Authors: Eliza Crewe
His harsh breathing is loud in the silence between us.
“On the bright side.” he looks down at himself, “it looks like I’ll get to keep this body. I’ve grown attached.”
“That’s fortunate, as the last one is dead.” In order to transition from human—or Halfling—to demon, you have to die.
“Fortunate,” he agrees, then smiles bitterly. “And the deed wasn’t done with preservation in mind. Quite the opposite.” He says it in a way that makes me think I don’t want the details. Another wave of pain hits him. The vein in his temple bulges as he goes rigid.
“Is it true?” I finally ask. “What you said?”
“I can’t lie to you.”
“Is it true?” I repeat.
“Yes,” he answers simply, but he watches me.
“And have you repented? Do you think you’ll be redeemed if the souls are set free?” The look in his eyes, something I don’t care to identify, sharpens, but he doesn’t answer. I push. “Do you?”
A sardonic smile forces its way onto his face, but it’s off. Strained. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.” I didn’t. “So what’s in it for you?”
His eyes drift closed then open again, in a long weary blink. “Hope,” he says, his tone oddly bleak for such a word.
I don’t know how to respond, so I don’t.
“I’m drowning, Meda.” The words are whispered, rough from his raw throat, and his eyes close again, exhaustion overtaking him. “I’m drowning and I’ll be drowning for eternity.” His eyes open but he doesn’t look at me. “I want to believe there’s a surface, and air, even if I never see it.” He jerks and lets out a gasp then sighs in a sudden absence of pain. “I want to believe there’s a chance, even for me.” His eyes capture mine, and in them is a blend of humor and pain and regret. He laughs at his dream even as he voices it. “Even if there’s not.”
He blinks slowly, then again. Then his eyes don’t open. His voice slurs with sleep. “My hope dies with the Crusaders.”
“But if your soul isn’t freed, or if the demons catch you . . .”
“They’ll what, torture me?” It’s clear he’d laugh if he had the strength. “What do you think is going to happen when I finally end up in hell?” He jerks his head in a tiny shake. “That’s the problem with taking everything away from someone. They’ve left me with nothing to lose.”
His next words so faint I almost don’t hear them. “You might want to remember that.”
He sleeps.
The next morning, my pleasant blood-and-black dreams are shattered by the Sarge’s bellow. “Melange, get up! We’re needed.” I jolt upright, blinking, completely disoriented.
“If I were a demon, you’d be dead right now.” The Sarge's head floats about four feet to my right—not an uncommon sight, but always an unpleasant one. Especially first thing in the morning. She ignores my glare. “Move it.”
“I’m on my honeymoon,” I protest.
Her eyes widen in disbelief. “Melange, the world is ending. Your honeymoon will have to wait.”
“Until
after
the world ends . . .?”
She snorts. “My honeymoon was in Vietnam—’
“Brag about it, why don’t you?”
“In 1966,” she finishes dryly. “During the US ground invasion of Vietnam. We had to pull our beacon literally from the jaws of—’
I cut her off, rolling my eyes. ‘“I honeymooned in a war zone, I fought fifty demons with one hand behind my back, and hiked through the snow to do it, uphill both ways—’’
“Now you’re getting the picture.” She grins wolfishly. “But most importantly, I didn’t complain about it. Now move!”
“Wait!” To my surprise she does. “What about Armand, the mission—’
“There’s nothing to be done until we figure out how to get into hell.”
“Shouldn’t I be here, working on it?”
“Smarter people than you are working on the problem, Melange, and we don’t have the manpower for you to waste your time navel-gazing. We need you in the field until we don’t.”
“But—’
“Do you want to kill demons or pore over ancient texts with Puchard?”
That shuts me up.
“Now
move
!” She barks the last loud enough to make me flinch and pops out of existence, probably off to badger another sleeping innocent.
I roll out of bed and pull on purple leggings and boots, not bothering to tie the laces, grab my bag of supplies, and pass by Jo’s door on the way down. I knock but no one answers, so I push it open. “Jo?” I ask, just as I hear the Sarge’s voice bellowing from the bathroom, followed by Jo’s yelp and a splash.
Sounds like Jo finally got her bath. Sort of.
I leave. There’s no way she’s going to make it down in time. I shake off any residual grogginess and the Hunger stirs, anticipating the bloodbath that’s to come. I meet a few Crusaders on the stairs, jogging, with packs tossed over their shoulders. If the Sarge had just woken them up, you couldn’t tell. Any bleariness was washed away in the news of yet another attack. When we reach the circle drive, more Crusaders, mostly Reavers, are waiting, strapping packs and holy blades on their bikes or swallowing a hasty breakfast.
The boy I kinda choked pulls up on a motorcycle, which he hands to a waiting Crusader. He turns and dashes off, presumably to bring another one. The Sarge is already clasping on her helmet and casts a quick glance around, presumably counting noses. She apparently decides we have enough people, whether everyone’s here or not. “The demons have found one of our fosters,” she tell us, pulling her helmet strap tight.
I don’t flinch like the others, but it’s not good news. When the mass attacks on the Templar communities happened, many of the surviving students were sent to the schools still standing, but the rest were placed in “fosters” or undercover group homes.
“A farm in New Hampshire, just across the border. We’re to rescue who we can, bury who we can’t.” The Sarge straddles her motorcycle just as the boy returns on a roaring Bubba. He hops off—on the far side of the vehicle, out of my reach—and I hop on, gunning the engine just to make the kid jump, and roll forward until I’m next to a disgustingly peppy-looking Chi. He looks behind me, then around.
“Where’s Jo?”
“In the bath, last I heard.”
He pauses, as if thinking about it, then smiles. “Nice.”
“Ew.”
He grins, then casts a look back at the door, as if hoping she’ll somehow magically appeared. “She’s gonna be sorry she missed this.”
“But on the bright side, her chances of surviving the day are much higher.” Then I grin, flashing a lot of teeth. “Plus, more for me.”
“Us,” he corrects, grinning just as toothily, and kicks off on his motorcycle, joining the rest of the herd pouring out of the schools fence.
We dive through a couple of rabbit holes which place us within a few hours of the foster, then roll through winding roads. The countryside, garish with autumn color, is almost tacky in its beauty. Syrupy sunshine filtered through blood-red foliage; covered bridges spanning rivers running thick with brilliantly colored leaves; rolling hills segmented with stacked stone walls, charmingly tumbled down and soft with moss.
The explosions we hear as we get closer are a little out of place, but nowhere’s perfect. In light of said explosions, the Sarge opts for speed over stealth and we roar up to the house
en masse
.
Incongruously, the site of the impending battle looks like a Thomas Kinkadian daydream: a white clapboard house nestled in a little valley, rolling fields wrapped around it like a quilt. The darling perfection is no doubt a deliberate choice by the Crusaders to dissuade nosy citizens from calling Child Protective Services no matter the number and ages and obvious lack of familial relation among the children. Oh no, it’s obviously not the kind of home where the children need protection.
Children currently in imminent danger of being ripped to shreds by a demon army.
A cluster of demons gather around a slanted door leading down into an updated 1960’s bomb shelter. The demons stand around it cheering, simultaneously attempting to blow it up and tow off the doors with a giant John Deere tractor and chains the size of my wrist. As the demons haul on the door, a blue halo shimmers into existence: Crusader magic reinforcing the doors stretched to its breaking point. Crusader spells, and demon spells for that matter, can’t be combined, but they can be layered. Like the rings of an onion, the spells will be wrapped around the bomb shelter, buying us time as the demons have to pull them off, one by one.
But they will pull them off, eventually.
The demons twist at our arrival. They outnumber us by at least two-to-one, but then, they always do. We leap off our motorcycles, and there’s a long pause as we size each other up. There’s always one of these moments before a battle—one that hums with equal parts anticipation and terror. The last moment before your chances of survival drop dramatically.
Then the demon on the tractor bares his teeth in a vicious smile and stomps on the gas. The tractor leaps forward and the doors squeal in protest.
This shit is on.
Chi, Rex, and the others rush forward, but I hang back with the Sarge and Crusader Henries. I widen my stance, so I won’t fall . The Sarge comes close enough for us to touch, and Henries starts the chant, not needing to wait for any signal.
“Gundam mode initiate!” I say in a robotic voice while I still can. The Sarge and Henries both give me uncomprehending looks. Illiterate barbarians.
Suddenly my skin feels the pressure of invisible hands and there’s one agonizing, endless second when no one controls my body. It sits still, a shell, inhabited by no one. Then the Sarge exhales into my face, riding her own breath into my body. I feel the now-familiar tickle of her soul sliding into my skin. Before me, her now empty body collapses and Henries tosses it over his shoulder to protect while she's otherwise occupied kicking ass.
After dozens of battles, we’re used to it now and the transition is smooth, flawless. She’s no sooner slid into my skin than we’re off. The Sarge chants, pulling magic into Us, turning Us into a channel. Our hand snaps our, taking aim, and magic rockets down Our arm. It feels not unlike the flood of a fresh soul but, instead of coming into me, it’s pouring out. Three demons clustered on the other side of the field scream and we drag the black smoke of their souls towards Us. It will take too long to drain them completely, but it will weaken—and terrify—them.
There’s not quite a pause—it’s too brief for that—but there’s a hesitation when the demons realize who is among them. I breathe it in, savoring their knowledge, their terror.
The Sarge releases the three demons who stagger, one falling to his knees. The Sarge doesn’t pause but whips Our other arm around and sends a fireball roaring out ahead of the Crusaders who are rushing the demons. The demons put up a shield to block our magic just in time, but the force of Our magic destroys it, rocking them back. We need time to regenerate our stores, but so do the demons, and in the interim Rex and the black-haired Crusader I don’t know launch their own magical attack. They don’t stop running, but continue to race forward, as demons explode into screaming fire.
Once We’re able, We launch another attack, forcing the demons to defend themselves against Us, just as the first Crusader reaches them. The demons have to split their attention between blocking my brutally strong magical attacks and dealing with the physical and magical attacks of the rest of the Crusaders.
The Sarge and I keep up Our combined attack until our numbers are more equal, then she slides out of my limbs, climbing into the backseat so to speak. I’m nowhere near as magically capable, but part of our agreement is that I'm not left out of all the fun—though, of course, I phrased it in terms of receiving “necessary training.” She stays along for the ride just in case we somehow lose our edge over the demons.
I could use magic, but my heart craves the rip-and-tear of flesh. I leap forward in four bounds, diving into the thick of it. I grab a curly-haired demon around the waist and drag him down, ripping his throat out with my teeth just because I can.
I feel a brief pressure of someone pressing on me from behind and flip. It’s Rex, protecting my back from a middle-aged female with a bob. The blood of the demon coats my tongue, thick and hot; excitement at its metallic taste sweeps away any thought of saying “thanks.” I leap for another demon, and bury my nails in his hip, ripping his skin as I drag my hands down his haunch like a lion with a gazelle. His twists wildly as he falls so he lands on his side, and I go down with him. My claws are still buried in the flesh of his leg right above his knee and he uses his other leg to kick down on my head twice before I’m able to drag myself up his body, out of range of his brutal kicks. I shove my fist through the flesh of his belly, ripping out some very important parts. He’s not even done screaming before I launch myself at the next. The world is a bubbling blitz of rage and red, of hot sticky blood and burnt flesh. The Hunger howls and laughs is crazy laugh and we play, oh, we play with our pets before we put them down.
I look up from the mangled corpse of a demon, panting so hard that the blood running down my face sprays in a bloody mist. A wild howl escapes from my lips then dissolves in to crazed laughter as I prance among the bodies. Dimly I’m aware of the way the Crusaders turn away, the way they try not to see my monstrous delight. The black smoke of the demon’s false life seeps from their corpses and I draw them to me, selecting one after another like a connoisseur at a buffet.
I feel the Sarge’s distaste as she catches my stray thoughts. I feel her tuck bits of her in, pulling in stray, red-smoke extremities, so she can avoid my feelings. She rides silent but watching from my eyes. Alert.
Then she disappears.
Her pulsing disapproval dissipates so suddenly, I stagger. There’s a soft breath, the tiniest sigh, then a hole opens in my consciousness, a space where she rested. I grasp for it, for her, but there’s nothing.
Sergeant? Sergeant?
I stiffen, and cast my eyes down the road where left we the Sarge’s body, and I hear them.
I feel them.
Dozens of them.
It’s a trap, I realize, dazed. Soul-drunk. “It’s a trap!” I scream, just as the demon hordes burst from the trees.