Cancer's Curse (The Zodiac Book 4)

by Sating, Paul

  Bilba was silent.

  "And you?" I prodded.

  He turned his target. The top left corner filled in the information his expression hadn't already conveyed. Emblazoned in red ink was his score. '28/40', it read. The minimum requirement was thirty target strikes.

  "You are so close. Don't worry about it. I'm sure we're going to shoot a few more times."

  Bilba didn't seem reassured at all. "I should have done better."

  I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. "Don't do that to yourself, bud. This is the first time we've ever done this."

  He flicked my target with a finger. "Easy for you to say. You have a perfect score."

  "Luck."

  "Missing two or three is luck. A perfect score isn't."

  "Don't sweat it, Bilba," Ralrek said. "You'll do fine next time."

  "Next time it might be for real." Bilba's voice shook.

  I got it. I'd dealt with humiliation my entire life. Being the Segregate meant the rest of the Fifth thought I deserved to be humiliated. "The sting goes away in a little while."

  Bilba pursed his lips and scrunched his eyes. "You don't get it, Zeke."

  I patted him on the shoulder.

  "All right, boys," Sergeant Halcion shouted, "get your weapons and let's head back to the training room. Before we leave, though. We've got clean-up. Collect the shells in your area. I want this place looking as clean as it did when you found it."

  Two hours later we finished cleaning the range and our weapons well enough to pass inspection—and when I say 'us' I mean me; I was the last one done, having failed the weapon inspection over and over. The staff finally stepped in to help me—they called it 'training'—by overlooking a problem with a spring. I blamed the spring.

  "Go join your platoon, recruit," Sergeant Pythan smirked. "You're hopeless."

  Obviously, a perfect range score doesn't count for much in boot camp.

  I rejoined my platoon outside. By the time we marched to our barracks, my stomach was angry at me for neglecting it for so long—again.

  "Chow will have to wait," Sergeant Kelem told us when we stepped into our bay, and was even kind enough to ignore our whining. "Put your shit away and get in the day room."

  Maybe this whole accelerated training wasn't a good thing after all?

  We did as ordered.

  "I'm so hungry," Bilba groaned.

  I gave him an understanding smile. "Me too, bud."

  Spurred by hunger, we raced each other to the day room, joined shortly by the rest of the platoon. Once seated, Charlie went to inform Sergeant Kelem that we were ready.

  "Have fun at the range?" he asked as he stomped into the room.

  "Yes sir!" we shouted in unison. It was the only answer to give.

  "Good, now calm down. I hope you learned enough to help you survive in the Overworld. You'll need it. The war escalated again today, a major capital was bombed in Saudi Arabia. Looks like this accelerated training needs to do as much as it can in the time we have left. Learn as much as you can. Ask questions if you've got them. You've got to be ready, boys." Sergeant Kelem paused and glanced up at the narrow window. "The crew at the range had good things to say about your weapons training. Well done, boys. You've earned your dinner tonight, so go get ready."

  "Yes sir!" A collective shout rattled around the room. Nothing struck the heart of an army recruit like the proposition of a meal well earned. We snapped to attention when he departed.

  As we prepared to head out for formation, I wondered what this meant for us. I was walking back to my bunk, past Sergeant Kelem's office, when he called out to me. "Sunstone."

  I halted. "Yes, sir?"

  "Get your ass in here and close my office door."

  I did, wondering what I had done wrong at the firing range. Was it possible to get in trouble for shooting too well while being a complete ignoramus in weapon cleaning?

  "Sir?"

  Sergeant Kelem wore u–shapes of dark circles under his eyes. He gestured to the chair. "Take a seat."

  "Sir, if I did anything wrong, I apologize. I didn't think I—"

  His hand karate chopped the air. "You didn't do anything, Sunstone. I wanted to talk to you about your performance today. Be honest with me. Did you use mortal weapons when you went to the Overworld?"

  I sat up straighter. Of all the questions he could have asked, I hadn't expected this one. I don't know why, but I didn't expect him to know I'd been lifted up.

  "No sir, I didn't."

  He nodded. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"

  I shrugged. "Nowhere, sir. I've never used a rifle before."

  "You did well. A perfect score." One side of his face flinched as if he had a disturbing thought, and then he pointed as his head dipped, like they were connected by an invisible string. "I don't know if I've ever seen a recruit shoot a perfect score the first time they picked up a mortal weapon. In fact, pretty sure it's unheard of. Does that have anything to do with it?"

  At first I had no idea what he was talking about. Then it dawned on me. He was referring to Creed. My hand slipped protectively over the halberd's knob.

  "I'm not sure, sir. It just came to me once I concentrated. In fact, wasn't really that hard."

  I didn't think it was possible, but Sergeant Kelem laughed. The lines on his forehead didn't dissolve, but the dark shadows seemed to fade ever so slightly from under his eyes. "You truly are something, Sunstone." The smile faded, the light dimming in his expression. "Let me give you a bit of advice even though you didn't ask for it."

  "Yes sir," I said with caution.

  "Don't become reliant on that thing," he pointed at Creed once more. "It's a curse, but even curses can be bad. What I guess I'm saying is," he pressed his palm against his eyes. In that moment, Sergeant Kelem became very normal. "What I'm saying is, don't get lulled into some false sense of security. It's a wonderful curse, no doubt, but it can make you lazy. And if things in the Overworld are headed in the direction we're being told, all of you will find yourselves in some Lucifer forsaken country, surrounded by mortals wanting to kill each other. And kill you. You'll need to be sharp and aware and if you over-rely on that thing, you'll lose the advantage. None of you are trained well enough yet, but that's out of my hands. We've got to make do with what we have. So you cannot veer, son. Okay? Don't let that happen to you. Understand?"

  The drill instructor's questions lacked the hardness I'd grown accustomed to in our weeks in boot camp. With the developments in the mortal realm, things were changing for all of us, apparently even this hard-as-brimstone drill instructor.

  "Yes sir," I said in a careful, measured response.

  "I know you have been to the Overworld a couple times," he continued, "but I still feel it's my responsibility to warn you away from getting comfortable with the mortals. I've seen it happen to other demons. I don't know if you remember or not, but a few decades ago, they had a nasty little fight called the Vietnam War, and we lost a lot of good demons in that one, let me tell you. I was a drill instructor then too. Had a few dozen boys I'd trained killed up there. And time and time again, one major reason bad shit happens to us is because we get too close to those blessed mortals. You're different, okay? You need to be extra careful, even more so than the rest of the boys. Before you all get out of here, I'm going to give everyone the same warning, so you better act surprised when you hear it again. But I mean it, Sunstone. Keep your head low and that thing," the message about Creed, harsh, "strapped away somewhere safe."

  "I will, sir."

  He measured me. "Do exactly like I tell you and you just might make it back home. I can't say the same for any of your friends in this platoon when you get deployed."

  A dark thought fluttered across his face.

  "How long before they graduate us?"

  He tilted his head away from me. It was only then that I realized I hadn't used the formal and mandatory 'sir.' Sergeant Kelem seemed to forgive me; I think he had more important things on his mind.
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  "Soon, scum. Very soon."

  7 - Underworld/Overworld

  "I recommend you double-check the line or you might die," Charlie said in between gasps as we hid behind the fallen tree. His narrow face, like all ours, was painted in camouflage, but Charlie had taken the extra step of also covering his thick bottom lip. Sometimes, I think, Lucifer gets bored and simply creates interesting demons to entertain himself.

  I shook my head, taking a swig of water from my canteen and screwing it closed. "I will when I get a second to think. You need to worry about dying long before me. That red hair of yours is like a freaking beacon."

  Charlie pulled his cap down over the tips of his ears to cover his burning follicles before peeking his head over the log.

  Day Four. The fourth day of our war games campaign. I was exhausted and trying to strategize through a thick mental fog. At fortune's blessing, deployed to a far corner of the installation isolated with a team of demons incapable of seeing how close we were to the end, Sergeant Kelem assigned me as squad Commander after firing Charlie. Charlie refused to let the meaningless personnel switch go, his attitude deteriorating each day. As Commander, I got to deal with it.

  Lucky me.

  It was my job to decide the next course of action, but doing so was impossible. We didn't have the information I needed to make an informed decision. Decide wrong and someone would die in the simulation, and I refused to get pseudo—blood on my hands, not least of all at the beginning of my command. Everyone rode Charlie hard after he was fired and I didn't want to follow his fate. Real or not, the war games reminded me of Sergeant Kelem's impromptu conversation about my overreliance on Creed and possible death in the Overworld, even almost three weeks later.

  "We can't sit here all day," Charlie said, falling back to his rear.

  I knew that, and he knew I knew that. But Charlie loved hearing himself talk.

  "What did you see?"

  "Nothing."

  Where was our enemy and would they—the instructor staff—strategize their attack? What approach would they take? They were intimately familiar with this area, and we had only been out here for days. They were real Army personnel. We were children new to the service. Some of them had been in battle, with real bombs and bullets. The only battle I'd ever seen was on my video game console.

  Yes, I'm being hyperbolic to draw on your sympathies, but the fact remains that we were facing a foe who had an advantage in every sense of the word. Caution and calculating maneuvers were required, not the ramshackle approach Charlie proposed. Throughout his short command and even in his impromptu role as self-assigned advisor, his strategic approach was like that of a lust-blinded teenager who hadn't yet noticed his date had left him for another incubus.

  I grumbled out of frustration before spinning onto my knees and popping my head over the fallen tree.

  Staring into the murky depths of the forest, I couldn't see a blessed thing that gave clues to the other team's location. If they were close, they hid well. As thick as the tree coverage and underbrush was, they could be on top of us, laughing over our naivety, and we'd be none the wiser.

  I slinked away from the tree, still on my knees, to draw the forest layout in the mud. Plotting our location and that of the other two teams, I laid out the known battle space. Five instructors against twenty-eight trainees. This mock war was not a numbers game. This was about strategy, and I was smart enough to know that I was too dumb to out–strategize them. My small team crowded around.

  "This is our location, and here are the two spots where the other squads should be," I said, pointing at the three Xs I'd drawn. "We know this is where the enemy entered the battlefield."

  "Only if the instructor team was being honest," Charlie said.

  "True, they could have come in anywhere, and we could sit here all day wondering and waiting. It's a great comment," I added when Charlie's face dragged at my correction. There is no sense in kicking a demon when he's down. "But we have to plan on the intel we have. This is a training environment, guys. They're preparing us for what happens after boot camp. Let's keep that in mind as we think about our response. They want us distracted; they want us to operate in confusion. The time we spend contemplating the whats and maybes, they're on the move."

  One of the more promising squad members, Tantric was his name—a story I wanted to pursue before we left boot camp—placed his finger to the side of my impromptu map before looking at me. "Do you mind if I add some detail?"

  Tantric had his shit together from Day One. Unlike Charlie, he excelled not because of the way he manipulated and politicked. Instead, Tantric was so highly regarded because he was one damn good soldier. I nodded.

  Tantric's finger moved up the periphery of the map, drawing a squiggle up its length. "When they were busing us in the other day, I noticed a river running alongside the training field." He tapped his finger next to the line he'd drawn. "I can't be sure exactly how close we are to it right now, but it runs the length of this training area, forming a border."

  "What's your point?" Charlie asked, his eyes on the squiggly line.

  "My point is, either we outflank them or they're going to outflank us. That river forms a natural boundary that will limit the team who doesn't reach it first. I say we don't become that second-place team."

  "If we move for the river, can we can squeeze them into a space to corral them?" I said, checking to make sure I was following Tantric's thinking.

  He nodded. "You got it."

  A broad grin spread across my face. "Let's do this, boys."

  I crawled back to the edge of the tree, checking the clearing to ensure no instructor lay in wait. Clear, I scrambled to my feet, pinned my paintball rifle to my side to prevent it from bouncing against me, and sprinted across the expanse to a spot where the hillside dropped away. The height variance would provide a hiding spot for anyone at our current elevation. It would be a disadvantage for fighting, but fighting wasn't our priority. Getting to the river was.

  Once the team gathered again, we set out for the next intermediary point, twenty yards up the slope. The brush, overgrown and thick, provided enough cover for a temporary check.

  I sprinted across the gap uncontested, got to the new location, and checked once more for any sign of the enemy while waiting for the rest of my squad. I winced at the racket the team made, snapping branches and crunching dried underbrush. Thank Lucifer our mission wasn't to sneak into Heaven in the middle of the night.

  "How far is the river?" I asked Tantric.

  Huddled in a small clump, the excitement was audible through everyone's rapid breaths. Tantric was the only one who looked composed. He didn't respond verbally, tapping his earlobe. At first, I didn't get the gesture, but then he tugged the lobe, probably frustrated by my stupidity. And that's when I heard it. Moving water. The river was close.

  Encouraged, I raised my hand, two fingers pointing forward, and waved twice; the signal for the squad to move out. Sixty yards of tall grass separated us from the next spot that would give us an opportunity to check our surroundings. Otherwise we were in the open. My skin burned, not with exertion but with excitement as I crossed the field of tall grass, checking behind me for the squad's position. They were close enough that I worried they'd be caught if an attack came to take me out, so I increased my pace and distanced myself.

  The gurgling of the water grew louder, no longer muffled as the field sloped downward. Ahead, a grouping of trees offered intermediary cover. The trees were still a good forty yards away, so I slowed to allow the squad to close the distance.

  Standing at the edge of the field, my skin warmed—and not from the heat of the Hellfire painting the dome above me blue.

  I faced the squad, turning my back on our destination and frantically waving them backward. Tantric pulled up. I hoped he recognized the strain on my face for what it was. This wasn't part of the exercise. Something was wrong.

  Someone was conjuring.

  I dropped to my knees, using the t
all grass as cover. From this vantage point I couldn't tell if the rest of the squad had retreated, but I had faith that Tantric was astute enough to pick up the urgency of the situation from my wild gesticulating.

  Wind whipped across the field, rustling thousands of stalks. I scrunched lower, looking up and hoping for a hint to what I sensed and why. If this was one of the instructors, we were all dead. If it was one of my squad, I would make sure they were.

  The grass whipped violently, shifting from one direction to another in a chaotic pattern. My skin flushed, heating, when the caster put more into their spell. The stalks responded.

  All around me, they grew, extending into the sky, sprouting tendrils of smaller stalks along the lengths of each blade. Thousands of tall stalks of grass became tens of thousands as they multiplied upon themselves, as each grew dozens of arms.

  And I was in the middle of it.

  The blades swayed in a malicious dance, the smaller branches now growing longer, thicker. Stronger.

  I hoped whatever was happening was isolated on me and that the squad was free. This was Manipulative magic, and someone was breaking the boot camp rules. I thought I could wait out the spell since there wasn't a clear and obvious purpose for it. But I was wrong on both points.

  A sucking, as if the air around me was being vacuumed out of the field, came from far above. It ended with an ear-thudding whoomp before everything fell silent. I fell to the mud, waiting for something to happen.

  Before I moved, the stalks swooped, bending in smooth arcs. My legs were snared first, stalks wrapping around them, their newly sprouted arms snaring my ankles, knees and thighs. As I reached to pull the blades off, other stalks dove and ensnared my wrists, elbows and biceps. I couldn't even reach for Creed. The one steadfast rule of boot camp was that we weren't allowed to conjure, but someone had. Not only had they cast, but they were using magic offensively, which in my book meant I was free to defend myself.

  "Cree—"

  A thick stalk shot around my neck, choking off the air and my call. Small tendrils that sprouted off the blade reached for the corners of my mouth, pulling it wide, preventing me from finishing.