The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy

by Terra Whiteman

  Leid threw down her cigarette, mashing it with her boot. “Status?”

  The entire city has been overrun, just as the report said, informed the raven on Adrial’s shoulder. We had to wear Aeon technology because birds couldn’t speak, so telepathy was our only form of communication. Most of the civilians are triggered. I counted at least ninety demons in physical form.

  Leid looked back at the city, dismal. “You think it’s worth saving?”

  Depends, said the one on Zhevraine’s shoulder. But it’s not my place to say, Justice Commander.

  Orders from Lucifer Raith and Yahweh Telei have just been received. They’re telling us to spare the city; do what we must but ensure the survival of the untainted.

  “Easy for them to say,” muttered Adrial.

  “Demons first,” Leid began, tapping her chin, “then the triggered. If we kill the source of the triggers, we might not have to kill the lessers.”

  “Oh, we’ll be killing plenty of lessers,” Zhevraine said, watching the city burn. “There is no avoiding that, Commander.”

  “Adrial, Zhevraine, take the upper city levels. Exterminate any gunmen you can find. Alezair, you’ll be covering me on the ground. I’ll go after the demons.”

  Great. “Cover you with what?”

  “Find a gun and use it. Make sure you keep the infected out of her target line,” Zhevraine elaborated.

  “I was never trained in Tal Ayen’s firearms—”

  “Same as the human world,” Adrial said.

  “So uh, how dangerous is this going to be?” Everyone looked at me, even the birds. “Like on a scale of one to ten—ten being the most dangerous, how—”

  “Twelve,” Leid snapped. “You’re the one who wanted to come. Backing out now?”

  I frowned. “Just asking.”

  Judges usually worked alone, but this was a situation that required all of us. Leid hadn’t wanted to bring me, but there was no choice. The Jury had never faced an entire demon legion before.

  “Why?” I asked, standing.

  “Why what?” asked Adrial.

  “Why are all of them here?”

  “We won’t know until we contain them. We need at least one of the demons alive for interrogation,” said Leid. “No more questions. Let’s move.”

  The raven watchers left us, disappearing into the clouds. We bolted down the cliff, blurs across the smoking, black terrain.

  As we closed in on the city, my eyes sharpened with enhanced vision. Leid had upped her resonance and passed it onto us. As guardians, we shared the same resonance as our noble: violet. Resonance was like an energy link, a web that connected us, sharing strengths and abilities.

  Humans described the way they perceived stimuli by a phenomenon known as the Law of Specific Nerve Energies. The five senses humans experienced—touch, taste, sound, smell and sight— were all received by different neural pathways in the body. But the real difference between any stimuli was the sensation. For them, touch was always touch, sound was always sound; they couldn’t taste pain or feel smells.

  We could.

  Vel’Haru received stimuli in any way that we wanted. We saw wavelengths outside the visible spectrum—heat emanating from bodies, rays flying through the air as explosions let loose radioactive particles. Essentially if an object had kinetic energy, we could see it. And thanks to Leid, we now could see every enemy position without obstruction.

  Leid pulsed, blowing open the gate. It sent a crowd of infected hurling into the air, some too close to the magnetic field. Clouds of entrails and body parts rained on us.

  Alarms sounded off. Gunfire commenced, a thousand bullet tail sparks whipped in every direction. The gunmen at the gates had left their weapons. I grabbed a rifle, chasing my Commander.

  Adrial and Zhevraine leapt to the rooftops. Clouds of white sand covered the streets below, a hurricane of powder and blood.

  Bullets felt like a million toothpicks. It was annoying and kind of painful, but I regenerated too quickly for them to bring me down. The bullets were stripped to their basic elements and recycled to heal my wounds. It was pointless, but the idiots kept firing.

  Crowds upon crowds of infected circled the streets, their shadows lurking in alleyways and rooftops, screaming to each other as we cleaved our way through them. Leid shoved past as many as she could, but sometimes they wouldn’t move as easily as we’d hoped.

  Unload, reload.

  Unload, reload.

  I used a rifle like others would a submachine gun.

  Soon fear was smothered by adrenaline. I was too focused on trying to keep up with Leid. Between sniping rooftop gunmen, showers of blood and salt from Adrial and Zhevraine’s upper-sector massacre, smoke from the fires wreaking havoc on the city, and all the unmarred civilians rushing into the streets screaming for help, I could barely see her.

  A bullet tore through my ankle and I fell, slamming my face into the road. I tried to stand, but my Achilles tendon was severed.

  “Leid!” I shouted, but she kept running, unable to hear me over the chaos.

  I grabbed at rubble, trying to regenerate, but was shot in the chest with an arrow. I ripped it out, snarling at the pain. Blood seeped from my lips, dribbling down my chin. I wiped it away, looking at a building across the street. That cocksucker was about ready to shoot me with another.

  I was out of bullets and snapped the rifle in half across my knee, throwing it. The butt nailed my assailant right between the eyes, two stories above. He fell off the roof, dead before he hit the ground. I stood, surveying the mobbed street. Leid was gone.

  A young girl covered in blood and burns collapsed into my arms. I flinched, surprised.

  “Help me!” she sobbed. “Please, help me!”

  I tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let go. “I can’t. I have to—”

  “Please!”

  “Lady, let go of me!”

  Before she could beg again, a gunshot broke the air and her brains splattered across my face. I recoiled, wiping her off.

  Zhevraine darted into view, slaughtering a group of infected gunmen emerging from an alley. When done, she looked at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I lost Leid.”

  “Then stop standing around and find her!”

  She leapt off.

  I threw my hands up. “Thanks for the advice!”

  ***

  I wandered into a park.

  The ground was chewed up, transformed into heaps of rubble. I still hadn’t found Leid.

  I was covered in blood and salt; a crowbar I’d found along the trek scraped across the ground, making a terrible shhhrrrrrkkk.

  There was a group of infected lessers crowded by a fountain, water leaking in a stream between my feet. They saw me and scattered, all except for one. A small boy, crouched in front of a dead woman. I stopped, staring at the back of his head. At first I thought he was crying, but then I heard an awful wet noise. Chewing.

  He turned; lightless, clouded eyes peered into mine, lips stained with gore. He raised his arm, offering up a handful of meaty pulp with a crooked smile.

  I twitched, raising the crowbar.

  Before I could follow through, something hit the back of my head, and hard.

  I dropped the crowbar and collapsed on all fours. Blood gushed from my nose, soiling the ground around my hands. I couldn’t see, could barely hear.

  Brain damage. The worst kind of injury.

  I scrambled away from my invisible attacker. Footsteps crunched over gravel, following me.

  A foot kicked my stomach in, cracking a few ribs. A pair of hands grabbed my coat and pulled me up, sending streaks of white hot pain across my back. I held in a cry, not giving them any satisfaction. Warm breath crawled along my face.

  “Miss me?” someone whispered.

  Samael Soran.

  I spat blood in his face and he threw me down, smashing my head into ground. My fingers dug into gravel as he laughed. My hearing had returned, but I’d have preferred
sight.

  “I didn’t want this,” he said. I heard him grunt, followed by the activity of stirred ground. “And this isn’t about last night either, in case you’re wondering.”

  I didn’t believe that for a second.

  My vision was slowly creeping back in, and I caught a blurry image of Samael approaching me with something in his hands. Something huge.

  I sent out a warning ping to the others, hoping they could find me. I didn’t know where I was, so I forewent any words and only gave them a little taste of my pain.

  My vision reached full-clarity. Samael was dressed as a Najudis civilian, face hidden in shadows beneath the hood of his jacket. His golden eyes gleamed with malice, wisps of ice blond hair sweeping over them. He was holding a giant chunk of cement over his head.

  Before I could move, he dropped it, crushing my chest.

  I screamed, blood erupting from my throat as all of my organs ruptured at once, leaving my chest concave. I had no idea how I was still alive. The pain was so intense that I actually wished for death. Black veins wriggled beneath my skin as my body desperately tried to repair itself. Black veins was a bad sign—a sign that warned of imminent death.

  Samael picked up the cement chunk again, this time holding it over my head. I wouldn’t survive that.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for oblivion.

  ka-tink.

  Samael fell backward, dropping the cement block. It missed my head, flattening my legs instead.

  Another scream erupted from my throat. I was unable to feel anything at this point, but the sound of crushing bones and the sight of my lower limbs reduced to puddles was horrifying enough.

  A pair of hands hooked my arms, pulling me back. The sinew and tendons still attached to my ruined legs ripped away. Someone shoved a handful of dirt into my mouth. At first I vomited, but he kept shoveling it in.

  “You’re alright,” Adrial whispered in my ear. “Come on, eat.”

  I relaxed, forcing the dirt down my throat.

  Leid was beating Samael with my crowbar, and he was on his knees with his arms shielding his head.

  I was too messed up to follow what was happening. Adrial kept shoveling dirt into my mouth, and I kept choking it down. I thought back to the time when I’d asked Leid what she was. That night in the bar, she hadn’t answered me, yet the look in her eyes had revealed torment. She’d hated what she was, whatever she was.

  And now I knew that torment, too.

  Vel’Haru couldn’t necessarily die from irrevocable trauma to our bodies, but that didn’t mean we didn’t feel any pain. We probably felt more pain than anyone else, given our advanced nervous system. But I would have much rather died than endure another minute of this.

  “Is he alright?” Leid asked, keeping her eyes on Samael. She was referring to me.

  “He’ll live,” Adrial said, patting me on the back.

  “And the demons?”

  “All dead,” reported Zhevraine, eyes on the Obsidian General. “Except him.”

  Leid nodded, sucking on a cigarette that she’d plucked from her squashed, bloodstained package. The others had taken some serious damage as well. The entire left side of Zhevraine’s face was covered in third degree burns. A trail of dry blood caked Adrial’s ears, leading all the way down his neck. Leid was covered in ash and salt; one of her brows was mangled and hung over her eye.

  She knelt in front of the general, held on his knees by Zhevraine. “What was this worth?”

  Samael’s eyes narrowed. “Stop pretending you don’t know.”

  “I’m not pretending anything. But, really, what was it worth?” She gestured to the carnage around us. Explosions ravaged another sector of the city, and the hum of helicopters broke the air. Najudis’ military was crashing the party. “You accomplished nothing, other than your execution.”

  “I might as well play the part you’ve written for me,” he said, a crooked smile crossing his busted mouth. “I can’t go back to Hell now; they’ll hang me for what I’ve done.”

  Adrial was staring at Leid, suspicion in his gaze. “What is he talking about?”

  She didn’t answer him. “Why would they hang you? No one knows—”

  “My sister knows!” he shouted. “She knows it was me! If she knows, then they all do! Nowhere is safe for me now!”

  Leid looked surprised. “How does Samnaea know?”

  He laughed, spitting blood across the ground. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”

  “You could have come to me, or Lucifer, you could have—”

  “And told Lucifer what?! That I was sitting on that ledger the entire time?! That…that I gave it to you instead of him because you seduced me!?”

  Adrial snarled, getting to his feet.

  My wounds were healing, but the pain came second to my surprise as I sat there and listened to their conversation. So far, I didn’t like what I was hearing. The scene at Durn Manor came to mind: right before Samael had hit Leid, she’d leaned in and whispered, “I never felt a thing.”

  Ouch. Poor bastard.

  “You promised to find a way to get Samnaea out of this!”

  “I did,” she said through her teeth. “After that hearing, the Sanguine Court is finished.”

  “You gave up their names to the angels! Yahweh Telei has that document in his hands! Do you know what that means?! That means I’ve committed treason!”

  “You act like there was a smooth procedure for this. Your sister committed a crime, and you asked me to forfeit my job to keep her neck out of the noose. I did that—all of that. I don’t work miracles, General Soran. Samnaea was not arrested, nor were you, nor was anyone else.”

  He laughed. “You think it matters whether or not anyone was arrested? The Obsidian Court won’t be able to protect me when they come. Commander Raith is nothing but a sock puppet; they’re the ones really pulling the strings.”

  Leid stared at him, lost. She didn’t say anything.

  I put a hand against my head, looking away.

  Adrial was angry too, but for a different reason. “You fucked an Archdemon.”

  Her stare was frigid. “I needed that ledger.”

  “And fucking him was the only way to get it.”

  “Without a mess.”

  “Have you given any thought to the mess this will cause—?”

  “We can kill him,” Zhevraine interrupted. We looked at her, and she smiled. “Your secret will die with him.”

  Samael only looked at the ground.

  Leid didn’t move. The borders of her eyes were wet.

  “Go on,” he whispered. “I’m dead already.”

  She dropped the crowbar. “I-I didn’t mean what I said at the masquerade.”

  Samael smiled, but it was thin.

  Adrial glared at them. “Stop dancing around the bush, please.”

  She turned her back, fingers combing through her tangled, windblown hair. “I can’t do it.”

  Leid didn’t have to. In a blur I was behind the general, plunging my scythe through his back. The Archdemon let out a surprised cry, craning his neck. He looked up at me, and I down at him, watching as the light faded from his eyes. Anger, unrefined, burned behind my gaze. It was the same anger that I’d felt at Durn. Unexplainable yet… familiar.

  Staring at my face, Samael looked like he’d come to some sort of revelation. His eyes widened, lips trembled, and then he said something that I couldn’t understand.

  A second later he exploded into salt. I closed my eyes, avoiding the cloud. Zhevraine and Adrial stared at me. Leid was already vacating the park.

  Targets eliminated, she reported to the watchers. Najudis is clean.

  Zhevraine followed her, while Adrial just kept staring. “What did he say?”

  I shook my head. It had sounded like a language I didn’t know, but that was impossible. Vel’Haru were able to speak any language in the Multiverse. It was our innate.

  If I had to guess, Samael had said something like:

 
Sanctum dor Veruya.

  ***

  I hid in my room for the rest of the night.

  Leid, Zhevraine and Adrial spent the day handling all the messy paperwork and delegations. With the damage that I’d taken, I was forced to sleep.

  I awoke hours later with a pit in my stomach. Cerasaraelia was quiet; it was early in the morning and everyone had gone to bed. I was a little crestfallen to discover no one had fetched me for dinner. Maybe they’d thought I needed the rest.

  Adrial was sitting on the kitchen counter in the dark, holding a bottle of wine. I frowned at his knowing grin, not exactly in the mood to chat, but I’d already seen the wine so now he had me; hook, line and sinker.

  I leaned against the counter beside him, smoothing my hair.

  Adrial popped the cork and poured himself a glass, handing over the bottle. There was a piece of casserole left in wrapping paper next to the sink. Leid had saved it for me. I unwrapped the plate and ate with my hands; I was even hungrier than I’d thought. Adrial watched as I ate, a look of uncertainty crossing his face.

  “Let’s talk about today,” he said.

  “Let’s not,” I replied, mouth full.

  “It’s necessary.”

  My lip curled. “Yeah?”

  “You’re upset.”

  “Mind your own business.”

  Adrial smiled. “You think I don’t know?”

  “Mind your own business.”

  “You’re acting different lately. Have you noticed?”

  “Nope,” I lied.

  “Emotional distress tends to skew our judgment.”

  I laughed, gulping wine. “You’re not my shrink.”

  Adrial rolled his eyes. “As if I’d ever want that gig.”

  “Well don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  Adrial nodded, sipping his wine. “She meant well, you know.”

  “Sure she did.”

  “Leid has a track record of bad decisions,” he went on. “I suppose that’s what I’m here for. Cleaning up her messes. It’s been that way since Exo’daius.”

  “And making excuses for her,” I pointed out.