Demons of Divinity

by Luke R. Mitchell

  As the darkest of the hybrids raised its fist and smashed through the duraglass window, it hardly mattered.

  “Down the corridor, Hounds!” Dillard snapped, already raising his rifle. “Move it!”

  The first gunshots joined the hybrids’ roars, Dillard and those closest to us opening fire as we shuffled toward the corridor, buying time for those who hadn’t yet reached our position.

  The first hybrids practically landed on top of us, slamming to the permacrete in a shower of broken duraglass. Johnny and I opened fire with our rifles, staggering a pair of the beasts. The rushing thrum of Edwards’ modified pulse cannon joined in, and one of their scaly heads all but exploded from its body. Johnny and I dropped the second with concentrated fire to the head, and then we all turned to move.

  I sensed something was wrong just as I met Johnny’s eyes and saw them widen with the same realization.

  Siren was gone.

  “That traitorous bitch!” he cried.

  Edwards shoved into us before I could rightly process the development, forcing us toward the corridor as more hybrids rained down from above.

  “Wait!” I snapped, rounding and casting my will out and above, forming a flat, solid barrier above Dillard and the two fireteams still trying to buy time for the Hound stragglers.

  Hybrids continued to leap down from above—and straight onto my barrier, where they smacked to unexpected halts against thin air. The first few, I felt like solid punches to the torso. The next few came with unforgiving speed. Within seconds, the weight was too crushing for me to even breathe.

  But then the last of the Hounds were sprinting beneath my impromptu hybrid trap, and Dillard was turning, chasing on their heels and shouting all the way.

  I gratefully released my hold on the barrier, and the writhing, growling mass of dark green hybrids slammed to the permacrete with a round of angry shrieks, more dropping down from above in twos and threes.

  We backed into the circular corridor, firing all the way. I was relieved to see the demo boys had already had the good sense to plant charges at the mouth of the passage. Not that we had time to celebrate.

  Though they had the look and durability of the older, more sentient kind, the hybrids pursued us like wild animals thirsting for blood. With the exception of Edwards’ pulse cannon, our gunfire barely seemed to slow them. When the first few closed, I hit them with a blast of telekinesis, giving us just enough time to shuffle back to what could only by the loosest definition be called a safe distance.

  Dillard snapped the order.

  Almost instantly, a thunderous boom tore through the corridor, punching me in the chest with concussive force and shaking me to the teeth. Our faceplates saved us from the worst of the dust and fine debris, but between the sloshing of my brain and the ringing in my ears, it took me a few seconds before the world around me started making sense again.

  And the hybrids were already coming.

  The corridor was clear for the moment, our forces aligned behind us, and a wall of hardsteel and permacrete rubble ahead. But we could hear them roaring on the other side, could hear them tearing through the rubble barrier like walking demolition machines.

  Dillard was snapping orders and getting the Hounds into formation when a voice came to me.

  “She’s here, Haldin. Hurry before that crazy bitch gets back!”

  Siren.

  I felt her there at the very edge of our cloaking packs, just past the door at the end of the corridor. I stared dumbly for a second, having been too caught up in our escape to even process her disappearance, much less to imagine she might’ve been running ahead to find Elise.

  “Siren found Elise ahead,” I said to Dillard, not pausing to let myself register all the suspicion and doubts that should’ve come with the statement.

  Dillard didn’t pause either.

  “Go,” he said. “Get her free and find us a way out. We’ll hold them here until we can clear out and blow the place.”

  I hesitated, not wanting to leave them behind to handle Alpha knew how many hybrids. But Dillard was right. The corridor was a fantastic pinch point. Until we had another way out, it would be stupid to abandon it.

  Unless Frosty showed up.

  There wasn’t time to debate it. I turned and started for the far end of the corridor at a run, not pausing when Johnny and Edwards fell in behind me. Behind us, there was a sound of cracking stone and shifting rubble, and a hybrid roar tore down the corridor, raw and unobstructed. It was met by the combined fire of at least a dozen weapons.

  I didn’t look back. I just kept running, Johnny and Edwards thundering after me. It was time to get Elise back and get the scud out of here.

  41

  Pureblood

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting in the room at the end of the corridor, cut off from my extended senses as it was by the Hounds’ cloaking packs. As I barreled through the door, Johnny and Edwards at my back, all I knew was that we must be approaching the eastern side of the superstructure.

  When we stepped out onto a balcony of glossy black floor tiles and glass-paned railings, though, I was taken by surprise—first at the long, curving wall of unbroken duraglass looking down on the roaring Red River and the eastern bank of the valley, then at what was on the ground floor.

  “Elise!” I cried.

  Her eyes widened, snapping up at my voice, and for a moment, I was so damned relieved to see her alive that I forgot everything else. Then I took in the excessive cuts and bruises, and the gag, and the extensive network of chains by which she was suspended. Several separate chains, I saw, actually tying her in place rather than feeding to shackles or any other locks that would’ve be easily manipulated with telekinesis.

  Siren was beside her, one of those thick chains in hand, glowing red hot several links above where she gripped it. She gave a growl of effort, and it snapped in two.

  “Come on, Hal,” Johnny shouted, heading for the curving stairs to the right. “Move your ass!”

  I started after him, cursing myself for having wasted precious seconds. There were at least three or four more separate chains tying Elise in place, and—

  I stiffened, whipping around as a beacon of telepathic fury blazed into existence at the far edge of my extended cloak—just before a section of the duraglass wall exploded inward and a dark figure came shooting through like it’d been fired straight from a pulse cannon.

  The thing that could only be Frosty skidded to a halt, rending long gouges in the tiles behind her, and looked up at us with burning red eyes just as a smoking transport roared past outside, careening wildly down toward the river.

  “Good,” she said, straightening herself and speaking as if they were simply picking back up after a minor distraction. “Now we can properly begin, if you’d—”

  Her hand shot up just as I heard the rushing thrum of Edwards’ pulse cannon behind me. The modified ten-inch armor-piercing bolt traveled so fast and stopped so abruptly that it appeared to simply wink into existence a few inches from Frosty’s outstretched hand.

  “Ah,” she said, looking as if nothing had happened. “You finally managed to break a chain. How cute.”

  I was vaulting the railing, drawing off the energy from my fall to slow the descent and prepare to fight, so it took me a second to realize she was talking to Elise. The raknoth was watching her with narrowed eyes, and it was only then I noticed Siren had disappeared from Elise’s side.

  Disappeared—I realized as the razor-tipped bolt by Frosty’s hand rotated to point Elise’s direction—but not moved.

  I threw my barrier into existence the moment before the bolt leapt forward from Frosty’s hand. Even just deflecting the projectile with my angled barrier, it was frightening how hard the raknoth had flung it.

  Unperturbed, Frosty casually waved a hand, apparently focusing directly on Siren this time. Siren reappeared, bouncing across the tile and away from Elise like a skipping stone until she hit the wall and sagged.

  “Ince
ssant ants,” Frosty growled, looking to the staircase, where Johnny and Edwards were descending toward Siren, weapons at the ready. “All I wanted was Raish. I’ve found the answer, don’t you see I’ve found the answer, you meddling, paltry…” Shaking with anger, she swung a backhand through empty air with an awful roar.

  A transport-sized section of the duraglass wall exploded outward, and Frosty stood there, looking out at the water, shoulders heaving in rage.

  She’d lost it. Gone mad.

  I was about to blast her into the river below to buy us a minute when I noticed Johnny and Edwards prowling toward Elise, Edwards with a small phase torch in hand.

  I laid my rifle down, figuring my slugs were worse than useless at this point anyway, dialed my cloak out, and started circling around to the left, away from Elise and the others.

  “What’s the answer, One?” I asked, approaching the breeding chambers I’d only then noticed on the far side of the room—at first feigning interest, then staring with a sickening twist as I realized the figures inside were the size of children. But I couldn’t worry about that now. “What did you find?”

  To my relief, the raknoth turned my way instead of theirs, her face twisted in disgust.

  “Do not call me by this vessel’s pathetic numeral, Raish. I am Nan’Reylor,” she said, stalking toward me now. “And you would do well to remember the name, pet.”

  Pet?

  It didn’t matter. Just a little closer.

  “Okay, Nan’Reylor,” I said, straining with every fiber not to let me gaze flick over her shoulder to wear Edwards was silently starting the first cut. Above, the sounds of fighting had grown to a steady, distant roar in the corridor. I did my best to breathe, to keep it together.

  “You have me here,” I said, drawing up to the tanks and feeling a combination of relieved and exposed as I felt the edge of my cloaking field envelop Frosty, cutting us off from the others. “Can I ask what you want with me?”

  “Al’Braka has been a fool, hoping to turn such weak creatures into anything of value,” she said, not seeming to notice or mind the shift. “That our mighty Zar actually believed the fool bright…” She shook her head in disgust. “None of them saw the obvious.”

  “But you have?”

  She drew herself up with a satisfied smirk. “Of course, I have. Of course. Of c—Agh!” She gave her head a violent shake, fangs bared in a snarl, then focused back on me as if nothing had happened.

  She’d definitely lost it.

  “While the other fools play at war and fret about their degenerating children,” she continued, spreading her hands wide, “I will begin building from the proper stock.” She smiled then—pure, demented bliss—and held her hands out to me. “The only stock that’s proved itself worthy of anything more than my claws in its throat.”

  “And that’s…”

  Was she talking about me? I held her madly smiling eyes, trying not to betray the storm of apprehension raging through me. Any second, she’d turn, or the chains would rattle, or the hybrids would overwhelm the Hounds above.

  “Tell me, Nan’Reylor. Tell me how you’ll build.”

  Her smile grew, baring fangs as she traced her hands down her body. “You will plant your seed in this vessel, Haldin Raish, and from that seed I will fashion a race of true warriors, gifted and pure of blood, not given to the pathetic degradation of those, those… those sacks of worthless flesh above.”

  I was rooted in place, desperately trying to keep the revulsion from my face, thinking of what she was proposing, and of the hybrids floating dead in their chambers above.

  “Is that why you killed them all?”

  “Killed them?” She looked confused. “Good as dead already. All of us good as dead,” she said, her head beginning to twitch again. “Dead. Good as dead, good as… Unless…”

  Alpha be damned, I slipped—my eyes stealing a glance over her shaking shoulder by their own accord, barely long enough to register Johnny lowering a cut chain to the tile. And the mad raknoth didn’t miss it.

  I didn’t know what else to do. As she turned to have a look herself, I drew a dagger and flung it at her eyes with as much telekinetic juice as I could muster.

  Not fast enough.

  She roared as the speeding dagger struck her raised hand. I felt a moment’s surprise that I’d actually driven the blade hard enough to punch the point through her palm and clear out the back of her hand. Then I realized what I’d just done.

  “So disappointing,” Frosty growled, sliding the weapon slowly from her hand and tossing it aside. “Very well.” She must’ve reached for something outside our shared bubble then, because her brow furrowed, and she looked confusedly around until her eyes settled on my pendant.

  “Clever ant,” she muttered. Then, at a yell, “Garrett!”

  Surprised as I was to hear the Seeker’s name, I didn’t wait to see what came next. I pulled the energy and hurled Frosty right back through the hole she’d blasted in the duraglass on entry.

  “We’ve gotta go!” I shouted, calling my dagger back to hand and turning for Elise and the others.

  “Oh really?!” Johnny shouted back, reaching for the gag in Elise’s mouth. “Tell me something I—”

  “Behind you, Johnny!” Elise cried as soon as the gag was free—right as Garrett the Seeker thudded down to the ground floor from the balcony, his usual smirk firmly in place.

  His irises were a disturbingly pale shade of red.

  For a second, I hesitated, remembering the raw desperation I’d felt in Siren’s memories—her need to save Garrett. Johnny, having missed that experience and now seeing the red-eyed Seeker eyeing him like a meal, was already pulling the trigger.

  A stream of softsteel slugs pelted the wall behind Garrett, deflected by whatever defenses he’d raised.

  “Worth a shot,” Johnny muttered, right before Garrett hit him with a telekinetic sucker punch and charged.

  I came to my senses, swept Garrett’s legs out with telekinesis, and was reaching for one of my secret weapons when Frosty flew back into the room and nearly took my head off with a wild fly-by punch.

  I rolled back to my feet, reflecting that her harvesting my genetic material might not require me to be alive after all, and plucked a pair of lightsteel disks from my belt.

  Ahead, Frosty was raising a hand my way as if to smite me down with telekinesis or worse. I dialed my cloak to mid-range, close enough to cut off direct attack and far enough to make indirect attack problematic. She snarled and ripped one of the breeding chambers into the air with telekinesis instead, intending to use it as a missile.

  I flipped the switch on one of my disks and tossed it at her feet, and the chamber crashed back to the ground, cut off from her influence by the short-range cloaking field. I had a moment of grim satisfaction that my hare-brained contingency plan against the superpowered raknoth seemed to work. Then she lost it and leapt straight for me with a chest-shaking roar.

  I dipped to the side, relying on telekinesis rather than my bum wrist to catch her by the arm and slam her to the tiles at my feet. Before she’d even hit, I was already falling on her with my dagger, but she caught the blade with telekinesis a full foot from her face.

  I danced back before she could grab me, activating and dropping another cloaking disk as I went. Over by Elise, Edwards and Johnny were trading blows with red-eyed Garrett, who appeared to have disarmed both of them. I watched in horror as the smaller man caught one of Edwards’ titan-sized punches in an open palm and fired back with a straight kick that sent the bigger man sailing as Garrett rounded on Johnny.

  I blasted the Seeker off his feet, caught a glimpse of Elise working on her chains with Edwards’ torch, then dipped left as my extended senses cried a warning.

  Frosty’s blow was so fast I felt the gust of wind from the narrow miss. She stomped after me in a rage, her face completely shifted to snouted green monster mode now. I fell into a kind of trance, giving myself over to my extended senses until I was tw
isting and dodging through a vicious series of blows almost without thought, feeling more than seeing the incoming strikes.

  For a few seconds, I was untouchable.

  Then an ocean of telekinetic force fell on me, slamming me to the dark tile before I could so much as take a breath. I was pinned too completely to even reach another cloaking disk from my belt. I reached out for my cloaking pendant instead, telekinetically dialing it in to break Frosty’s hold.

  Too late.

  Frosty was already over me, stomping down with the killing blow.

  I prayed for a barrier more than consciously one, some desperate part of me reflexively pulling the energy. Her dark boot plummeted for my heart with the power of a speeding mag tram, and met thin air bare inches from my chest.

  She might as well have landed the hit for the surge of channeled power that ripped through my body. It darkened my vision, blurred my hearing to dull background. I felt more than heard the tiles crumble beneath my telekinetic cocoon.

  It seemed a rather large miracle I was alive at all.

  And she was raising her foot to stomp again.

  I had nothing. No more tricks, no more energy. Just a desperate prayer that Elise and the others would somehow make it out of here, and that Glenbark and the Legion would use my cloaks to eradicate every last one of these scaly bastards from our planet.

  I snarled up at Frosty, preparing attack her mind at her with my dying breaths.

  Something blasted her clean across the room before I could.

  “Get away from him, you crazy bitch,” growled a voice that filled me with relief.

  Elise.

  I sat up, blinking the darkness from my vision, and found her limping over to me, the remnants of one of the dark chains dangling from her forearm like a weapon.

  Behind her, Johnny and Edwards were both down, Johnny crawling feebly for his rifle. Garrett was standing between them, trembling like an enraged beast, caught in place by…