A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1)

by Cassy Campbell

  “We need to think. How do we keep him from just Traveling out again? We could chase him around the multiverse forever.”

  “I thought of that, actually. I’m going to shoot him. That should distract him enough to keep him from Traveling.”

  “Jordan! What if you kill him?”

  He gave her a withering look. She had to admit, he was such a good shot that the possibility was vanishingly remote.

  Unless he wanted to kill Nathan. After this, she wouldn’t blame him. She sure wanted to. “All right. After you.”

  Jordan reached for the door knob, but hesitated. “You don’t think—”

  A bolt of electricity sizzled through the doorjamb with a sound like an angry snake. Jordan and Liv both jumped back, but it was already gone.

  Liv stared at the door. “That bastard tried to fry us!”

  Jordan turned to her with a smile. “Now do you mind if I shoot him?”

  “You’ll have to beat me to it!”

  “I’m the better shot, no offense. Leave it to me, okay?”

  She glared at him. She wasn’t making any promises.

  “Do you think it’s safe to touch the door?”

  “No. It was dumb luck he didn’t fry us the first time. It must have grounded to the building instead of through the grate we’re standing on.”

  “Think our rubber boot soles are any protection?”

  “Maybe a little—Jordan, wait!”

  He’d already lifted his scorched and partially melted boot to the door handle. It was the lever kind, and he pushed it downward, pulled the door toward them, and kicked it wide. Liv went through fast, gun raised and aiming for where she hoped Nathan’s heart would be—if he had one.

  Jordan came through just behind her, covering the left as she covered the right.

  “Liv!” came Jordan’s strangled cry, and before she could turn, he had knocked her forward with a body block.

  She turned in time to see Nathan at the end of the hall, and much closer, the clips of his Taser as they fell harmlessly to the floor. When he saw that his weapon hadn’t worked, he dropped it and ran.

  “That would be perfect to incapacitate him,” Jordan said. “Think you can get it working?”

  “Oh yeah, let me just pull out my spare compressed nitrogen cartridge.”

  “So that’s a no.” Jordan stepped over the electrodes and jogged down the hall. Liv followed.

  They turned the corner, expecting another attack, but Nathan was nowhere to be seen.

  “Great.” Liv looked both ways down the hallway as if a sign would present itself: ‘Nathan Blank went this way.’ She saw only the empty hallway lined with identical metal doors.

  Jordan, meanwhile, was inspecting each door carefully, moving as fast as possible from one to the next. Liv couldn’t believe that he’d actually find something, but within a minute, he called, “Here.”

  Liv moved to his side. “How do you know?”

  “Fresh fingerprints. He’s sweating.”

  Liv nodded her admiration—the guy really could track in any environment—and followed him through the door. He trotted down the stairs, stopping to inspect each door before moving on.

  They had traversed at least six flights when Liv asked, “Jordan, how do you know he went down?”

  Jordan shrugged. “He would go to ground.”

  “That’s flimsy,” Liv protested as they reached the final landing and stepped off the final stair. It was like being at the bottom of a well, complete with stone walls and floor.

  Jordan inspected this door, and said, “He went through here.”

  She looked at him, gun pointed at the ceiling. “On three.”

  When he opened the door, she darted through with him. “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  She turned to ask him which direction, but he was already walking down the hallway. The floor was stone here too, covered in dirt that looked as if it had been there for ages. Although the ceiling was man-made, now it was like walking into a cave.

  They reached a corner and turned to find the passage blocked by a glass wall. There was a keypad next to the sliding door, and an airlock sealed by another glass wall and sliding glass door, this one with no keypad. Through the two glass walls, they could see stainless steel tables full of equipment, glass beakers and test tubes, machinery, and bottles of liquids and powders. Nothing was dusty in there. On the contrary, everything gleamed as if it had just been placed there yesterday, including the glass walls and doors.

  Liv goggled, trying to fit it into her perception of the building. “What is this place?”

  “Secret laboratory.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged.

  “I guess it fits. He was experimenting on DNA, among other things. Who knows what he’s got in there?”

  Movement inside the room caught her eye, and she turned as Nathan emerged from another room beyond the one they could see. “I see you found me,” he called. “You’ll never get in!”

  “We’ll see about that,” Jordan muttered to himself. He pointed one of his Nighthawk 10-8’s at the glass, and turned away. “Cover your eyes,” he said to Liv.

  She turned away too, shielding her face. Jordan’s gunshot sounded deafening in the enclosed space. Not only did the glass not break, but the whine of a bullet told her they’d narrowly missed getting hit with the ricochet.

  “How about we don’t do that again?” she said as she turned to him.

  He looked her over to make sure she hadn’t been hit. “You got it. So I guess we go to plan B.”

  He punched a key on the keypad next to the door. The screen flashed, Who are you?

  Blink, blink. Blink, blink. Who are you?

  “What’s his password, Liv?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Because you know him,” Jordan said impatiently.

  “I knew him, a long time ago.”

  “But you know what he’s like, who he is. It’s asking who he is. Give me something to work with.”

  Liv was distracted by Nathan walking into their view again, this time with two beakers filled with different colored liquids.

  “Come on, Liv. Whatever he’s whipping up in there can’t be good.”

  She focused her mind on the problem, ignoring the fact that a big part of it was standing in the next room glaring at them with a self-satisfied smirk.

  “Self-satisfied bastard.” Liv continued the thought out loud.

  “And?”

  Jordan thought she was telling him about Nathan. And wasn’t she? “He’s a selfish, self-centered, self-serving prick. His password would be self-aggrandizing in the extreme.”

  She realized as she said it that she’d always known that about Nathan. Maybe it was forgivable that being in love with him had made her forgive him for it. But it wasn’t forgivable that he was that way in the first place. She’d always known it, always known that he would dump her in favor of himself. After all, she hadn’t been the least bit surprised when he’d done just that, had she?

  It was like a light flashed inside her. Nathan had always been that way. And she had always known. She turned to Jordan, focused on the problem now. “He’s obsessed with ruling, with conquering, with being worshipped.”

  “Ruling the multiverse?” Jordan asked.

  “So it would seem.”

  “So what’s the term for that?”

  “King?”

  “Too prosaic,” Jordan decided. “Lord?”

  “That could mean God as well,” Liv agreed. “Maybe.”

  “That seems obvious. Would he be subtle?”

  “Yeah, actually. Devious, even. Clever, witty. A pat-on-the-back look-how-smart-I-am kind of phrase would suit him best.”

  “How about Almighty?”

  “Maybe. I bet he would spell it a-l-l mighty, though, two words. Because he thinks he’s all.”

  “I wonder how many chances we get at this?”

  “I wish Gin were here.”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, but it’s just you and me. So All Mighty Blank?”

  “No. He would never go by just his last name. There are a lot of Blanks.”

  “So both names?”

  “I don’t know, Jordan.”

  “Have you got anything better?”

  “No.”

  Jordan punched in the letters on the keypad. The pad gave a buzz, but the door didn’t open. The pad went back to blinking Who are you?

  “Okay, that was wrong.”

  “Really.”

  “Liv…”

  “Right, sorry. Okay, he would want it to be as individual and distinct as possible.”

  “Middle name?”

  She shook her head. “He hates his middle name. It’s Eugene.”

  “Nathan Eugene. Nathangene. Nategen.”

  “New.” As soon as Liv said it, she knew it was right. Nathan had always talked about how he was something the world had never seen before. Something new. “All Mighty New, Nathan Blank.”

  “That’s a lot to type,” Jordan said.

  “It’s right.”

  Jordan shrugged and typed it in. The doors slid open.

  They walked through the airlock and stopped at the second door. The first door hissed shut, making Liv feel a lot more claustrophobic than she’d expected, given that their prison’s walls were made of clear glass. “Now what?” Jordan asked.

  Liv shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The door hissed open, and they went through it together, each covering their own side.

  “Liv!” Jordan shouted, and she whirled to find him scrambling backwards from some sort of gas cloud. It was completely silent, glittering with strange colors in the predominantly white mass. But as it passed along the tables, Liv heard a faint hissing.

  And the tables began to melt.

  “It’s some kind of acid,” Liv said. “Go left, now!”

  Jordan followed her direction without question, and she ran right on his heels.

  “Go around it, through the door!” she called. Nathan had to be in the next room, since he wasn’t in this one. They brushed past the acid cloud just as it started to invade the last clear pathway through the room, and halted for a microsecond at the door into the next chamber.

  She and Jordan exchanged a glance and went through the door together.

  They were in another laboratory room, this one with much less glass equipment and many more big machines, some with analyzer trays. “Clear,” she called, and Jordan echoed her.

  She looked around more closely. “DNA sequencing equipment.”

  When she saw that three doors led off this room, her heart sank. How big was this place?

  The door to her right blew open, and Nathan raced through. Something punched into her bullet-proof vest, and she registered that something was wrong with Nathan’s silhouette, and that he was moving far too fast. She only had time to yell “Jordan!”

  Then Nathan was on them. Something struck her in the chest. As she flew backward, she saw Jordan still turning to meet the attack. Nathan was moving that incredibly fast.

  Faster still, her heart leapt into her throat, but Jordan moved with uncanny speed too, and his wasn’t unnatural. He brought up his left hand, and she saw that he was holding a beaker of solution in it.

  She had time to wonder when he had picked that up, and then Nathan was screaming on the ground.

  “Liv!”

  She was already moving, grabbing her plastic zip tie restraints from her pocket. Jordan rolled Nathan onto his stomach and grabbed his wrists. She zipped them together before he could move. She did the same to his feet and then stood back.

  He started to become less substantial, but Jordan shoved his face into the floor. “Oh no you don’t. You’re staying right here.”

  Liv reached down to get a hand on him as well, so he couldn’t Travel without their permission.

  Nathan started screaming, “Oh my God, what did you do, that burns, what are you doing, you’re killing me!”

  “Shut up,” Jordan said, and his tone was so chilling that Nathan immediately did. “You’re coming with us to Home World,” Jordan said. “Right now.”

  “What makes you think I would ever do that?” Nathan asked, his voice only slightly muffled by the floor that Jordan still pressed him into. The skin of his cheek was red and his visible eye was tightly shut.

  “Because if you don’t, I’m going to start experimenting with all the interesting mixtures you have here. I’m sure I can find at least one that will melt your face. If you come quietly, you leave behind what’s already there.”

  “When you put it that way, it does seem agreeable.”

  Jordan tugged him up, and Nathan obediently stood.

  “You’re first.” Jordan gave Nathan a shove. “Home World on mark.”

  Liv waited until Nathan became less substantial, then threw herself into the whirlwind, deliberately following him wherever he was going.

  She blinked, and her first breath told her they were back in Home World.

  It smelled like burning demon.

  She opened her eyes to assess her surroundings. They were on the ground floor of Innerstellar, in the lobby behind the desk. Carnival lights still strobed outside.

  She grabbed at Nathan, and Jordan did the same from the other side. He’d left his restraints behind.

  “Connor, Trent, come in,” Jordan said.

  “Jordan! Where the hell have you been?”

  “Haha. That’s funny, Con, although we actually weren’t in hell. We’re in the lobby and we have a guest.”

  “Delightful,” Connor said.

  “We’re on the roof,” Ben broke in, “and this building is the least stable thing I’ve stood on in a good while. If you got up here in a hurry, that would be delightful.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  Liv followed Jordan to the nearest elevator. He pressed the call button, but nothing lit up, and no elevator came.

  “Looks like we’re taking the stairs.”

  “It’s twenty-one flights!” Nathan complained.

  The building shuddered above them, and Liv looked fearfully at the ceiling as dust sifted down. There was no sign of collapse—yet—but it looked like it wouldn’t be long.

  “And we’re running. Go.” She was the one to shove Nathan this time, and she and Jordan herded him into the stairwell and followed so close on his heels that they were almost stepping on his feet with each step.

  “Faster!” Jordan growled as more dust sifted down.

  “I’m going as fast as I can!”

  Liv glanced at Jordan with a half smirk and pulled her gun. She jabbed Nathan between the shoulder blades. “Hope not.”

  He put on a burst of speed.

  Fourteen flights later, Liv regretted goading him to go faster. She could barely lift each leg to the next never-ending stair, and she wondered how Nathan was doing it. He seemed determined to leave them behind. That was the one thing they couldn’t allow. If he Traveled out, they’d never find him again.

  Somehow, she kept up, Jordan at her shoulder. She could always rely on him to have her back. Another thing she’d always known, she realized.

  She’d never really trusted Nathan. She’d always been waiting for the next disappointment, of which there had been many before the final one. Jordan, on the other hand… She’d always trusted Jordan, knowing he would die before he let her down. And in over a year, he hadn’t disappointed her. In fact, he’d so far exceeded her expectations that she couldn’t imagine a better partner. In every sense of the word.

  She glanced at him, running the stairs two at a time, at her right shoulder, backing her up.

  The building bucked again like a nervous colt, and Liv tripped up the stairs. Jordan’s hand was on her shoulder before she had a chance to catch herself. She managed to catch her balance with the help of his steadying grip.

  “I’m good,” she panted.

  She put on a burst of speed to get within arm’s reach of Nathan
again, but he was flagging badly, and apparently hadn’t noticed her stumble.

  They reached the door on level twenty-one and burst out onto the roof.

  The instant Connor and Ben took hold of Nathan, Liv dropped her hands to her knees and focused on breathing, trying to erase the burning in her chest and the blackness at the edges of her vision.

  The building shook again, this time more like a full-grown bronco trying to throw them off its back.

  “We’re ready,” Connor said into his radio, and in moments, the SM had set down on the roof.

  “All aboard,” Ben said with a tight smile at Nathan. He pulled him a titch harder than necessary and almost took him off his feet.

  “All right!” Nathan gave Ben an irritable glare and walked onto the invisible ramp.

  Liv flopped down on a bench in the back as Ben and Connor strapped Nathan to the other one and then sat on either side of him, looking like two upperclassmen trying to intimidate the freshman between them. Nathan, for his part, ignored them entirely, head back and eyes closed, trying to catch his breath.

  “Sounding a little wheezy there, friend,” Ben said companionably to him. “Might want to start a more regular workout plan.”

  Nathan didn’t respond.

  Liv gave them a tired smile as Jordan flopped down next to her. They were both still breathing hard.

  “I sure hope there’s no one still in the building,” Liv said as the SM took off.

  “We didn’t find anyone, and we searched every floor.” Gin said from a captain’s chair in the front of the passenger bay.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Nathan panted. “I sent my employees home hours ago.”

  “Then why didn’t they sign out?”

  “There was a fire alarm.”

  “Couldn’t have any witnesses, right, Blank?” Jordan said.

  Nathan just sat and wheezed.

  A sudden rumble distracted Liv. She jerked her head toward the window just in time to see the Innerstellar headquarters shudder. Then the top floors simply sank into billows of dust, presumably all the way to the ground.

  “Now I really hope nobody was still in there,” Liv said.

  “Or on the street,” Gin added.

  Nathan stared at his knees.

  Jordan said, “I’m sure they got everybody back. They would have seen the tremors while you were waiting for us, right?”