stand on top of a stack of ammunition boxes.

  “I never knew they manufactured so much stuff,” Trent said. “Why would they store all this here?”

  Connor held up another canister as if peering at it more closely would suddenly make him able to read it. He memorized it for Jordan. “Maybe they decided that since they built the building, they might as well use it. Or they might think they can bring this stuff through when they Travel.”

  Trent looked around at all of the shrouded equipment, his gaze lingering on the Gatling gun. “That’s a pleasant thought. At least the scary things are too big.”

  They worked their way up. The next two levels were empty, and the two levels after that were full of junk.

  They reached the equivalent of floor fifteen. They walked down parallel aisles, holding their guns aimed at the floor since they’d encountered no one so far. Connor stepped around a stack of boxes and came face to face with two demons. Reflexively, he brought his gun up and shot each of them in the head. One demon took a shot in the nose, the other squarely between the eyes.

  He heard Trent’s voice from his aisle: “Shit!” then three more shots.

  Connor ran toward Trent’s aisle and rounded the corner to see him backing away from two blazing demons. A roar from behind him made Connor spin back to see the demon he had shot in the nose racing his way, Forehead Shot in hot pursuit, the bullet flattened on its frontal bone.

  Trent pulled out another wildfyre grenade and pitched it at the newcomer. The wildfyre splashed against its chest and it blazed up like a torch. The last flame-free demon slid to a stop, scrambled to get out of the way of its comrades, and crashed into a stack of boxes. Cardboard broke open to spew equipment everywhere.

  The demons encased in flame winked out one by one as they Traveled to escape the fyre. The remaining demon looked from Connor to Trent and swirled into nothingness. Amazingly, the wooden floor hadn’t caught, but the smoke and stench of burning demon lingered in the air.

  Connor looked over the mess of equipment: big plastic containers, glass beakers and tubes, incomprehensible brass thingys that might have been parts of a ship’s sextant or a witch’s scrying device for all he knew. A grenade rolled toward his foot and he picked it up. It was olive green, oval, painted with yellow markings, and read M61.

  “Sir, we should get out of here,” Trent coughed through the hand that covered his nose and mouth against the persistent smoke.

  “Trent, you see this?” Connor glanced at him and winced at his red streaming eyes. “What are you, allergic to burning demons?”

  Trent answered the first question. “It’s an M61 fragmentation grenade. From the Vietnam war. They’ve been replaced by the M67.”

  “Yes,” Connor said dryly, “I know. What’s it doing here when it belongs in some storage locker in Home World?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Connor pocketed the grenade. “Let’s get out of here. On mark.”

  They arrived on level fifteen, into a lab which was completely empty except for a thick layer of undisturbed dust on the floor and worktables.

  “Sir,” Trent said after he sucked in fresh air, “Before we departed I thought I saw—”

  “Demons?”

  Trent frowned. “How did you know?”

  Connor pointed behind him, and Trent turned to see three demons standing across the lab table from them.

  They pulled their guns and opened fire as the demons leapt onto the countertop and launched themselves forward.

  * * *

  Liv dived to the left as Jordan dived to the right, both of them drawing their guns as they moved. The demons leapt into the space they had just vacated, and Liv spun as she fell so that she could shoot. Her four shots took the nearest demon in the throat, nearly decapitating it. The other took several shots in the chest from Jordan and dissolved out of existence.

  To Liv’s surprise, the demon she’d hit fell to the ground. It lay still, but the wounds in its neck were already starting to heal. As she watched, its fingers started to twitch and its claws clicked on the floor. She shuddered as she scooted closer, praying that it wouldn’t suddenly regain the ability to move and slice her head off with one of those claws.

  She pulled out her belt knife and sliced through its neck first. The body fell still as the head rolled sideways, eyes staring lifelessly. She pushed it away from her and swallowed her gorge as it wobbled across the floor. Her eyes fell on Jordan across the mutilated body.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yeah.” His gaze dropped to the demon on the floor. “What did you do?”

  She thought for a moment. “I must have severed its spinal column with a lucky shot. And apparently, decapitation is deadly.”

  “How did we not know that sooner?”

  “We know now.” Liv surveyed the headless corpse and grimaced. “Let the others know how to kill them.”

  Jordan clicked his radio twice.

  Gin’s voice came through. “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve discovered that decapitation works wonders for our cause.”

  Gin sounded delighted. “Fabulous! Thanks for the tip. Also, we request radio silence. We’re going into the lobby.”

  “Roger.”

  Jordan clicked his radio off and gunfire sounded from the hall. Liv whipped her eyes to his. “Connor and Trent.”

  They leapt to their feet, Liv holding her gun in one hand and her knife in the other, and Jordan with both guns drawn. They ran down the hall toward the shots, to a lab on the other side of the building. Liv glanced through the door’s window.

  Connor and Trent stood back to back, holding off three demons circling them.

  Jordan picked the lock in record time, then stood, ready to throw the door open.

  The scent warned Liv before any sound registered, and her eyes whipped to the hall behind her. Two demons stood there, one of whom, based on the healing wounds in its chest, was the one who had just Traveled away from Jordan’s bullets in the other lab. The other was scarred by wildfyre burns.

  “Oh, shit,” Jordan said as he saw Liv’s eyes widen and turned to look as well.

  “Take off their heads!” Liv shouted through the lab door.

  Chapter 26

  Gin crouched opposite Ben in one of the recessed elevator doors in the hallway leading to the lobby. The stairwell door they’d just come through was just behind her, and on each side of the hall were three recessed elevator doors. She peered around the shallow cover and into the lobby.

  Three demons clustered around the security monitors at the front desk, two milled near the front door, and three lounged on couches across the lobby.

  She glanced at Ben across the hall, crouching in the elevator alcove that mirrored hers, and caught his eye. His expression mirrored her thoughts. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  Between the two of them, she and Ben had only four wildfyre grenades left, and the demons weren’t going to just sit and wait for her to throw the fyre at them. All of them were twitchy; they obviously knew the team was in the building. They’d Travel in a blink.

&nbs
p; One crossed in front of the windows, and Gin saw that its skin was burned, giving it a partially melted look. This must be Jumps Out Windows While On Fyre. One of the couch loungers shifted, and she saw the other two were also burned, though not as badly. It looked like somebody else had made use of their fyre. Gin smiled grimly.

  Vigilant demons were bad, but far worse was the fact that they were bathed in red and blue strobing lights. The street outside was lit up like a carnival midway, and Gin counted no less than fifteen cop cars and seven TV newsvans parked outside.

  Shit, Shit, SHIT, Gin mouthed. Ben silently agreed, but then sent her a what-the-hell grin. She couldn’t help but return it—he was right: this was fun.

  She faded back, Ben following. They stayed to the shadows until they reached the stairwell and slipped inside, careful to be silent. Side by side, they climbed up to the first floor.

  “Shit!” Gin said as soon as they were through the door.

  “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Maybe we can lure them up here, or at least to the hallway where nobody will see.”

  “Maybe one or two. But all of them? I don’t think we can take down eight, even with Liv’s tip about beheading them.”

  Ben sighed. “We’d better see if the others can lend a hand. Man, this is going to be a long night.”

  “Tell me about it.” Gin clicked her radio twice. Liv and Jordan didn’t answer. “I wonder what’s up?”

  “Maybe we should go see.”

  “We don’t even know what floor they’re on.”

  “So what do we do?”

  She glanced up worriedly. “Wait.”

  * * *

  Liv opened fire on the nearest demon, aiming for the neck. Jordan did the same. His target bubbled and swayed on its feet, and he holstered his left-hand gun and pulled his knife, slicing across the demon’s neck. The weapon got hung up on the spine, and he was forced to abandon it as Liv’s demon leapt toward him.

  “No!” Liv shouted, shooting it in the right eye. Not where she should have been aiming, but at least the damn thing slowed down.

  Jordan pulled his other gun again and aimed for the demon’s neck. He put a cluster of shots right through its Adam’s apple, but apparently missed the spine. However, Liv was able to slip around to its side while it was stalking Jordan. She put her gun to the back of its neck and pulled the trigger. The demon dropped as if pole-axed, and Liv took its head off with her knife.