Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (5 page)

No, I will
NOT fail! I will not let him down again!
he thought, gritting his teeth in
determination. Danner forced himself to relax and out of the corners of his
eyes, he saw translucent blue feathers flicker back into existence.

A feeling of
peace and holy power flooded through Danner’s body, and he closed his eyes and
allowed himself the briefest of moments to let the sensation soak into him. A
cleansing fire coursed through his veins, burning away his fears and
irritations and replacing them with serenity and strength as he focused on his
intentions. When he opened his eyes, Danner was somehow unsurprised to see a
faint blue nimbus surrounding his hands and forearms.

Ignoring the
murmurs behind him, Danner leaned over Garet and laid his softly glowing hands
on the Red paladin’s chest. Immediately, he felt the pain and agony contained
in Garet’s broken, human body, and Danner hissed involuntarily as he shared
some of the pain himself. His lips parted as he silently whispered a healing
prayer, reaching inside of himself and touching the immortal power, his
āyus,
[8]
hoping
that font of holy strength would aid his healing.

He continued to
pray, probing Garet’s body with his healing power and willing it to repair the
damage, visualizing what needed to happen. For a few agonized moments, nothing
changed, and Danner despaired. Then, slowly at first, bones began to shift and
realign themselves where they had snapped or been torn apart. Muscles stretched
and repaired themselves, as strong and powerful as they had ever been. Flesh
grew over wounds as they healed themselves, sealing the once-deadly injuries
and leaving nothing more than broad pink scars as evidence.

Finally, Danner
turned his attention to the injured hand. As he lifted Garet’s limb, the blue
nimbus surrounding his hand stretched out and enveloped the bloody stump and
the hand still hanging on by a few shreds of torn sinew and bone. Danner
grasped the two severed parts in his hands and held them together.

A river of blue
energy poured into the bloody juxtaposition, flared briefly, then was gone.
When Danner let go of the hand, Garet’s arm fell limply across his chest,
bloody but whole once more. A thick trail of pink, hairless skin jaggedly
encircled Garet’s wrist where the two pieces had been rejoined.

Danner stumbled
to his feet and his wings flickered briefly and then dekinted out of sight. He
took one staggering step, then fell forward and collapsed into Garnet’s hastily
extended arms. Fighting against a weariness as deep as his soul, Danner looked
up and saw tears in Garnet’s eyes as he looked first at his father, then down
at Danner.

“Thank you, my
friend,” Garnet whispered. “Thank you.”

- 2 -

Later that
afternoon, Michael watched over Danner as their friend slept fitfully. Danner’s
face was tightened up in concern, or perhaps even fear, and he occasionally
thrashed around in his blankets. Twice he nearly rolled out of the cot they’d
placed him in, so on Marc’s suggestion, they’d wrapped a pair of rolled
blankets around Danner and the cot and tied them off, holding him gently, but
securely, in place.

Now, watching
the evident distress on Danner’s young-looking face, Michael worried about what
could so trouble his dreams.

“Kinda makes you
wonder what’s going on in there, doesn’t it?”

Michael turned
and nodded as Flasch walked up and seated himself on a nearby rock. The
fair-haired Violet paladin was smaller than most men, while Michael towered
over just about everybody, even Garnet. Flasch had once quipped that if they
looked more like each other, they could do a stage act of an Incredible
Shrinking Man.

 “I
wouldn’t be worried if it was just today,” Michael said, keeping his voice low.
“He twitches and moans every night. Ever since the war ended, it seems. I asked
Alicia. Being who and what he is…” Michael trailed off.

“You’re worried,
and with good cause, probably,” another voice said, and now Marc approached
them. His olive-hued skin was harder to see in the dim light, and pretty much
everything about his body was brown, from his hair to his toes. He was more
heavily muscled than he’d been when they’d first started training so many
months ago. They all were. Stronger, better, more deadly. Wearier, sadder, more
scarred.

Was it only
last spring?
Michael wondered silently.
It feels like years.

“Did someone
call a meeting here and not tell me?” Michael asked lightly, laying his
thoughts aside.

“Sure, didn’t
you get Brican’s kythe?” Flasch joked. “Meet around the comatose half-angel
during third hour.”

“Damn good thing
I was here early anyway, then,” Michael said.

Flasch winked at
him, then his smile faded as he looked down at Danner’s body.

“He went angel
today,” Flasch said. “During the fight, I mean, and Brican said Garnet
specifically ordered him not to. Garnet was pissed.”

Marc shook his
head. “Can you blame him, after what happened with that demon in the basement?
After Trebor?”

Mention of their
departed friend’s name brought an even more solemn pall over the trio. They all
knew Danner still blamed himself for Trebor’s death. Worse… they all secretly
agreed with him. Danner had lost himself in his angelic power and left his
friend and their two platoons behind; too late, he came to his senses only a
moment before Trebor was torn apart before Danner’s very eyes.

None of the
others had seen the gruesome death at the time, but thanks to denarae kything,
they had all witnessed the horrifying scene through the memories of Danner and
the denarae who had been there. There was really no question that Danner’s lack
of control had almost directly led to his best friend’s death, and the fact
that none of them could argue against his guilt led them all to avoid the topic
whenever Danner might overhear. Two months later, the scar over the wound of
Trebor’s death was at least superficially healed over for all of them… except
Danner.

“I think he’s
addicted to the power,” Marc said softly. “We wondered about it before, but now
I think we’ve moved past mere speculation if he can’t
not
change.”

“Danner’s always
been a bit of a thrill-seeker,” Flasch objected. “He drives that buggy of his
like he’s being chased by a thousand demons, and once he conquered his fear of
heights, I caught him daring himself to fall further, faster before activating
his cloak. It may not be the power itself, just the rush he gets using it.”

“That’s bad
enough if he can’t stop himself from doing it,” Marc murmured, shaking his
head.

“The look on his
face when he was healing Garet,” Michael said softly, then shivered as a chill
swept over his body. “Worse than the basement.”

Two weeks
earlier, Danner and a handful of Shadow Company personnel – including Michael
and Garnet – had gone to investigate a demon sighting near the outskirts of
Nocka. Three lesser demons and a drolkul were hiding out and, in the course of
the fight, Danner went completely berserk and tore the drolkul to pieces with
his bare hands.

For a long
moment, they were all silent.

Finally, Michael
spoke up.

“Marc, you said
we might have good cause to be worried about Danner’s dreams,” he prompted,
then fell silent.

The Orange
paladin nodded.

“I don’t think
it’s too much of a stretch to assume that Danner could be reacting to the war
on the immortal plane,” Marc said slowly. “It started about a week after our
war ended, and according to ancient texts and even the firsthand testimony of
Danner’s uncle, time passes much more quickly on the immortal plane than it
does here. A single week here would be the equivalent of two weeks passing in
Hell or Heaven. In that much time,” Marc shook his head, “who knows what could
be going wrong?”

“At least we
know Hell hasn’t won yet, though, right?” Flasch asked. “Birch told us if that
happened, then life everywhere would cease. The fact that we’re still alive and
talking about it is sort of a good sign. We just have to have faith that it
will work out.”

“I think we need
more than just faith.”

They all turned
as Garnet and Brican approached, followed closely by Guilian.

“What
is
this today?” Michael grumbled. “Don’t you people ever announce yourselves, or
is everyone determined to just break into the conversation unexpectedly?”

“What’s his
problem?” Brican asked.

“Well, we’re
still waiting for confirmation from the Green paladins,” Flasch said glibly,
“but we’re all pretty sure it’s just because he’s Michael.”

Garnet was just
lowering himself wearily to sit on a rock and paused, then shook his head and
slumped down.

“I got it,” Marc
said, then rapped Flasch on the back of his head.

“Thanks,” Garnet
murmured with a tired smile as Flasch rubbed the back of his head and glared
irritably at Marc.

They sat in
silence for a moment. Garnet finally straightened up, and all eyes turned to
him.

“Marc, when we
get back to Nocka, I’d like you to get a group together and pore through the
Prism’s archives,” Garnet said. “Take Danner with you to read any of the texts
written in the immortal tongue.”

“Are we looking
for that connection we talked about?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this?”
Michael asked.

“Garnet and I
were talking yesterday,” Marc answered, “mainly about the whole concept of
balance between the two immortal powers. Based on what Danner’s uncle told us
about God and Satan and their relationship with each other and the world, and
looking at a dozen or so other things, we reasoned that Heaven and Hell are
pretty much evenly balanced in power.”

“We all sort of
figured that,” Flasch said.

“Well, we were
thinking about the Merging,” Marc continued without even glancing at Flasch’s
interruption, “and if Hell has had a gateway to the mortal plane for the last
few centuries, wouldn’t it stand to reason there might be a gateway of some
sort into Heaven? We know there has to be
some
way to get between the
two realms, because of Danner’s mother.”

“The question
is,” Garnet broke in, “is it something we can exploit, even assuming we find
it? A portal that’s usable only to angels, or one hovering in midair over an
ocean really won’t do us much good.”

“And you think
there might be something in the archives that will tell us about it,” Michael
said.

Garnet nodded.

“Well, it makes
sense,” Brican said. “At the very least, it would indicate there
was
such a portal. Now, though, who knows.”

Marc snapped his
fingers.

“Right,” he
exclaimed. “I wonder if the connection would still be here now that the Merging
is gone. If the two immortal planes really are balanced, the gateway might have
disappeared when Hell slid past to assault Heaven directly. I wonder if…”

“Wonder later,”
Garnet said, cutting him off. “First, I want you to find out if it even exists
and its location. Once we know that, we can go see if it’s actually there,
okay?”

“Got it.”

Danner moaned
from his cot, then abruptly tried to sit upright and gasped as though in severe
pain. The blankets Marc had suggested held Danner down, and he struggled
against their confining embrace.

“Danner, relax,”
Michael said, putting on hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re okay.”

Danner stared at
them all with wild, uncomprehending eyes, almost as if he didn’t recognize any
of them. He fought frantically to free himself from the blanket holding him
down. His arms twisted up, and he tried to claw at the material with his hands.

“At ease,
Danner!” Garnet bellowed, and immediately Danner’s struggles ceased. He stared
up at Garnet in fear, then suddenly his eyes cleared, and he sighed as his body
relaxed and sank back to the cot.

Garnet glanced
around the people gathered at Danner’s cot.

“Everyone please
leave,” he said slowly. “I need to speak with Danner alone.”

As they all
turned to go, Garnet added sternly, “And Brican, stay out of it.”

Brican glanced
at the unyielding expression on Garnet’s face and thought better of protesting
any intended innocence.

“Yes, sir.”

- 3 -

When Garnet
rejoined them an hour later, he told Guilian to detail a group of denarae to
keep an eye on Danner and see his rest wasn’t disturbed. Guilian volunteered to
take the first shift himself, then left. The commander of Red Platoon was still
feeling his way around their command group when they were off the battle field,
and Garnet allowed the denarae his space. The five paladins were already close
friends and Brican had quickly assimilated into their group despite his racial
antagonism towards humans, and Garnet had faith that Guilian would come along
eventually.

“How’d it go?”
Flasch asked.

“Well, I hope,”
Garnet replied. “Danner doesn’t remember everything from the battle, but he
says he remembers he was cornered and felt he had no choice but to use his immortal
abilities to save his life.”

“Do you believe
him?” Marc asked.

“I believe he
felt
that way, yes,” Garnet said. “Whether or not he was actually
in
that
much danger is another matter.”

Michael shook
his head. “Addicts usually make some sort of excuse to explain their behavior,”
he said, “and to them it makes perfect sense. It explains their actions without
forcing them to realize just how much of a hold their addiction has over them.”

They stared at
him a moment, then Michael shrugged. “I had an uncle,” the Yellow paladin said,
shifting uncomfortably. “He drank.”

“That’s more or
less what I was thinking,” Garnet said. “I think Danner realizes we’re all just
worried about him because he’s our friend. Heaven knows I tried to stress that
while I was talking to him. Right now, I think it’s important that we just
treat Danner as our friend and support him. Just act normal.”