Angel Of Solace (2 page)

The cabin had a single circular window, and Damien allowed himself a smile as he peered outside. Despite the early morning fog and the towering bulk of Haberian, he could make out the many great spires at the center of Louvette in the distance. Somewhere among them was the Agency’s tower—the prison he had finally escaped and would never see again.

A wave of sorrow washed over him at the thought, and he slouched down. Had he forgotten about Vala so quickly? No, he would definitely return someday. He would find a way to set the others free as well, no matter what it took. He owed them that much for the life of friendship and camaraderie they had given him. If he was the only one fortunate enough to escape, he would find a way to make it count.

Somehow.

Damien closed his eyes and reclined on the bed, working to clear his mind of doubt and just enjoy this moment for what it was. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the door to his cabin closed and an attendant announced over the speaker that they were about ready to leave port. Apparently the spot in his cabin hadn’t filled at all, and he would be spending the bulk of this trip alone. In the end, that was probably for the best.

He continued to watch out the window even as the ship broke free and its mighty engines sent a muted but audible rumble throughout the hull. Fifty years from now, he thought idly, he might still associate that sound with freedom.

They had traveled for perhaps an hour when someone tapped gently at his door. He took a moment to collect himself and blink away his reverie before walking over and peering out the three-inch peephole. Outside was a slender woman with long, black hair and otherwise sharp features. She was dressed in civilian clothing, but she didn’t appear to have a bag.

He felt his stomach clench tightly. His delayed bunk mate, perhaps? He had no way of knowing, but she noticed him peering through the glass and mouthed a clear “can I come in?”

For some reason it made him even more paranoid. It was tempting to just ignore her and go to bed, waiting for the ship’s staff to force the issue if needed. But then, that would simply draw more attention to himself in the long run, and if she was a legitimate bunk mate, being rude wouldn’t do him any favors for the next two days they were about to spend together.

He sighed to himself and decided there wasn’t much of a choice after all. He tapped the door’s keypad to unlock it and then pulled it open.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” she said with a quirky smile and a soft voice. “It’s a long trip, and I’m told you’re the one to see if I want things to be more exciting.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You are Mr. Vendare, are you not?” she asked. “The Incubus who slithers into women’s minds and gives them whatever they desire?”

Damien froze. Even though his real name was largely unknown and meaningless, he had still booked this trip under alias. No one here should know who he was. The only ones who could possibly know at all were at the Agency, and that meant…

His mind screamed at him to run, but of course there was nowhere to go. He chose the only remaining option and slammed the door closed.

Or rather, he tried. A bulky male arm reached around from the hallway and held the door cracked even as Damien put his full weight into it. When it failed to move, he glanced down to the woman and her widening smile.

“No need to be rude,” she told him, and with a quickness that startled him, she leaned back kicked the door open.

She must have had perfect form; it slammed into him hard enough to send him tumbling back into the room and smack his head on the bedpost. His vision blurred and he tried to blink away the dizzying haze even as the two figures slipped inside. The man was huge, well over two meters tall, and the woman slid free a two-foot long black rod anyone would recognize. They were called shock sticks, one of a very few weapons sanctioned for private use by the Covenant. In theory they were nonlethal, but in practice they hurt like hell. He knew from personal experience—understanding pain was a necessary part of weaving a convincing illusion into the minds of his more submissive clients.

“This doesn’t have to hurt,” she continued, closing the door as her friend moved over to loom between them. “I just want a little information.”

“I haven’t done anything,” he insisted, hearing the panic in his voice. For all his other skills, Damien was not a fighter and he knew it. He tried to swallow the onrush of fear and focus on stalling her as long as he could. Maybe someone would come by and hear them…

“Not very original. Or convincing, for that matter,” she said, shaking her head. She took a moment to appraise him, and beneath her dark blouse he could see the edge of thin black body armor. “Given your reputation, it’s a little disappointing.”

“What do you want?” he asked, staying as still as he could on the bed. The man was only about a half meter away, glaring down in annoyance. He may or may not have had armor—the only thing Damien really noticed was the size of his arms.

“I told you, Mr. Vendare: I just want to ask you a few questions. First, I’d like to know the name of the contact who got you these tickets.”

“Are you from the Agency?”

Her smile faded. “That’s a question, not an answer.” She flicked her wrist and the shock stick extended another foot. Its tip crackled dangerously. “You can scream all you want, for what it’s worth. I’m not worried about anyone else on this ship—and you shouldn’t be, either. It’s just the three of us until we get to port.”

“And then what?”

“That’s another question,” she said. “You were warned.”

She touched his leg with the stick, and suddenly his entire body was on fire. He convulsed uncontrollably and flopped back on the bed, his arm banging so hard against the metal wall he almost thought he broke something. When the pain finally waned, it took him nearly a minute to get his breathing back to normal. The woman hadn’t moved, but the man had crept forward a bit more. He was smiling crookedly.

“My instructions are simple,” she told him. “Now, who bought you your ticket? Who got you your ID? I want names.”

Damien’s mind flickered to all the messages he had exchanged with the Asurans over the last month. He hadn’t worked with any one person, and they hadn’t been very generous with names. He only really knew one—Samuel Kronn—but he had no idea who that person was.

And then he felt something pressing against his mind, a subtle tug at his conscious thoughts, almost as if he were currently touching another Demon. He tried to hold onto it, to figure out where it was coming from—

I can help you
, a female voice said into his thoughts
. I can get you out of there, but you need to trust me.

Damien brought a hand to his face. His assailants hadn’t moved, and they were looking at him expectantly. The woman was twirling the shock stick in her hand, her eyebrow raised. Certainly they hadn’t said it. So then who…?

I can help you,
the voice repeated, louder this time.
But I need your help, Damien. I need you to distract them for just a moment. Try and touch the man. Share your pain with him. You will be shocked, but it will buy us time.

“I don’t…” his voice trailed off and he licked his lips. He wondered dimly if he was just going crazy, if fear was manifesting a ghost inside his mind. But no, this was real. Someone was speaking to him—another Demon perhaps, one powerful enough not to need physical contact to share her thoughts. He had heard that such Demons existed, but he had never met one.

His female assailant inched forward with the shock stick. “You don’t what?”

Damien released a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.”

Damien lunged towards the bulky man. He thought he was moving quickly; he had certainly never felt as swift in his life. But before he even connected, the stick pressed into his back and his body exploded in fire once more. He flopped to the ground like an empty sack, twitching uncontrollably, unable to see anything beyond the pain.

Focus on me, Damien,
the voice said. It was soft and sweet, and the words soothed his aching body. The biting pain dulled into an echo, and the strength returned to his muscles. All he needed to do was move.

“Not very wise,” the woman sneered from above him. “The Covenant likes to claim that these aren’t lethal, but…let’s just say I know better.”

Damien bit down hard enough on his lip to draw blood. He glanced upward. The man was standing over him now, having produced his own shock stick from somewhere inside his coat. Unfortunately he was wearing gloves and his clothing seemed tightly fitted; there was no way for Damien to get contact with skin unless it was on the man’s face. He only had one option.

“All right,” he grunted, his voice weak and trembling. He reached out to grab onto the bed to pull himself up.

“You can tell us from the floor,” the woman insisted.

Damien coughed. He was going to have to be fast, much faster than he had been before. He didn’t see how it was possible…

Be ready,
the voice told him.

A second later, a loud
thump
shook the metal door. Reflexively, both of his assailants turned to see who had stumbled in on them. And in that moment, Damien moved.

He had barely gotten to his feet when his target swiveled back and extended the shock stick, but it was enough. Damien reached out and placed a hand upon the man’s neck just as the charge coursed through his body. It was a simple technique many Demons possessed, the ability to forcibly share one’s pain with another. Damien’s body became a conduit, and the larger man shrieked as he was punished by his own shock stick.

A second stick jabbed into Damien’s side, and he channeled that pain into the thug as well. The man’s muscles spasmed and he collapsed to the ground, his twitching quickly turning into a violent thrashing. His body reeled and threatened to shut down, but Damien held onto it as long as he could…

Lost in the other man’s mind, Damien was only vaguely aware of what was happening around him, but he heard the door slam open and saw a figure slide inside. A blinding light followed her as she strode in, and he had to flinch away from the silvery glow. Amidst the chaos, the thug’s mind shut down—and suddenly the pain of the double shock attack to Damien’s flank became very real and very painful. The Incubus cried out as he flopped to the ground, convulsing and screaming.

Before Damien lost consciousness, he saw a single lithe figure bathed in a brilliant, heavenly light standing atop the bodies of his tormenters. Her hair was a ghostly white, and her eyes were as dark as burnished obsidian. She looked upon him with both sorrow and joy, and in that moment he somehow felt as though no pain could ever harm him again.

Not with an Angel watching over him.

Chapter Two

Each lash was like a thousand barbed needles pricking into his flesh, but there were no gashes in his skin. Each stab was like a knife had been driven through his gullet, but there were no holes in his chest. For all intents and purposes, Avrick Torgain was just a shirtless man tied to a pole screaming like a wild beast.

“Enough,” a stiff voice ordered. “Give him a moment.”

Avrick clenched his fists and bit down into the spongy pad stuffed into his mouth. He could barely see anything; the sky had transformed from a clear, midday brown into a sea of blood red clouds, or at least that’s what his eyes were telling him. He didn’t believe them. Like the rest of his body, they would lie to him to get the pain to stop. His skin insisted it was about to burn off his body, and his muscles complained they were about to fall off his bones.

But they wouldn’t. Not yet, anyway. He still had a record to beat, and he wasn’t about to let up now.

“Pain is a weakness of the body,” he muttered through the mouth gag, “but the Lord protects my soul.”

The voice considered. “Then transcend the weakness that binds you to this world.”

There was a nod that was felt more than seen, and Avrick tensed for the inevitable barrage of lashes—

“That’s enough,” a different voice said. “Transcendence can wait for another day.”

Avrick growled and tried to focus on the newcomer, but his eyes refused to cooperate. The bloody haze was everywhere now; he could barely make out the metal floor at his feet, let alone distinguish shapes a few meters in the distance.

“He just finished his seventh round. Another impressive performance.”

“I agree, but this is important. If you would, please…”

Avrick felt the cool touch of a syringe poking into his arm. Like icy water dousing a pit of embers, the fire on his skin slowly hissed and died. He blinked away the crimson haze, and once again the world came into focus. Within less than a minute, his body was as rejuvenated and refreshed as if he had just taken his morning shower.

“I know you were looking to beat your old record,” the man in front of him said, “but that will have to wait.”

Avrick nodded in understanding. The man before him was tall and broad, with a militaristic bearing any soldier would recognize. Well into his forties, his brown hair was just starting to gray, but he had lost none of his presence or physique. He was Vaelen Osland, the man Avrick had always wanted to become. 

“I have no doubt he’ll succeed,” the second man, a similarly aged priest named Letaris, added thoughtfully. “And some day he will probably pass yours.”

Vaelen smiled thinly. “We shall see.”

They worked at releasing Avrick from his bonds. He was stiffer than he expected after the injection, but a few moments of stretching seemed to clear the worst of it. The injections were a training method and not meant to inflict any real physical damage. The chemicals ran through his blood stream and stimulated particular nerves surrounding his implants—nerves which could be targeted and attacked by the overseeing priest. The premise was to learn to control pain in any part of the body, and for decades all Chosen had learned to endure it.

It was Avrick’s favorite regimen—not because he was a masochist, but because he felt it was the only time he got to battle himself. All the other regimens, from hand-to-hand sparring to weapons training, involved others in some capacity. But this was purely mental, the ultimate test of willpower and discipline. Twenty years earlier, Vaelen had lasted ten rounds before passing out. Avrick himself had achieved eight only weeks earlier. Most Chosen rarely broke four.

“This sounds important,” Avrick commented as he stretched his muscles and caught his breath. As usual after the nerve lashings, his veins had become more pronounced, a bright blue latticework glowing beneath his skin. It was an unnerving sight to most that lived outside the confines of the Covenant, and as Letaris handed him back his shirt, Avrick hastily threw it on. 

Vaelen’s smile faded and he glanced about the training courtyard. “Take a few minutes to clean up, then come to my quarters.”

“Yes, sir,” Avrick replied. He took another moment to stretch and let the injection clear the toxins from his system before hopping briskly to his feet. Another of the priests led a half dozen fresh recruits through basic training regimens, mostly endurance building exercises that would prepare them for later combat drills and the pain rituals. Soon enough, they would be anointed as a Chosen like himself, soldiers of God sworn to defend His temples and servants against all threats.

And most importantly, to hunt down and destroy Demons.

Avrick sighed as he entered the temple and maneuvered through the quiet corridors. He assumed that’s was what this was about. He knew Vaelen had been working with their agents in Elassia trying to track down the Asurans, a group of terrorists who harbored Demons and even used them to attack Covenant outposts. Perhaps his mentor had finally gotten a solid lead he wanted to pursue.

Avrick paused as he drew near one of the priest’s chambers. The door was open and no one was inside, but he rarely saw this room as it was now. Instead his memories flickered back to the way it was two years ago, decorated with violet flowers and smelling of kaffa root. And sitting at her desk, smiling up at him, was a temple priestess with long black hair and crystal blue eyes…

Abruptly, he shook away the memory and continued on to his chambers. In all probability, this wouldn’t even be about her. Vaelen may have simply found another nest of Demons, perhaps even a local one. He would assemble a squad of Chosen and they would go out into the city to deal with the problem, just as they always did.

He managed to hold onto that delusion all the way to his quarters and most of the way through his shower, but by the time he had reached Vaelen’s chambers it was a distant memory. He knew full well this would be about her. At this point, almost everything was.

 “Is this new?” Avrick asked as he stepped inside the spacious office and glanced towards the large mosaic on his left. The room had more paintings than most art galleries, though the quality was uneven. Vaelen had a soft spot for aspiring artists whose work depicted aspects of the faith, and he purchased even the mediocre ones quite frequently.

“It commemorates the last days of the Reckoning,” Vaelen told him, glancing up from his desk.

“Ah.” To say the mosaic was an abstraction was to heartily understate the matter; the swirling orange-red mass and complete lack of anything resembling an actual shape or form made Avrick think it could be interpreted any way the viewer chose. Perhaps that was the artist’s intent. Or perhaps someone had just splashed paint on a canvas and called it a holy mosaic.

“I find it stirs my imagination,” Vaelen said to the unspoken question. “And it is important to remember.”

Avrick nodded idly. As if anyone here could ever forget. It was the defining moment of humanity, the time when God had burned the world to cleanse man of his sins…and the time when His Angels had descended from the heavens to help rebuild the world anew. It was the dawn of the Covenant.

“I have news from Solace,” Vaelen said after a few moments of silence.

“More Demon attacks?”

Vaelen’s face was hard, and his eyes seemed to bore into the younger man. “We have found the Betrayer.”

Avrick did his best not to flinch, and he figured he was at least mostly successful. From the moment Vaelen had spoken to him he had known it would be about her, but that didn’t make it any easier. And if they had really found her…then this was the news he had been dreading for six months.

Because it meant he was going to kill her. 

“We always suspected she was there,” Avrick replied matter-of-factly, doing his best to keep his feelings in check. 

Vaelen eyed him carefully for several long seconds before finally turning away and nodding. “Now we have proof. She’s working with the Asurans and seems to have befriended their leader.”

Avrick searched his memory. “The doctor, Samuel Kronn?”

“Yes. He’s been cautious since we killed his predecessor a year ago, but over the past month they have grown aggressive again. Just last week, they attacked several of our agents and released at least two Demons.”

“And you think she was involved?”

“There’s no way to be sure, but we do know she is aiding them.” Vaelen tapped the console on his right, and it projected a translucent hologram onto his desk. It appeared to be a still capture of a busy city street, but it didn’t take Avrick long to locate what he was looking for. Hidden beneath the folds of a hooded jacket was a pale-skinned woman with impossibly black eyes.

Sariel.

“That’s her,” he murmured.

“The man next to her is Kronn,” Vaelen pointed out. The doctor was a bit past middle age with dark skin and a graying beard. A still holo like this didn’t really tell them much beyond confirming their presence, but that was all they needed.

“When was this taken?”

“Three days ago. We haven’t picked up anything since, but our agents know where the Asurans are working. Our people put together some bait, and they’re going to make a move soon.”

Avrick pressed his lips together. “So what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to Solace,” Vaelen told him. “Tonight.”

“I see.”

The older man grunted. “I know it’s not what you were expecting, and maybe not even what you wanted, but it has to be done.”

It was, Avrick knew, something of a test. He had known Sariel since they were both brought to the temple when they were six. She had been trained as a priestess and he as a Chosen. It was no secret that they had been close, and Vaelen doubted whether his pupil was up to the task of hunting her down and doing what was necessary. 

His doubts were reasonable. Avrick had plenty of them himself.

“I can’t…” he started, biting his lip. “I just can’t see her as corrupt. I didn’t believe it when the priests told us, and I’m not sure I do now.”

“That will only make her more dangerous.”

Avrick closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against them. When the Covenant had branded her an outcast and a traitor six months ago, he had been in Fauress on missionary work. He was a man who could endure eight rounds of the pain ritual, yet he had spent most of that first night weeping in his tent like a small child. He couldn’t understand what had happened. He still didn’t.

It would have been one thing if she were still just a priestess—bad enough, certainly, but not nearly on the same level as a fallen Angel. She had been selected for the Bonding when she turned eighteen, and they had both expected the ritual to change her like it had the others. And really, how could it not? The ritual called down a holy spirit to possess her, transforming her into an Angel, a direct servant of God and a leader of the Covenant. Most priests who underwent the Bonding became entirely different people—aloof, distant, and reserved. Sariel had not.

“Since the Descent, only two other Angels have fallen,” Vaelen said gravely. “And none have ever left the mainland. She has turned her back on us and on God, Avrick. She has taken his divine gift and used it for evil.”

“I know,” he murmured. “That doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Betrayal is never easy. And when it is personal, it’s often impossible.”

Betrayal
. The word seared in Avrick’s mind. It did seem impossible; he had spent weeks convincing himself it was. Sariel had been devout even for a priest. Whenever he had come to her chambers late at night with his troubles, she had always been willing to answer them patiently, both as a friend and a mentor. Even when they were younger and more rebellious, when he bombarded her with question after question about the Sacra’thar, she had never grown angry or impatient.

But how many of her teachings had been poison? The priests said she left quietly, but his other friends insisted that had not been the case. They claimed she had bickered openly with the other Angels, and some insisted there had been actual fighting. He found that particularly unlikely…

“You need to prepare yourself, Avrick,” the older man said softly. “We will find her and any others she has corrupted, and you must be willing to do what is necessary.”

“You doubt me?”

Vaelen smiled. “Yes, as I know you doubt yourself. But I have faith that will change when you see the life she has chosen.”

Avrick wondered if that were true, and a part of him—a large part—hoped it wasn’t. This was not a mission of mercy or conversion they were going on. There was only one punishment for a betrayal of this magnitude: Sariel would be dragged back to the temple and burned alive until the spirit left her body. The Angels would keep her conscious in the flames until the spirit was exorcised and could be reclaimed. It was not something that happened often, but Vaelen had told him that he had witnessed a similar exorcism as a younger man. It had lasted for nearly two hours, and there were times he still woke hearing the screams.