ONE
Jordan
THE REVEREND IGNORED THE BODIES.
“Who else have you told?” He leaned into his cane, pinning the
security guard with a look. “Purgatory? City security?”
“No one, Holiness.” The guard hastened back when I approached, his
eyes widening as they locked on me.
My uniform was at home, weapons were concealed, and I didn’t have
the word “Templar” tattooed on my forehead, but Reverend Greaves hadn’t
received such a reaction. That earned the guard a harder look.
He had the thick, ropy muscles of a laborer and the thicker gut of
a drinker. His weathered face looked pale in the harsh light. His arms were
crossed over his body, instead of loose and ready to act. And he couldn’t keep
still. Nervous twitches, like a hand darting up to scratch his chin or the
slight but rhythmic swaying of his weight on and off his heels, made it look
like he was barely fighting back the urge to bolt. His eyes flicked into the
room, where a splash of vomit by the door looked fresh.
It was fear. This might be his first real taste of death.
I dismissed him again, slid past them into the room, and turned my
attention to the dead.
A filthy window provided most of the light inside the apartment.
It lined up with gaps between the buildings, giving a narrow view of the city
of Ash, gray at midday with tones of neon green and blue reflected off the
glass. The place had been stripped for reconstruction, leaving one wall as bare
metal and another just a frame. The floor looked like old cement, dusty where
it wasn’t stained brown with filth.
I grimaced involuntarily. The air reeked of vomit and shit, with
an unpleasant undertone of blood, but there was no hint of decay. Not yet.
“Has anyone been in here?” the Reverend was saying.
“The guys on this project ain’t been paid in three weeks.” The
guard’s voice shook slightly.
“It’s been empty that long?”
“I check in every few days. Make sure the doors are locked and
everything’s where they left it.”
It wasn’t locked this time.
A teenage boy in ragged, faded clothes had died bound to a chair
with the same black tape that sealed his mouth. Bloody lacerations covered much
of his body, but the dark, gaping line across his throat had likely finished
him.
My eyes glazed a little as I walked past him, and I shook my head
to clear it.
“Who has keys?” the Reverend said. “Apart from yourself.”
Shattered pieces of a chair lay strewn across the room, starting
by the dead youth’s feet. Ripped tape clung to its limbs along a trail to the
dead girl who had broken out of it. The single, brown stab-wound on her chest
had probably killed her, delivered by the older woman that now sprawled by her
side.
The dead woman slouched against the wall beneath the window. She
looked older than the other two. No color broke the solid black of her tailored
suit, but brown stains marred the white handkerchief spilling from her pocket.
A knife lay on the floor by her side. It looked clean.
Her cause of death was less obvious than the others. Short brown
hair brushed her shoulders, disheveled and crusty. Blood smeared her neck, but
I couldn’t see the wound that had produced it, even when I drew closer and the
shape of fingers became clear. A messy handprint on otherwise unmarked skin.
The Reverend continued his questions while I looked deeper at the
bodies, the way only a Chanter could. It wasn’t sight,
precisely. It was an awareness of emptiness where there should be fullness, or
darkness where there should be light.
There was
nothing. In any of them.
I stepped around the woman for a better view, but without moving
her body I couldn’t see more. My gloved hands wouldn’t make prints, but any
disruption of the scene might leave traces for city security to find. The
footprints I might add to those left by absent workers were risky enough.
I leaned closer. Blood matted her hair, but the room was too dark
to make out the source.
“Your message wasn’t clear,” the Reverend said. “What made you
contact the church? City security deals with crime, and Purgatory handles the
dead.” And the church was not welcome in the Edge.
“The girl’s hands.” A tremor shook the guard’s voice. “Don’t y’all
deal with the monsters?”
I crouched beside the girl’s outstretched arm. A shock of pain
lanced down my back, and I froze. But it quickly faded to a dull ache.
Her hands were open, making the unnaturally long joints obvious
once I looked. I reached for them but stopped short of touching. The subtle
stretch of her fingers turned into lengthened nails, curving at the tips into
short, skeletal claws. A few dark strands of hair were tangled in the dry blood
that stained them.
“Give us a few minutes.” The Reverend ushered the guard out.
“After we leave, call Purgatory and city security like you normally would.”
After the door closed, I triggered the scanning systems implanted
in my head to watch the next room. If the guard called or messaged anyone, or
even just muttered to himself, I’d hear it. The precaution probably wasn’t
worth the headache it might cause, but we could never be too careful in the
Edge.
I dug into my coat pocket for the tablet the Reverend had
provided. A few clicks, and the camera opened. I started a scan for their ID
chips, snapped a picture of the dead woman’s face and connected to the church
database to run it.
“These people didn’t die days apart,” I said.
The old man’s shoes scuffed a heavy, irregular rhythm behind me.
“What about her hands?”
I glanced up. My body was blocking his view, so I stood and
stepped back. “Looks like a revenant.” I snapped pictures of the other two
faces and ran them.
“What do you see here?”
My eyes shot back to the boy. The tape that bound him to the chair
would have easily held a much larger man, and the cuts to his body were sloppy,
mostly shallow. Meant to make a bloody mess more than to cause that
insufferable kind of pain that would break anyone. Eventually.
“Jordan?”
I needed to focus.
“The teens were her prisoners,” I guessed. “Maybe they owed someone,
or she thought they knew something.” I pulled my eyes away from the boy and
gestured at the dead woman, though the tale was better told by the lacerations
that marred his body. “She tortured him to control the girl. Got what she
wanted, or decided she wasn’t going to, so she cut the kid’s throat and stabbed
the girl.”
“Then the girl’s body stood up and killed her,” he finished for
me.
I waved at the blade on the floor. “She had time to clean the
knife but not to use it again. The revenant got to her too fast, but it didn’t
eat or rampage. It killed her and dropped. Like the rest.” Gooseflesh rose
under my sleeves.
“Get more data,” he said.
My jaw clenched, but I didn’t respond. Playing investigator wasn’t
my area of expertise, but the last few weeks had brought enough variations of
this scenario that I knew what data he meant. I used the tablet to record the
temperatures of the bodies, and to take more pictures for the church’s
investigators. It was better than getting sidelined while my back healed, but a
new and intrusive awareness of the Reverend’s cane never ceased prodding me.
The old Chanter hadn’t chosen when to retire from the Templar Order.
The tablet beeped at the return of the first search results, and I
pushed the thought aside as I read them. “We’ve been watching her. The older
one.”
“Suspected tag?” the Reverend said.
“No.” Fire crept through my chest. “She worked for Vicks.”
The file listed other infernals too. Most were known associates or
sons of Emil Vicks, and many were dead, but one name overshadowed them all.
Caleb Dumas.
Vicks had killed the man, his own son, shortly after I’d learned
his name. Objectively, his death was a good thing, but it was a disappointing
conclusion to over six years of searching. I’d never stop resenting the fact
that someone else had ended that rapist piece of shit.
“That’s three.” The Reverend’s voice dragged me back, into the
room and onto the current problem.
“Looks like a pattern.” I cleared my throat, but the fire didn’t
fade. “She was suspected of moving here, into the Edge, after Vicks died.”
“Working for Carmen?”
“Unclear.” I kept my voice neutral. “A few deep ID scans caught
her in the area. We have facial recognition history, but it was flagged as
limited.” Another notification popped up on the screen. “Nothing on the teens,
and they’re chipless.” Born outside the system. They would’ve had no chance in
life, even if it hadn’t ended so early.
The Reverend rubbed his chin and said something.
“Talk to the Inquisitor,” I interrupted whatever it was. “Hawthorn
needs to be confined to the tower until we figure this out.” I gestured at the
girl’s hands.
I thought I caught a hint of curiosity on his face until I looked
him in the eye. His expression smoothed. “For what reason?”
“Three people connected to Emil Vicks are dead. She could be
number four.” It wasn’t my job to care anymore, but Gwyn Hawthorn was still
valuable to the Order.
“You need to do better than that. The other three worked for him,
but Gwyn was abducted.”
I didn’t need to be reminded. “Any connection justifies caution.”
“He had you shot. Looking to take a vacation already?”
My back tensed, and the dull ache sharpened. “That was
incidental.”
“You assume. Either way, it’s a connection.” His expression was
unreadable. “I need more than that, unless you want to be confined to the tower
indefinitely too?”
I turned off the tablet and pocketed it.
“Don’t give me that look,” said the old man.
“The rules are changing.” I schooled my expression. “Or we’re
wrong about what they are. We need to be careful.”
“Agreed. How does that relate to Gwyn, specifically?”
“She refuses to learn what ‘careful’ means.”
That time he gave me the look, but he turned toward the door
without a response. His cane scraped the floor as he said, “We’re done. This
guy needs to call Purgatory before another revenant rises.”
The walls and flooring on the way to the stairs were stripped down
and incomplete, and the ceiling was stained and dusty, but once we stepped into
the stairwell, the only signs of construction were stacks of materials and
equipment left on the landings in between floors.
As we neared the bottom of the steps, I fished the sunglasses out
of my coat. The Reverend opened the door after I put them on. He didn’t say
anything about it, and we stepped out into the shadow of the building and the
gray light of a hazy day.
Our sedan waited near the end of the alley, and I took the
driver’s seat. Sitting brought another minor flash of pain and provoked a few
profane thoughts. I kept them to myself as I stared at the Edge’s relatively
open view of the sky, and a feeling like exposure, like vulnerability, crept
through me. The rest of Ash, its soaring towers and sheltering skyways, was out
of view.
“Everything okay?” said the old man.
I tapped through a few menus on the vehicle’s dash, and all the
windows darkened. “Of course.” The motor started in near silence, with a rush
of damp air and the wan glow of dashboard lights. “I just can’t stand this side
of town.”
TWO
Gwyn
I HAD TO ROLL UP
my sleeves so they wouldn’t swallow my gloved hands, and my pants sagged over
the tops of my boots, but the Inquisitor had insisted I wear the uniform.
It was for my
protection, of course. The reinforced fabric would reduce my risk of burning
alive if things got “exciting.” The armored plates would stop most rounds, just
in case an impossibly strong infernal, who could drain the life out of me with
a thought, decided to use a gun for some reason.
It was standard
Templar armor, but thankfully the white ouroboros of the church was missing
from the back. Some would object to me wearing that sign, myself included. I
had met too many Templars to feel otherwise.
I glanced at the
woman in front of me. Some of them were alright though.
“What’d this guy do?”
I tried to tighten the armor’s side straps and fumbled around the seat belt.
Squirming into ill-fitting body armor in the back of a van was not how I had
planned to spend my afternoon. Neither was sober.
“Murder,” Hanley
said.
“That’s a
relief?”
Mariela Hanley
sat across from me. The Templar’s near-black eyes were set under long, thick
lashes that looked like she spent a small fortune on mascara, even though she
wasn’t wearing any. Her glossy hair was bound up in a short, thick braid. Bulky
armor obscured her athletic build, but I’d seen her carry a grown-ass man on
her shoulders during training. Plus, she could get stuff down from high places
without a stool, which was a useful feature in a potential friend.
She leaned
forward, pulled the seatbelt aside, and yanked one of the straps on my armor
into place, easing the pressure it had put on my shoulder blade. “I’ll fix it
for you when we stop.”
I thanked her.
“Did the Inquisitor say why this is so fucking urgent? I’d just opened a
bottle.”
Hanley tilted her
head. “A bottle?”
“I was thirsty.”
“It’s barely
three o’clock.”
“I slept in. It’s
never too late to get started though.”
It was supposed
to be a joke, but she didn’t even fake amusement. She just looked concerned as
she said, “Are you ready for this?”
I didn’t answer.
“Yes” would be a lie, and “no” might get me executed.
“Gwyn?” she
pressed.
“Why wouldn’t I
be?”
Fifteen days.
Well, fifteen
days and eight hours, give or take how long I’d resisted getting out of bed.
That was how much time had passed since I suffered the last vestiges of the
seemingly insatiable hunger.
Sixty-five days
since I learned it wasn’t burritos my body craved.
Okay. Not only
burritos.
A little over
nine weeks had passed since I was forced to kill a woman I’d called my friend.
That same morning, I had found out I was an infernal, just like her. But I’d
been taught, without my knowledge, how to survive without feeding on other
people’s lives.
I had been
ignorant, but now I knew. And knowing changed everything as far as my heart was
concerned.
It changed
nothing about my situation though. I was a weapon, trained by the church to
kill infernals like myself. Up until now, I had only ever executed murderers,
but my orders weren’t coming from the same place anymore.
And as a bonus,
I’d been sentenced to die if I ever disobeyed those orders, tried to escape, or
let on that I knew what I was.
I scooted in my
seat but couldn’t get comfortable. I tugged down one side of the crooked armor.
Didn’t help. “How did he kill them?” I said.
Hanley grimaced.
“Coroner reports weren’t in my orders.”
“I mean was it
just, ‘slurp—they’re dead’? Or does he play with his food?”
She leaned
against the wall of the van. “Does it matter?”
The vehicle
lurched over a speed bump. Her shoulders shook as the van rocked, but she
didn’t take her eyes off mine as she waited for my answer.
It did matter,
but I couldn’t explain why.
Once it was clear
I didn’t mean to respond, she unhooked her belt and turned across the gap
between us to fall into the seat beside me. “Let me fix your hair.”
“This mess isn’t
my fault,” I said. “I barely had time to put on pants.”
“You were
drinking and pantsless at three in the afternoon?”
“I barely had
time to put on these pants. Would you be drinkin’ in these pants?” They
were actually very comfortable. “Wait, you’re a Templar. You probably would.”
She fixed me with
a look that was simultaneously stern and pitying. “Your ponytail would be
uncomfortable in that helmet.” She nudged my shoulder until I turned sideways,
then slipped the tie off my hair. Her fingers ran through it, tugging it
straighter and picking out tangles before she separated sections for a braid.
Said helmet sat
beside a small bag on my seat. It looked glossy, black, and intimidating in its
soulless anonymity.
I unzipped the
bag while Hanley worked on my hair. My khukuri sat on top of my clothes, its
wide, forward-curving blade hidden in a plain black sheath. Without pulling it
out, I wrapped my fingers around the weapon’s handle. Touch-sensitive pads in
my gloves perfectly mimicked the feel of the nonslip grip.
I’d practiced
with that blade for years, almost daily, but my grip felt weak. My armored gloves were designed to
preserve flexibility and strength, but the weapon didn’t
feel like it fit my hand anymore.
I released it
with a sharp exhalation and dropped the bag by my thigh. My fist opened. Then
closed. Then I ran my fingers down my armored forearm, over the ache that
marked the fresh scar from a shard of broken glass.
Hanley tied the
braid. “Your arm’s barely out of that cast.”
“It feels like
new.” I clenched a fist, then opened it. The feeling of weakness didn’t fade,
but if conviction wouldn’t give me strength, fear could be motivational too.
“If I scrub the
mission, it won’t count as disobedience,” she said. “If you’re not ready, tell
me now.”
“No.” I glanced
over my shoulder. Her reflection in the tinted window looked as worried as she
sounded. “I’m ready.”
Daylight passed
into patchwork fluorescence as the van descended into an underground parking
garage. We were on the wrong side of downtown, where the lights were broken or
burnt out as often as not. Trash on the pavement and stains on the weathered
walls didn’t do much for the ambience either.
The first couple
levels were filled with cars, but we descended to the fourth, which was nearly
empty, and the Templar driver parked near a stairwell.
When I didn’t
immediately move, Hanley undid my belt buckle and opened the door. “Get your
head where it belongs,” she said. “Don’t want to lose it.”
Her tone was
soft, but her point stung because I didn’t think she was warning me against the
tag.
She was one of
the few people who knew about my death sentence, but only because she had been
asked to carry it out. She’d declined the order, but she never spoke to me
about her reasoning, and I never asked. Whether she knew why I’d been sentenced
to die, or why my execution was delayed, remained unknown to me.
She nudged me out
of the van, followed after, and gave me no time to orient myself before she
started tugging at straps and rearranging my armor while I avoided meeting her
eyes.
“You’ll get
through this.” She gave the last strap a tug, then slapped my shoulder.
I leaned back
into the van, snatched the bag off the seat, and pulled out my khukuri so she
could help me attach the sheath to my back. They’d included a stun gun with my
gear, and I hooked it to my belt, but if I got desperate enough to use it, I’d
probably already failed. I’d seen an infernal recover from one of those in a
matter of seconds.
It hadn’t saved
him in the end though.
The memory made
me pause, but only for a moment. I had a lot of practice shoving such thoughts
to the back of my head for later. I figured crying didn’t count if no one saw
you do it.
I looked at the
helmet. More compact than my bicycle helmet, it was glossy black and vented to
release the warmth of the electronics inside. It was standard issue Templar
equipment. But I wasn’t a Templar, and my job had always required looking like
I wasn’t dangerous to anyone, so I’d never worn anything like it.
I put it on, and
the visor slid down over my face with a hissing snap. It smelled like new
clothes and fit wildly better than the rest of the uniform.
“Move fast.”
I jumped a little
when Quin’s voice filled my ears.
“They’re already
talking,” he added.
Quin was a church
tech, and he was also one of the few friends I had left. He always made sure I
had access to the newest games and the best equipment to play them on, no
matter how few cents I had to my name. And he’d walked me in and out of a dozen
life or death situations without getting me killed, so bonus points for that.
“How do I talk to
you?” I said.
Hanley gave me a
wry look, but a hint of concern drew up her brows. Maybe realizing how
unprepared I really was for this job.
“We see what you
see and hear what you hear,” Quin said. “You should be chanting anyway. The Templars with you don’t officially
know what you’re here for, but they’re not idiots. Get moving.” He started giving more specific directions, but I
looked to Hanley.
“We’ll be behind
you,” she said. “But if you’re exposed, don’t listen to the Inquisitor. Just
run.”
Good advice, but
I’d probably die before I got the chance to flee if I flashed my ass at another
infernal. Or I’d survive when I shouldn’t, revealing what I was to an
Inquisitor who didn’t have any reason to refrain from killing me for it.
The door to the
stairwell creaked, and I walked through. At the top of the steps, a man and
woman leaned against the wall, legs entwined and arms around each other. They
paid no attention to me as they whispered, but I got enough of a look at the
woman’s face to recognize a Templar I’d seen around the tower. The man’s button-up
shirt left little room for a hidden weapon, but her coat was long and bulky
enough to arm them both.
The short jog I took down a flight and a half of stairs didn’t
explain my rapid breathing or racing heart when I reached the door at the
bottom. I put my hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn it. Instead, I closed my
eyes and drew into myself, forcing my breath to slow and stopping the parade of
fears and what-ifs.
“What’s the tag’s name?” I said. Knowing would make this harder, and
the fact he was an infernal didn’t make it easier anymore. But killing should
be hard.
“Lucas Alexander,” Quin said.
I opened my eyes, relaxed, and let myself see.
They were still a ways away, and it took a moment to pick their
faint spirits out from the background noise. The door blurred details, but my
spirit eye could see through both it and the concrete wall beyond. A figure of
white light, and one of red, stood together on a level empty of both cars and
other people. Other stairwells provided access to the area, and Templars
guarded those too.
I wondered if the infernal could see them. Or if he’d even looked.
He might have seen me already, and I didn’t know what would happen if he was
watching when I started to chant. But I had no choice, and time was running
out.
The ethereal syllables of the chant flowed off my tongue, turning
to ice that crept over my skin and made my toes curl when it repeated at the
fourth beat. The chill was the same whether I was half-naked or, as I was then,
covered head to toe in heat. Neither of the distant figures appeared to react,
though the red one shouldn’t have. The color of her light marked her as human,
and as far as I knew, I was the only person in Ash who looked human but could
see like an infernal.
And heal like one.
And break steel handcuffs like one.
I could probably do much more terrible things than that, but I
refused to think about it.
A few weeks of practice had made it easier to balance my spirit
eye with the physical world, but it was still distracting and often confusing,
so I let it go before I turned the knob. I braced myself to stop if the door
creaked like the one upstairs, but it didn’t. At the same time, I softened my
chant until it was barely loud enough to call a whisper. I had seen what Lucas
Alexander was – the chant would hide me from him – but caution never hurt.
The door closed behind me in near silence.
The lowest floor of the parking garage didn’t look like it had
been used for a while. There were no cars, but empty bottles, paper bags, cups,
and cigarette butts collected near corners and along walls pitted with holes.
As I moved away from the door, I passed a small field of shell casings. So at
least someone had a use for the area.
I broke into a light jog, as fast as I trusted my boots to stay
quiet on the pavement. They were designed for stealth, but the chant would only
hide me from the infernal’s eyes. As far as I knew, the only sound it obscured
was its own unearthly tone.
I slowed to a walk at the edge of a partition wall that hid me
from their view. Lucas Alexander wouldn’t see me while I maintained the chant,
but there was still a form to the confirmation. Trotting right out in front of
him, even knowing he wouldn’t see a thing, seemed thoughtless. So I stepped out
slowly, giving him time to notice me and myself time to study the man I might
have to kill.
Once I saw him, I knew I didn’t want to.
Ash blond hair hung disheveled around his gaunt, earnest face. A
worn trench coat draped from his bony shoulders, hanging limp over a rumpled
shirt and loose slacks. His lined skin made him look well into his fifties. A
man on the humble side of ordinary.
Nothing about his doleful gray eyes screamed cold-blooded killer,
and I wondered how mine would look to him.
He said, “Are you an idealist, Miss Preston? Or merely an
opportunist?”
“Isn’t realist an option?” Inquisitor Gianna Burris answered with
her own question. I couldn’t see her face, but everything about her stance
embodied poise and confidence.
The Inquisitor had replaced Reverend Martin Greaves as my liaison
to the church’s High Council, and she did not have the Reverend’s soft touch.
But as much as I resented her, it was hard not to be impressed by her nerve in
that moment. The longer Lucas failed to react to my presence, the more certain
his inhuman nature would be to her.
“Make a scene, Hawthorn.” A man’s voice sounded crisp on the
speaker in my ear. I had trouble focusing on his words while I softly murmured
my own, and I didn’t recognize his voice. “Show us he can’t see you.”
Lucas wasn’t facing me directly, but I was in his line of sight.
He would have reacted already if he was going to.
I held up my hand, palm out, and pulled in three fingers and a
thumb to give the camera in my helmet an awkward one-fingered salute.
Quin snickered on the comm but went quickly silent.
“Save it for the tag,” the man said in my ear.
The gesture would be wasted on Lucas, but if I stopped chanting to
point that out, it would cease to be true. I lowered my arm, shaking my wrist
to work out the weird tension that had tightened the back of my hand with that
move.
“Can you get what I want?” Lucas said.
Gianna’s head tipped down as she gave his weathered clothes a
disdainful look. “Did you bring the down payment?”
I approached them, still chanting, watching my step to avoid the
occasional piece of trash or broken glass that might give me away.
Lucas leaned forward and reached into his coat. I went for the
khukuri, but before I could safely draw it, he held out a thick envelope. He
didn’t move toward her, and Gianna had to step in to reach for it. I circled
around them. If I had to do this, I didn’t want to see his face.
I opened my spirit eye, studying the white light that seeped from
his skin as I examined the man himself. It had been weeks since I saw an
infernal’s aura like that, but he seemed fainter than any of them. Dimmer than
even Cobie had been when I killed her, and I suspected she was newly changed at
the time.
I pushed aside the swell of sickness, fury, and guilt that rose at
the thought of her. Cobie hadn’t been my friend. She only acted like it.
Gianna didn’t react when I moved into her field of view. She
opened the envelope and made a show of flipping through its contents.
“Trusting. Aren’t you afraid I’ll take it and run?” She couldn’t
have outrun a snail in those heels, but I doubted she was speaking literally.
“Not at all.”
I checked the area around us as I half-listened. We were beneath a
massive tower and four floors of parking, yet through the walls, indistinct
disruptions in the darkness looked like rooms or hallways. My eyes flicked
down, catching the outline of a narrow service tunnel under my feet.
“The rest comes when I have proof,” Lucas said.
A man leaned against the wall of the tunnel below. His light was
dull and red, human, like Gianna. Through the stone, cement, soil, and steel
that separated us, I couldn’t see much more detail than a slight dimming of his
light, outlining the sleek shadow of his gun.
“Proof,” he repeated. “Not just names.”
“You’ll have it.”
All of the Templars I’d seen lurking around us were paired up, and
I wasn’t enough of an optimist to think the lone man in the tunnel had nothing
to do with us, so I looked past him. My spirit eye couldn’t see far through
solid matter, but if he had other friends, I needed to know. I stepped forward.
“Not yet,” the man said in my ear.
I paused. Even if I could have spoken without betraying myself, I
couldn’t explain my sudden interest in the floor. No one knew what I could see
except for me.
“This city needs to know the truth about the vipers in its nest,”
Lucas said.
I looked up. Vipers? I didn’t know what he was trying to
buy. I didn’t even know if he thought the Inquisitor was from the church. He
had called her by a fake name.
“Spare me the sermon,” she said.
“Opportunist then.” He sounded disappointed.
Motion below drew my eyes back down, but I held my head up so the
helmet camera wouldn’t show where I was looking. I took another step.
“Don’t expect—” Lucas let out a pained shout, then doubled over
and clutched his ear.
I froze.
Gianna withdrew as he backed away from her, toward me.
What the fuck? I reached for the khukuri and clumsily freed the blade from its
sheath.
“What the fuck?” Quin echoed my thoughts.
Without warning, Lucas swung at the air behind him. His face
twisted in a snarl of pain as his fist swept through empty space. In the tunnel
below, the waiting human shot upright. He started to move, and at the same time
Gianna threw up her hands.
I scrambled back. An infernal didn’t have to hit me directly. If
he grazed me with his full strength, it could shatter my ribs or crush my skull
right along with my fancy helmet. And the Inquisitor didn’t even have that
much.
I needed to act. I knew what he was. But I was stuck.
If Lucas Alexander wasn’t human, then neither was I. And if he
deserved to die for it, why didn’t I?
Then the voice on the comm filled my ears. Pointed and assured.
“Kill him.”
THREE
Gwyn
I STILL DIDN’T WANT TO KILL Lucas Alexander, but it was starting
to look like I had no choice.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Gianna held character admirably
as she backed into the wall.
I sprinted around him, giving a wide berth but putting myself
between the Inquisitor and the infernal. I didn’t want to kill him, but I
wouldn’t let him hurt her either.
Lucas ripped something out of his ear, and the pain drained from
his face. The tinny, piercing shriek that came from his hand cut off as he
tightened his fist with a crunch. His eyes shot to the side, toward an
unlabeled door.
He couldn’t see me, but he knew I was there. I got the sick
feeling I knew how when the crushed remains of an earpiece fell from his hand.
He bolted for the door.
“Lawson, move in,” said the Templar on the comm.
I drew a stun gun from the holster at my hip and took desperate
aim as I chased him. If the Templars flanked him, the day would get a lot
bloodier than it needed to. I fired. The visor shielded my eyes from the streak
of blinding light. It seared past him as he threw himself sideways into the
door, deforming the metal as the latch ripped through the frame.
Firing the stunner confirmed my presence and gave away my
position, but Lucas didn’t turn toward the bait. He barreled into a room full
of boxes and construction material, and I followed right behind. In the solid
walls, where my eyes saw zero doors, my spirit eye spotted one.
He grabbed a metal tool case off a shelf and pitched it over my
head with so much force that it exploded when it hit the wall behind me. Nails
and tools showered the floor, but I was already past them. Sometimes it helps
to be small.
“Stop him,” came another command.
At the same time Quin said, “That’s a dead end.”
Lucas knocked the hidden door open, and I chased him down into a
tunnel.
“Shit,” Quin corrected himself.
Recessed lights traced along the ceiling, but no power flowed to
them. The tunnel would have faded to pitch if not for the dark vision sensor
that lit the inside of my visor in shades of green. The combination of night vision
and my spirit eye made the world look like a surreal, drug-addled mess, but the
important details were still clear. The infernal ahead of me. The concrete
tunnels around us. The debris in my path that I couldn’t afford to trip over.
“...losing,” said a crackly voice in my ear. “...new map. Go right—” Not a message
for me, so I tuned it out.
Lucas was fast. Fast enough that it was almost inevitable I’d lose
him. My only advantage was that he couldn’t see me while I maintained the
chant, but I could see him as long as he didn’t get too far ahead.
Then the tunnel took a turn toward his human backup, sprinting our
way, and I guessed he didn’t mean to run far.
“—ley, go!” crackled the fading voice on the comm.
More backup meant a bigger mess if I didn’t reach him first.
The ephemeral red light of the human’s spirit staggered to a stop
behind a closed door ahead of us, lurking where it wouldn’t hit him.
Lucas blew through the door. It bounced hard and started to slam
shut. I rebounded off it as I passed and redirected my momentum toward the
waiting man.
He looked younger than Lucas. Bare cheeked, maybe my age. A slim,
transparent visor covered his eyes, probably so he could see in the dark. His
gun was up.
I moved under it.
He shouted, “Stop or—”
My khukuri ripped through his side. His weapon fired so close that
the streak of light would have blinded me if not for the helmet’s visor.
He went down with a visceral cry. His weapon hit the ground, and I
kicked it back down the tunnel.
A stun gun.
I turned toward the infernal. He’d stopped running and started
swinging. Blind to my exact location, he inferred a lot from how I hit his
trap.
I twisted.
He missed and struck again.
There was desperation behind his attack, but also a powerful hesitation.
I ducked under another blow and brought the khukuri around, but
hands grabbed my leg. Pulled my attack up short. The young man’s grip was
solid, despite his strength bleeding out. And he only needed to slow me down
for a second.
I looked up, still chanting. Lucas looked down, right through me.
Shit.
He held up his hands, looking over my head and a bit to the right.
“My quarrel isn’t with you, ‘angel.’” His calm expression and wary pose seemed
sincere. Far more so than the way he pronounced the word “angel.”
Sorry if my skepticism seems like malice.
I focused the energy I didn’t need for the chant on my leg and
kicked. The human shouted as his grip broke, and the infernal’s expression
collapsed back into hard lines and grim focus.
Momentum carried me out of the way as he struck where I’d been.
Rubble and rocks and the curve of a spray-painted letter exploded from the
impact where his fist hit the wall. His blood streaked the broken cement as he
withdrew. He wasn’t taking chances anymore either.
“Run.” The human tried to climb to his knees, arm clutched against
his bloody side. “Run. I’ll catch you.”
I doubted it. The Templars would find him first.
But Lucas Alexander ran.
I trailed him down the tunnel with my stun gun in one hand and the
khukuri in the other. He was straight ahead and in range, but I needed to be
close to take the shot. Close enough to strike immediately if it hit. Even
faster if it missed.
He slammed another door behind himself and stopped on the other
side. I stopped too. Through the aged steel and chipped paint, his glowing
white form waited for me to follow.
I inched toward the wall. If he struck the door down, it might
still hit me there, but he didn’t. I shouldn’t have known he was waiting for
me. I’d followed him through a half dozen doors without hesitating, and I
couldn’t help but wonder if he would stop and think about that.
The secret had been burning me up because learning it taught me
something I wished I didn’t know about myself. But I had never fed on anyone.
I’d never drained the spirit out of another living being, so I didn’t know what
that side of the scale felt like. Even nine weeks after learning I was an
infernal, it still didn’t feel real.
But it was.
Lucas couldn’t see me because of the chant. He wouldn’t see the
truth of what I was even if he could. I looked wrong to other infernals, nearly
human. He wouldn’t know I wasn’t.
But I could see him through the door the same way he should have
seen me, and if he thought about it, maybe he would guess.
The motion of his legs and narrowing of his chest looked like he’d
turned and taken a step back. Another step. He stopped, and I thought he wasn’t
looking at me, but I wasn’t certain enough to move forward. I followed the
direction his head seemed to turn and saw Templars through the earth. They were
closing in from the side, and they were ahead of him.
His white glow shifted wildly as he sprinted away. If the flanking
Templars got to him first, he’d either rip the lives out of their bodies, or
they’d risk incinerating us all to kill him. It would be my failure if either
happened, but I didn’t dare open the door until he was too far ahead to turn
back.
He didn’t slow when the hinges squealed.
I tapped into the energy that fed my chant and drew a little more.
My stride lengthened, my feet pushed a little harder, and I ran faster. Hunger
gnawed at my stomach from using that inhuman energy, but it was mild. It wasn’t
dangerous yet, and I started gaining ground instead of losing it.
Lucas tore through a doorway and stopped.
Still chanting, I flattened myself against the wall to avoid
whatever he meant to throw at me.
“I meant what I said.” He only flung words as he backed away.
“Hope you’re listening, because I might not want your blood on my hands. If you
follow me here, you’ll die too fast to regret it.”
I lurched forward, still chanting. Still hidden from his eyes.
His head swiveled toward the Templars. They were nearly upon us,
racing down an intersecting tunnel. He slammed the door and took off.
An electric blue nexus lit up part of the door frame. A security
system or lock on the far side that he must have set up in advance. The whole
meet with Gianna had been planned after all, but not by the church.
I was still running when the Templars burst into the tunnel ahead,
and the display in my helmet reacted to mute the brilliance as their
flashlights drove back the darkness.
The man in front reached for the door.
Lucas’s words filtered through all the fears fighting for my
attention as I stared at the electronic light he’d triggered.
It wasn’t a lock.
I broke my chant and tried to stop. “Wait!” My boots scraped the concrete floor.
Thunder smashed the tunnel, and my back hit the wall.
The blunt impact of debris beat my ribs, and the chant’s abrupt
end burned its chill from my skin. Like I’d been slammed into a vat of hot
water.
Then I was sliding. Falling.
Voices shouted. Static crackled. I barely heard either through the
ringing in my ears.
I saw blurry cement and clouds of dust. I sat
up, and the room spun a few degrees before righting itself. Acid burned my
throat, and bile bit into the taste of copper in my mouth. I’d lost control of
my spirit eye, and so the Templars’ auras were gone.
The display inside my visor buzzed. Static
colors blazed from damage to the screen over my left eye. It flashed once.
Twice. After the third blinding flare, I found the release with shaking fingers
and pulled the helmet off.
I was blind. My hands were empty, but I didn’t
remember releasing the helmet.
I was out of the comm loop, but I didn’t care.
Even if a message came through, I probably couldn’t hear it.
“Lawson?” It was the only name they’d said
while my comm still worked. My slurred voice sounded like it came from both five feet away
and a cavern inside my skull. I levered myself onto my knees.
Dim light filtered through the dust and smoke.
Debris fell away from me as I crawled toward the Templars, shock giving way to
sick fear of what I’d find. My muddled brain reminded me that I could see
through the haze if I used my spirit eye.
I didn’t want to look, but I needed to know.
The ephemeral light appeared, as if a curtain had been drawn back.
My chest shook as my mouth filled with a new rush of bitter fire. I swallowed.
Four living bodies sprawled in the tunnel, but
there was dead flesh with them, and it wasn’t all in one piece. One Templar’s
red light dimmed. Fading. Dying.
I found my khukuri lying on the ground and
picked it up as I caught sight of Lucas Alexander’s white light. Debris
cluttered the tunnel, but the way after him wasn’t blocked. Still, he’d gained
too much distance and was quickly fading from view.
Son of a bitch.
Now I wanted to kill him.
I tried to remember how many Templars I’d
seen. Was it six? Seven? I couldn’t tell one from the other in the darkness.
Their spirits blurred together so much that I couldn’t even count them. How
many died because I was too slow to catch him? And too slow to warn them.
Of the thing I shouldn’t be able to see.
I had failed, and so there would be no
explanations demanded about how I’d known, no unbelievable lies told.
No immediate execution.
Shame filled me, warring with my relief.
Footsteps beat the concrete behind me. I
turned too quickly, and the hallway quirked sideways then righted itself as I
swayed and nearly fell.
The dim red auras of Templars approached along
the path I’d taken. Their leader’s flashlight snapped toward me.
“Where is he?” Her shout barely penetrated the
foamy ringing in my ears, but I recognized Hanley’s voice.
I swallowed. “Gone.”
Her light flicked over my head. Her steps
faltered, and the figures behind her slowed too. I recognized them from the
stairwell. Both were armed now.
“Lawson! Sir, are you hurt?” Hanley called.
A pistol rose past my right side, clutched in
a Templar’s bloody, armored fist. He was standing behind me, where I couldn’t
see him, and aiming down the tunnel at Hanley and her team. The barrel
quivered, and his finger curled across the trigger. I shoved his arm with a
wordless cry as the shot stabbed my ears.
Fingers dug into my scalp and tangled with my hair. My scream
drowned out Hanley’s shouting as dark purple locks slid out of my braid and into my eyes.
The pain spiked as he forced me to face him and dragged me to my feet.
To my spirit eye, white radiance surrounded
the Templar, but it didn’t seep through his flesh as it should. It hovered
around him and bulged from his skin. Discordant light arched over his head and
flickered from his back like the wings of a giant bird.
He dropped the pistol and seized my head between his hands,
forcing me to face him. I looked into his glassy eyes, visible through his broken helmet. Brother
Lawson’s eyes. His
pupils weren’t lined up, much less directed at me. His jaw hung slack.
Impossible.
I aimed
a desperate kick at his groin. His armor would have absorbed some of the blow,
but his vacant expression didn’t change.
I raised the khukuri, pulled on the strength I was supposed to
hide, and brought the blade down on Lawson’s forearm. Flesh sheared, and bone
crunched. His hand released and fell away from his arm, but his flat expression
didn’t change. Blood didn’t spurt from the wound as it would if his heart still
beat. It splattered, warm, across my face. Then dribbled and dripped, with no
living heart to pump it.
He jerked me forward, off my feet, then flung me to the ground. My
knees struck cement, sending spikes of pain up my thighs.
Revenants took days to rise, not seconds. But both revenants and
infernals had the strength to crush my head like an egg. Which one he was
wouldn’t matter in a moment.
His eyes cleared and focused on me. I brought the khukuri up as
white light shifted and shot toward me along Lawson’s arm, like an infernal
starting to feed.
Instead of the rush of weakness and agony that I expected, a dozen hammers came down on my skull. My body froze. The splitting pain tore a shriek from my throat as the khukuri slipped from my fingers. Darkness buried me, and I never heard my weapon hit the ground.
I was riding my mother’s motorcycle alone for the first time. It was three weeks before she died and the hospital took it, along with everything else, to cover the expense of not saving her. The panel across the handlebars lit up, and a call tone played in my ears.
My heart jumped. Mom couldn’t have found out I’d bypassed the fingerprint lock. Not that soon.
Pressure surrounded my head and vibrated through my ears.
Sitting at a bus stop, I picked mold off the bread of a dumpster sandwich. A girl in designer jeans and gaudy shoes sat beside me and asked if there was a safe place to crash nearby.
“Why the fuck would I know?” I snapped, bitter because I did.
She said to call her Trinity.
I tried to blink, but I had no eyelids.
“We can’t squat up here forever,” Jack said.
I pulled his arms around me and rested the back of my head on his chest. “But I want to.” The clouds took on hues of pink and gold as dawn approached. “If you do.”
His chin settled on my shoulder, and his cheek pressed against mine. “I’ll make it happen.”
It was a lie, but I smiled anyway. Frigid morning wind whispered across the rooftop, but I was warm, for the moment. As the sun crested the mountains that ringed the city of Ash, I closed my eyes against its light.
I tried to push back, but I had no hands.
I lay on my side, face pressed into carpet sticky with blood. I couldn’t move.
Chilly air engulfed my bare skin. Couldn’t shiver.
But despite the cold, everything burned. I couldn’t cry.
For hours I stared at Jack’s lifeless, bloodless face, and I couldn’t even blink.
If I could have moved enough to close my eyes, I would have tried to gouge them out instead.
My throat clenched tight, and my lungs burned.
I woke up in a hospital bed, alone and confused. I panicked and looked for the door.
My knees gave out when my feet hit the floor, and I tangled with the sheets as I tried to stop my fall.
A young man caught me. He came from nowhere, but I forgot to wonder how when I saw his black armor and the sword sheathed at his side.
A feeble scream escaped my lips, but he only helped me rise.
“You’re safe.” His voice soothed me to silence as he withdrew.
I sat on the bed, looked up, and was paralyzed by the pity in his blue eyes.
My lips parted, but words froze in my throat, and tears ran down my cheeks before I remembered why. Then fragments of memory stabbed vicious little claws into my head.
Heartbreak wrenched his face as I crumbled.
I vibrated with the visions. I was the vibrations.
I stood in front of the first infernal I had ever killed. My heart strained to escape as I murmured the chant and confirmed that it hid me from her eyes.
I drew the khukuri from its sheath and took comfort from its silence.
The chant was darkness, and it frosted my lips with ice.
I was small and getting smaller. Contracting. Crushed.
The pressure shook around me. I tried to scream, but I had no lungs.
The gag filled my mouth with fiber, bitterness, and blood.
A handsome man with gray sprinkled through his hair grabbed my throat.
Emil Vicks said, “Sing for me, angel.” His hand covered my lips, and his fire burned with the light he stole from my veins.
The pressure released.
I pulled air into my burning lungs.
Light hovered over Brother Lawson, and his
body slumped. His head lolled oddly where my khukuri was still buried halfway
through his neck, severing the spine. He let go of my hair as Hanley released
the weapon’s hilt and shoved the corpse away.
I stared at the dead man. Twice dead. “What?” My legs gave out,
and I sat on my heels. My stomach tried to escape through my mouth, but I
swallowed it.
“Hawthorn?” Hanley sounded like she was yards away when she
touched my head. “Are you okay? Gwyn?” Blood covered her sleeve.
“No.”
She reached for my shoulder. “Are you bleeding?”
I had no idea. “What the fuck?”
The other Templars closed in.
The light thing shivered in the air above
their heads, but they didn’t seem to see it. Its wings flared, stretching
across the tunnel and into concrete. Three pulses of pressure assaulted my
head, and at the fourth it vanished.
