A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (6 page)

The general’s
statement wasn’t exactly a question, but Connor answered him. “Not as far as we
know.”

“Sir,” Liv
said, “it looks like they’re searching for Elachai pretty single-mindedly. We
need to know more about the demons, their world, and their leader.”

“And put a stop
to their raids,” Jordan added.

General Mace
looked around the table. “Any ideas who he might be?”

“Head Demon,
probably,” Connor said.

“Great, we’re
fighting Satan,” Ben said.

“We shouldn’t
assume he’s a demon,” Jordan said. “There are certainly other forms of life in
Hell.”

“Intelligent
ones?” Liv asked.

Jordan shrugged.

“What,
something worse than demons?” Ben asked.

“Apparently.”

“So we go to
Hell,” Gin said.

General Mace
said, “Absolutely not. Hell is off-limits.”

Connor opened
his mouth to protest, but closed it when the general said, “Period.”

Instead he
said, “They’re searching for a Singularity.”

“Which may not
even exist,” Liv pointed out.

General Mace
asked, “Why would they want a Singularity?”

“I don’t know,”
Liv admitted. “I never conceived that such a thing would be possible. Everybody
has Mirrors, hundreds or thousands of them. In all the infinite worlds, how can
he be the only one? How could circumstances conspire to make sure there was
only one world where he came into existence? It’s inconceivable.” Regardless,
she couldn’t ignore the implications of a Singularity’s existence.

“But possible?”
Jordan asked.

“She just said
it was inconceivable,” Ben said.

“Sure, but not
impossible,” Liv said. “Infinity means infinite possibilities. If he is
Singular, he’s truly unique, in all the multiverse. Of course Raul wants him. We
know he pushes people. Who knows what else he can do? If they figure out how he
does what he does...”

“What if we
figure out how he does what he does?” Jordan asked.

Liv opened her
mouth to give him a snarky answer, but realized he wasn’t joking. “Yeah, I’d
love to. Let’s just ask him to erase my brain a few more times in the name of
science.”

“Until you find
him again,” General Mace said, “we need all the information we can get. Get to
Blue Beach and get me some answers.”

*
         
*
         
*

Liv stood in
front of the blasted building in Ganja, holding the mass spec. “It’s definitely
explosive residue, Connor. Nitroamines, trinitrotoluene.”

“TNT,” Trent
said.

“Yes.”

“What kind of
nitroamines?” Connor asked her.

“Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine.
Also steel fragments.”

“It was a
grenade.”

“Looks that
way. But there’s something else weird. A lot of dinitrotoluene.”

Connor gave her
a look. “TNT breaks down if it’s stored at high temperatures. Dinitrotoluene is
one of the main isomers.”

Jordan, reading
the scanner screen over Liv’s shoulder, said, “Judging by the demons’ nonreaction
to burning sand, Hell might be pretty hot.”

Connor stared
at the burns on the wall. “Let’s get back to base and let General Mace know.”

*
         
*
         
*

That night, Liv
had a hard time falling asleep, and when she finally did, she almost wished she
hadn’t. It was the same old nightmare. A part of her knew it, but that just
made it worse. She couldn’t change anything and she couldn’t wake up. She could
only lay helplessly while it happened all over again.

She lay on the thick quilted blanket next to
Leslie, who was blessedly free of her children this visit. Not that Liv didn’t
love her nieces and nephew, but she got so little alone-time with her sister.

The sand molded itself to cradle her, the
sun was a warm glow on her back, and the occasional breeze placed a cool kiss
at her neck. The distant unimportant sounds of children splashing and adults
yelling were buried beneath the slow ebb and roar of the waves. A small cooler
sat at the corner of the blanket, just at the edge of Liv’s vision, and she
contemplated whether it would be worth moving to get a drink.

A roar echoed through the air, and several
people screamed. Liv bolted to her knees, whipping around to scan the area.
“That was a gunshot!”

One woman’s screams continued after everyone
else’s quieted. “My baby, no, my baby, oh no, my baby!”

Liv blocked pity and terror as she popped
into a crouch, shading her eyes with her hand and systematically searching the
beach. A group of people huddled around a small still form at the water’s edge.

“Oh, God.” Leslie’s tone held
barely-contained horror.

Another shot rang out and a child playing in
the sand with a plastic bucket and shovel fell forward into her sandcastle. Liv
was looking right at her.

She grabbed Leslie’s arm to drag her along,
studying the angles as she ran crouching to the tall grass at the edge of the
beach. The shooter must be in the old ‘store,’ a little wooden shack with a
shutter that swung open for the vendor to display his wares. It had been empty
since the vendor quit and moved to Florida.

Liv held out a hand to Leslie. “Stay down.
He’s in the store. I have to get my gun.” She threw a glance at the store, then
darted in a crouch toward the parking lot, where she’d left her gun in the car.
Stupid.

Another shot rang out as she reached the
ticket booth at the entry gate. More screams. Ruthlessly, she forced down
helplessness and put on a burst of speed.

She reached the car and grabbed her Rogue, a
smaller version of the Sentinel she carried at the DEPOT. Another shot as she
reached her car, another as she grabbed the gun, and one more as she slammed
the car door. She raced back to the beach, oblivious to the debris on the
pavement cutting her bare feet, although she’d barely be able to walk the next
day.

She reached the gate and sped over to the
store in a crouch. She froze behind it, back to the wall, trying to breathe
silently. If he heard her out here, he’d blast her right through the flimsy
plywood. She crept toward the door and grasped the handle.

She threw the door open and leapt through
with her gun sweeping to cover the room. “Freeze!”

She’d been holding her breath, and sucked in
air as she saw only empty shadows. He had fled.

Liv heaved out
of sleep gasping. The dark and empty store morphed into her dark and empty
bedroom, dragging her off the beach and back into reality. Four children had
died that day, and two more had been severely wounded. She hadn’t been able to
stop him, all because she’d left her stupid purse in the car. And they hadn’t
caught him that day.

Her permits to
carry were all in order, and although the police were flummoxed as to why a
neuroscientist would carry a concealed weapon, they could find nothing with
which to charge her and eventually allowed her to go home. Leslie had waited
the entire time in the precinct lobby in her beach shirt, sarong, and sandals.
When they finally released Liv, Leslie drove her home and put her to bed.

That was the
first night she’d had the nightmare, but it hadn’t been the last. Not even
close.

Friday the same week. One of earliest
explored parallel worlds, DEPOT designation M-998A, codename Mai Tai,
corresponding Nevada.

Mai Tai was
famed for its beautiful beach sunsets, and so far this one lived up to the rep.
Liv leaned back in her chaise lounge and sipped her drink, enjoying the ocean view.

The lounge
chair sat on a wooden deck at one of the Huma Huka’s best tables. Ben and Liv
had just finished a fabulous dinner and looked forward to a casual Friday
evening with their friends Winnie and Markle.

Liv took a
deep breath, inhaling the tangy ocean breeze and the fruity aroma of her drink.
The air here was so clear she could almost smell the sun hitting the ocean.
They had banned fossil-fuel burning back in 1972, but only after a marked
greenhouse effect had melted the polar ice caps and flooded the world’s
lowlands with ocean water. Nevada in Home World was the beach of the inland sea
here in Mai Tai.

“We don’t
even have names for the colors in this sky,” Liv said dreamily; she was on her
third Grassfruit Gala, and felt like she was floating in her chair.

“I can’t
believe she dumped me over that,” Ben complained again.

Winnie and
Markle laughed, used to his ups and downs with women. This had been the first
world Ben had brought Liv to when they discovered their mutual ability to
Travel at age ten, and Winnie and Markle had been their first best friends.

Liv said, “It’s
good to find out now, though, isn’t it, before y’all get seriously involved?
You’re better off, if she couldn’t handle it.”

“I would have
liked to get a little more seriously involved first. Just because I came home
with a demon swipe across my back and said it was classified when she asked
what happened, she stormed out of the house and said if I couldn’t trust her, I
never needed to call her again! I thought a demon swipe would get me sympathy,
not get me dumped.”

Markle laughed
again, but Winnie said, “Ben, honestly, you can’t be with a woman who can’t
understand the demands of your job. She has to accept certain things without
question. She should be glad you couldn’t tell her you were attacked by
demons.” She shuddered. “I almost wish
I
didn’t know. You could have
been killed!”

“Oh, come on
Ben, you hardly even dated her. Three dates,” Liv chided. “Get over it, and
find someone better next time. Maybe the size of her boobs shouldn’t be the
first standard you judge by.”

“What about
dating someone in the same profession?” Winnie asked with an overly obvious
suggestive glance at Liv.

Ben followed
her gaze, and he grimaced as his eyes met Liv’s. “No offense, sis, but Winnie,
no way in Hell!”

Liv laughed at
the look on Ben’s face. “Yeah, that would be totally incest.”

“Dating
coworkers is so not a good idea,” Ben continued. “Imagine if I had to see
Brittany again at work every day. Awkward!”

Jordan’s face
flashed through Liv’s mind: fantastic smile, gorgeous eyes. “I see your point,”
she said to Winnie. “You could talk about what you do, which, let’s face it,
you can hardly tell anyone, and she would already understand what you go
through every day. That would be great.” But she’d had that with Nathan. The
alcohol must be loosening her mind. Ben was right. Dating someone you worked
with just meant disaster when the relationship failed. Which it always did.

Her mind closed
off the thought of Nathan before it could fully form, and she deliberately
tuned back into the conversation.

“You guys are
just scared of commitment, because you can’t just walk out and never see her
again,” Winnie said.

“Damn
straight,” Markle said.

Ben stared at
Liv. “What’s going on in your head, Olivia Jane? Got somebody all picked out?”

Liv’s stomach
swooped painfully. All she needed was for him to find out about her newfound
fascination with Jordan and start trying to play matchmaker. “No I don’t have
someone picked out,
Benjamin Bartholomew
.” Ben looked scandalized at the
use of his middle name. “And don’t call me Olivia. Olivia is a fat girl. My
name is Liv.” She stood abruptly. “I’m going to use the ladies’.”

Ben waved her
off and Liv headed into the crowded tavern.

She had just
stepped out of the bathroom when she bumped into a man in the narrow hallway.

“Sorry,” she
said automatically, then froze as she got a look at his face. Although she
still didn’t remember him, she recognized Connor’s description: black hair,
blue streak, dark eyes, narrow face, pale skin.

“You!” she
cried. “What are you doing here?”

His eyes opened
wide as he recognized her as well. “I just cannot stay out of your way, can I?”
he said, more to himself than Liv. “I hate to do this to you again.”

“Who are you?
Are you really Singular? Who’s Raul?”

He looked even
more startled, but said only, “I must not be found here. I was not here. Forget
you saw me.”

Liv caught her
balance as some rude bastard shoved past her on the way to the men’s room.

“Excuse you!”
she said to his retreating back. She didn’t expect an answer, which was good
because she didn’t get one.

She continued
on into the crowded bar, where she literally ran into someone she knew.

“Jennifer? What
are you doing here?”

Jennifer looked
chagrined to be caught in another world by one of her former classmates. Her
two companions, both men, looked positively mortified.

Jennifer hiked
a smile onto her face. It looked as fake as her cheery voice sounded. “Liv!
It’s been too long. What are you doing here?”

“Just having a
drink with some friends.” The two men stood together two feet away and looked
around as if they couldn’t hear Liv or Jennifer. Actually, they seemed to be
looking for someone. Something nagged the back of Liv’s brain, but she couldn’t
quite get a grip on it. What had she been thinking about?

“How’s the
DEPOT treating you these days?” Jennifer asked. The existence of the DEPOT was
highly classified, but Travelers were scarce and they all knew about it, either
through stories told by other Travelers or the DEPOT’s own recruitment efforts.

“Well. You know
I can’t really talk about it.”

“Right, all
that nondisclosure stuff. You’re so loyal. Oh, that’s right, they put you
through school, didn’t they?” Jennifer’s fake smile transformed into a real
smirk. She had always harped on about how real scientists didn’t work for the
government.

“Yes,” Liv
snapped. “And what are you doing these days?”

“Oh, I work for
a private company. Developing new technologies.”

“You mean
stealing them.” Liv glared. She knew there was no way to regulate Travelers,
but she still thought that they should be banned from forming corporations that
only functioned by stealing who-knew-what kinds of technologies from other
worlds.

“You say
tomato. Besides, isn’t that exactly what you do for the government? For a lot
less money?”

“We don’t
steal. But I can see how you would need to. Private industry is all about
results, isn’t it? And the DEPOT
does
only take the best. But I’m sure
you’ve done the best you could.”

Liv smiled
sweetly as outrage flashed in Jennifer’s eyes.
Point to me, bitch
.

Jennifer
spluttered indignantly. “Real scientists… government… research….” She took a
breath and puffed out her chest like an offended chicken. “At Innerstellar
Technologies we work alongside scientists in other worlds to understand their
discoveries!”

Liv’s stomach
shriveled. Goddamn Nathan. It was like thinking about him earlier had conjured
him closer. “Innerstellar Technologies? That’s Nathan Blank’s company, right?”

“Yes. What’s it
to you?”

“Despite his
shortcomings, I thought he was above coercive thievery. But then, I thought you
were too. What are you doing here, Jennifer?”

Jennifer cut
her eyes to the side and hunched her shoulders. “Oh, you know, enjoying the
sunset.” She gestured vaguely to the absolute night beyond the black windows.
“Say, you haven’t seen anyone else who doesn’t belong to this world, have you?”

“No.” Liv
frowned at Jennifer and her two companions, and felt that tickle at the back of
her mind again. She needed to talk to Ben. “Well, it’s been great running into
you, but I’d better get back to my friends. See you around.”

“Okay, let’s
catch up soon.”

Liv didn’t
answer as Jennifer and her two companions turned away. She watched them scour
the bar, check the bathrooms, converge in a huddle, and finally walk out the
front door. Who were they looking for?

Again that
tickle nagged her like she was forgetting something important. She wracked her
brain, but finally shrugged and went back out to the patio.

Ben and Markle
were engaged in a deep discussion of sports in their differing worlds.

Winnie asked
Liv, “Who were you talking to, honey?”

“Oh, just an
old classmate,” Liv said as she sat down. “Jennifer Ingers.”

“No, I meant
that man.” Winnie waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Liv froze in
the act of reaching for her drink. “What man?”

Ben and Markle
broke off at the tension in Liv’s voice and turned toward her.

“The man with
the black and blue hair. I went in to grab another drink and I saw you two
talking, but then he turned and went into the bathroom and you headed back into
the bar.”

“Describe to me
exactly what he looked like.”

Winnie looked
alarmed by the expression on Liv’s face. “He was about our age, dark eyes, thin
face, straight nose, black hair swept to the side with blue streaks at the
front. Tall, about four or five inches taller than you, and slim.”

“Ben,” Liv
said. The single word was both an entreaty and a command.

“Yeah.” He set
his drink on the table as he turned to Winnie and Markle. “Sorry y’all, we need
to go.”

Winnie looked
even more alarmed. “What’s going on? Is that man important?”

“Very,” Liv
said. “Sorry, that’s all I can say. This is classified. Please don’t tell
anyone else about him, okay?”

“Sure, no
problem,” Markle said. “But you know, if you need to find him, we could put it about
quietly—”

“No,” Ben cut
across him. “We can’t risk anyone knowing about him at all. Don’t tell anyone.
It’s for your own safety as well as his. And ours,” he added as an
afterthought.

“Okay,” Winnie
said, sharing a worried glance with Markle. “Be safe, you two.”

“Always,” Liv
said with a passable smile.

“We’ll get
together again soon,” Ben promised.

Liv and Ben
strode down to the beach where they could vanish into the darkness.