A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (25 page)

She tried to think. Something glimmered in the back of her mind and she
reached for it. They had to behead the demons, but without first pulverizing
the spine with gunfire.

The glimmer clicked into a memory, and Liv turned to Connor. “Connor, I
think we should bring something to even the odds.”

“What kind of something?”

“Something that might help remove some heads.”

Connor looked at her with a quizzical expression. “You found something like
that?”

“No, but I just remembered a research project from a while back, and the guy
was on the employee list. If what I’ve heard is true, it’d be just the thing.”

“All right. We’ll head down and scope out the situation. One click when
you’re ready.”

Liv nodded and clicked her radio back on. “Ben, sit tight. We’re going to
look for something to improve the odds a little.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“We’ll try to be quick.”

“Roger.”

Liv turned to Jordan with a grin. “Let’s go. His lab was listed on
fourteen.”

“Who?” Jordan asked as they hit the stairs.

“Dr. Takiguchi. Laser optics.”

Takiguchi’s lock was better than the one in the storage lab a floor above,
but Jordan still made short work of it.

He and Liv entered the lab and looked around.

“He works with laser-based technology,” Liv explained. “His initial work was
in stealth weaponry. He made a laser drill, for lack of a better word, that
bored completely silently through lock mechanisms, screws, or clasps.”

“That’s hardly going to help us,” Jordan pointed out.

“I know.” She pored through computer research logs that were password
protected but not encrypted, and not even locked at the moment. He must have
left in a hurry. “But I heard two years ago he was contracted by the Defense
Department. I hope the demons haven’t copied any of this…oh, here we go.”

She’d found plans for a prototype weapon. Jordan read the screen over her
shoulder.

“Wow. He’s adding bayonets to P90s?”

“Yeah,” Liv grinned. “Laser bayonets.”

They found the storage locker, and once again, Jordan broke in.

There were four weapons there, but only two had the block with a glowing red
dot that Liv assumed was the laser attachment.

She took one, pointed it away from Jordan, and pushed the button.

A red beam shot out. She jerked the gun up slightly in surprise and slipped
her finger off the button. She stared at the table in front of her, a ribbon of
smoke trailing from the now-missing corner of heavy slate countertop, and then
at the black smoking line on the wall across from her.

“I guess he hasn’t worked out all the kinks yet,” she said.

“I think that was operator error,” Jordan said dubiously as he took the
other one. He pointed it the other way and depressed the button with identical
results, except that he only burned through the cabinet hanging on the wall
since he didn’t jerk in surprise.

“I guess that was operator error too?”

Jordan smiled an apology. “Guess we’d better be careful who we’re pointing
at.”

Liv nodded and followed him back to the elevator.

When the elevator doors opened, she jumped back in surprise as clouds of
acrid smoke billowed out. The walls and floor burned merrily, green and orange
flames surrounding a charred lump in the center of the car that must have once
been a demon. The fyre hadn’t eaten through the steel yet, but it probably
wouldn’t take much longer.

Liv coughed. “I guess we’ll catch another one.”

Jordan nodded. “Why don’t we send this one to the lobby? It ought to provide
a decent distraction.”

They rode another elevator to level one and called the burning elevator
again.

Its doors
dinged
open, and Liv
asked, “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Liv clicked her radio to let the others know they were coming. She felt like
a kid pulling a prank as she leaned around the corner to push the button for
the lobby, pulled herself back out of the baking inferno, and dashed for the
stairs with Jordan beside her.

At the lobby entrance, they darted through the door and into a pandemonium
of roaring demons, billowing clouds of black smoke, and monstrous shadows
thrown by the wildfyre from the elevator they’d sent down.

At least they had plenty of cover.

A hulking giant stumbled out of the smoke right in front of her. She pointed
the P90 up at the ceiling, clicked the laser button, and took off its head as
it ran by.

Two more demons had cornered someone in one of the recessed elevator doors,
and she attacked from behind, taking both out in a single swipe. “Stay down!”
she shouted to Gin as the demons between them fell.

Liv turned and saw Jordan taking a swipe at a demon trapping someone in
another corner, who turned out to be Connor when the headless demon fell.

Three more demons came at her out of the gloom, and she sliced at the first,
missing the neck but cleaving off the wing tip and leaving a deep valley in its
chest.

Her next swipe took its head.

The second demon forced her to duck and dodge to cancel her opponent’s
superior reach, keeping the laser aimed up and cutting at whatever appendage
was closest. She took off an arm when it swiped toward her. The other demon
attacked her from the side, but Trent whipped two throwing stars into its face
to temporarily distract it. The first demon swiped at her with its remaining
arm, and roared in her face when the offending limb landed at her feet. She
lifted the laser above her to take off the head, and caught the second demon on
her back swing.

She looked around to see Jordan finishing up the last of the two that had
attacked him.

The last demon stood exposed between them, Connor’s knife bristling from its
eye. It swirled into nothingness and the knife clattered to the floor. Connor
yelled, “Liv! Jordan! Hell on mark!”

He ran for the knife as he counted at top speed. Liv dropped her
P90—it was too big to Travel with them—and pulled her gun.

They dissolved into Hell, where they caught a glimpse of the demon running
for the door.

Jordan shouted, “Hey!” and threw his knife in a perfect spinning arc. The
demon turned its head to gauge how close they were, and the knife struck it in
the right eye. It spun down to the dirt floor.

Liv raced forward and shot it in the back of the neck, and Connor sliced off
its head before it could rise. Jordan walked up and retrieved his knife.

They met each other’s eyes and grinned like fools.

“Well done,” Connor said. “Let’s leave this one here for now and make sure
we’re secure on the other side.”

Back in Home World, they found the others dragging the demon bodies out of
sight of the lobby windows.

Connor said, “Search them for any evidence of corporate espionage. Then we
need to get these bodies under cover and figure out how to find our missing
Innerstellar employees.”

Gin said, “I’m on the security system.”

Connor nodded and grabbed a demon arm. She slipped around the main lobby
desk to the computer console while the others dragged the bodies and heads into
the burning elevator.

“None of these have any places to hold discs,” Trent reported.

“Maintenance is going to love us in the morning.” Ben threw one of the demon
heads in on top of the pile of bodies, surveying the blood splashed in liberal
swathes across the hallway walls and floor, and the scorch marks that
graffitied the walls and ceiling.

“More like the sweep team,” Trent said.

“They may not have a building to clean. We left a raging wildfyre on fifteen.”
Jordan grimaced as he tossed a head into the elevator left-handed. Liv wondered
how much pain he was in. That ibuprofen had been hours ago.

“Yeah, we sort of left one on five, too,” Gin said.

“I’m not sure if y’all noticed,” Ben said, “but this elevator’s burning like
gangbusters too.”

“Let’s send it to fifteen,” Jordan suggested. “Then it won’t start another
fire somewhere else, at least until the cables or floor burn through and it
falls to the basement.”

The others agreed.

“Hey guys, I’m in!” Gin called.

Trent tossed the last head into the elevator, leaned in, and punched fifteen
on the panel of the burning car. He pulled back fast and paused to carefully
probe his eyebrows.

Connor threw him a smirk. “You’re beautiful!” he said in a stage whisper.

Trent scowled and flipped him off.

Connor laughed.

Liv followed them in a crouch to Gin’s security station behind the desk and
took a closer look outside. “Wow, it’s really a circus out there.”

“Tell me about it,” Gin said as she gestured to the computer terminals, now
showing feeds from the outside cameras.

People milled everywhere, standing behind barricades and yellow tape that
read ‘POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS,’ gawking at the building or talking to
each other with excited gestures. It looked like every policeman in the city
was out there, and of course, the news vultures circled. “So much for zero
presence.”

“We’ll be lucky to make it out of this without the whole world finding out
about the DEPOT,” Jordan said, “not to mention actually finishing this
mission.”

“Speaking of.” Connor gave Gin a pointed look.

“Yes, sir!” She mock saluted and tapped keys. The outside scenes disappeared
to be replaced with empty hallways, rooms, and elevators. The three computer
terminals behind the desk showed four pictures each. She manually switched to
different cameras every few seconds, giving them a chance to see that there was
nothing in any of the pictures, until they got a look at the raging wildfyre on
five and fifteen. Some of the cameras on five weren’t transmitting, and they
saw only black squares.

“Hope no one was hiding out on those floors,” Ben said with a sick smile.

Connor looked at Trent. “How long before the structure starts to come down?”

“Normal fire, it wouldn’t come down at all. The steel frame wouldn’t burn.
Wildfyre burns really hot, burns
everything
.”
He considered. “Maybe one and a half or two hours before ceilings and floors
go. Probably three and a half to four hours before the walls start to buckle.”

“Fucking Jesus H. Christ on a cross.” Connor viciously scrubbed his face.
“It’s been, what? An hour fifteen, maybe, since the fire on five was set?”

“About that,” Gin agreed.

“And maybe forty-five minutes for level fifteen?”

“Probably,” Jordan said.

While they continued to study the ever-changing camera images, scouring the
building for the missing workers, Connor pulled out a grenade. “Liv. Jordan.”

They turned to look, and Jordan looked surprised. “When did you start
carrying antique grenades?”

“Since I picked one up from a storage box in Hell’s skyscraper.”

“What?” Liv was stunned. “How is that possible?”

“That’s my question.” Connor spun the grenade so they could see the writing.
“Is there any chance this was developed in Hell?”

Liv shook her head. “I don’t see how. If it had been, it wouldn’t have come
with you.”

Jordan agreed. “That’s clearly US ordnance. The demons’ writing is
completely different; they didn’t manufacture that.”

“How about cardboard? They manufacture that?”

“Now that you mention it,” Jordan said, “with their level of technology, I’d
expect wood boxes. I should have noticed the cardboard when we were there.”

“You were a little distracted by your near death,” Liv said.

Connor jerked his head at the grenade. “So it came from Home World?”

“Seems likely,” Jordan said, and Liv silently agreed.

“Then explain to me how it sat in a storage box in Hell.”

Liv searched for any possibility, and came up with nothing. “I can’t. According
to the rules of Travel as I know them, that shouldn’t be possible. They
shouldn’t have been able to bring something there from our world at all.”

“What happens when you put it down?” Jordan asked.

“Let’s find out.” Connor took his hand off the grenade.

Gin said, “Connor, there’s no one on these monitors.”

“Are we even sure they’re still here?” Ben asked.

Connor frowned. “They signed in today. None of them signed out. There are
twenty-seven people on that list.”

“Do you have any other way of searching for them?” Trent asked. “Infrared,
motion sensors, something?”

Gin shook her head. “Not from here.”

“All right,” Connor said, running his hands through his hair as if to scrub
an idea into his head. Or out of it. “We don’t have a choice. There’s no time. Gin,
Ben, and Trent stay here. Do a floor-by-floor search for the missing
scientists, see if you can find any evidence of stolen technology. Or any
object they may have taken with them.”

“We already know they took something off fifteen,” Jordan said. “We heard
them in the lab.”

Connor nodded unhappily.

“What are you three going to do?” Trent asked.

“We’re going to Hell. We’ve got a little mystery to solve.”

“There might be workers over there too,” Liv said. “Nathan employed
Travelers to steal ideas for him.”

Connor nodded again. “We’re on a time crunch. Let’s move. If you find
anybody, send them to the lobby and outside. Tell them to get the people
outside back, before the building comes down. We’ll meet on the roof in ninety
minutes. Keep your radios on unless you absolutely need silence. Everyone
clear?”

Everyone was.

“Move out.”

“Con.” Jordan pointed to the countertop where Connor had set the grenade. It
was gone.

Liv felt a jolt in her stomach. She wasn’t sure if it was excitement at
discovering something new or fear at finding out the rules of Travel were more
like guidelines.

Connor turned expectantly to her. “Liv?”

“I don’t know. It’s oriented to Hell as its home world. But in that case,
you shouldn’t have been able to bring it here.”

“That’s what I thought. Hell on mark.”