Armageddon's Children Part 12

One of the lesser demons that served him, a still-too-human creature named Arlen, lean and stoop-shouldered and possessed of stringy hair and reptilian features, came through the gates leading two bloodied figures by chains he had fastened about their necks. Every time they stumbled, he screamed at them and yanked hard on the chains before allowing them to struggle up again. Bringing them to a ragged halt, he threw them down at his leader's feet and kicked them.

One was a woman. Findo Gask waited. Arlen beamed in expectation of his reward, then realized he was expected to say something.

"These are all that are left, yessir," he said.

Findo Gask nodded patiently. "Left of what?"

"Them that was guarding the children."

"And the children are where?"

Arlen shrugged. "Gone. She took them out while we was breaking down the gates. Took them out some tunnels, says these two. The whole bunch of them."

"The female Knight of the Word?" He spoke quietly, but from between clenched teeth. "She took all of the children?"

The other demon nodded eagerly. "Sure enough. Took 'em all. Must have come in another way."

Findo Gask picked up the length of chain knotted about the woman and drew her back to her feet. His eyes locked on hers. She was shaking all over, but she could not look away.

"Where did the Knight of the Word take them?" he said.

"Please," she whispered.

He gave her one moment more, then snapped her neck and threw her aside. He reached down and yanked the man to his feet. "Can you tell me where they went?"

"Out the tunnels . . . that lead to the streets," the man gasped.

One eye was gone and the other swollen shut. His face was a mask of blood.

"She told us ... this would happen. We .. . should have listened."

"Yes, you should have." He dropped the man in a heap and looked at Arlen.

"Where are these tunnels?"

Arlen shrugged-one shrug too many to suit Findo Gask. Quick as a snake, his hand shot out, fastened around the other's neck, and began to squeeze.

"Maybe you had better organize a search party to go down into the lower levels of the compound and find them."

He emphasized each word without raising his voice, then threw the hapless Arlen down beside the chained prisoner. "Maybe I should arrange for you to change places with him. Maybe I will if you don't find those children."

Arlen crawled a safe distance away on hands and knees, then came to his feet and staggered off without looking back. Findo Gask let him go. In truth, he didn't really care about the children. There were always other children. What he cared about was discipline and obedience. What he cared about was respect born of fear. Let them think he was soft or indecisive, and they would rip him apart.

There was danger of that happening as it was.

Where, he wondered suddenly, was Delloreen?

IT TOOK ANGEL a long time to get out of the city. She was too sore and too tired to move quickly, so beaten up from her encounter with the demon that she could barely put one foot in front of the other. If she was to meet resistance from another demon now, or even from a band of once-men, she wasn't sure she had the strength to stand up to them. So she kept to the alleyways and shadows, skirting anything that seemed like danger, conserving what strength remained to try to catch up to Helen and the children.

More than once, she looked back to see if that demon from the hotel was following. She had never encountered anything quite so ferocious. That the demon was female only made it seem more odious made it feel as if it were a perversion of herself as a Knight of the Word, a monster with no other purpose than to destroy. She hoped she had killed it, but she didn't think she had. Worse, she knew that if it lived it would come after her, probably with once-men to support it this time, probably with that old man as company.

When it did, she wasn't certain what she was going to do to save herself.

If not for the stairway collapse, it would have had her. She had been lucky this time. She couldn't expect to be that lucky again.

Behind her, black clouds of smoke billowed from the Anaheim compound. The demons had broken through the gates and were inside. The last of the defenders were being slaughtered; she could hear their screams rising with the smoke. She felt curiously numb to what she was witnessing, perhaps because she had grieved already or because she had endured it so many times already. Why hadn't they listened to her? What more could she have done? There were no answers, and asking the questions only served to point up the futility of her efforts as a Knight of the Word.

She stopped a moment and looked back at the shattered landscape. It didn't help knowing what was going on now inside the compound. The lucky ones would be killed; the unlucky would be taken as slaves. If there were any children left, they would be taken for experimentation. She hoped they had all gotten out. She wished she could go back to make sure. She wanted nothing so much as to save one more tiny life.

The ache and weariness washed through her in a sudden rush and she began to cry silently. She didn't cry much these days, but every now and then she couldn't seem to help herself. She grieved for those in the compounds, men and women who had struggled so hard to survive. She grieved for everything the world had lost, for the common ordinary things everyone had taken for granted, for what had once seemed so dependable and lasting. She had not been alive then, but she knew something of what it had been like from the stories the old ones told.

A few had been born in those times and remembered a little of what it had been like. But they were mostly gone, and the memories of the old ones now were much darker.

She wondered if she would ever be able to have memories that were sweet and treasured and welcome when they surfaced. They would have to be memories she would make later, she knew. Such memories would have to come from the future.

After a last look back across the broken walls and collapsed roofs of the buildings stretching to the compound pyre, she turned away. With Los Angeles gone, the demon-led army would begin to move north toward San Francisco, where the whole scenario would be repeated. She wondered if there was a Knight of the Word defending that city. She guessed she would find out when she got there.

That was where she was going. It was the only place left for her to go.

Ahead, the escaped children and the women herding them appeared in a ragged line. Some of them were clutching favorite possessions as they trudged through the ruined city streets. Some them were crying and hanging on to each other. She could imagine their thoughts in the wake of losing home, and parents, and everything they had ever known and loved. She could imagine their despair.

She hurried to catch up to them, anxious to do what she could to ease their suffering.

IT TOOK DELLOREEN a long time to extricate herself from beneath the collapsed stairway. She had lost consciousness, knocked senseless by one of the supports that had struck her head. When she woke, everything was black and the weight of the rubble was pressing down on her. She pushed and shoved and finally worked her way free, clawing up from the debris to the air and light and the silence of the hotel lobby. She stood and looked around, already knowing what she would find. The Knight of the Word had escaped her.

She was in some pain, but her pain was secondary to her rage, and her rage gave her renewed strength. She looked down at the tear in her arm, at the white of the bone. Injuries like this would cripple a human, but not a demon. Using her fingers, she pulled the flesh back together and held it in place until scales, which were gradually spreading over her entire body, closed the wound.

Her human flesh was weak, but her demon scales were like armor. She hated the human part of herself, but there wasn't much of it left.

When the wound was sealed sufficiently that she didn't have to think about it anymore, she brushed herself off, wiped the blood from her face with her hands, and licked her fingers clean. She thought about her battle with the Knight of the Word. The woman was small, but resilient. She was stronger than she looked. Still, she should not have escaped. If not for the staircase collapsing, she wouldn't have. Delloreen was more than a match for her. When they met again, she would prove it.

She walked to the door and looked outside. Down the street, from the direction of the compound, black smoke billowed into the midday air. The sounds of battle had subsided, and the solitary wails and groans that had replaced them bore testament to the result. She could go back now and resume her place at Findo Gask's side, but she already knew she wouldn't be doing that. She would not go back until she had found and killed the Knight of the Word. She would not go back until she had the Knight's head on a stake.

That was what it would take for her to replace Findo Gask as leader of the army. He had set the conditions, and she had as much as said she would fulfill them. Crawling back to him now would be a clear indication to everyone that she lacked the strength to rule. It would be an admission of failure and a sign of weakness. She knew that. She knew, as well, it would be her death sentence.

But she was not compelled by any of this. She would not go after the Knight of the Word out of either fear or a need to prove anything to Findo Gask- or to the other demons or the once-men that served them or even to the Void, itself. She would go because no one had ever bested her. She would go to match herself against an adversary that might mistakenly believe it was her equal. Her failure to kill this female Knight of the Word was a humiliation that she would not suffer under any circ.u.mstances. It did not matter what she had promised Findo Gask, or what anyone else expected of her. It only mattered that she find this creature and set things right.

She looked down the street, away from the compound. The Knight would have gone north, taking the rescued women and children with her to the compounds in San Francisco. She would not be able to travel quickly with children in tow. Not as quickly as Delloreen, who would be tracking her. She would not escape a second time. She would try, of course, but she would fail.

The demon pictured in her mind for a moment what she might do to the woman when she had her within reach again. She pictured the fear and pain she would find in her eyes when she had her in her grasp. She pictured the ways she would break her.

It was only then that she would feel vindicated.

Putting such images aside for another time and brushing off any further concerns about the old man, she began walking north out of the city.

Chapter TWELVE.

IT WAS MIDDAY in the ruins of the Emerald City, and the Ghosts were playing stickball in the streets of Pioneer Square.

Stickball most closely resembled baseball, a game none of the Ghosts had ever seen, though they'd read about in books. They didn't know anything about stickball, either, for that matter, other than what Panther taught them. Panther claimed to have played it on the streets of San Francisco. He showed them what he knew, and they made up the rest.

They had figured out what innings were and how many they should play, but nine innings made the game go on too long so they settled on five. They had figured out that in baseball there were nine or maybe ten players on the field, but they didn't have that many Ghosts, so they settled for teams of three or four. They had a rubber ball, one that was kind of worn and squishy, but no bat, so they used a sawed-off broomstick. The batter just tossed the ball in the air, hit it as hard as possible, and took off running. If someone caught the ball, the runner was out. If it was dropped, the runner could keep going. But you could still touch him with the ball or throw it at him and hit him, in which case he was out, too. The game was played in the open s.p.a.ce just north of the old pergola-Owl had looked the name up in one of her history books. There were four bases, old tires laid out in an irregular formation because the open s.p.a.ce and surrounding streets were clogged with debris and derelict vehicles. The base paths looked a little like a maze. They hadn't figured out strikes and b.a.l.l.s, either, but that didn't matter since there was no pitcher and they had decided early on that the batter should just keep swinging at the ball until he hit it.

They allowed three outs per side per inning, but sometimes they extended that number to four when one of the little kids made an out, like Squirrel or Candle, just because it seemed fair.

It wasn't the stickball kids had played fifty years earlier in the streets of the cities of America, but it worked just as well. It gave them something to do besides forage and scout, and Owl was forever telling them they needed to have fun now and then. Panther, in particular, liked this form of fun, having thought up the game in the first place, and he spent much of his time urging the others to play it.

Just now, it was the fourth inning and he was batting, facing a field that consisted of Chalk, Sparrow, and Bear. Fixit and Candle were waiting for their turn at bat. Owl was acting as umpire, a role she was regularly a.s.signed, as much because she was the only one any of them trusted to be fair and impartial as because of the wheelchair. Squirrel was still in their underground lair, recovering from his fever. While he had insisted he was strong enough to come up and play ball with the others, Owl had told him he needed at least one more day in bed. River was keeping him company.

Hawk stood off to one side, the odd man out in the game and just as happy to be so because he was preoccupied with mulling over the consequences of Candle's vision of the previous night. Cheney dozed in a nearby doorway, big head resting on his paws, eyes closed, ears p.r.i.c.ked, missing nothing.

"Better move way back, children!" Panther shouted to the fielders, tossing the ball up casually as he took his batting stance. "Hey, I said way back 'cause this baby's gonna fly!"

Then he hit it a ton, his smooth, hard swing catching the ball flush on the end of the broomstick and sending it soaring far out into the square. Chalk and Bear, who were already playing pretty far out in deference to Panther's superior athletic ability, backed up hurriedly. But the ball dropped between them as they misjudged its distance, and Panther skipped around the bases, tossing out taunts about inept.i.tude and bad eyesight. Unfortunately for him, he was having such a good time that he failed to account for Sparrow, who was waiting at second base for the relay, and he ran right into her. Sparrow, furious, kicked him in the shins and started beating on him. Howling in dismay and at the same time laughing, Panther broke away.

By this time, Bear had chased down the ball. Wheeling back, he gave it a mighty heave. Bear was strong, and the ball flew a long way. Sparrow tried to catch it, but the ball caromed off her hands, took an odd hop, and bounced into Panther, who was just coming into home plate.

"You're out!" shouted Sparrow.

"Out!" Panther laughed. "No frickin' way."

"Out!" Sparrow repeated. "The ball hit you on the base path. The rules say you're out!"

Panther picked up the broomstick, waved it at her threateningly, and then threw it down again. "What are you talking about? That don't count! Bear just heaved the ball in! He didn't try to hit me, so I ain't out! Besides, it hit you first!"

"Doesn't matter who it hit first. It hit you last, and you're out!"

"You're frickin' crazy!"

Sparrow stalked over to him, brushing her mop of straw-colored hair out of her blue eyes, brow furrowed in anger. "Don't talk to me like that! Don't use that street language on me, Panther Puss! Owl, tell him he's out!"

The rest of them came crowding in to stand around Panther and Sparrow, who by now were right in each other's faces, yelling. Hawk watched it for a moment, amused. Then he saw Owl give him an irritated glance as she wheeled over to try to break it up, and he decided that enough was enough.

"Hey, all right, that's the end of it!" he shouted them down, striding over. "Panther, you're not out. You can't be out when the ball bounces off someone or something else first. That's the rule. But," he held up one hand to silence Sparrow's objection, "you have to go back to first for running over Sparrow. Isn't that right, Owl?" He looked over at her and winked.

She gave him a thumbs-up. "Play ball!" she shouted, one of the few things she knew they said in baseball when they wanted the game to resume, motioning Panther back to first base.

Grumbling, the players all returned to their positions. "Still say that's bull!" snapped Panther over his shoulder as he slouched away.

Hawk ambled after Owl as she wheeled back behind home plate, hands in his pockets, head lowered so that he could watch the movement of his feet on the pavement ahead of him. "I don't know about these games," he said.

Owl glanced over her shoulder. "It's good for them, Hawk. They need the games. They need something to take their minds off what's happening around them.

They need to get all that energy and aggression out." She gestured at him. "You should be playing, too. Why don't you take Fixit's place for a while?"

He shrugged. "Maybe later."

She wheeled into position behind home plate and reached for his hand as he stopped beside her. "At least tell me what's bothering you. And don't say nothing because I know better. Is this about Tessa?"

It was, of course, because everything was about Tessa these days. But it was also about Candle's vision, and he hadn't told Owl of that yet. He wasn't sure he should tell anyone because he didn't know what it meant or what he should do about it. He was still working that through, trying to decide if he should make preparations to leave the city and, if so, where he should think about going.

Leaving meant uprooting everyone from the only stable home they had known.

It meant finding another place to go to, abandoning the familiar and striking off into the unknown. It meant finding a way to persuade Tessa to go with them, to leave her parents and her life inside the compound, to give up everything she had ever known.

In short, it meant turning everyone's world upside down. He didn't have the first notion how to go about doing that.

"While you're deciding how much you want to tell me," Owl said, breaking into his thoughts, "there's something I need to tell you.

It's about River. She's been going somewhere on her own without telling anyone.

Not at night, but during the daytime, when the rest of us are busy with other things and don't notice her absence." She paused. "I think she might be meeting someone."

Hawk knelt beside her, one eye on Fixit, who was standing at the plate getting ready to hit the ball. "How do you know this?"

"Candle told me. You know she and River are like sisters; they don't have many secrets. But this was one. She noticed River sneaking out and when River came back, she confronted her. River wouldn't tell her anything, just said she had to trust her and not to tell anyone. Candle didn't, until yesterday. She became worried after you got back from your visit with the Weatherman and she heard about the dead Croaks, so she decided to tell me."

Hawk shook his head. "Who would she be meeting?"

"I don't know. But Candle says she was taking something with her in a bag when she saw her leave that one time. She thinks she's been doing this for a while. Hawk, I don't know what to do. I don't want to confront her about it. She would know it was Candle who told me, and that would ruin their relationship.

They're too close for me to do that."

He nodded. "But we have to do something."

"Maybe you could keep an eye on her, and when she sneaks away again, you could follow her."

That sounded a good deal easier than it was likely to turn out to be, he thought. River was pretty good at looking out for herself, and she would not be caught off guard. If he was going to find anything out by following her, he would have to be particularly skillful about it. It was not something he was anxious to attempt, in any case. Following any of his family secretly was a demonstration of his lack of trust in them and a betrayal of their trust in him.

"I don't know," he said to Owl.

"I don't know, either," she agreed, "but I don't think we can let her go off by herself like this without knowing what she's doing. Being a family means a.s.suming responsibility for each other, making sure that we look out for each other. I don't think we're doing that if we ignore the possibility that she is putting herself in danger."

He knew it was true, but that didn't make him feel any better about it. He resented the fact that this was happening now, when there was so much else that needed his attention. He wanted to confront River on the spot and tell her that he didn't need this added distraction, but he knew that wasn't the way to handle things.

"Let me think about it," he said.

Owl's attention was back on the game. "Don't take too long. I don't think this can wait."