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PELLUS GASPED when he saw Barakiel drop his sword and let the demons take him.
I cannot watch him die. After Roan? To save a human?
The human in question shouted in protest. Then the foolhardy woman raised her gun, prepared to go after the demons.
She is courageous. I will give her that.
He strode forward and grabbed her by the waist, cursing the promise that Barakiel had extracted from him. He thought she was going to shoot him, but she recognized him.
“Let me go!”
“No. He would not want me to.”
Zan struggled ineffectually as Pellus dragged her to cover. He dropped the curtain of refracted light he had draped over the entire area, concealing only the small space where they stood. He began to form a protective barrier around Barakiel, but the compression chain exploded as soon as it began. He clenched his fists.
My adversary is certainly an adept.
“I have to help him!” Zan shouted, reacting to the sight of the demons inflicting wounds on Barakiel. “Let me fucking go! They’re going to kill him! Rainer!”
“I do not know what they are doing.” Pellus had thought they would immediately take his head. Whatever their heinous plan, he thanked Balance they were giving him time to stop it. “Stop struggling and let me concentrate!” he said. “I am forming a barrier to protect him.”
The demons were about to bind Barakiel and he needed to re-establish the compression. Zan kept talking. He wanted to slap her.
Whenever he gathered enough electromagnetic force to turn the gaseous air into a solid, a different electromagnetic wave would crash through to disrupt the process. He would need to start two compression sequences: one to protect Barakiel and one to absorb the aggressive wave.
I can do it. It is merely a variation on creating a barrier and a hot zone at the same time.
“That adept is stopping me from creating the barrier,” he said, in an attempt to quiet Zan.
“Adept?”
“Someone like me.”
“Where is she? I’ll kill that freaky bitch.”
“The adept is female?”
“Yeah. I got a look at her. Weird eyes. Like pennies.”
So now I am certain.
“Domist.”
His plan to quiet Zan was not working. She frantically begged for a way to help. He told her he’d promised to safeguard her and that she should not do anything to make him break his concentration.
“All right, but you need to break that goddamn promise if it comes to it.”
Pellus almost smiled.
I am beginning to understand what Barakiel sees in her.
Zan screamed when a demon shoved something into the warrior’s neck. He slumped unconscious and the beasts moved to bind him.
“Dire essence,” Pellus muttered. He could see Domist’s electromagnetic wave coming to disrupt his compressions, a dull glow that narrowed, swelled and narrowed like a snake that had swallowed a rodent. When it struck, his first-line compression burst wide. To his eyes, it looked like a splintering diamond catching the ambient light. The wave dissipated.
Now for the hot zone.
The demons screeched and backed up. Barakiel fell with a thud to the ground. Pellus allowed himself a touch of elation, as the compression around the warrior stacked the molecules faster and faster, surrounding him with a solid barrier.
When the beasts tried to reach him again, they were confronted by the barrier.
“Thank Balance, thank Balance,” Pellus mumbled.
“You did it!” Zan pumped her fist. “Is he all right? What did they do to him?”
“They drugged him. It is a dangerous drug, but he is breathing.”
“Oh, thank god.” She looked like she might vomit. “How long can you keep the barrier up?”
“I do not know.” He explained Domist’s interference as simply as he could.
“They were going to chain him. Why?”
“I think, uh—”
Domist must mean to bring him to his father. Guardian save me. I must kill her.
“They have chains. The drug made it easy to bind him. The adept who abducted you can transport him, but because she has never traveled with Barakiel before, she cannot form the necessary connection unless he is conscious.”
“Transport? Transport?” Zan convulsed and spit up. “They’re going to take him to his father.”
Pellus was shocked that she had come to that conclusion as well.
She must know everything.
“I fear you are right,” he said.
“We can’t let it happen. I won’t let it happen.” Zan stomped off to make a phone call. Pellus thought she might be calling the authorities, but if it saved Barakiel’s life, so be it.
A flash caught his attention. Domist was preparing another assault on the barrier. This time with light. Pellus watched as she cycled photons faster and faster, pouring in electrical energy she drew from the atmosphere. He braced himself, strengthening the barrier.
“Pellus!” Zan said. “Why aren’t the demons coming after us?”
“We are concealed. They cannot see or hear us. I am not bothering to conceal the whole area.”
Please stop talking.
“Good. I’m going to need you to hide my friend when she gets here, to keep her safe. Will you be able to do that?”
“Your friend? What—”
Domist’s photons spun faster and faster in a blinding swirl of light. One by one, she shed the other frequencies until the photons coalesced into a single sharp beam of vicious red.
“A laser!” Pellus exclaimed in his own language. “Demon take you, Domist. May your progeny be stillborn.”
With a sizzle, the intense red line cut into the barrier. Pellus groaned as it turned white and spread outward through the compression barrier in a geometric crawl. The laser’s power altered the compression’s bonds, rendering it brittle. The demons burst through.
“What the hell was that?” Zan shouted. Pellus ignored her, already reforming his compressions.
This time, a laser will only make them stronger.
The demons hauled Barakiel to a tall, tapering monument of stone. They twisted his limbs, binding him so he could not get any leverage to break his chains. Domist sent an electromagnetic wave after Pellus’ first-line compression as he began to furiously create the second, the actual barrier around his warrior.
Zan skittered beside him. “Pellus, can I find the other one? The adept? Break her concentration?”
“I am sure she is concealed, Zan.”
“What can I do?”
“Stay put and let me concentrate. This will be the last time she collapses my barrier.”
Barakiel regained consciousness. He struggled against his chains. The demons howled with delight as they wounded him.
How long will it take before this bloodletting makes him weak?
“I’ve got to stop them.” Zan seemed ready to do something stupid, but Pellus re-established the barrier. He superheated the air around the demons. They screeched and staggered back.
“The barrier is up?” Zan asked.
“Yes.” Pellus allowed himself to breathe.
“You’re amazing,” Zan whispered. She walked to the edge of the mausoleum, craning her neck to see around the demons. “He’s bleeding. Do they want him weak? Is that why they were cutting and beating him?”
“I suspect so. To make him manageable. And I think they enjoy it.”
“Can you keep the barrier up until my friend gets here?”
“Yes, but what insane thing are you planning?” Pellus implored her to stay put, but she was not having it. She stated that she and her friend would kill the demons, and that when they were dead, he could drop the barrier so she could free Barakiel.
She is mad. She loves him with unreasoning force.
“Zan, you will be killed. He will never forgive himself.”
“What else are we going to do, Pellus? Keep the barrier up until a bunch of people show up here tomorrow morning? Until a couple demons peel off to engage in some carnage because the barrier vigil got boring?”
Provided I could even maintain the barrier that long.
“Yes, that’s right,” Zan added, taking his silence for acquiescence. “Now, I’m going to meet my friend. Be ready when we get back. She’s a crack shot. You’ll need to conceal her while she picks them off. I’ll go in with an automatic weapon.”
Before long, Pellus detected a disruption in the air. Zan coming back with her friend. He extended his curtain of light to obscure their approach. He listened to their breathless exchange as they ran.
“This is insane. Would you stop running, please? Your broken heart has made you crazy. There are no such things as aliens!”
“Yeah? Well, you’re going to see them in a minute with your own fucking eyes.”
They came weaving through the memorial garden. Zan’s friend was carrying a long brown case. She was much smaller than Zan, but with the same fierce look in her eye, the same assertive physicality.
As soon as they got close to the mausoleum Zan’s friend shrieked and dove behind the structure. “Whuh, what are those things? Holy sweet Jesus, what are they?”
“Don’t worry, Mel. They can’t see or hear us.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Zan?” The human’s voice disintegrated. Her mouth hung open. The adept could see her white teeth and her pink tongue.
“This is Pellus,” Zan said, gesturing. “He is Covalent like Rainer, but he, um, has different talents. One of them is hiding things. Pellus, this is Mel.” He nodded to the panicked human. Zan went through a rapid-fire explanation of the situation and her plan while Mel’s look of terror transformed to fascination, or perhaps fascinated terror.
“The demons can’t get to him because Pellus is blocking them,” Zan continued. “Pellus, can you make that barrier flash or something, so Mel understands?”
“I will form another layer, of a different type. It will add to his protection.”
Pellus focused, forming another compression a sliver in front of the barrier. He drew from power lines buried in the grass to slowly build a lattice that crawled upward over the old barrier, sparking and zapping. Not a solid wall. More like a very fine mesh of unbreakable filaments that repelled and attracted electricity in alternating rounds, warning the demons that they would touch it at their peril.
I should have thought of this sooner.
“It’s beautiful,” Mel whispered.
“Are you going to be able to do this, Mel?” Zan asked gently. “I need the badass sniper. You need to hit them in the head. Right in the brain. Otherwise, they won’t die.”
Mel looked at Zan, her eyes slits, her mouth still hanging open. “You’ve known for months that monsters are real?”
“More than that,” Pellus said. “She has known for months she would be attacked.”
“What?”
“Who cares!” Zan exclaimed. “Get your game face on, soldier. I need you.”
“I was never a soldier. I’m not trained as a soldier.” Mel’s thin voice caused Zan to grab her hand.
“The G-woman then,” Zan said, bright and clear. “That’s who I need. Special Agent Romani, the best shot in the Philadelphia field office. Think of those things like any other bad guys, Mel. Take ‘em out.” The frightened human set her lips in a hard line. She nodded.
“That’s my partner. Remember, they won’t be able to locate you. Pellus, do you think you should take Mel to a new spot, for insurance?”
“I will.”
“Good.” Zan bent and pulled a vest out of her bag. She put it on then took out two large guns with long barrels. She shoved curved black boxes into their curved handles, then handed one gun to Mel. “If the demons get anywhere near you, spray them with bullets. Here’s some extra ammo.” She handed Mel a black box.
While her friend stared, Zan strapped on her gun. She stuffed black boxes into pockets on her vest then took three objects out of the bag. They were round on one end, with a long thin handle. She put them through loops on her vest.
When Zan finished, Mel wiped her eyes and threw her arm around her friend’s shoulders. They shared a look not unlike the one shared by warriors before they march into the Turning. Mel picked up her long brown case and balanced it on her gun. She noticed Pellus looking at it.
“High-powered rifle with a scope,” she said, squeezing it. “I’ll feel better when it’s out and loaded so you need to tell me where to set up, uh, what’s your name again?”
“Pellus. We will wait beside that structure. He pointed to a huge, square mausoleum of white granite finished with neoclassical columns.
“All right,” Zan said. “The time has come. Lower the barrier when they’re all dead.”
“Wait,” Pellus said. “Will your gunfire be loud?”
“Of course.”
“Then I am going to have to shield the entire area, to dampen sound. I will not be able to hide your friend.”
“Shit. Then you get out of here, Mel. You brought me the guns. It was help enough.”
“No fucking way. I won’t abandon you now. Not when I worked so hard to get a grip on myself. Anyway, when you start shooting their focus will be on you. They’ll think my shots are coming from you. Look at them. They’ve been throwing themselves at that barrier, over and over. They seem stupid.”
Zan looked at Pellus. “Are they stupid?”
“Very.”
“What about that freaky adept?”
“She will be busy.”
“Are you sure?”
“I will be right next to your friend, Zan. If necessary, I will conceal her.”
“All right.” She took a deep breath. “Lower the barriers when we’ve killed them.”
“Do not try to kill them all,” Pellus said. “I think your goal should be to free Barakiel. He can kill demons easily. Cut a path to him. Try to break his chains. I am unable to work on the chains while they are beneath the barrier, but I can distract the other adept.”
“You can blow the chains with those grenades,” Mel said, pointing to the long objects on Zan’s vest.
“The blast could hurt Rainer.”
“No need to worry about that,” Pellus said. He glanced with appreciation at Mel, who seemed clearheaded now, despite her shaking hands. “I can redirect the blast. When you are ready, shout for me. I will lower the barrier.”
Zan nodded with calm determination as if she battled demons on a regular basis. Pellus grasped her shoulder.
I fear she will die. I do not want her to die.
She touched his hand. “We’ll save him, Pellus. Go get in position. I’ll hide here until Mel takes the first one down.”
Mel proved equal to the task. She set up her elaborate long gun along the edge of the mausoleum, muttered that she must be in shock, then put a bullet in a demon’s head. She swung the bolt to load another cartridge into the chamber. Pellus cut short his exhilarated shout when he saw Zan running toward the demons. They turned at the sound of her footfalls and she opened fire, spraying bullets in a chaos of muzzle flashes and staccato noise. Some bullets hit the barrier surrounding Barakiel and ricocheted back into the demons. Pellus thanked Balance for the sound shield. The demons began such otherworldly caterwauling that without it the night would have been another human myth in the making, when the eerie howls of beasts rang out across the old cemetery.
An electromagnetic wave headed for Zan. Pellus did not know if Domist meant to kill her or disable her gun. He only bothered to assess the wave enough to disperse it. Then he sent a barrage of his own waves on either side of the obelisk, shimmering and ruffling with power until there was no chance for Domist to penetrate the dancing energy with a pinpoint attack.
You are no match for me, Domist, not in the long run. Soon I will kill you.
Another bullet from Mel landed in a demon’s neck. When it didn’t fall, she gasped. Nor had the demons that Zan sprayed with bullets fallen, though they were slower now, and bewildered. Zan ran towards the obelisk as Barakiel writhed in his chains.
When the brutes had recovered from their confusion, all eight of them charged toward Zan, slobbering and yowling, their yellow eyes sinister in the electromagnetic glow. She lobbed a grenade. The explosion sent two of them flying to the side, injured but alive. Another grabbed its eyes and shrieked. The rest scattered, buying Zan time. She reloaded, then resumed her spray of bullets, stepping backward toward the obelisk as Barakiel seemed to plead with her from his bindings, his silence imposed by the barriers.
Another shot whizzed off beside Pellus. This one tunneled into the back of a demon’s head. The beast crumpled to the ground.
“Die, you fucking ugly son-of-a-bitch,” Mel muttered as she cranked the bolt.
A ricocheted bullet caught Zan in the right arm, just as she was about to reach the obelisk. She jerked sideways and cried out, but kept shooting as blood oozed from the wound. Barakiel jerked in terror, his mouth open. Pellus could not cut through the waves of energy to stop the bleeding.
Domist made continuous attempts to thread the interference with an attack on Zan while Pellus monitored her efforts. He feared he would miss something because he was now maintaining more phenomena at once than he ever had before.
I need to stay calm and remember this is far easier than my actions in the Turning when I saved Barakiel from the swords of the Corrupted.
Level with the obelisk now, Zan paused to concentrate on firing. Pellus thought she might be trying to back them off. It worked. They stopped moving forward and batted at themselves as round after round tore into their stinking hides. A bullet from the spray found the eye of one demon. It fell dead, just as Mel took out another. Zan whooped in celebration, reloaded her gun and ran to the back of the obelisk. “Now, Pellus!” she shouted, her voice ragged with volume.
Pellus dropped the barriers, Barakiel’s desperate howls now bouncing among the monuments. Freed from one task, Pellus scanned the area to see if he could detect Domist’s energy signature despite her efforts to hide. At the same time, he prepared to redirect the explosion Zan would unleash near Barakiel. She threw one grenade, then another, as the demons attacked. Mel took another shot but missed. She cursed and reached to load another cartridge.
“Goddammit!” Zan shouted. “It didn’t work! Rainer pull on the chains! As hard as you can. They’re damaged but not broken. Pull!”
Barakiel obliged, thrashing so much the obelisk nearly ripped from the ground. Standing to the side, Zan peppered the chain with bullets. Pellus cursed under his breath, wondering if the chains could be broken at all. He planned to zero in on the weakest point to see if he could help this along, when Domist finally managed to cut through the interfering energy and send an electromagnetic wave zooming toward Zan, forcing Pellus to abandon his work on the chains to stop it.
Focused on the chains, Zan lost track of the demons. Mel took another shot but missed again. Five beasts rounded the obelisk just as Zan hollered with elation, followed closely by a shout of warning from Barakiel. Zan tried to raise her gun to fire, but one brute was too close. It brought its doubled-side ax down toward her head. She dodged and it sliced into her left side shoulder as she fell back, at the same moment Barakiel burst away from the obelisk, chains flying around him. Pellus could feel his bellow of rage reverberate through the soil.
Zan fell near the base of the obelisk, blood pouring from her shoulder wound. Mel screamed and tried to run towards her, but Pellus grabbed her arm. “Do not worry. Barakiel is free. He will save her.”
The warrior wrapped the chains around his wrists and bounded toward the demons. He whipped the chains at the two nearest beasts. Whistling with speed, the chains coiled around their necks, once, twice. He yanked and ripped their heads from their bodies in a geyser of brown blood.
The three remaining demons rushed him, their axes held high. Barakiel swung his chains. He lashed the beasts’ legs. As they stumbled and swerved he snatched an ax from one’s claws and leaped to land behind them. He cleaved one demon’s skull. The others turned to face him, yowling and spitting. He waited for them to move forward, then rotated his shoulders. He extended his arms and whipped his hips around with such speed and power that he severed the remaining beasts’ heads in one stroke. He rushed to Zan.
Mel also ran to Zan’s side, stumbling in her frenzy. Fearful that Domist would escape, Pellus scanned for her energy signal as Barakiel screamed and begged for his help. Now that Pellus was freed of all other tasks, he could sense the other adept, faintly, beneath her curtain of light. The electromagnetic waves she had formed and he had defeated had given him the insight to locate her. As Barakiel’s frantic shouts continued, Pellus dropped a cage over Domist, a cage he had devised to be a gladiator ring for Barakiel and the demons. The traitor adept could no doubt collapse it, but it would take her some time. Not much, perhaps, but enough. In a flash, Pellus was at Zan’s side.
“Help her, please, please,” Barakiel pleaded. He cradled the unconscious Zan in his arms. Mel’s face was wet, but she had brought the bag and applied a tourniquet to Zan’s right arm, where she had been shot. Mel also compressed her shoulder wound with a mass of gauze. Pellus concentrated for a moment to make Zan’s blood thicken and congeal. Mel’s eyes lit with amazement.
“What did you just do?” she whispered.
“I congealed her blood.” Pellus shifted his stare to Barakiel, whose lacerations also stopped bleeding. “A simple matter of gathering proteins, something I can do on the surface of a wound. She will be fine. I see no internal bleeding.”
Mel scowled at him. “Maybe so, but she’s lost a lot of blood already. She’s unconscious and that’s not good. We need to get her to a hospital.” She turned to Barakiel, who smoothed Zan’s hair and kissed her. “Can you get her to the car fast?” Mel asked as she took out a set of keys. “It’s parked on Ridge, over there.” She pointed to the northeast.
Pellus walked away while she was talking.
Now to deal with Domist.
“Where are you going?” Barakiel shouted. “We must take Zan to the Sylvan Three!” He rose with Zan in his arms and walked toward Pellus.
“Do not be ridiculous, Barakiel. I am not taking Zan to the Covalent Realm.” He looked at Mel, who had risen to approach them. “Take her to the hospital, as Mel suggested.” He continued on his way. “Right now, I am going to kill Domist.”
Barakiel blocked his way. “Then you will take us through a rift, so we can get there faster.”
“Roan must be avenged.”
“Leave her to Covalent justice.”
“Abraxos will protect her! Roan must be avenged!” Pellus shouted.
The two Covalent glared at each other. Mel put her hand on Barakiel’s arm.
“Forget him, Rainer. Let him do what he has to do. Temple University Hospital is close. Ten minutes tops. Let’s go.”
The warrior grunted, adjusted Zan in his arms, grabbed Mel by the waist and shot off towards the car. Pellus resumed his march toward Domist.
The traitor adept was hard at work when Pellus reached her, attacking his barrier at its base with another intense needle of red light. He dropped the barrier, prepared to restrain her physically if she tried to run. He wondered if he should strangle her.
Would that feel best? The kind of visceral act that would satisfy Barakiel?
He decided against it. They would settle this like adepts.
“You are letting me go?” Domist asked, smiling, though he could see her fear. She did not know this realm like he did.
“Hardly.” Pellus located the power lines running beneath the soil. Domist did not try to run. Instead, she began to create a shield for herself, one that could move with her and allow her to flee through the rift, not a simple proposition. As she knitted the particles around her, attracting and controlling them with an electromagnetic field, Pellus threw disruptions. The shield expanded slowly but surely anyway, as Pellus gave most of his attention to the electricity snaking through the buried lines. He drew the power to a point a yard or so from his enemy’s feet and sent it burrowing through the soil, faster and faster, until a circle had formed beneath her, hissing and crackling.
Domist shuffled her feet, but when her shield was nearly finished a smug smile crept onto her face. Her body tensed to flee.
Before she could move, Pellus snapped his eyes from the ground to her. He whipped a wave of intense heat up and down from his ring of power, stripping her shield of its electrons. He bombarded it with waves and particles he gathered from the surroundings. Radiowaves, microwaves, radiation, the particulate matter of pollution, photons of light, all came together to barrel along the edge of the burning circle, gaining speed.
Pellus drew his bright ring of electricity inward until the particles and waves flying along its edge crashed into Domist’s shield, which exploded in a burst of glowing orange tendrils. He was vaguely aware of increased darkness, a blackout in the adjacent neighborhood.
The traitor tried to run, but Pellus caught her in his ring of whirling fire. It surrounded her flesh, getting smaller and smaller, the heat more and more concentrated. The ring closed halfway up her shins, shearing off her legs, the sickening smell of roasted flesh hanging in the air. She fell, screaming in pain. Pellus walked to her and delivered a chilling smile.
I could not forego this visceral satisfaction.
“Are you prepared for death, traitor?”
“You call me a traitor?” Domist said, her voice surprisingly strong. “Your loyalty to the warrior is the betrayal. How long before he becomes his father? Best to turn him over now. As long as that human lives, he will resist. Lucifer will slaughter him. Barakiel must be killed before that human dies. When she dies, he will no longer care about duty. Only Destruction. His father will claim him.”
“Arrogant fools. You and your mate. You allow Lucifer to grow more powerful with each turn while you undermine the only warrior who can defeat him.”
A crystalline shard formed in the air beside Pellus.
“This is for Roan.” He took the shard and plunged it deep into her eye socket, pushing and grinding until she was dead. He rose calmly and retrieved Barakiel’s sword. Then he set about removing all traces of what had transpired that night, like a human cleaning up after a wild party.