Covenant

by Mel Odom

  “I do.” Simon nodded at the boy’s mother seated in one of the chairs before his metal desk. “Your mother’s name is Nancy. Your father’s name is Craig, and we’re still looking for him.”

  A solemn look tightened the boy’s face. Tears swam in his eyes. “I know. You’ll find him one day. I know you will.”

  Simon didn’t know what to say to that. With so much time gone, over eight months now, only a child would hold on to so much hope.

  “Why do you want to be a knight?” Simon asked.

  “To fight the demons,” Chandler answered. He thought for a moment. “I’m going to have to fight the demons anyway, so I think it would be better if I knew more on how to fight them. Don’t you agree?”

  Simon heard the affected grown-up tone in the boy’s words and knew that Chandler had given the matter a lot of thought before he’d requested a meeting. Surprisingly, most of the children who came forward had thought about the matter long and hard. In many cases, their thoughts surprised their parents.

  Looking away from the boy for just a moment, Simon held Chandler’s mother’s eyes. Quietly, tears trickling down her cheeks, the woman nodded.

  No mother should have to give her child over to something like this, Simon thought. Templar children and parents were different. They stayed immersed in the same world, male and females. But the civilian parents gave up time and a certain amount of control over their children. The Templar education, when taken by outsiders, was a rude awakening.

  Looking back at the boy, Simon said, “I do agree. But you have to know that if you want this, it will be very hard. The training will be exhausting, and you won’t have much free time.”

  “I know,” Chandler told him. “I’ve seen the Templar kids. They’re in school nearly all the time.”

  “They are. There’s a lot to learn.”

  Chandler smiled. “It’ll be okay. I’m a fast learner.”

  Simon almost winced at that. Those who didn’t learn fast often died early. He thought about the funerals that would take place later. Even the good ones die.

  “All right,” Simon said, hoping that he didn’t have to see the boy die in battle in a few years, “you can start training with the Templar children.”

  Chandler smiled broadly and looked a little nervous. “Brill.” He hesitated. “Don’t I have to say an oath to you or something?”

  “Not yet.”

  Disappointment filled Chandler’s face. “Oh.”

  Behind the boy’s back, Danielle held up one crooked pinky finger. Simon almost grinned at that and had trouble keeping a straight face. He held up his crooked pinky finger.

  “Pinky swear,” Simon said.

  Chandler grinned hugely and stuck out his own crooked pinky. “I pinky swear to be a loyal knight.”

  “And I pinky swear to be a loyal and fair leader,” Simon said.

  Chandler backed off hesitantly. “Will I see you in class?”

  “Yes.” Simon still taught the classes—martial arts, sword fighting, and basic knowledge of demons—whenever he could.

  The boy’s mother stood and came over to Simon as he got to his feet. Her mouth trembled as she looked at Simon.

  “Mom,” Chandler said. “Why are you crying?”

  She looked down at her son. “Because I’m so very proud of you, that’s why.” She tousled his hair, then looked back at Simon. “Please…please take care of him. He’s my boy. All that I have left.”

  There had been a daughter as well, older, Simon remembered, but she hadn’t made it out of London.

  “I will,” Simon said.

  The woman nodded, got control of herself, then took her son by the hand and led him from the room. Silently, Simon watched them go.

  “You okay?” Danielle asked. She removed her helmet as well and looked at him.

  “Yeah.”

  “The young ones are hard.”

  “I know.”

  “They trust too much.”

  “I know.”

  “Every time I tell one of them we’re accepting them into Templar training,” Danielle said, “I feel like I’m lying.”

  “About accepting them?”

  “They think that if they become Templar, they’ll be safe. That they can be heroes and everything will be fine.”

  Simon nodded.

  “That’s the lie,” Danielle said.

  “This evening,” Simon said somberly, “should remind them that even being a Templar is dangerous.”

  Simon stood in front of the polycarbonate caskets that contained the mortal remains of the fallen Templar. Orchestral music piped into the great room that held for general assembly. From the size of the crowd, all squeezed in tight on the bleachers and folding chairs, Simon felt certain that everyone at the redoubt who wasn’t too sick or too wounded to walk put in an appearance at the funeral.

  After a time, they prayed. Simon led them. The words came easily to his lips. Too easily. He couldn’t remember how many funerals he’d presided over in the past four years. He could remember their names, though, and if he stopped to count the names, he’d have a number. He remembered people, but he didn’t like remembering the number of losses they’d had.

  The caskets were simple affairs. The coat of arms for each House stood out in bas-relief. Tri-dee images of the individuals played over the tops of the caskets.

  The Templar formed color guards of the different Houses, and some of them gave eulogies. Simon followed them and felt hollow inside while feeling brittle outside. Standing there with everyone watching was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. It always was.

  He paused for a time when he came to an end of the memories he had of the fallen and why they should be remembered. Then he strengthened his voice.

  “We’re burying brothers and sisters here today,” he said. “Husbands and wives and lovers. Fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. Most of all…we’re burying friends.”

  Tears ran down even the gruffest of faces. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

  “If these Templar were here today,” Simon said fiercely, “they would tell you that they died for one thing and one thing only.” He raised his sword. “They died so that the others might live on. For the living!”

  The other Templar took up the chant as they lifted their weapons—swords and axes—toward the ceiling. “For the living! For the living!”

  Even the civilians took up the chant. It was the Templar battle cry, the fierce promise they made to the demons and the Darkness.

  In the back, Chandler—now outfitted in Templar novice robes—lifted his fist and joined in. Hope swelled in Simon’s heart when he saw the fierce determination in the boy’s eyes. They still had that hope. The demons had not yet managed to wrest that away.

  SIXTEEN

  W arren slept for hours among the dead.

  Naomi wanted to move him, but every attempt she made was blocked by the zombies that stood protectively around him. The imps had finally started to slip from Warren’s control, though she wasn’t sure if that was because they’d gotten stronger or Warren had grown weaker. As a result, the zombies turned on the demons and slew them before they could defend themselves. More demon corpses added to the wall of dead flesh surrounding Warren.

  At first, Naomi worried that he might die. She couldn’t tell how wounded he was. Blood covered him, but she knew from the quantity that not all of it could possibly be his. No one human could bleed so much.

  No one human. The words echoed in Naomi’s thoughts. Warren wasn’t human anymore. Merihim’s machinations had twisted him to begin with. The strange book he was so careful about seemed to have been the catalyst that changed him now.

  When she’d first met Warren, he’d been badly scarred from a fire. Now his skin was smooth and unblemished. He didn’t possess any demonic transplants or tattoos that helped anchor a Cabalist in the arcane forces that had quickened to life with the opening of the Hellgate. By everything that Naomi understood, Warren should have had lit
tle to no power.

  The pockets of dead demons and the zombies that ringed him offered mute testimony that such thinking was wrong. He possessed more power than anyone Naomi knew.

  She gazed at his silver hand and watched the slow rise and fall of his chest. If he died, she wondered if she could remove that hand and use it herself.

  “Miss?”

  Startled, not happy with the fact that someone slipped up on her from behind and feeling especially vulnerable because of it, Naomi looked up at the thin old man behind her. He carried a steaming metal bowl in his hands.

  “I’ve brought soup, I ’ave,” the old man said in a Cockney accent. “Me missus insisted. Allowed as ’ow it was the Christian thing to do. It’s not so much, p’rhaps, but me missus always puts ’er ’eart into it, she does. It’ll warm ye some’at.”

  Naomi reached for the bowl. Despite the distance back to the village—or the nearness, when she thought about how close the imps had come to finding it, the bowl and its contents were still warm. She used a small spell to check for poisons or hallucinogens but didn’t detect any. More at ease, she dipped her nose near the bowl and inhaled the soup’s aroma.

  “Chicken soup, miss.” The old man stood uncertainly. “The old bird what gave ’is life to make that was gamy an’ toff, an’ there weren’t much to ’im, but ’e makes a fair soup when the missus was through with ’im.”

  “Thank your wife for me.”

  “I will, I will.”

  Most of the survivors had left to take the wounded and bad news home. But they’d left guards with weapons to watch over Warren and the zombies. During the past few hours, they’d rotated out. None of them spoke to her. Not a one of them trusted her. She was fairly certain they were convinced that she somehow kept the zombies in one place.

  “’E’s still alive, innit ’e?” the old man asked.

  “Yes.” Naomi sipped the soup, relishing the fluids as much as the mushy vegetables and noodles, and the stringy chicken bits. She’d found clean snow to slake her thirst, but she hadn’t gotten hungry enough yet to eat the rations they’d brought with them.

  “Is ’e gonna be wakin’ up anytime soon?”

  “I don’t know.” Naomi scanned the blanket of white snow that hugged the terrain. Except for the trail they’d followed, and the tracks left by the imps that had pursued them, the snowcapped landscape appeared pristine. London remained a dark smudge in the distance, but the sun hung in a blue sky and the snow glittered.

  “‘As ’e done this before?”

  “No.”

  The old man wrapped his arms around himself and hugged fiercely. “Don’t seem normal, does it?”

  Looking at the dead demons and the zombies that stood guard, Naomi couldn’t help thinking that “normal” somehow didn’t apply to the world anymore. But she agreed with the old man’s assessment.

  “No.”

  The old man stood there awkwardly.

  “What is it?” Naomi asked.

  Hesitating, the old man wouldn’t look at her. “It’s just that some of the people back to the village, well, they were wonderin’ when the two of you might be movin’ on.” He hurried on. “Not that anybody’s in a rush or anythin’.”

  Naomi quelled her immediate anger. Getting angry wouldn’t help them, and might even tilt the delicate balance the villagers had about merely watching them instead of trying to kill them.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Not until he’s on his feet, at the least.”

  The old man scratched his head. Gray wisps of hair stood out under the edges of his cap. His nose and cheeks burned red with the cold.

  “I guess, then, that they’ll be ’opin’ ’e’s on his feet before evenin’ then.”

  Naomi didn’t say anything. She supposed they were lucky the villagers didn’t try to kill them. Concentrating on the soup, she savored the flavor and the warmth and drank it more quickly when she got down to the dregs because they cooled so much more quickly. When she was finished, she handed the bowl back to the old man.

  “Thank you,” she said. She’d been taught to always be polite. Even when around imperfect company.

  The old man took the bowl, nodded, wished her well, and departed. His footsteps crunched through the icy crust over the snow. Somewhere in the distance, a branch cracked as it finally surrendered to the burden of snow and split from the trunk.

  Naomi watched Warren’s chest rise and fall. Wake up, she thought angrily. Wake up. But she wondered if Warren was going to recover. She’d never seen anyone harness that much raw power.

  Imp bodies lay in pieces for a hundred yards. Many others were twisted into improbable shapes, or burned almost beyond recognition—other than being demonic.

  What did it take for a man to do what Warren had done? And what had it cost him?

  Naomi glared out at the bleak countryside. More than that, what were they doing out here? He’d been keeping to himself lately, not telling her anything she wanted to know about his new hand.

  Frustrated, she laid her head back against the tree she sat next to, pulled the thick wool blanket one of the villagers had given her more tightly around her, and slept.

  Without warning, Warren woke. Bright light lanced into his eyes before he opened them. Day, he told himself, then immediately wondered if that were any better than it still being night.

  He felt unaccustomed weight over his body. He shifted, terrified for a moment that he’d been buried alive, then quickly reminded himself that he couldn’t very well be buried if he could see the sun.

  Senses alert but so weak he didn’t know if he could defend himself if he had to, Warren opened his eyes. Quietly, he took in the destruction all around him. The zombies stood tirelessly over him. They didn’t look at him, but he knew they felt his presence.

  “Warren?”

  He tracked Naomi’s voice. She stood just beyond the reach of the zombies nearest her. She looked worried. And mad. He almost smiled at that. Like she could do anything to him that the demons hadn’t already tried to do.

  Beyond her, a handful of the villagers shifted and pulled their guns into ready positions. The trust department is bankrupt, he thought. Looking at all the human bodies scattered around him, he couldn’t blame them.

  “Warren? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” Warren lurched to his knees. His back and leg muscles screamed in protest. When he smelled himself, the gore that covered him, sickness twisted in his stomach. He swallowed with difficulty. “Is there any water?”

  Naomi tried to pass him a canteen, but a zombie flailed at her. Cursing the undead thing, she stepped back.

  Warren forced himself to his feet and stood swaying for a moment. His senses swirled. Then he stepped through the zombies and took the canteen. He removed the cap and drank.

  “Don’t go so fast,” Naomi said. “You’re going to get sick.”

  He couldn’t stop, though. It felt as if someone had gripped him in a hard fist and squeezed him dry. He barely had time to take the canteen away from his mouth before he threw up.

  Real impressive for the locals, he thought bitterly as he wiped his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve.

  The second time he tried to drink, he went more slowly. As he sipped, he gazed around the field of carnage and tried to spot Lilith.

  “What’s wrong?” Naomi asked.

  “I was looking for someone.”

  Naomi looked around and spoke quietly. “Most of the men that were with us last night died. They took the bodies back to the village to get them ready for burial. They couldn’t reach some of them because of the demons and zombies.”

  Warren felt the wave of resentment and fear that boiled off the men in the brush. If they thought they could kill him with impunity, he knew they would.

  “We’re not going to win any popularity contests,” he said. “But that’s all right. I wasn’t looking for a country home anyway.”

  “It would be better if we could go.”

  “I know
.” Warren passed her canteen back and walked toward the nearest villager.

  Gray streaked his hair and beard. He held a large-bore pistol naked in his fist and kept it between them. Despite the zombies at Warren’s back, the man didn’t back away.

  “We need supplies,” Warren said.

  “We’ve barely enough to feed ourselves as it is,” the man grumbled.

  “Only enough for two people.” Warren refused to beg. He and Naomi needed food and water, and he was powerful enough to take it without asking. They all knew that. “For no more than a week.”

  The man looked as though he thought about lifting the pistol and shooting Warren in the face. Warren knew the man wanted to do that because he felt that emotion within the man. But fear won out.

  “C’mon with me, then. We’ll see what we can do.”

  Warren followed and Naomi joined him. The zombies fell into step around him.

  “They’re only giving us the supplies because they want us gone,” Naomi said.

  “I want us gone, too,” Warren replied. Without Lilith, though, he didn’t know exactly where to go. He didn’t like feeling lost and not having a plan. His whole life after he’d entered foster care had been planned out. He had never been able to afford the luxury of mistakes.

  “They also know that we could take the supplies if we wanted to,” Naomi told him.

  Warren remained silent. He counted the zombies shuffling around him. Their numbers had dwindled during last night’s attack. Besides the food, he needed reinforcements. He knew the villagers weren’t going to be happy about that.

  While the supplies were arranged, Warren ate homemade bread baked in a small woodstove. The heat circulated through the exhaust pipe, and another pipe allowed the heat to bleed off to bake the bread. To him, the whole system appeared quite ingenious. He also ate a bowl of stew that held a lot of vegetables and a little rabbit meat.

  He sat at a table by himself. Naomi supervised the gathering of the supplies, and no one among the villagers ate with him. The zombies hunkered and stood outside the door of the small house. Until the undead arrived, the small town had resembled a rather pastoral setting.