Destroyer of Worlds (6 page)

Caleb’s stomach cramped with hunger,
and Gray hovered just beneath the surface, ready to manifest at any
minute. Ready to
hunt.

No!
His heart
thundered—from panic or elation?
We can’t—I
mean, you can’t! Don’t give Forsyth a reason to toss us in a new
cell. Or trap us here.
Now the tests punching the
fucking steel plate made sense, after seeing the door.

His teeth burned, and the tips of his
fingers tingled, fangs and claws aching to slide free.
“They are here all around us! We must
hunt.”

If you do this now, there won’t be any more
hunting, not ever, because Forsyth will decide we’re too dangerous
to keep around. Or he’ll throw us down here with…these others.

Gray didn’t like it, but he subsided a bit,
enough for Caleb to focus on something besides hunger. Other
smaller halls cut off to either side of the main corridor, all of
them with security cameras and guards. Caleb peered down one
casually. Heavy doors opened to either side, each with a hatch set
into it. For feeding?

Was Forsyth out of his goddamned mind? There
were dozens of demons down here. Maybe hundreds. These people
should have been exorcised, or given the release of death if it was
too late. Who would keep them like this, trapped in cells, meat
puppets for the demons within? And hell, what about the demons
yearning for all the tasty human flesh just on the other side of
their cell doors? If something went wrong and they got loose
somehow, RD would find itself overwhelmed by a small army of
monsters.

An army.

Christ. Was Forsyth building an army? Just
like Brimm, on a larger scale?

But why? Against what enemy? Forsyth wasn’t
Brimm, locked away in a moldering house, slowly going insane in the
middle of his pet ghouls. A huge operation like this would take
government funding on a massive scale. Someone else must know about
this.

Brimm. What had he said?
“SPECTR isn’t what you think.”
It had
worried Caleb at the time, but he’d listened to John’s
reassurances.

John. No way did he know about this. He’d
never go along with locking up NHEs, still inside the humans they’d
possessed. Such cruelty went against everything he believed in,
everything he stood for. If he found out…

It would break him.

They came to a halt in front of another door.
The guards opened it and motioned Caleb through. Apparently, they
weren’t coming with him.

Not reassuring, actually.

“
Do they mean us
harm?”

They all mean us harm. The only question is
if it’s immediate or not.

Caleb stepped through, and found himself in a
large, round room, somewhat like the sunken floor of an
amphitheater. Smooth concrete walls, twelve feet high, enclosed the
area he stood in. Above them stretched a thick glass barrier,
beyond which were a couple of rows of seats.

Caleb walked slowly to the center of the
pit-like area, staring up at the watchers behind the glass. Forsyth
was there, of course; he gave Caleb a smile and pressed an intercom
button. His voice came out of a speaker mounted on the pit’s
wall.

“
Good morning, Mr. Jansen!” he said
cheerfully. “This will be your final test before your exorcism
tomorrow.”

Caleb managed a feeble smile. “Um, great.” No
way a test in a place like this would be anything but awful. “What
do I need to do?”

“
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the
drakul in action, but we’d like to make observations in a more
controlled setting.”

Gray perked up.
“We will feed?”

Unease roiled Caleb’s gut.
Sounds like.

“
What do you mean?” he asked
aloud.

The door behind him opened again, and he
quickly stepped away and turned to face whatever came through.

To all appearances, only a man joined him.
Early twenties, brawny, dressed in fatigues and with a
military-style buzz cut. But he stank of rancid fur and spoiled
musk. Like a demon.

Like food.

The man—soldier? SPECTR agent?—flinched back
at the sight of Caleb, and some of the color left his skin. But the
door behind him had already shut.

Seeming to realize no escape existed, he
straightened and forced a sneer onto his square features. “What the
fuck is this thing?”

His demon must have been able to smell Gray.
No wonder he’d flinched—it must recognize Gray as a predator and
want to get the hell away. And of course this douche decided he had
to mask his fear with aggression.

“
Your opponent,” Forsyth replied
simply.

Shit. Not good.

The possessed agent smiled, although it
looked more like a forced grimace. “I’ll rip his fucking head off.
Hear me, monster? You’re going to die.”

“
Monster? I am no
monster.”

Caleb wasn’t about to debate semantics. Even
as his heart started to pound and his teeth ache, he backed up,
hands held before him. “Die? I’m not fighting you. Forsyth, this
guy is still human! He can still be exorcised!”

With a low, animal growl, the man
charged.

* * *

The mortal alters as he charges. His teeth
overfill his mouth, his eyes darken from blue to dirty black, and
his nails become claws. Not a full shift to werebear, not yet, but
he is close to the end of his time. The demon’s scent intensifies,
and every instinct tells Gray he should leap upon the creature,
sink his teeth deep, and drink up the energy carried on the
mortal’s blood.

But he has learned a few things in his time
with Caleb. Perhaps it is all mortal foolishness, but there are
complexities to the world, to his decisions, he did not understand
before. One of these, one of the first he learned from John, was
not to kill the possessed if they could still be saved.

He darts to the side, his reflexes faster
than the werebear’s, at least as long as it doesn’t have complete
control of its host. It lumbers through the spot he had occupied,
turning with a snarl, the mortal’s face something less than human
but not utterly monstrous.

“
Desist,” Gray orders. “I will not kill
you, but you must stop this foolishness.”

Instead of listening, it rushes him
again.

“
Let me”

Caleb’s telekinetic power shoves the werebear
back hard, sending it sprawling across the concrete.

This display is absurd. What does this
Forsyth wish to prove?

“
Hell if I know.”
Caleb’s unease bleeds through them both. This cannot be
anything good.

The werebear snaps up, berserker rage
clouding its eyes. One hand darts to its belt, and it draws out a
gun.

“
Oh, that’s not fucking
fair.”

Without the kevlar-lined coat, nothing slows
the punch of bullets through their legs and torso. Bone splinters,
shredded muscle screaming in agony, and they collapse to the
merciless concrete.

Gray is becoming annoyed.

Bone is still snapping back into place when
the werebear plows into him, claws mauling his chest. Its rank
breath gusts into his face, and hunger spikes, because healing this
living body takes energy. They must feed.

His fist connects with its face before it can
bite. Its grip loosens. He uses the single leg which works at the
moment to kick it hard in the gut, shoving it away. He rolls over,
veins knitting, muscle reconnecting, until he’s back on his
feet.

“
Christ, let’s not do that
again.”

Agreed.

He takes the fight to the werebear, not
giving it a chance to gather itself. Grabbing one arm, he wrenches
it back violently, dislocating at least two joints. The werebear
roars in agony, but its lust for death is greater than its pain,
and it swipes at him with the other arm.

He catches its clawing hand and snaps the
wrist.

It bites at him in its frenzy, but it is no
threat now. He seizes it by the hair, dragging its head back. The
pulse beats enticingly in its throat.

“
Go ahead.” Forsyth’s voice is tinny
over the loudspeaker. “Feed.”

Careful not to exert too much force, Gray
raps the werebear’s skull against the concrete floor, hard enough
to stun but not to kill.

It goes limp, eyes glazed. Satisfied it is no
longer a threat, he lets go of its hair and steps away. Lifting his
gaze, he stares up at Forsyth through the thick glass.

“
I do not kill those who can be saved,”
he says. He folds back into Caleb, and leaves the mortals to their
confusion.

* * *

Caleb’s heart still pounded overly fast when
the guards left him inside his apartment-prison.

What the hell was Forsyth’s game? It almost
seemed as if he’d wanted to see how far he could push Gray. And the
hyper-masculine jerk who’d be lucky if he regained use of both
arms…had he been a volunteer? He’d obviously thought the test was
of his speed and skill, his chance to show off. Had no one actually
told him what he’d be facing? Or had he just thought he’d be good
enough to kill Gray first?

Would they exorcise the man now? Or leave the
demon inside, and put him in with all the others?

We have to get out of here.

Gray stirred. He’d been grumpy and
out-of-sorts since the confrontation, not that Caleb could blame
him. Gray was hungry, and angry, and…

And he wanted to go home.

Except there was no “home” for him to go to.
The condo and John were Caleb’s home, not his.

Caleb bit his lip, forcing the pain to
distract him from the burning of his eyes. Bursting into tears in
front of the spy cameras wouldn’t help anything.

I’m sorry.

“
It does not matter.”
Except it did, of course. Gray had finally learned how to lie
to himself, just not very effectively.
“Nothing will change the situation.”
That was
more truthful, at least.

No, but still. I’m sorry.

“
Let us worry about leaving
this place, instead of dwelling on what cannot be
altered.”

Agreed.
Leave
and find the moths, and things would…

Well. Caleb didn’t know, but “go back to
normal” wasn’t in the picture anymore. Not for him, anyway.

It didn’t matter right now. First things
first; getting out wouldn’t be easy, even with help.

He didn’t go straight to the sketchbook in
his bedroom. Instead he headed for the shower, as any watchers
would expect, shedding his blood-crusted clothes as he went. He
took a long shower, the water turned up hot enough to turn his skin
pink and steam up any camera lenses. Or so he hoped; the idea of
someone ogling his naked junk made him feel vulnerable.

“
Mortal nonsense. Clothing
is no protection.”

Thanks for the
reminder.
Being alone in his own head again would seem
weird after all this.

After drying, he hastily pulled on the
identical shirt and pants as the ones the werebear had ruined. Only
then did he go to his sketchbook.

He thumbed through it idly, looking at the
illustrations he’d done this week. Not his best work, given his
mind hadn’t really been on the art, but Gray’s influence on his
style was apparent. It would have been interesting to see what they
might have done together.

A few pages in, he leaned forward,
deliberately hiding the pages from any cameras with the fall of his
long hair.
Would’ve been screwed if I had a
buzz cut.

Flipping to the first unmarked page, he found
a key card tucked into the sketchbook. Someone had written “22:00”
on the card in black sharpie.

Guess that’s when they want us to go. This
card has to open our door. Wonder if it works on the elevator?

“
If not, we will
climb.”
Grim determination.

Caleb took a deep breath.
Think we can do this?

“
We will.”
No
hesitation.

You can’t know that.

“
Nor can you know we
cannot.”

Caleb slipped the card into the
waistband of his underwear.
You’ve got a
point. Okay. Ten o’clock, and we’re out of here.

At precisely ten o’clock, the power went
out.

Caleb didn’t realize how much ambient sound
filled the apartment until it disappeared. The distant purr of fans
died, the sigh of air through the ducts going with them. No buzz
from the fridge, or banked hum of the lights.

For a moment, he sat in complete darkness,
too deep even for Gray’s vision to penetrate. Then backup power
kicked in, an amber glow of emergency lights near the door. To his
amped-up eyes, it might as well have been daylight.

Caleb didn’t waste any time. He’d already
stripped off his stupid t-shirt and sweatpants; rolling out of bed,
he slid open the closet and yanked on his own clothes in record
time, buckling a hundred pounds of kevlar-lined elk hide around his
shoulders as he headed for the door.

The electronic lock still had power.
Considering the monsters Forsyth had squirreled away in his
basement, no doubt keeping the security system up and running was
priority number one. He held up the keycard, but hesitated an
instant before swiping it.

They didn’t have much time. With any luck, it
would be a while before anyone realized they’d escaped, but they
needed to move fast. No hesitation.

Gray stirred, hovering just under the
surface.
“And if the guards try to stop
us?”