A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (19 page)

“If you could control them, we would not have to fear them,” a man at
Polly’s side said.

Liv shook her head. “I’m sorry, but it won’t work. I have a very limited
number of shots. If even half of the demons who came through the Rift survived,
I have no way to get to them all, even assuming they would stand docilely in
line while I went from one to the next and reprogrammed their brains.”

Polly drooped. “It is futile, then.”

“They’re stuck here on a strange world,” Jordan said. “Maybe you should try
to open up communication. Trade with them.”

Polly’s eyes grew wide. “We are not so foolish!”

Jordan shrugged. “They haven’t attacked you. How do you know they aren’t
willing? Their need must be getting desperate after weeks of living hand to
mouth in unknown terrain. Trade with them.”

Now she looked dubious. “How would we go about doing that?”

“I speak their language. I’d be happy to help you broker a deal.”

“Later, Jordan,” Connor said. “One mission at a time.”

“Right. I’ll come back,” Jordan promised. He held his hands out at Trent’s
and Connor’s incredulous looks. “What? This is a unique situation. They’re trapped
here. They might be open to peaceful trade.”

“Probably less so if we go in there and do something to their brains,” Liv
said.

“So let’s do what Elachai did to you,” Jordan proposed. “Catch one on its
own and make it forget it saw us.”

“I did include a memory setting on the device for that reason.”

“Brain ray,” Ben said.

“It’s a plan,” Connor said. “We’ll go now, if you have no objections.”

“Yes. Of course.”

Jordan said, “Think about the deal. What would you trade if you could?”

Polly only gave him a troubled look, watching as they filed back out.

*
         
*
         
*

They headed back to Home World, grabbed a ride with the Soccer Mom that had
brought them, and took it twenty miles to the west, where Mallet had indicated
the demons were. Then they Traveled back to Demon Rift.

“Looks like we’re in the right place,” Trent said as he looked around.

Liv ascertained her own surroundings per Rule One, and found herself in wet,
damp forest and rocky, hilly terrain.

“All right, Jordan,” Connor said. “Find us a demon.”

Liv said, “How is he supposed to track anything in this?” The wet ground
would wash away any trace, and the moss that covered everything would carry no
footprints.

Jordan just smiled. “Oh ye of little faith.”

He started out confidently but aimlessly, Liv right behind him and the team
trailing her. Within minutes, he started to move more purposefully, in more or
less a straight line. A short walk later, he held up a hand to halt them and
motioned Liv forward. He pointed, and she stared hard at the indicated place. All
she saw was a rock outcropping liberally splashed with gray and green lichens,
set into the middle of a copse of sapling trees.

Jordan moved his hand, tracing a shape in the air, and Liv realized he was
giving her the outline of wings. It was as if the demon appeared from nowhere,
one minute hidden, the next second visible. Liv held up a finger and raised an
eyebrow.
Only one?

Jordan nodded.

She took a deep breath, pointed the brain ray, and fired. When it beeped,
she said, “Demon!”

It jumped to its feet with the scary quickness they possessed, and now its
wings were visible above the rock, silhouetted against the sky with the wing
joint six feet above their heads. She rushed on before it could attack them. “You
will not see us or hear us while we are here, and then you will forget. You
will allow us to pass out of your mind as if we were never here.”

“Is that going to work if they don’t speak English?” Ben asked.

Liv looked to Jordan, who repeated her words in their language.

The demon peered around suspiciously, looked right at Liv, and sat back
down.

She motioned Jordan to cover her and walked cautiously into the open,
scrutinizing the demon for any sign of imminent attack, holding the brain ray
on it just in case. Jordan’s two unwavering guns gave her more courage than the
brain ray.

The demon sat unconcernedly, peering around as if on watch, which it
probably was.

Liv fought the urge to squeal and jump up and down, although she sort of
wanted to test that and see if the demon noticed. There might be others nearby
who weren’t so oblivious. She also wondered how long the effect would last, but
because of the likelihood of those others, they had decided this would be a
five-minute trial.

The whole team was walking around the copse now, the demon oblivious to them
all. “It works!” Liv said as she caught Jordan’s eye.

A branch snapped to her left, and she and her teammates dropped to a crouch,
weapons pointed at the sound. Liv glanced at Connor, who gave them a ‘fade
back’ signal. She found a mossy tree stump behind her, and crept behind it.

The demon by the rock—now just to her right—said something that
sounded like, “Beswarch.”

A similar growling voice answered, “Rragmochan,” and its owner crunched out
of the trees. The first demon stood, stretched, and grumbled. The second demon
took its place, and the first headed off in the direction the second had come
from.

Great. Changing of the guard.

Before the new demon could settle down and start listening, Connor poked his
head out from behind a boulder. He gave the signal for ‘Safe World.’

Liv glanced to her right. The demon was screened from her by some thin
saplings, which meant, she fervently hoped, that she was also screened from it.

Connor held up his hand, three fingers raised. He dropped one, then another,
then made a fist. Liv reached for the space between worlds and vanished into
it.

“It worked!” Liv crowed. She had already indulged in her happy dance in Safe
World, so she contained herself to a small chair bounce.

General Mace was just sitting down in his chair and looked up with a
surprised expression. Then he frowned at her.

Liv had expected him to be pleased. Swallowing her irritation, she sat up
straighter and started again. “The trial was a complete success.”

Connor recited the details of the mission as the general frowned at the
table.

Gin said, “So this means we can go to Hell, correct?”

General Mace turned his frown on her.

Of course. He didn’t want to authorize that mission. He’d been hoping her
brain ray wouldn’t work. Of all the nerve!

The general said heavily, “If the device worked, the Joint Chiefs have
ordered me to allow you to Travel to Hell, with the express and singular
mission of meeting with Woolfe, using the device on him, and forcing him to
stop his plans to attack Home World, along with the other conquests he’s
planning. We have very little intel to work from, so reconnaissance first. But
they would like this problem dealt with ASAP. Therefore, if you—” he
looked at Connor, “—feel that the mission is a go, you may take it. Neutralize
Woolfe without killing him, and rescue Elachai’s family. But only if it is
tactically the best option. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Trent and Connor said, almost in unison.

“Crystal,” Ben said, and Liv muttered a “Yes” along with the others.

“You’ll leave tomorrow at 0900 hours. Dr. Greenwood, I suggest you think
about what you’re going to say to Woolfe. Make sure you cover the bases and
leave no loopholes.”

“I’ll help her, sir,” Jordan said.

“Good. Dismissed.”

*
         
*
         
*

At 0900 hours the next morning, the team met again in the briefing room. Jordan
and Liv had come up with an elegant and loophole-less order for the Wolf. She
tried to swallow the angry swarm that attacked her stomach every time she
thought of the Wolf. She hadn’t seen him since she’d observed his execution by
lethal injection.

What a strange world we live in,
she thought as the oddity hit her. In any case, it was her reality. She knew it
was going to be hard to look into those dead shark’s eyes again and think of
her failure to stop him at the beach. Although he had eventually been stopped,
each child he’d killed in that schoolyard was an arrow in her heart.

She took a deep breath and pushed it all down in her mind. A touch on her
shoulder startled her, and she turned to see Jordan at her side.

“You okay?”

She smiled. “Fine.”

He gave her a skeptical look, but his reply was interrupted by General
Mace’s arrival. The general sat immediately and they all followed suit.

“Are there any final points to cover?” he asked without preamble.

There weren’t.

“Then you will Travel to H-666X—Hell. The jump team deemed it safe. You
will gather intelligence and report back. If Commander Bryant and I deem it
feasible, you will complete the mission. You will neutralize Woolfe, release
Elachai’s family only if possible, and get out. Avoid capture at all costs. The
last thing we need is to give Woolfe more intel on Home World, especially its
technology.” He gave them a hard look.

Connor held up his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m all for nothing going
wrong.”

“All right. Anything else?”

There wasn’t.

“Then good luck and God speed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Connor said as he stood. He jerked his head toward the
door, motioning his team to follow.

Liv trailed behind him to the armory, where she grabbed her usual ordinance:
bulletproof flak jacket in DEPOT gray-green-brown sage camo, tools and gauges
she’d need to assess conditions in Hell, her STI Sentinel Premier, her Sig Sauer
P238 clutch piece, her standard issue seven-inch belt knife, and her three-inch
boot knife.

They were also still on testing detail for the Fluffy Bunny wildfyre
grenades, so when Connor handed her two, she took them with a sigh and jammed
them into a flak vest pocket. She still didn’t like them—she felt like
they might spontaneously combust her.

Finally, she secured the brain ray in a belt loop and followed Connor to the
Hangar.

Half an hour later, they landed in the jungle near the pyramids at
Teotihuacán. The SM pilot would wait for them there.

Liv strained for a glimpse of the famous pyramids as they stepped through
the dense foliage surrounding the site. The sun was bright but a mist hung in
the air, dulling colors and fading edges. They made their way to a small rise,
and the haze gave way to dripping water that fell from every stick, leaf, and
vine.

Connor waited until everyone had clustered together. “Safe World on mark. One,
two, three, mark.”

Liv watched Connor’s solid form until she blinked through the space between
worlds and opened her eyes on Safe World’s sere sand plain. The dry air sucked
the moisture from her clothes almost instantly, and the first breath she took
seared her throat.

She looked around and found the tiger-shaped rock formation directly behind
her.

When Connor arrived, he judged their distance from the rock. “We’ll just get
a little farther away, so we don’t pop into rush hour traffic.”

When they reached a point about a kilometer distant from their landmark,
Connor signaled a halt. “Hell on mark. One, two, three, mark.”

Liv wasn’t sure if she was nervous or excited to be the first to explore
Hell, confront the Wolf, stop the demons. She exhaled against the butterflies,
blinked, and opened her eyes on an empty red plain soaked in smoky haze. If the
city really was at the tiger-rock’s location, she couldn’t see it. Her first
breath brought her a taste of burnt metal and sulfur. It was like breathing in
a rusting sewage tank.
Lovely.
The
second breath didn’t taste better, and neither did the third. The hot, hazy air
clung to her like something more dense, as if she stood in a warm pool with
water sucking up against her body.

She looked around while she pulled out her air gauges and Jordan, Trent,
Ben, and Gin formed a defensive perimeter. They stood on a rise surrounded by a
red sand plain with burgundy-colored rock formations curling out of the ground
like huge snakes, making natural corridors and twisting paths through the
landscape.
MacPhisto’s Maze
, she
thought. She loved eighties rock and U2 had always been one of her favorites. Too
bad they weren’t going to meet Bono’s devil persona instead of Woolfe.

Clouds covered the sky, reflecting a glow of fire in the west. The weird
thick air blocked only some of the light spectrum, giving everything a dim
yellow cast. With the burgundy rock and yellow light it was like standing
inside of a fading bruise.

As Connor materialized and assessed their surroundings, she reported. “Quite
a lot of sulfur, only eighteen percent oxygen instead of twenty-one, but
otherwise comparable composition to Home World atmosphere. No toxins. Radiation
levels low, except for ultraviolet. Must be a hole in the ozone layer.”

“Anything dangerous?” Connor asked.

“No.”

“All right.” Connor turned to the others. “Anybody see anything?”

“No, sir,” Ben said, and the other three echoed him.

Liv tucked the tiny gauges back into their various pockets as Connor turned
to Ben. “Reconnaissance.”

Ben smiled. “Yes, sir.”

He took a small package out of his fatigue pocket and began to unfold and
assemble it. When he was done, he held a small silver plane with the same dull
sheen as the SM jets. He took a remote control with a viewing screen from
another pocket and pressed a button. The plane began to vibrate but didn’t make
a sound. Ben threw it into the air and they watched it float silently away.
Then it vanished.

Ben grinned. “Ahhh. I love this new spy plane.”

“Are you sure it’s completely undetectable?” Gin asked.

“Undetectable by the five senses or radar.” Ben sounded as proud as if he’d
made it himself. To be fair, he had had quite a bit to do with its development.

Liv looked over Ben’s shoulder, watching the viewing screen as he worked the
controls. Before long, a group of buildings shimmered into view like a mirage
on the horizon. But as the spy plane drifted closer, Liv saw the depressing
reality. The city was an ugly heap of squat cubes made of flat gray sheet metal
dusted with burgundy sand. Windows were unadorned square holes like blank eyes
searching the streets for intruders. The streets themselves were straight and
even, but paved only in red sand. A few demons scurried back and forth through
the dust.

“There.” Connor pointed. “That’s our way in.” The screen showed a street
that dead-ended in a burgundy stone wall—the edge of the maze.

Jordan glanced at the screen. “Where are all the demons?”

“What do you mean?” Connor asked.

“Don’t you think there should be more demons out on the streets?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

Jordan nodded. “Yes. There should be. They have a hive society. A city like
this would be teeming with them.”

“Well, it’s not. Maybe they’re off pillaging. Or maybe they’ve depleted
their ranks in the campaign against other worlds.” Connor shrugged. “Makes it
easier for us to get in, so I’m not complaining.”

Trent said, “As long as they’re not massing for a raid. Like a Home World
raid.”

“Thanks, Sunshine,” Connor said.

The plane floated past a building made of burgundy stone, taller than any of
the others. Jordan said, “There’s Woolfe’s place.”

“And there’s a building with a cargo bay right next to it,” Ben said. “Easy
access.”

“We enter the city where it touches the maze,” Connor said. “Get to the
storage building undetected. We go in through this small side door so we don’t
have to be in the open for nearly as long. We reconnoiter there. Then Liv will
have to do her brain ray thing and get us inside.”

Liv squared her shoulders. She was ready. She hoped.

An image of Woolfe’s dead gray eyes tried to intrude, but she pushed it back
down in her mind.

“I’m heading back to report to General Mace,” Connor said. “Trent and Liv,
with me. The rest of you, stay here, guard our entry point. If you see
anything, and I mean
anything
, get to
Safe World immediately. Otherwise, we’ll be back with instructions in a few
minutes.”

Liv watched Connor for his mark, and when he gave it, reached for Home
World.

She opened her eyes on tropical jungle. After the rusty sulfur air of Hell,
the jungle smelled unbelievably green and alive. She sighed. Now she’d have to
acclimate to that odor all over again.

Connor was already reaching for his sat comm. He dialed General Mace
directly, as ordered. “Sir. We have information.”

He relayed all they had seen, and his plan for getting to the Wolf.

“We don’t have any idea what’s inside the building. That’s why we need the
go to get in there and see.”

He listened to whatever General Mace said.

“Yes, sir, but we can just Travel out whenever we need to. If they follow
us, we’ve got the secondary Safe World. I can’t imagine them piggy-backing us
farther than that.”

He waited, listening.

“Thank you, sir.”

He snapped the phone shut and looked up at Liv and Trent. “We’re green.”

Liv swallowed the swoop in her stomach.

“Back to Hell.”

When they arrived the second time, their teammates stood exactly where
they’d been.

Connor asked, “Anything?”

“No,” Jordan answered.

“Then we have a go. Move out.”

Ben, who had been circling the spy plane around the Wolf’s building, steered
it back toward them.

Connor led his team into the maze, which formed natural canyons and gave
them sufficient cover. When the spy plane reached their position, Ben circled
it low over their heads to give them an overview of the maze.

They followed Ben’s directions, avoiding several dead ends. Finally, the
city came into view, dusty gray-burgundy buildings squatting threateningly in
the haze.

Ben skimmed his plane low, caught it as it floated by, and quickly
disassembled and stowed the pieces.

When they hit the dead-end, Connor took out a mini-periscope to study the
streets over the maze wall. “Nobody in sight, demon or otherwise. Let’s get to
the warehouse.”

Connor boosted them over the wall one by one, and Jordan, who was second to
last, turned at the top to grab Connor’s hands and pull him up.

Liv dropped into the deserted street with the feeling that a trap had just
sprung closed. She pulled her sidearm and covered her side of their group. Jordan
and Connor landed next to her, surveying their surroundings.

Jordan asked, “Does this seem too easy to anyone else?”

Connor shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t expect attack. There probably isn’t
any resistance in this world, right?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Yeah, probably.” Connor sighed. Clearly, he hadn’t even convinced himself.
“Move out.”

Liv followed the others, keeping her sidearm at the ready, eyes moving,
expecting at each corner to fall into the demons’ claws. But at each corner the
new street was as deserted as the last.

They made it to the Wolf’s building without seeing a single living thing and
huddled into the recessed doorway across from the warehouse. From there, they
crossed in a running crouch to the warehouse, single file, eyes darting from
window to doorway to roofline.

“Hsst.” Jordan hissed through his teeth, and Liv turned to look at him. He’d
come to a halt with his eyes locked on something to her left. She followed his
line of sight, and saw a demon striding along on the cross street.

Ben picked the lock and threw the door open. He, Connor, and Gin leapt
inside. Liv dived for the meager cover of the stone building’s corner, and
Jordan flattened himself into the scrubby grass near the door. Trent, serving
as rear guard, was forced to leap back into the shadowy doorway across the
street.