A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (8 page)

“You can get
going. I’ll just meet you over there.”

“Oh, it’s no
problem. I’ll just wait and we can go together.”

“No, really,
you don’t have to do that. It’s going to take me a bit to get myself looking
presentable.”

His eyes did
a quick zip downward, and when they reached hers again he smiled. “I think you
look very presentable.”

She laughed.
“No I don’t. And you don’t have to wait, really.”

“It’s no
trouble.”

“You’re
already really late.”

“So are
you.”

He had a point.
She opened her door and he followed her into the dark cool interior. “I was
researching the effects of the dangerous mind-wiping Traveler on my brain. What’s
your excuse?”

“Well, I
would have said I was researching too, demon society and technology, if you
must know. But if you don’t hurry, I’ll just blame it on you.”

“You could
just go.”

He crossed
the room to her couch, sat, and folded his arms. “I’ll wait.”

He wasn’t
going to leave without her. When he got his mind set, it took a force of nature
to change it. She sighed. “I’ll try not to be too long.”

“Take your
time.”

She didn’t
take her time, but it was still half an hour before she was showered,
blow-dried, and make-up’ed appropriately for public consumption.
Maybe Jordan’s left by now,
she thought.

But when she
stepped out into the living room, he was still sitting on the couch.

“Ready?” she
asked.

He looked up
as he leaned forward to get to his feet and he froze. His eyes traveled from
her freshly curled hair to her clinging wrap-around shirt to her capris and the
length of leg beneath their hem, to her bare feet in sparkly Egyptian-esque
sandals, and finally back to her eyes.

He still
looked great, but based on his reaction, she’d won this round.
Point to me,
she thought with a smirk, then
wondered exactly what kind of competition she thought she was competing in.

Jordan said,
“Yeah, um, what?”

Her smile
widened. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes. Right.
Let’s go.”

Liv didn’t
know what to make of his reaction. It was one thing if she was going to get all
crush-y on him, but what if he did the same? She surreptitiously eyed him as he
drove them the three blocks to Trent’s house, but he was his normal self,
carrying on a normal conversation. He’d asked her out once when they first
started working together, but after Nathan—
You mean that damned ex boyfriend betrayer,
she thought
viciously—she hadn’t wanted to get involved with someone again. Certainly
not someone she worked with. Again. Jordan had never acted remotely interested
after that, so she had dismissed it.

How had she
not realized how amazing he was? Then, she’d just thought he was a dangerously
sexy guy, but now she knew him, and knew what a kind, intelligent, talented,
and driven person he was.

She shifted
uneasily in her seat.
You love him because
he’s your partner
, she argued with herself.
That’s all this is. There’s no future here. How could there be? You
work with him. Like Ben said, you can’t get away when it blows up in your face.
And it always does.

Her inner
voice was silent.

They arrived
at Trent’s, and Liv and Jordan let themselves in. “Hey! Welcome!” Trent called
from the kitchen. “The others are out back.”

Liv admired
the collection of framed awards and trophies fly tying competitions, and
wondered again why Trent would pick such a useless hobby, since he had
absolutely no interest in actually fishing.

She and
Jordan headed out into the backyard, and were instantly swept up in a game of
horseshoes. Jordan’s behavior was perfectly normal for the rest of the day. He
dropped her off at her house, said goodnight, and left.

When she
walked through her door, it was with unusual regret.
You wish he’d made a pass at you? And what then?

She tried to
dismiss it, but the feeling remained, regardless of what she told herself.

I love him
, she admitted to herself in a
small voice.

Now what?

*
         
*
         
*

Monday
morning, Liv was the last one into the briefing room.

“Sorry to
keep you waiting.”

General Mace
said, “I hope you have some good news.”

“Very good
news.” Liv quickly set up her laptop.

“Friday
night Ben and I were in Mai Tai, and I had another run-in with Elachai. I don’t
remember it, but our friend Winnie saw him and described him to me.”

A surge of
anger reared up at the fact that Elachai had stolen something irretrievable
from her. Twice.

Without a
noticeable hitch, she continued, “We immediately returned to base so I could
scan myself and find out what he did to make me forget.”

She ran
through the results she’d shown Jordan Saturday, and added her normal scans and
bloodwork from last night.

“Bottom
line, Doctor,” General Mace said when she’d finished.

“Sir, I have
been wracking my brain all weekend. I think I have a basic understanding of how
Elachai’s power works.” She clicked another slide up onto the screen. “I have
no idea how we can protect ourselves from it, at least not yet. But I think I
may be able to replicate it. With your permission, I’d like to try.”

“What is
that going to entail?” he asked.

“Some
research into a delivery vehicle with Nora in physics, and some consults with
Medical about brain chemical levels.”

Connor
asked, “What’s your timeline?”

“As of right
now, I have no idea what kind of delivery vehicle will work. Hence the
research. And consults with Medical.”

“Is there a
downside to this?” Jordan asked. Sometimes, he was far too smart for his own
good.

Liv tried to
look guileless. “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to
do it.”

“You
mentioned the narrow focus of Elachai’s power. Will you be able to duplicate
this?”

“I certainly
hope so, sir.”

Jordan frowned.
“Imagine his power in the hands of the demons.”

“Why?” Gin
asked.

Jordan
turned to her. “Demons kidnapped his family. With the threat of harm to them,
the demons could make him do anything.”

Connor
tapped a finger on the table. “I’m sure that’s their plan. Let’s just hope he
can stay ahead of them.”

Liv looked
at General Mace for his okay. “Go ahead, Dr. Greenwood. Conduct your research.”

“Thank you,
sir.”

General Mace
nodded. Then he turned to Connor. “Is your team done with Necropolis,
Commander?”

T36 had
spent the previous week searching the world where Liv had first run into
Elachai. They had found the lab where the world’s destruction originated, but
the records of the toxin or agent had been completely destroyed.

Connor
answered, “I think so, sir.” He looked at Liv with his eyebrows raised.

“I agree,”
she said. “There were no surviving records of how the plague or toxin was made,
and no samples of the agent. Just plenty of files proving the existence of
demons.”

Ben snorted.
“Great. We weren’t sure if they really existed.”

General Mace
ignored him. “Then you’re scheduled to begin exploring D-79302R tomorrow. See
you at 0800.”

Tuesday, previously unexplored parallel
world, DEPOT designation D-79302R, corresponding Oregon.

The next
morning, Liv walked through a poisonous-looking landscape. T36 was on an open
plain with sparse ‘trees’ and no signs of human habitation.

The ground
was covered by some sort of rust-orange lichen that looked like overlapping
drips of melted candle wax. The ‘trees,’ with their thick fleshy branches and
shiny waxy skin, reminded Liv of giant purple octopi standing on their heads.
They appeared to wave at the edges of her vision, although she had yet to catch
one moving when she looked at it straight on. The air smelled like burnt metal,
and the breeze blew hot on their faces. The sky was a mottled tapestry in gray,
and she wondered if it would thunderstorm.

“This is
really creepy,” Gin said, her blonde pony tail flipping as she whipped her head
from side to side, trying to catch the trees moving. “It’s like walking through
an illustration done by Dr. Seuss on a bad acid trip.”

Liv walked
over to one of the trees to lay her hand on the bruise-purple skin—it
couldn’t be called bark. It felt just like patting a soft wax candle. She
pushed her finger into the skin and left an indent which very slowly pushed
back out and disappeared.

“I think we
should sample this, Connor,” she called.

He signaled
a halt. She pulled out her protein scanner, mineral scanner, and spectrum analyzer.
She cut a tiny section of the skin and tried not to shudder as it bled a black
substance that looked a lot like blood.

“Oh, God,
that’s gross,” Gin said from behind her.

“I know.” Liv
looked away as she waited for the results.

“What could
possibly have caused Oregon to evolve into this, Jordan?” Trent asked.

“I have no
idea.”

Liv looked
over her shoulder to see Jordan scanning the horizon. “I could study here for
months or even years before I figured it out. I think it must have split quite
a few million years before now.”

Connor
suddenly raised his gun, and Trent and Gin did the same.

“Ah, looks
like the locals are coming to greet us,” Ben said as he followed Connor’s lead.

Liv whipped
her head the other way, following their line of sight.

From the
shelter of the giant purple octopus-trees, eight…humans, for lack of a better
word, stalked toward them. They reminded her of African pygmy tribesmen, but
their skin was a dark red-purple, with a dull waxy sheen like the trees. They
wore clothing made from strips of waxy tree skin, and jewelry of rocks and
bones. Most wore only loin cloths, but two sported a sort of toga. Liv guessed
these were women.

She stood,
her hands full of scanners, and punched buttons so they would save their
readings. Then she stowed them in her pockets and drew her sidearm, reassured
by the heavy weight of the blued steel.

Jordan
unsnapped his holsters but didn’t draw. “Connor, could we at least make sure
they’re not going to welcome us before we start shooting them? This isn’t the
way to greet potential allies.”

“We’ll see,”
Connor said.

As they got
close enough to speak, Connor raised his right hand, palm outward. “Hi. We’re
Travelers, explorers. We just want to look around your world. Do you understand
me?”

Without
warning, the pygmies raced shrieking toward the Travelers.

“What
the—?” Ben took an involuntary step back.

Liv, too,
was stunned by their speed. It reminded her too much of the demons.

“Well,
Peacemaker,” Connor said to Jordan, “what do you think now?”

“It may just
be a test of our bravery or something. The aboriginal Muruwari have a similar
rite.” Jordan answered. “If we fail, we may never gain access to any place in
this world where people live. Don’t shoot. Just hold your ground.” However, he
also pulled his guns, holding them loosely at his sides, muzzles pointed toward
the ground.

The pygmies,
still running, opened their mouths wide, showing rows of pointed teeth, and
spit something like globs of pitch into their palms.

“Ugh. What
are they doing?” Gin asked.

The pygmies
pulled their arms back like major league pitchers, and their hands suddenly
blazed with fire. While still running, they threw the flaming spitballs toward
the Travelers.

The first
fireballs landed short, splashing against the lichen-covered ground and
snuffing out.

“How about
now, Jordan?” Connor asked with a bite in his voice.

Jordan
watched as the pygmies, still racing toward them, repeated the spitting, the
windup, and the pitch. This time, fireballs rained down around them.

“Yeah, this
looks like an attack. We should probably try to deter them.”

“Warning
shots,” Connor commanded.

Connor, Gin,
and Ben raised their guns to fire a shot above the pygmies’ heads, with no
appreciable effect.

“Nagano, try
your stars,” Connor said. “We’ll see if we can turn them back without shooting
them.”

Trent
exchanged his sidearm for a stack of throwing stars. He could aim to injure
without causing as much damage as a bullet.

He blurred
into motion, shooting three stars at three different targets in the space of a
breath. He hit all three, grazing an ankle, an arm, and a thigh. The injured
pygmies shrieked like birds, but didn’t even break stride. The others took up
the cry.

“I still
don’t think we should kill them!” Jordan shouted over the screeching. “We need
access to any technology or medicine lore they have.”

Another
salvo of fireballs rained down, and Ben ducked and held up an arm to block one
from hitting his face. The fire splashed onto his sleeve, but instead of going
out, it clung like tar and began to spread.

Connor aimed
at the nearest pygmy. “Shoot to wound.”

Liv, Gin,
Connor, Jordan, and Trent fired one shot apiece into the shrieking horde. Ben
was busy beating his arm against his pant leg, which also caught fire. Their
shots struck targets in the arm, leg, or shoulder, but nothing changed except
the volume of the pygmies’ shrieks.

Another
round of fireballs rained down.

Liv called,
“Ben, heads up,” since he was still attempting to quench his sleeve instead of
watching the sky. The team dodged the raining fireballs, but barely.

“Sir, either
we get out of here or we kill them,” Trent called.

“Fall back,”
Connor said.

They ducked
more fireballs as they retreated. The pygmies overtook and completely
surrounded them, dancing in a circle that flickered with the flames they held
in their hands.

“Think
they’ve seen
X-Men
? This is the best
Pyro impression I’ve ever seen!” Ben yelled, still beating at his burning
sleeve and pant leg. Gin tried to help by beating his sleeve with her jacket,
but it caught fire too and she discarded it.

“We need to
get out of here!” Gin shouted as fire splashed up from the ground and caught
her pant leg.

“I thought
that like, five minutes ago!” Ben yelled.

Connor’s
eyes fixed on Ben’s burning pant leg. He said clearly but quickly, “Safe World
on my mark, one-two-three-mark!”

Liv reached
for nothingness and swirled into the space between worlds. She reappeared in
their Safe World, Q-435G, just before Connor popped into existence next to her.

She looked
around and saw a red sand plain. That was pretty much what they saw here no
matter where they Traveled from—the whole world was a post-apocalypse
desert. The hot air was breathable, barely, thanks to surviving microorganisms,
but there was no human or animal life. Safe World served as a buffer to ensure
that no one followed them from a hostile world to one where people lived, or to
Home World, which would be even worse.

As they
arrived, Ben attempted a jaunty grin that looked a bit sick as he peered
through the charred hole in his pant leg to the reddened flesh underneath. His
voice wasn’t entirely steady as he said, “Oh good, it turns out fire is one of
those things that doesn’t Travel. I wondered.”

Liv’s heart
dropped when she saw the damage to his clothes, and she immediately moved to
look him over.

Connor
joined her as she inspected Ben’s missing pant leg and the red hairless skin
beneath. She held out Ben’s blackened arm, trying to see beneath the soot so
they could see how badly he was wounded.

“Here, let
me,” Connor said. He soaked his jacket sleeve with his canteen and gently wiped
Ben’s arm. The skin came clean.

Liv breathed
a sigh of relief. “You were lucky. Your skin is barely singed.”

Connor
walked over to Gin, who also sported blackened pants, but she waved him away. “It
didn’t get to the skin.”

“Everyone
else okay?” Connor asked.

The team
responded with variations of yes.

A thought
struck Liv, and she glanced up at Ben’s face. “You know why this soot Traveled
with you?”

Ben shook
his head mutely, and she frowned at him. Ben was hardly ever at a loss for
words.

“I totally
wondered,” Gin said, laying the sarcasm on thick, her usual method of dealing
with fear for a teammate.

“Your hair
and skin singed. The Travel Authority decided the soot belonged to you.”

“That is so
good to know,” Gin said with a scowl at her own blackened clothes.

Liv smiled
at her and looked back at Ben. “You sure you’re okay?”

He appeared
to unlock his tongue. “Yeah. It was weird, though—I couldn’t beat the
fire out, and I couldn’t brush it off. It was like it was sticky or something.”

As Liv
stepped away, Jordan said, “I think it
was
sticky. When it hit the
ground, it splashed like liquid before going out against those lichens.”

Trent turned
to Liv. “How do you think that fire worked?”

“I don’t know.
We’d need to test their spit to be sure.”

Gin
grimaced. “Awesome. Who wants to ask them to stand still and open wide?”

Jordan said,
“I wish we could. That’s the only way to tell what it was and how it evolved.”

“We can go
back and see if there’s any left on the lichens in that area,” Liv said.

“They sure
pelted enough of it down on the ground,” Ben said.

Trent asked,
“How could humans evolve to spit fire?”

Jordan shrugged.
“They were certainly humanoid, but it’s impossible to say if they were human.
We’d need their cooperation to run DNA testing, and I don’t think we’re going
to get that anytime soon.”

“Maybe there
will be DNA in their saliva,” Liv said.

“Why did
they attack in the first place?” Trent asked.

“Impossible
to say,” Jordan answered. “They could have been protecting their territory. They
could have been responding to a perceived threat. Hell, they could have been
protecting the tree Liv sampled.”

“Speaking of
which,” Liv said. She pulled out the scanners and read the results.

“Anything?”
Connor asked.

“It’s an
organic life form. No known toxins, no known medicinal chemicals. I’ll give it
to R & D when we get back, see what they think.”

Connor nodded
and looked around at the barren sand plain. “I think we’re safe, kids. Doesn’t
look like they’re going to follow. We’ll wait an hour, go back with sample test
gear—we’ve got the gear we need?”

Liv nodded.

Connor
continued, “And we’ll look for samples before we call this a complete
disaster.”

The team
made themselves as comfortable as possible on the rock plain.

“How about a
riddle, Jordan?” Gin asked with an innocent smile.

Jordan’s
original education had been as a historian, and his area of expertise was the
Middle Ages when riddling was considered a serious competition. He collected
riddles and often told them to pass the time.

He thought
for a moment. “What cheese is made backwards?”

Liv happily
turned her brain from DNA to riddles.

After what
seemed only minutes, Connor glanced at his watch. “Time for a return trip.”

Liv stood
and stretched the stiffness out of her back.

“You just
don’t want me to beat you.” Gin scowled at Connor as she rose to her feet. “I’m
only two behind.”

“I wasn’t
counting.”

“I was.”

“I know.”
Connor gave her a rare grin. “On my mark. One, two, three, mark.”

They materialized
to find the scene of their attack as empty as when they’d first arrived. To
Liv, that didn’t necessarily bode well.

“All right,
fan out,” Connor said. “See if you can find any spit to test.”

The team
complied, taking slow deliberate steps, watching the ground in front of them.

After a
minute, Gin called, “Over here.” As they got nearer, she continued, “I’m
betting this is where we were attacked. It’s like heaps of rubber cement all
over the ground.”

“Don’t touch
it,” Liv warned as she crouched to look.

“Don’t
worry,” Gin said. “I’ve never wanted anything on my hands less.”

Connor, Ben,
and Gin took up defensive positions as Liv took a sample stick from a container
in her pocket. She peeled some of the gluey greenish-white material off of the
ground. “I’m going to have to melt this so it won’t gum up the scanner.”

She swiped
the glue off the stick into a sample tube of solution for the protein scanner, then
tipped the mixture into the test well. Trent and Jordan watched with interest
as the screen displayed a countdown to test results.

Liv prepared
samples for the other scanners to test for pH, DNA, and molecular analysis,
along with the mass spec. When the results appeared on the protein scanner,
Jordan and Liv looked at them in puzzlement.

“It’s…reptilian,”
Liv said.

“They
weren’t even mammals,” Jordan said with equal surprise.

Gin said in
a stage whisper, “Um, guys? We’ve got company.”

Liv glanced
at her and followed her line of sight. She had expected something unusual, but
she hadn’t expected this.