Authors: Selene Edwards
“Hold on, hold on!” she told him frantically, tearing off his helmet and pulling off one of her gloves. His face was pale and his breathing labored. She touched her hand to his skin.
She had nowhere near Sariel’s practice with this type of thing, but she had been able to help Kronn at the ESI base and knew her Demon had at least some experience with it. Its powers, weakened though they were, still coursed through him, bolstering his body against the pain and working to repair the damage. Almost as an afterthought, she reached down and slid the shrapnel free of the wound and did her best to dull the pain.
Shyrah barely noticed the movement next to her until Jarvis was nearly standing on top of her. His armor was also scorched in a few places, but he seemed mostly fine.
“Shit,” the man breathed. “Kid took it for me.”
“Not on purpose,” Corin muttered.
Shyrah smiled down at her old friend and rubbed her hand across his two-day stubble. The color had mostly returned to his face. There wasn’t much else she could do, but the wound was closed and she knew he didn’t have any significant internal bleeding.
“I told you to stay back,” she mock-scolded. “You got lucky.”
Jarvis leaned down next to them and gestured off to the side with his rifle. “Caroline’s dead.”
She followed his gaze to the door and the body sprawled next to it. Three left out of ten, and they still weren’t finished…
“One of the Chosen is wounded but still alive,” Jarvis added.
She held her hand reassuringly against Corin for another few seconds before standing and walking over towards the center terminal. A short, wide-faced man clutched at a wound on his side from the ground next to it.
“He’s not a Chosen,” she said. “I’d recognize a lackey anywhere.”
“It’s over,” the man sneered in a nasally voice. He looked about as imposing as Corin on a bad day, but she knew well how deceiving appearances could be.
“Your men are dead, and Elassian Security will tear this place apart soon,” Shyrah told him. “We can leave you to them, but first I want to have a look and see what you have here.”
The man snorted. “It doesn’t matter, Demon. Your time will come, one way or another.”
“Right, well, in the meantime, how about you tell us where your boss is?”
He smiled thinly. “He is with the Betrayer. Soon he will be taking her back to the temple where she can be cleansed.”
“Betrayer, huh?” she grunted. She eyed Jarvis meaningfully, and he moved over to the active computer terminal and pulled out some data sticks. Hopefully its memory drives hadn’t been damaged.
“You know well of her sins, I’m sure,” he said. “And how she has twisted your mind to fight on her behalf. You are a thrall, Demon, and you don’t even see it.”
Shyrah shook her head. “So you’re the real deal, huh? The True Believer.”
“Mock me if you wish, heretic,” he coughed. “The Lord will pass his judgment upon you.”
“Maybe,” she said, turning to Jarvis. “Anything?”
“There’s a lot here, but there’s no way to know if it’s valuable or not,” he replied. “I figure I’ll take it all and sort it out later.
“The choppers are already out there,” Corin said from the ground, slowly bringing himself up on an elbow. “We’re out of time.”
“Download what you can, then make a break for it,” she told them. “With luck the skyway is still open and we can get out through the other tower.”
“Wait, what are you going to do?” Corin asked.
“I’m going to find Sara and Damien,” she said, her eyes flicking back to the Covenant man. “And hopefully what’s left of his Angel.”
“My lord will crush them,” the man said, his eyes wide.
“We’ll see.” She turned to Jarvis. “Tie him up and leave him for ESI. I’m sure they’ll have fun with him.”
Shyrah walked over to Corin and helped him stand. “I need you to focus and get out of here.”
“I can come with you, just give me a second to—”
“No,” she told him flatly. “Go.”
He eyed her wearily. “You should come with us while there’s still time.”
“I can still help them. Maybe. I have to try, anyway.”
He grunted. “I think maybe that’s your alien talking. The Shy I know would have never come on this mission to begin with.”
She smiled tiredly. “Yeah, well, complain about it later. Now get moving before I start kicking you.”
Corin brought himself fully to his feet and nodded slowly. “All right. Just don’t do anything exceptionally stupid.”
“No promises.”
Taking a deep breath, she retrieved her rifle and bolted across the room. With luck, maybe she could catch up to them before Marivean found them. Or at the very least, get there to help before it was too late. If not…
Well, she was a heretic. Today seemed as good a day as any to kill an Angel.
***
From the moment he and Sariel had designed this plan, Damien had known it wasn’t going to be easy. Only days ago he had nearly been overwhelmed reaching into her mind, and he suspected Marivean’s would be even more resilient regardless of the battle going on around him.
He had been right.
The Angel was powerful and his mind disciplined. He swatted away Damien’s advances like a master swordsman casually parrying his opponent’s thrusts. Sariel was doing everything she could to distract him, and it was obvious the effort was harming her. Crimson tears poured down her face, and Damien had to force himself to keep his concentration on Marivean and not leap over to help her. There was nothing he could do anyway; the only way out of this was to breach Marivean’s mental defenses and get the information they needed. And that was exactly what he was going to do.
Damien thrust again, even harder this time, but Marivean’s mind still held. He tried again and again, but the results were always the same. He could feel Sariel visibly shaking now and forced himself not to panic. There had to be something he was missing, some trick to let him slip inside—
“No!” Marivean roared, and with a thundering mental shriek, he hurled both of his attackers aside. Damien stumbled backwards, his connection snapping when he lost physical contact, and Sariel collapsed limply to the ground. Damien tried to leap back and grab hold once more, but this time the Angel was ready for him, and that meant he didn’t stand a chance.
The Incubus lifted from the ground and slammed hard into the wall ten meters behind him. The air left his lungs and he choked wildly. He expected to hit the ground just as hard, but Marivean didn’t release his telekinetic grip.
“You impudent wretch!” the man hissed, walking forward towards the Demon. The glow from his body was nearly blinding, and his dark eyes smoldered with rage. “You really thought you could defeat me? You, a sniveling little whore?”
Damien’s body jerked off the wall a few meters and then slammed back into it. He heard a snap in his chest and still couldn’t find a single breath.
“She has led you all to your deaths, don’t you understand?” Marivean sneered. “She poisons your mind and corrupts your soul. She has twisted you around her finger, and for that weakness alone you shall die.”
Damien expected to be hurled across the room or have his bones shattered where he hung. Instead, the mental blast shrieked inside his skull again, and it felt as if his brain itself were on fire. Throughout his life he had always been the one on the offensive, the one spinning illusions and breaching barriers. He had never felt another claw into his mind so deeply or so easily.
He had known coming here would be dangerous. A part of him had even accepted that there would be pain and perhaps even death. But nothing could have prepared him for the agony searing in his thoughts or the raw power of the man holding him at his mercy. For perhaps the first time in his life, Damien truly felt fear.
He screamed soundlessly, unable to even grasp his own throat. His gaze fell to Sariel, still lying insensate on the ground, perhaps already dead, and he wished more than anything he could whisk her to safety. But in the end, he wasn’t a hero; he was just a whore. And that was how he was going to die.
Just as his vision started to go black, Sariel struck. She pounced upwards from the floor like a starved jungle cat—one instant she had been an unconscious ball, and in the next she was tackling him. Marivean’s mental grip broke, and Damien collapsed from the ceiling. He hit the ground hard and he may have even lost consciousness for a few seconds, but suddenly the air returned to his lungs and his vision cleared. His head still burned, but he managed to pull himself up over a desk to see what was happening.
The glow in the room was nearly blinding as the two Angels wrestled. As powerful as Marivean may have been mentally, physically his body was still that of an aging man, while Sariel was fit and in her prime. They clutched at each other’s throats, their battle of supernatural power reduced to little more than a frantic melee.
Damien crawled forward, though he wasn’t sure what he could do to help. There was no way he could summon his powers in this condition, and he wasn’t even sure he could make it over to them…
The answer was less than five meters away, nearly buried beneath some overturned furniture. He just had to summon the strength to reach it in time.
“Betrayer!” Marivean hissed. His arms flexed and he pried Sariel from him, using his superior reach to keep her away. She flailed wildly as he crushed the life out of her, trying desperately to get a grip on him…
With the last bit of his strength, Damien lunged for the forgotten pistol and swept it into his hand in a single motion. Even as fire scorched his lungs and a hammer pounded in his skull, he leveled the weapon towards Marivean and fired.
The shot struck the Angel cleanly in the center of his chest. He managed a gargled scream as he toppled over, and Sariel tumbled away from him, desperately gasping for air.
Two shots later, the room fell silent.
Damien’s aim faltered and he collapsed. Whatever adrenaline had gotten him this far was spent, and he could do little more than draw weak, wheezing breaths.
It was over. But not just for Marivean—without his knowledge, Sariel was doomed. All of them were. They had bought themselves some time, perhaps, but little else. And Damien knew he didn’t even have much of that left. His eyelids fluttered closed and the darkness washed over him—
And then Sariel was there at his side, her hands pressing against his face. Energy flowed though the spark between them, a brimming conduit of life and hope. The fire in his skull burned out, and the pressure in his chest slowly faded.
His eyes opened and he looked upon her. She smiled widely, and a pair of crystal blue eyes looked down upon him.
“Damien…”
“I’m sorry,” he managed.
“Sorry? Why?”
“Without him, there’s—”
She shook her head and squeezed his arm. “It’s gone, Damien. It’s finally gone.”
“Gone? What? How?”
“It’s gone,” she repeated, and leaned forward to kiss him.
Air surged into his lungs, and all that remained of his pain was swept away at the touch of her lips. Memories flooded over him, and he suddenly understood. It was all there in her mind, every dark secret about the Covenant. She understood it all, and they finally had the weapon they had been looking for.
She squeezed him against her, and her power coursed between them. But this time it was different. She was different. He could feel the clarity in her mind and tranquility in her heart. For the first time since he had met her, she was herself again. A Demon, but also a human being. A true symbiosis of life, and perhaps even a vision of the future.
A perfect Angel. His perfect Angel.
Epilogue
The red-headed woman stepped out of the hotel and flashed the doorman a warm but forced smile as she started off down the street. Her red silken dress managed to be both elegant and sexy at the same time, and she walked with an almost regal grace despite the height of her shoes. Even in the relative safety of the high-class section of Louvette, few women would be seen out at night alone like this walking down the street. But then, she wasn’t exactly helpless, and more importantly, she didn’t have far to go.
Damien slid from his perch in the alleyway shadows and fell into step behind her. His shoes were virtually silent compared to the rhythmic clicking of her heels, but he knew she was aware of his presence, if not his identity.
A minute later she turned the corner, now only a block from her final destination, a tall, spiraling tower whose lights never seemed to dim. Damien followed, knowing full well what was about to happen.
The moment he turned the corner she was already leaping at him. It wasn’t much, just a quick lunge to grab onto his skin and overload his mind with an empathic jolt, but the moment their skin touched, he felt recognition flare in her mind—and then her face as she looked up at him.
“Damien?”
“Hello, Vala,” he said with a smile, reaching down and grabbing her other hand. It was as soft as ever, and he allowed himself a moment to drink in her presence—the quiet desperation of her life as a slave, the frantic confusion as she looked upon him, and then the relief she felt at seeing him again.
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. I figured you’d be heading this way sooner or later.”
“What…?” she shook her head. “What happened? Why are you here?”
“Fulfilling a promise,” he told her. “It’s time to get you out of here.”
She looked up at him breathlessly. Through their bond she could feel his sincerity, of course, but that wouldn’t dull the shock of the moment.
“Damien, I…”
“I know,” he said, squeezing her hands. “It will take awhile to explain, but everything’s about to change.”
“You met these Asurans? Is that it?”
He smiled widely. “You could say that. Now we’re here, and we’re going to get you away—from the Agency, from the Covenant, from everything. You don’t have to live this life.”
She glanced around frantically, as if expecting something to leap from the shadows. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“You know I am,” he said, trying to reassure her as much as he could through their bond. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not anymore.”
“So what…what do you want me to do?”
“Right now you should return to your room. Take this with you.” He handed her a data stick. “Use it on any machine you want—the more people read it, the better. When your first appointment comes tomorrow, I’ll be there to pick you up.”
She reached out and tentatively took the stick from him. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he assured her. “We’ll get the others soon, and the Agency won’t have any clout for long. And neither will the Covenant.”
Vala twirled the stick in her hand and slowly shook her head. “Damien, I want to believe you, but…”
“Just read it. Everything will start to make a lot more sense.” He leaned in and kissed her, the tingle of her lips a familiar but long-forgotten comfort. “Go on, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She nodded idly and stared down at the stick for a few seconds. Finally she flashed him a smile as she turned and almost skipped away. Damien watched her go, recalling all the times he had made the trip from that hotel or nearby restaurant back up the tower. He remembered the last time he had seen her, the day before he was going to try and make a new life for himself.
It had barely been over a month, but it felt like a different lifetime. He felt like a different man. In many ways, he decided, he really was.
“You think she’ll read it?”
He smiled, half turning to the nearby alley where the voice had come from. “She will, and I think the others will too, eventually.”
“And you’re sure the Agency won’t punish them for having it?”
“No, certainly not before we make our move.”
The voice emerged from the shadows, a raven-haired woman with bright blue eyes and a smile he couldn’t imagine living without. She took his hand, and the spark between them came to life as it always did, as powerful as it had been that first night she had saved his life and as addicting as the first night they had made love.
Sara smiled and kissed him softly. “It must feel odd coming home like this.”
He shrugged. “In a way. I knew I’d be back, but I don’t think I really knew how it would happen. It can’t be that different for you.”
She glanced about the mostly empty streets and up to the pale luminescence of the clear sky. “I almost never left the temple. This doesn’t even feel like home.”
“It will soon enough,” he soothed. It would have to. After their attack on Marivean, they had all known the Asuran’s time there was over. Without Kronn, there was no way they could fend off both ESI and the Covenant. And besides, the secrets Sara had pulled from Marivean’s mind were of far more use here in the lion’s den itself. Freeing the Agency’s slaves was only the first step of many, but he looked forward to it.
“Shyrah’s still not convinced ESI won’t follow us here,” she said, holding his hand tightly.
“They’ll send their spies, certainly, but we can handle them. By now I wouldn’t be surprised if the Elassian Prime Minster and most of his senior staff know what’s really going on. Soon enough word will get out, and they’ll have a lot more to worry about than a few renegade Demons.”
She nodded, and he ran a hand through her dark hair. It hadn’t all turned black on its own yet, of course, but she had dyed the rest. There was no reason to make it any easier for their enemies to find them, and besides, in a few months all would be back to normal. They were partners with the creatures inside them now, not slaves or captors. In time, those relationships would expand, and they could even teach other Demon hosts to do the same.
He had come to hate that word. Angels, Demons—they were all just Covenant labels with no real meaning. They were all bonded humans, both to the creature inside them and to each other. Eventually everyone would come to understand and embrace that. Or so he hoped. It would be a long and probably dark road to get there, but he was more willing than ever to walk it.
But that was the future. In the present, there was only one being he wanted to be with, and he leaned down and kissed her lips. With all they had learned so much about the Covenant and its fraudulent Angels, it seemed impossible to believe a divine hand had a part in any of this. Maybe it didn’t. But he still saw an Angel anytime he looked upon her face.
“We should let the others know what’s going on,” she told him.
“We should,” he agreed.
She smiled and pulled out her phone to send a quick text message. “I told Shyrah and Corin to meet us back at the safehouse in an hour, but that you dropped off your message.”
“An hour?” he asked. “It will only take ten minutes tops.”
“I know,” she said, an implish smile on her lips. “But didn’t you say this hotel was a nice place?”
He smiled back at her. “It is, but it’s pretty expensive.”
“We’ll figure something out,” she told him, dragging him along with her.
Damien laughed and threw her into his arms. She gasped and then giggled as he carried her along.
Perhaps she wasn’t an Angel after all. And really, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
***
Shyrah had once heard someone say that a mirror never lied. She’d never had much use for them personally. Looking into them just reminded her of things she would rather forget. But right now she actually liked what she saw, and it even made her smile.
Her hair was an untied mess and even a little sweaty at the roots, but her eyes were sharp and powerful. And most importantly, the scar on her cheek—the one that had marked her betrayal of the Syndicate—was gone. Her Demon’s regenerative powers were easily up to the challenge once she knew how to command them.
Perhaps it was a symbol of a fresh start. Or perhaps that was just a silly way to rationalize that she finally had a reason to care about being something other than a hard-assed bitch. Either way, for the first time in her life, the future didn’t really look so bad.
“You look beautiful,” Corin said from below her.
“I thought you were tired.”
“It passed.”
She laughed and dragged her fingers across his bare chest. They were in her room in their new safe-house in Louvette, a small but cozy place she was already growing to like. And for now, at least, they weren’t worried about getting flushed out into the open. That time would come, but for now she just wanted to enjoy the stability. And the man in her bed, of course.
“I mean it, though,” he told her. “Maybe you should leave it down more often.”
“We’ll see,” she grunted.
He ran a hand along her leg. “You know, I’ve been wondering something.”
“What’s that?”
“You never told the others about Kronn. Why not?”
She sighed. “I’m not even sure what all he did. We never really had the chance to find out.”
“But he was an ESI spy.”
“Maybe more than that,” she said. “I wondered if maybe the Asurrans were their idea all along.”
“That’s a disturbing though, but I guess it would make sense,” he admitted. “A great way to learn about Demons and hassle your enemies at the same time, all without the drawbacks of politics.”
She nodded. “If that is the case…I don’t really know what to think. He cared about us, for whatever that’s worth, and he did a lot of good for a lot of people.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter now.”
Her phone beeped on the nightstand, and she stretched out to grab it.
“Damien and Sara?”
“Yeah. They say they need another hour.”
“An hour? What the hell are they up to?”
She shrugged and tossed the phone onto the pile of clothes on the floor. “Who knows. Probably found a dark alley where they can jump each other.”
He smiled. “You know, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”
“Don’t get cocky,” she mock-scolded. “I think that’s still a bit advanced for you.”
“Hey, that’s not very nice.”
“Yeah, well, you knew what you were signing up for,” she said, smacking him gently and shifting her leg to straddle him again.
He grinned sheepishly, but it slowly faded as he ran his hands along her thighs. “You know, I…I never really had the chance to tell you…”
She cocked an eyebrow. This was going to be good. “Tell me what?”
“How I felt.”
“Oh, God,” she muttered. “If you break into a poem I will hit you. Hard.”
“It’s just…you know, we’ve been—”
“Look, first lesson of the day, never tell a woman you just slept with for the first time that you love her,” she told him. “It just makes you look pathetic.”
“But I do love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you for…years, and I just never—”
Shyrah leaned forward and placed a hand over his mouth. “Second lesson of the day: there’s no reason to ruin a good thing by talking about it.”
He made an odd face, and she laughed. She glanced again to her reflection, and this time she liked it even more. After a moment she leaned down to his ear.
“You’ll like the third lesson a lot better,” she whispered.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, gently guiding him back inside her. “I love you too.”
He made that same adorable face he had twenty minutes earlier, and she leaned down to kiss him. Soon enough, he’d figure it out. He was a clever man, after all. Together they had survived one life as slaves and another as terrorists. How hard could be to survive another as heroes?
She couldn’t wait to find out.