Angel Of Solace (20 page)

The young man at the door Damien also recognized: Avrick. He wasn’t quite as muscular, and his youthful face seemed far more innocent somehow, but it was the same man. Sariel quickly let him into the room, and within moments the two of them were locked in a passionate embrace.

Damien blinked and his vision returned to the present. He still held on to Sariel, her eyes fluttering as he made her mind relive the only sexual encounter of her life. His stomach churned in annoyance, directed mostly at himself. Most of his client’s fantasies involved him in some way or another, but a few preferred to relive past experiences in their own lives—with some additional polish, of course. But Sariel’s mind wasn’t asking him to change anything—the natural ineptitude of a first-time lover, their restraint and fear of being caught, nothing. Her fantasy was to be in that exact moment, just as it had been.

With Avrick.

Damien bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. He forced himself to maintain concentration and keep the illusion going. This wasn’t about uncovering her sexual fantasies; this was about finding the spirit inside her. And enraptured by his illusion as she was, the time was now or never.

The Incubus pushed past his own illusion and delved deeper into her mind. He probed lightly, praying he wouldn’t provoke the spirit into driving him out again. It was something he had done hundreds of times before, searching for hidden secrets and scandalous bits of information hidden within the minds of his clients. The only difference now, he told himself, was that the secrets might bite back.

You!

It was more of a presence than a voice, but he heard it just the same, blaring so loudly inside his skull he felt his entire body shake. He couldn’t see or even feel it, exactly, but he knew it was there. And it was watching him.

She is mine,
it told him.
Now and forever.

Why?

The presence paused. Damien could feel its confusion, as if it couldn’t understand the question.

She is dying,
Damien added.
Won’t that harm you? Why can’t you let her go?

Never! it shrieked. The spirit’s assault was quick and brutal; Damien nearly lost his concentration, and he was amazed his illusion managed to remain intact. But somehow he knew that was the best it could do. He had gotten in this close, and it had no way of pushing him out. Was it weakened somehow, like her?

Let me help you,
Damien said.
Maybe I can find a way to keep you both safe.

You speak with the voice of the heretics,
it hissed.
You do not understand.

No, but I want to. Tell me. Give me a chance.

The presence stirred, and Damien braced himself for another attack—but it never came. Instead, he heard a low, guttural rumbling in his mind, as if an ancient creature were sighing straight into his brain.

You will know,
it told him.

Damien started to reply, but he never got the chance. A moment later, the knowledge poured over him, an unstoppable torrent of memories and feelings. He tried to hold himself firm against it, but it was impossible. Soon it had engulfed him completely, and he was washed away by its power.

***

For a long, breathless minute, the unadorned, half-painted walls in the Asuran compound were a pristine marble cream, and the empty rooms and storage lockers were a series of elegant crystal fountains. Shyrah wasn’t the broken shell of a woman she felt like now, but instead an eight-year old girl terrified that her parents had abandoned her but enamored by all the wealth and splendor surrounding her.

A dark-haired, barrel-chested man welcomed her over to join him and the two women in sleek silken outfits tending to his every need. His name was Garaldi, and he promised her that if she just did exactly what she was told, he would make certain she had everything she ever wanted. On that day her desire had been little more than a hot meal and some toys, and he had made sure she was well-cared for. At least, at first.

As the months passed, her time for play dwindled, and she spent most of her days with two older women. One who taught her everything there was to know about being a proper escort for a Syndicate boss, from fashion to social graces in her early years to sex not long after. The second taught her how to defend him with her life, and how to make her body into a weapon when she needed it to be. It wasn’t until she had turned thirteen that a third tutor had joined her, a large, callous man, and he taught her what it was to feel pain.

He also taught her to steel herself against it. It had kept her sane during the long hours of rape and torture that were to come, and it had allowed her to survive a meek existence that very rarely decided to be kind. Today, however, it wasn’t working at all.

Shyrah blinked away the memories as she leaned against the wall in the Asuran compound. It wasn’t even midday yet, and the halls were quiet. Almost everyone was gone, and soon they would be leaving this tattered collection of interconnected houses behind them. They would once again find a new home, ostensibly safe from the myriad forces waiting to destroy them.

Safe
. People used the term far too frequently for her liking. They were never really safe, no matter how far of a hole they dug themselves into. And if Corin was right, this all might have just been a big illusion anyway—a show for Elassian Security to get something out of them. She just couldn’t figure out what that could possibly be.

The thought gave her hope. She couldn’t understand how the Asurans could have survived an ESI spy. They wouldn’t just tolerate a rogue organization like theirs operating behind-the-scenes. Corin had made an excellent point—they certainly had far more resources and better intelligence than the Asurans could ever muster.

And yet…

It would serve her right if Kronn was a traitor, especially for the way she had been treating Sariel and Corin. For all Shyrah’s bluster, she had been just as dull and accepting as the rest of them. It had taken her half the time to trust Kronn as it had their former leader, Tolson. She had followed him around for weeks, just expecting him to double-cross them all. And even when he hadn’t, she hadn’t really trusted him for many months.

But Kronn had been in charge for a year now, and there was no denying that she trusted him. If he was using them now, if he was a part of some ESI scheme, then it was her fault. She could have caught it earlier and stopped it if she hadn’t let her guard down—if she really was the stone-faced bitch she liked to pretend to be instead of the battered shell she actually was.

Shyrah took a deep breath and did her best to wipe the pain off her face. Kronn was in his office making calls and finishing off the final details of their move, and thankfully there were no other Asurans left in the base to wander by and see her making a mess of herself. She gave herself a full minute to calm down and wipe her eyes before striding through the doorway.

“Problem?” Kronn asked, glancing up from his datapad.  

“Maybe,” she said neutrally, sliding inside. She felt her hand instinctively dropping down to her pistol and instead flattened it against her leg. “Corin may have found something.”

Kronn cocked an eyebrow. “Something?”

“Unauthorized communications,” she told him. “He’s checking into it. Hopefully it’s nothing.”

His face might have twitched fractionally, or she might have been just imagining it. Either way, she knew her own tension had to be obvious, and a man like Kronn would have no trouble reading her like a book. And so she just stood there, looking into his eyes and praying that she was wrong about all of this.

“Have him give me a report as soon as he gets something,” he said after a moment. “He’s sure it’s not coming from Avrick’s cell, right?”

“It was the first thing he checked,” she said mechanically. “He thinks it’s from one of the other offices.”

 For a moment, she almost thought he would break down. His calm façade splintered just a little, and she could see the sweat forming at his brow. He knew her past—he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him right here if she found out. And for a long, agonizing minute, the two of them simply stared at each other.

A door opened down the hall and hurried footsteps approached. Shyrah swiveled to the side, but her eyes didn’t leave Kronn. The answer to all of this had to be there somewhere in his face…

“Sam,” Sariel said as she whirled around the corner, Damien in tow. Tears streaked down her face.

“What? What is it?” Kronn asked, standing up sharply.

The Angel’s eyes flicked to Damien, then back to Kronn. “You’re going to want to get everyone.”

“Did you…?”

Damien nodded. “I made contact…and you’re not going to believe it.”

Chapter Thirteen

“You’re sure you want him here?” Shyrah asked, nodding to the Chosen as he took a seat in what was left of the lounge.

“He needs to hear it,” Sariel said, arms folded tightly across her chest. Her tears were gone and she had more or less collected herself, at least superficially. It was going to take a long time for her to come to grips with what they had learned. 

Damien turned as the others seated themselves, taking a moment to glance out the small uncovered sliver of the closest window. His thoughts turned to the Agency’s Tower where he had grown up, where a criminal organization had shielded against the Covenant. They had kept the children in line with nightmarish tales of what would happen to them in the outside world. For once, those tales hadn’t gone far enough. Not nearly. 

“The bottom line is that you were right, doctor,” Damien said softly after a few moments, spinning to face them all. “About the Angels.”

The older man frowned. “How so?”

“You told me earlier you thought they were parasites; you just couldn’t confirm it with your instruments. Well…you were right.”

Kronn nodded, but he didn’t seem particularly happy about the revelation.  “I see.”

“But it’s much more than that. They’re fully sentient, conscious creatures,” Damien continued.  “And they’re native to Argoa.”

Everyone in the room seemed to stir at once, glancing about as if to see if what Damien was telling them sounded as crazy to the others as it did to themselves. He had thought it was crazy too, even as the alien being had spoken directly to his mind. But most people were willing to believe Angels were an incorporeal, divine spirit, complete with their own consciousness—was this really any different?

“You’re saying they’ve been on this planet forever?” Corin asked.

“They were here before the first colonists landed a hundred-fifty years ago,” Damien confirmed. “It’s their home, and we took it from them.”

“Actual, factual aliens,” Shyrah murmured in disbelief. “That’s what you’re saying.”

Kronn let out a deep breath and shook his head. “Aliens we didn’t know existed. And then we started terra-forming sections of the planet and altering the atmosphere for our colonists…” he trailed off.

“That’s impossible,” Avrick said. “How could we not have known they were there? Are you saying there was this entire invisible civilization and we just somehow missed it?”

“Invisibility is a matter of perspective,” Kronn replied. “There are plenty of things we can’t see with our naked eye, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And in this case, even our tools weren’t sufficient to bridge the gap. It actually makes so much sense it’s sickening.”

“I hope you’re kidding,” Shyrah muttered.

“No, think about it: for all the thousands of years when we considered the possibility of alien life, we assumed it would be like us—eyes, ears, limbs, whatever. But most scientists understood we were far more likely to find some protoplasmic entity or bacteria—something really, truly
alien
to us—than we were some near-genetic cousin. That’s all this is.”

Corin shrugged. “Makes more sense than some supernatural creature that can possess people.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t make any sense, either,” Shyrah said. “As much as I hate to agree with God Boy over there, he makes a good point. I don’t see how we could have just missed it this long.”

“We can’t perceive them, and they had no idea how to communicate, not at first,” Damien explained. “They couldn’t fight us, either, at least not conventionally, and we were wiping them out. Eventually, some of them discovered they could physically enter our nervous systems and form a more-or-less symbiotic relationship. They started doing this in mass to save their civilization.”

Corin waved his hands. “Wait a minute, I thought you were talking about Angels. That sounds a lot like…”

He trailed off, and everyone slowly turned their gaze to Damien. At first, he had thought the revelation that the Angels were aliens was huge—and it was. But that was only the beginning. The second part was actually far more shocking.

“Angels and Demons,” he said softly, “are the same race.”

“No,” Avrick breathed. “The Demons were…” he trailed off soundlessly.

“The Demons were a temptation sent by the devil to test our faith,” Sariel continued for him, almost mechanically. “When humanity began to embrace their evil, the Reckoning was needed to purge the wicked from their midst. In the ashes of this devastation, the Angels descended from Heaven to light the way towards their salvation.”

Damien leaned back in his chair. “These creatures had a civilization not so unlike ours, but after our attack, there was dissent. Some of them chose to bond with their invaders, believing they could live in this symbiotic relationship with us and perhaps one day learn how to communicate. They thought it would help them survive.”

“And others decided they would rather destroy us,” Kronn reasoned. “And so they tried.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Shyrah said, standing up sharply. “You’re telling me some invisible parasites or aliens or whatever nearly destroyed the entire colony?”

Damien nodded. “The Angels found it easy enough to take control of their hosts, and so they did. They used the colony’s own defenses to eradicate most of the mainland.”

“So they caused the Reckoning and murdered millions of people.”

“And then created a religion around it in the aftermath,” Corin whispered. “I don’t even think conspiracy theorists could compete with that.”

“Impossible,” Avrick repeated, though his voice lacked conviction.

“From their time observing us, they understood our basic psychology,” Damien went on. “They knew that in a crisis, humans rally around fear and symbols. To put it bluntly, they used our own mythology against us. The faction who wanted to destroy us did so as best they could, and then made the survivors believe in Angels.”

“And turned people into willing hosts for them,” Corin said, still shaking his head. “They made people believe it was some great honor, and convinced everyone else to try and kill Demons.”

“Exactly. The Demons believed they could live in peace with us. Their symbiotic bond allowed them to survive the changes we had made to the planet and experience the universe in a different way. It also had the side effect of expanding the senses of their human hosts—empathy, telepathy, even telekinesis sometimes. To them, both species were benefiting from the arrangement, even if they didn’t know exactly why.”

He rubbed a hand through his hair and leaned forward to continue. “The Angels weren’t satisfied with that arrangement. They wanted to control us, not live in harmony. By being more aggressive, they changed the relationship from symbiotic to parasitic, in a way. That’s why during the normal bonding process, the Angel’s personality changes.”

“And some physical traits,” Sariel added softly. “The Angel parasite takes control of the host’s mind and body. The host becomes a vessel.”

“And, incidentally,” Damien said, “it’s also why Angels are far more powerful than Demons most of the time.”

“That’s fucking…” Shyrah grunted and trailed off. “I don’t even know. Crazy doesn’t begin to cover it. You’re saying we started a war without even knowing it, and now we’re being used as puppets to resolve some aliens’ ideological tiff.”

Damien nodded. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Look, I’ve never bought into the Covenant bullshit about spirits and possessions or whatever, but you have to realize how absolutely insane this sounds.”

“It fits the facts,” Kronn said softly.

Shyrah snorted. “Except that you still can’t scan these things or validate this story in any way. This thing could be blowing smoke up your ass and you wouldn’t know it.”

“It might not have told me everything, but it wasn’t lying,” Damien assured her.

“Right, and you’re an expert on alien sociology.”

“No, but I am a telepath. I would have known.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “No offense—I know you took a great risk to learn any of this, but I’m not comfortable just accepting it as fact. We have literally zero proof outside of what this thing told us, and it’s all pretty convenient.”

“If it is a deception, the next question is what this entity has to gain by perpetrating it,” Kronn pointed out. “If anything, this would be plenty to damn the Covenant. We couldn’t have asked for better dirt, so to speak.”

“I don’t know,” Shyrah replied, rubbing her face in exasperation, “but there has to be a reason.”

“There’s more, and it might help convince you,” Sariel said. “We also know why I’ve been experiencing the…erosion that only afflicts older Angels.”

Shyrah cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not going to like this either, am I?”

“The Angel is trying to kill the Demon inside me.”

Damien could almost hear them all working through that. Kronn made a soft clucking sound in the back of his throat, and Damien knew the Asuran leader understood immediately even if the rest of them didn’t.

“I’m a Demon, too,” Sariel told them. “I managed to hide it from everyone as a child at the temple. When they picked me for the Bonding, I had no idea anything would change. I just thought…I don’t know, I thought maybe I would be redeemed. Or that it would all just go away.”

Avrick nearly recoiled at her words. Almost uniformly, the others did nearly the opposite.

Shyrah swore under her breath. “Well, I was right. I don’t like that a damn bit.”

“So they’re fighting it out inside of you,” Kronn said, stroking his beard. “That explains a lot.” After a moment his eyes refocused and turned to Sariel. “Do you have any idea what we can do about it?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think they know, either.”

“The bigger problem is that it doesn’t really matter who wins,” Damien told them. “Eventually, the struggle itself will rip her mind apart if we can’t figure out how to stop it.”

“But the Covenant wants you back,” Shyrah pointed out. “Desperately enough to send an Angel here. To me that suggests they have a way to end it, either to get these things out of you or kill one of them or something.” She glanced up to Damien. “Are you sure the Angel didn’t know what to do?”

“No,” he admitted. “It wasn’t lying to me directly, but it could have easily omitted something. That’s much harder to detect.”

“Couldn’t you go in again and find out?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I only know this much because it wanted me to. I don’t think I can actually force anything out of it.”

“So we’re back to this thing spilling the beans for a reason,” Shyrah said, “or just making it all up. I’m not sure what’s worse.”

“It’s definitely desperate. It doesn’t know if it can defeat the Demon, and it’s going to die soon if it can’t. It might just be hoping this makes us do something—anything.”

“I can run tests,” Kronn suggested, his voice a bit odd. “Maybe there’s some way to bolster you against it.”

Damien eyed the older man for a moment. Did he know something he wasn’t sharing? An idea they wouldn’t like or that he didn’t want everyone to hear?

“The only ones who will know are the Covenant,” Avrick put in softly, his eyes distant. His face was drained of color. “If it’s true, they’ll know. If there’s a way to get the things out of you, they’ll know.”

Fifteen minutes ago, sitting in the dormitories talking this over the first time, Damien and Sariel had already come to that same conclusion. Deep down, Sariel had probably always known it would eventually come to that. Still, he knew that wouldn’t make it any easier to deal with. None of the options were pleasant.

 “Avrick is right,” Damien said eventually. “The Angels are the only ones who might have an answer. Even if they don’t, they’ll have more data than anyone else. Either way, that’s the best chance of figuring out a way to beat this thing.”

“If they have that medical knowledge, it might not be in a place we can access,” Kronn pointed out. “It may just be in the minds of these parasites. It would be much safer than risking the data getting out and ruining their secret.”

“I wasn’t expecting them to
give
anything away,” Damien replied. “But you have resources. You have people willing to take risks to bring them down.”

It was a flippant and perhaps even arrogant way to suggest the Asurans simply throw lives at the problem, but somehow he didn’t regret it. And for what it was worth, he was placing himself alongside them at the same time. Only hours before, he had almost convinced himself he could turn away from all of this once he had helped her. But now, knowing what all was at stake—both for Sariel and all the others like them—there was no looking back.