A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (13 page)

“Sir, don’t twist my words. Another leader will surface, sure, but not
another leader like this one. He’s single-handedly building a multi-world
empire.”

“You’re not going to Hell.”

“What if we could push the demons like Elachai does?” Liv asked.

“Are you able to do that, Dr. Greenwood? Because last I heard, you had no
clue how.”

Liv tried to ignore the feeling of failure. “I’m hoping this new data will
help me.”

“If not,” Ben said through his grin, “we could always wander around until he
attacks you again, get you more data. You’re like a magnet for this guy.”

Liv glared at him. Not funny.

“If you get a working device, and if it is effective against demons, which
you will have to prove somewhere other than Hell, I may consider it. Until then,
request denied.”

Beep:
Simulation weapon fire failed.

She slammed her hand on the desktop. “God damn it!”

Immediately, she jerked her head up, hearing her mother’s voice, etched in
her brain from the time she could talk:
Olivia
Jane! How dare you take the Lord’s name in vain!

Jordan stood frozen in the door with his hand raised to knock on the jamb. “Everything
okay?”

“No!” she snapped, and immediately regretted it. It wasn’t his fault he’d
caught her in the most profound blasphemy her mother could imagine. Or that she
couldn’t stop the automatic guilt response. “Sorry. I can’t get this simulation
working. Now, instead of just not working or affecting the wrong part of the
target’s brain, which is what it did before, it’s actually blowing up when I
fire it.”

“Trent can probably fix that.”

“I know, but I’ve already gone to him twice today, and I feel bad because
he’s trying to work with R & D on a substitute component for some new metal
alloy they found on G-1760B.”

“Sounds like maybe you could use a break. Everybody’s taking an exercising
lunch. Come on.”

He jerked his head toward the hallway, and when she just sat there staring
at him, he strode toward her desk, took her arm, and physically pulled her up
out of her chair.

“Come on. You’ll feel better.”

Jordan ushered her into the hall, waiting while she locked her office. He
left her with a wave at the entrance to the locker rooms and she headed to
change.

When she got to the gym, she found the rest of her team already there.
Connor and Trent sparred on mats in the corner, Ben heaved a barbell with a
grimace, and Jordan stood spotting him. Gin waved from a treadmill, clearly
grooving to something bouncy in her headphones.

Liv, her mood not much improved, stomped over to Ben. “Come on, Ben, fight
me.”

He glanced up at her expression. “What bug crawled up your ass?”

Liv scowled at him.

Jordan said, “Her simulation weapon keeps exploding.”

Ben laughed. “That’s a pretty awesome weapon.”

“Not if it kills the person holding it, you moron.”

“Yeah, I suppose that would be a problem.”

“So y’all gonna fight me or not?”

Ben put down his weights and stood up. “All right, you asked for it.”

*
         
*
         
*

Liv tried to hold back her towering frustration as Ben waited for her to
attack. She tried a feint to get the first hit, but her patience didn’t hold
out. In moments, they were striking, blocking, punching, and kicking, ranging
over the whole mat as one tried to get an advantage over the other.

Speaking in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried over the clank of
weights and the
thud thud thud
of Gin
running on the treadmill, Ben said, “You’ll get it, OJ. And send us straight to
Hell.” He grinned.

Liv didn’t soften at the use of her childhood nickname. She shook her head
as she slipped out of a half-hearted hold. “That’s pathetic.”

He blocked again as she launched forward, and they backed and lunged in a
flurry of strikes and blocks.

He stopped again, chest heaving, and she bent to catch her breath. “This is
helping. I can tell you’re not pissed anymore.”

She just stared, hands on her hips, trying to inflate her lungs all the way.
He opened his mouth again—Ben had never been able to stop talking. But
she didn’t want to talk, and she definitely didn’t want to admit that he was
making her feel better. She wanted to beat on something.

She launched herself forward, straight through his hasty block. He went
down, caught off-guard by her sudden attack. Liv brought him to the floor,
landing on top of him and trying for a pin that would end the match. He
struggled to break her hold, but he couldn’t throw her off.

Instead of trying to fight fair, he went for a weakness he knew he could
exploit; he reached up and tickled her.

She fought not to laugh as she yelled, “Ben, you imbecile, what the hell are
you doing?”

She struggled to hold in laughter and glare at him simultaneously. Ben broke
her grip and they rolled around on the floor, wrestling like they had when they
were kids. But he wouldn’t leave off tickling her, and she couldn’t pin his
hands. Finally Liv couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling out. “Okay, okay,
uncle, I yield.”

Ben didn’t bother to untangle himself from her yet, but smiled and stopped
tickling her. She slapped him on the back of the head and said, “Cheater.”

“It worked, didn’t it? I won. And you feel better.”

“Yeah. I guess. Thanks.”

Jordan stalked past them and slammed the door as he left.

“What’s his problem?” Ben asked.

Liv shrugged.

Ben shook his head. “I swear, I have no idea how you can be so intelligent
and still so stupid.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Ben shook his head. Sure, now he stopped talking.

Liv turned her head and found the rest of the team standing at the edge of
the mat watching. “Ha ha,” she said. “I have witnesses to that ridiculous bout
of blatant cheating.”

“You guys done already?” Ben asked.

Trent grinned. “Looks like you are too.”

Ben laughed, popped to his feet and held a hand out for Liv. She grabbed it
and he hauled her up. “I’m going to hit the showers.”

“Me too.” She sighed. “After that, Trent? I’m going to need another hand
with the stupid Elachai gun. It’s blowing up now.”

“Sweet. Meet you in your office.”

“’Kay, thanks.” Liv headed for the locker room, following Gin’s bouncing
pony tail as she danced to her music.

*
         
*
         
*

Jordan rummaged in his locker for his shampoo. Where the hell had he
put—

“So what’s with you and Liv?” Ben asked.

Jordan’s heart jumped in his chest, but he calmly stood up and looked over
at Ben leaning casually against his own locker.

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, that’s what she said.” Ben had a smirk on his face that Jordan
couldn’t quite interpret.

“That’s what who said?”

“Seriously, you’re nearly as clueless as she is.” Ben rolled his eyes
dramatically.

Jordan took a breath, and summoned near-heroic patience. “Are you talking
about Liv?”

“Yes. Finally. Listen. I know you’ve got a thing for her.”

“No—what? How could you possibly think that?”

Ben laughed. “You just confirmed it, buddy. I’ve never seen you squirm
before—hilarious. But don’t worry. She has a thing for you too.”

“She told you that?”

“Hell, no! But I know.”

“What about you?”

Ben grinned. “No offense, but I don’t really swing that way, buddy.”

“What about you and Liv?” Jordan growled.

“You’re joking, right? She’s my sister. She thinks so, I think so, everybody
thinks so.” He sobered. “Except you, obviously. Well, and Winnie, but she
doesn’t count. And we set her straight.”

“Whinny?” Jordan was getting whiplash trying to follow this conversation. Ben
wasn’t usually this incomprehensible.

Ben laughed. “So that’s what that was about? You thought there was something
going on between me and Liv?”

Jordan tried to keep the uncomfortable squirming to a minimum. Whatever his
shortcomings, Ben was not unintelligent.

“Ah. Well, there’s not.”

“Okay.” This was as much as Jordan was willing to say at the moment. He
didn’t want to admit anything and have it get back to Liv. His interest had
only grown in the last year, and he’d never be able to extinguish it. Control
it, though? Yes. That, he could do. Still, he couldn’t help asking. “So, you’re
usually that flirty and handy with your sister?”

“Handy? I am not handy.” Ben snorted, then frowned. “Jordan, you weren’t
around when the Wolf thing happened. It was…really hard on her. She’s still
messed up. If she would just acknowledge that she has feelings…. Anyway, she
doesn’t think she can face him again.”

“How do you know
that
?” Jordan
considered Liv’s reaction when Elachai had told them about the Wolf, and
realized that of course she was scared and would never ask for help. “Never
mind. I’m sure you’re right.”

Ben gave him a look that said
obviously
.

“So what do I do?”

“Do? God, are you all morons? I feel like the only person in on the joke at
a fake séance. I don’t know, Jordan, do whatever you want to.”

Connor and Trent walked up to their lockers and Connor glanced at them
curiously. “Should I get you two a room?”

Ben grimaced. “Ha ha. You’re hilarious.”

Connor grinned. “That’s true. Everything okay?”

“Mmhmm,” Ben said. Jordan just nodded.

Trent asked, “So what are you two doing this afternoon?”

“I’ve got to get over to the Ranch,” Ben said with a glance at his watch.
“I’m testing a new concept plane.”

Jordan said, “I have to get some work done in my lab.” More like some
thinking. If Liv had feelings for him, that would change everything.

Trent frowned. “I have to go stop the Other Elachai from blowing up in Liv’s
face again.”

Jordan frowned. He knew Trent was just helping, but
he
wanted to go see Liv. He wished he could help her with the
stupid simulation, but he had no clue how the gun even began to work.

Connor gave Jordan a look, uninterpretable as usual. “I’m running tacticals.
See you tomorrow.”

Jordan waved a hand headed off to the shower. He didn’t remember until he
was under the water that he never had found his shampoo.

*
         
*
         
*

Two hours later, Liv was deep into analysis of brain wave patterns and PET
scans. Trent had found the short in her simulated gun, but now she had to
figure out why it wasn’t affecting the areas of the brain she was targeting.

Correlating the data from the experiment that had ended in the Blue Beach
disaster with the information from both times her memory had been affected by
Elachai, and her and Jordan’s data from their most recent encounter, was taking
her a lot longer than she’d expected. She finally finished entering data into
the charts she’d created, but she noticed an anomaly in the Blue Beach
experiment.

The parahippocampal gyrus was lit up, but that made sense, because it was
related to spatial memory, and she presumed the hippocampus was active because
it related to navigational cognitive maps. But parts of her amygdalae, anterior
thalamic nuclei, limbic cortex, and fornix were also lit up in the original
scans. She flicked through the tests from the Elachai incidents but didn’t see
it there.

“The limbic system? Motivation and emotional integration,” she said. “Feelings
about the place you’re Traveling to? But what if you’ve never been there? I
followed Ben when we were ten only because I wanted to go with him.”

She thought about that for a minute and said, “Will. Travelers will
themselves somewhere else.”

She wasn’t sure how that helped, but it had to be key to stopping a Traveler
from Traveling. She looked at Jordan’s scans from the third Elachai incident
but didn’t see it there either. His scan from the experiment showed it, and so
did all the others’. It must be active only when a Traveler was physically
preparing to Travel. She’d give almost anything to see what Jordan’s scan had
looked like when he’d been trying to Travel out of Safe World when Elachai had
locked him there.

How did you stop will?

She didn’t register the quiet, “Hm hm,” from her door until Jordan walked
into the room.

She jerked her head up and immediately realized it was him. “Hi.” Her
stomach lurched, and she wasn’t sure why. It was just Jordan. Looking gorgeous
and smelling clean and freshly cologned. “I was just thinking. How do you stop
will?”

He leaned against her work counter. “I don’t think you can. That’s kind of
the point of will.”

“Well, he did it somehow.” She came all the way up out of her head. Jordan
was in her office, presumably for a reason. “What time is it?”

“After shift.”

She glanced down at the clock. “Wow. I didn’t realize it was so late. I got
caught up in this data.”

He smiled and her stomach fluttered. “Happens to me all the time.”

Get a grip! What are you, twelve? No
schoolgirl crushes. That’s not what this is. Period.

Silence fell as he looked around her office. She followed his eyes around
the meticulously ordered room. He glanced through the window into her lab,
which was just as tidy, although harder to see since it was lit only by the
indicator lights of several pieces of equipment.

She watched him look everything over—why was he here?—and nearly
jumped when his eyes snapped back to hers.

“I wanted to finish our earlier conversation,” he said.

Her heart leapt into her throat, and her stomach felt full of small slithery
snakes. What did you call a group of snakes? She swallowed hard. Why was she so
terrified? “What?”

“We were interrupted in the field in Texas.”

Had that really only been this morning? Yes, it had been. What a long day.

“Earlier today, with Elachai. Why did you follow me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you follow me when Elachai told me to leave? Why did you risk your
life jumping through into an unknown situation in an unknown place?”

“Because….” She was confused. It had been a split-second decision, and she
hadn’t really analyzed her reasons. “You’re my partner. I shouldn’t have to
explain why I wanted to protect you. Elachai could be dangerous, and if you’d
gone alone, he might never have let you come back. I was the only one close
enough to back you up.”

“You said earlier, in the field, that it was your job.”

“It is.”

Jordan stared intently at his shoes. “Just?”