Face Of The Void (Desa Kincaid Book 3)

by R S Penney

  “Good. Because we’ve got trouble on the way.”

  Scrambling to his feet – and bracing himself for a surge of pain that didn’t come – Dalen examined his surroundings. Another troop of grays was coming over the wall. He counted six.

  Zoe backed up until she stood beside him, glancing this way and that like a rabbit searching for a way to escape a predator. Her face was even paler than usual, and that was saying something. “What do we do?”

  “We fight!” Victor declared.

  Jim hesitantly took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. “I’m not sure I want you anywhere near a firearm,” he muttered. “I don’t have any more crystals.”

  “I think there are some in the barrack,” Dalen mumbled. He grimaced as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Why had he said that? What good were the crystals that Miri hid under her bed? It wasn’t as if he could get at them in a pinch.

  The gray goons landed just inside the wall, each bending his or her knees to cushion the impact of a ten-foot drop. One by one, they straightened and then began a slow shamble toward Dalen and his friends. It was as if they knew they had cornered helpless prey.

  Jim sent an arrow streaking toward them.

  It scraped a gray man’s shoulder as it zipped past and then struck the wall behind him, falling uselessly to the ground. The fellow didn’t even seem to notice that he had been wounded. He just kept coming.

  “Inside!” Dalen yelled.

  Zoe and Jim bolted for the nearest barrack. Victor lingered a moment, reloading his pistol with fresh ammunition and slapping the cylinder into place. He lifted the weapon, taking aim, and narrowed his eyes.

  CRACK!

  His first shot struck a gray woman, leaving a hole in her forehead. She toppled over, landing in the grass. And then the others started running.

  Dalen took Victor by the arm and dragged him to the nearest building. He kicked the door open, pulling the other man inside, ignoring the string of muttered curses and the glare he received for his trouble.

  Once they were clear, Jim leaped into motion, slamming the door shut and locking the deadbolt. That would do for now. Even the strongest foe wouldn’t be able to force his way inside.

  The small foyer was lit only by two narrow windows on either side of the entrance. Neither one was large enough for a person to squeeze through. Which meant they should be safe within these stone walls.

  His confidence faltered when something pounded on the door. By the Eyes of Vengeance! Did those monsters have a battering ram?

  Dalen gasped, stumbling backward to the hallway that led to the sleeping section. He braced one hand on the wall.

  Another blow came and then another, each one rattling the wood. It held. Mercy be praised, it held. His heart rate slowed, his sense of panic fading away. If they could just hang on long enough for Desa to do whatever she had to do. Dalen was beginning to feel a smidgen of optimism. Just a smidgen.

  He should have known better.

  The sound of glass shattering told him that he had miscalculated. The captain’s office was right next to the foyer, and it had a big, beautiful window for plenty of warm, healthy sunlight.

  The door on his left flew open, and two gray men with large, thick arms came storming in. Zoe screamed, backing away from them until she was pressed against the opposite wall.

  Victor moved to defend her.

  Showing no fear, he strode toward his enemies with his pistol gripped in one hand. He fired two shots that punched through the nearest man’s chest, but the big fellow didn’t even notice.

  The gray man moved across the room with alarming speed, grabbing Victor’s wrist and twisting until the gun fell out of his hand. With a casual shove, he flung Victor into the front door, cracking the wood.

  Zoe screamed again.

  Standing inside the hallway, Jim nocked an arrow and drew back the bowstring. He loosed, and the shaft went straight through the gray man’s head, fletchings poking out from the side of his skull.

  One down.

  The second gray ignored Jim entirely. Zoe’s shrieks had enraged him. It was as if he could think of nothing else until he quieted that awful noise. He lumbered up to Zoe, drawing back his fist.

  Dalen tackled him from behind, wrapping his arms around the other man’s neck. The big brute writhed like a bucking horse, trying to throw Dalen off. He held on. Sweet Mercy, he held on!

  For ten seconds.

  A sudden undulation sent Dalen flying sideways until his shoulder hit the front wall of the foyer. He fell to the floor, landing next to Victor, pain surging through his body. He knew that he should get up, that he should keep fighting, but his muscles resisted.

  Jim attacked the gray man with his belt knife.

  Zoe kept howling. The poor girl was huddled against the wall, terrified. She could run, use the opportunity to slip away, but her brain was addled by fear. Dalen could see it in her. This child was no warrior. She didn’t have Desa’s battle-hardened instincts. She was just a scared kid in over her head.

  The gray man tossed Jim to the floor as easily as he had Dalen, and then he rounded on Zoe. A fist to the belly made her fold up and wheeze, but the gray man wasn’t finished with her.

  He spun Zoe around, pulling her hard against his body. He seized her head with both hands and then – with a quick, wrenching motion – he snapped her neck.

  Her body hit the floor with a thump.

  Suddenly, there were no more screams.

  “No!” Victor moaned. He forced himself to rise, clamping a hand onto his wounded arm. Tears leaked from his eyes. With shaky steps, he shuffled toward the gray man, then lost his balance and fell to his knees.

  It’s over, Dalen thought. This thing is going to kill us.

  Together with her friends, Desa directed her will toward Hanak Tuvar. Her mind swept over the city, over townhouses and cobblestone streets with frightened people, over plazas filled to bursting with gray monsters. She felt the others with her, Kalia and Tommy, Mercy and Rojan.

  Their thoughts drifted over the East Road and the field beyond the city’s edge. And there, in a pocket of pure, undiluted wrongness, she found the squid demon nursing its wounds. It sensed her immediately, turning its hideous face toward her. That gaping mouth let out a scream.

  The beast was angry, enraged by this sudden twist of fate, by the notion that these lowly humans could resist. When it recovered, it would lash out again, smash their city and punish their arrogance.

  Desa wouldn’t allow it.

  Under Mercy’s direction, she searched for the tendrils of wrongness that connected Hanak Tuvar to its monochrome minions. She found them as hair-thin cracks, gaps where the Ether should be. So small they were almost imperceptible, and yet when she let her mind drift into them, they were as vast as the space between universes.

  Fill them, Mercy said. With the essence of the Field.

  Three minds working together had not been enough to overpower Hanak Tuvar, but perhaps five could do the trick. Desa took the lead, gathering the Ether, directing into those horrible cracks.

  They resisted, pushing her out.

  Hanak Tuvar squealed.

  She tried again, throwing her will against the creature. She felt Rojan and Tommy and Mercy adding their strength to hers. And Kalia. Kalia most of all. The others were a light in the darkness, but with Kalia lending her strength, Desa felt as though she could lift mountains.

  The Ether bent to her will, flowing into those cracks.

  Hanak Tuvar pushed back, trying to widen the fissures. They strained. Like fault lines in an earthquake. Tremors reverberated through Desa, shaking her to her core. She held on, refusing to relent.

  Elsewhere in the city, gray monsters were scrambling over walls, knocking down doors and terrorizing helpless people. Al a Nari Field Binders fought back against the darkness, saving those they could.

  Desa felt something.

  A cry of pain and alarm.

  Her thoughts slid back to the barracks w
here Dalen, Jim and the others fought a hulking gray man. Four others surrounded the building, pounding on doors, smashing through windows. In moments, her friends would be overwhelmed.

  And Zoe.

  Desa sensed her lying on the floor, the life draining out her broken body. She hadn’t known the young woman for very long, but this still felt like a knife through the chest. She had to do something! She couldn’t just leave her friends to die!

  No.

  At first, she thought it was Mercy whispering in her thoughts, but that wasn’t Mercy’s voice. No, it was Kalia’s. Sympathy and love as vast as an ocean washed over Desa. The best way to help them, Kalia said. Is to stop all of those gray creatures. Now. Together.

  Once again, Desa rallied her strength and directed her will into the Ether. It surged at her command, flowing into the cracks, filling them. Hanak Tuvar fought back. Its will was like a boulder pressing down on her.

  Desa reached out to her friend. Tommy added his will to hers. Like another set of hands holding up the boulder. And then Mercy. Rojan. And finally, Kalia. Together, they directed the Ether.

  It sealed the cracks with a flash of light, severing Hanak Tuvar’s connection to its minions. All over the city, gray corpses dropped to the ground, the life stripped away from them.

  Sensing its defeat, Hanak Tuvar recoiled and retreated into the distortion field it had created. In that blessed moment, Desa sensed something she would never have expected. The demon was afraid of her.

  Yes, it was afraid.

  She had won the day. At great cost.

  The gray man collapsed, falling flat on his face, stretched out on the floor of the foyer. Dalen forced himself to rise, the pain in his shoulder spiking, sending shockwaves through his body. He wanted to rest, but there was no time for that.

  Shambling over to the gray corpse, he kicked the body and rolled it onto its back. The darkness that seemed to fill its skull receded, leaving ordinary eyes. Colourless but ordinary. The thing was dead.

  “The crystal!” Dalen panted.

  He stumbled through the narrow hallway that led to the sleeping area, stepping into a long, rectangular room with beds in neat rows along each wall. Miri’s was the third one on his left. Wasting no time, he ran to it and dropped to his knees.

  He pawed underneath the bed, searching, searching. Finally, his hand fell upon a wooden box that he slid out with considerable effort. Opening it revealed exactly what he had been looking for.

  Crystals.

  Thin, glittering shards reflected the lamplight, each one casting a rainbow on the walls. He chose one that was about the size of his palm, carrying it in a delicate grip, staggering back to the foyer.

  Victor was crouching by the door, holding Zoe in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. He kept murmuring soft words of reassurance and gently stroking her hair. “Save her,” he pleaded when he saw Dalen. “Save her.”

  Rushing over to the girl, Dalen took one of her hands in his. Her skin was still warm! That had to count for something, didn’t it? He pressed the shard into Zoe’s palm, closed her fingers around it and squeezed hard. The distinctive crunch told him that he had shattered the crystal.

  But nothing happened.

  No rainbow.

  Zoe’s fingers uncurled when he released her hand, fragments of crystal falling to the floor. She was perfectly still in Victor’s arms, her dull eyes staring at the wall. Gone. Dalen wanted to weep. He had liked the girl.

  “No,” Jim murmured, shaking his head.

  “Try again,” Victor demanded.

  “It’s too late.”

  “Again!”

  Taking one of the slivers off the floor, Dalen crushed it in his palm. The rainbow surrounded him, flowing up his arm, over his body and his face. He closed his eyes, tilting his head back, breathing deeply as his pain faded away.

  His eyes snapped open, fixed upon Victor. “It’s too late,” he insisted. “She’s gone, Victor. We need to…We need to find the others.”

  “I won’t accept that!” Victor snarled, tears streaming over his cheeks. He sniffled and touched his nose to Zoe’s forehead. “I won’t! I won’t!”

  Dalen left him to mourn, taking Jim and stepping out into the yard. The other grays were scattered around the building, lying dead in the grass. He heard people moaning in the distance. The city had suffered a tragedy. He had to find Miri. She would know what to do. “Come on,” Dalen muttered. “We’re needed.”

  24

  Evening sunlight streamed over the city, leaving the buildings of Ofalla as shadows against the glare. Zerena Dobrin stood upon a stone balcony, her hands braced on the balustrade as she watched her people.

  In the plaza below, men loaded bodies into a wagon bound for a mass grave. They were burying the dead a few miles southwest of the city. Some of those corpses were gray. Others were just ordinary people who had fallen during the attack.

  “These are the fruits of your labour,” Zerena muttered. “You promised us help, and this is what you brought us.”

  Dressed in tan pants and a blue shirt under her leather coat, Desa stood in the shadows. Her bob of short, brown hair was an absolute mess, thin strands falling into her eyes. “If not for us,” she began. “Your city would have been destroyed.”

  Zerena gripped the railing, stiffening as she peered down at the people below. “You will forgive me if I take little comfort in that,” she whispered. “Such carnage…Now that you’ve fought your little battle, will you help us clean up the mess?”

  Desa strode forward to stand beside the other woman, clasping her hands behind her back. “We can’t stay,” she said softly. “As much as I wish we could. We have to lead the demon away from here.”

  “How convenient.”

  Though it took some effort, Desa ignored that comment. Convenient? Hardly. She had nearly died a dozen times during the battle, to say nothing of what she had endured in the days leading up to it. The constant fear, the sense of impending doom nipping at her heels: it wore her down.

  Sweet Mercy, she had lost one of her people in the fighting! Zoe’s death would haunt her for a good, long while. She had barely known the girl, but she could already feel the grief weighing her down like a stone. Desa might have learned to stop blaming herself for everything, but that didn’t mean she had stopped caring.

  She wanted to stay, to help these people rebuild – she felt she owed it to them – but the urge to leave was an itch she couldn’t scratch, growing more insistent with every passing second. The longer she stayed here, the greater the risk to the citizens of Ofalla. Hanak Tuvar would return. Her only hope was if its hatred for her was stronger than its desire to crush the city. If so, she might be able to coax it away and lure it into the desert.

  “Rojan will be leaving a contingent of Field Binders here,” she said. “They can help you rebuild and protect you against future attacks.”

  “I suppose that will have to be enough.”

  Desa nodded.

  She hopped over the railing and used her Gravity-Sink for a gentle descent to the plaza, producing a gasp from Zerena. She landed in a crouch, then rose slowly and let out a sigh.

  Kalia joined her as she started down a narrow street lined with gray townhouses. At first, they walked in silence, content to just enjoy each other’s company. Desa caught a glimpse of a man in a nearby window, a tall fellow in his middle years who sneered at her and pulled the curtains shut. Maybe she was just imagining it, but she couldn’t help but think the citizens of Ofalla agreed with their mayor. This was all Desa Kincaid’s fault. It was pure foolishness, and she knew it. But people were often looking for a scapegoat.

  “Are you all right?” Kalia asked.

  Shutting her eyes tight, Desa shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I went to the desert. I found enlightenment. I’m supposed to be past this.”

  “But…”

  Desa stopped dead, standing there with her mouth agape, the enormity of her grief bursting through her pitiful defens
es. “But I look at these good people, and I can’t help but think that I should have been able to do more.”

  Kalia was staring straight ahead, nodding slowly as she considered Desa’s words. “Maybe there’s no such thing as enlightenment,” she said. “Maybe we can’t overcome our deepest anxieties by spending a few weeks in the desert.”

  “Then the trip was a waste of time.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No?”

  Kalia took her hands, pulling Desa close for a kiss on the lips. “Darling,” she said. “Overcoming our fears is a lifelong process. You have made progress. But you are still Desa Nin Leean.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “And that’s how I know we’re going to get through this,” Kalia murmured. “Because we have you.”

  When night fell, Dalen found himself pacing in the yard outside the barracks. He had never understood how Miri and Tommy could throw themselves into physical danger so easily. His battleground was the written word. But after today, he thought he might have a vague idea.

  When you were scrambling to stay alive, you didn’t have time to fret about all those pesky emotions. It was all just instinct. But once the heat of battle faded, all the things you had been ignoring came roaring back.

  He hadn’t known Zoe all that well, but he remembered when she first arrived on Hebar’s Hill. Those first few weeks had been rough. She would barely speak. But after a little while, she started to come out of her shell. She could be downright jovial at times. It wasn’t fair! She had only just gotten her life back, and then it was snatched away from her in the blink of an eye.

  Grief warred with confusion in his head. He had kissed Jim, but now he had to decide what he wanted to do about that.

  The broken, wooden gate swung inward, and Tommy came trudging up the shallow hill with his head down. His duster was ripped, and his wide-brimmed hat looked as if it had seen better days. Miri was right behind him, walking with a slight limp. She must have taken a few bruises during the fighting.

  “I have something to tell you,” Dalen began. “Something-”