Hellgate London - Exodus Part 8

Getting to his feet, Warren went to the door and peered out. He saw no demons. At the door, gazing out onto the street, he saw a few scattered fires, but no sign of the demons.

"How did you do that?"

The woman's voice startled Warren. He drew back quickly enough to collide with the door frame and trigger a new onslaught of pain to cascade through his head.

A thin woman stood at his side. She looked emaciated, and like she'd just crawled out of a bin at a medical examiner's office.

"Who are you?" Warren asked. The warning itch squirmed like a worm on a hook inside his aching head. He curled his fists, ready to lash out. He'd learned to fight while he was growing up in state-sponsored homes, but he'd never been very good at it. Others had always hurt him more than he'd hurt them.

"Calm yourself," the woman said. She took a step back and averted her face as if he was shining a bright light into her face. "You are raw, boy. Has no one trained you?"

Warren didn't know what she was talking about. He backed away from her, toward the stock room where Kelli was.

Upon closer inspection, Warren thought the woman was in her late forties or early fifties. Her skin was pale as milk, but the shadows blended with the tattoos that covered her, making them hard to identify. They looked like the sigils and symbols that had drawn Warren's attention in the library. Some of them seemed to burn with a green fire. But her most astounding features were the stubby horns that jutted out of her forehead.

"What are you?" Warren demanded before he had a chance to think about what he was going to say.

"A human, if that's what you're wondering."

It was, though Warren didn't want to admit that. "My name is Edith Buckner," she told him.

"Warren," Warren replied automatically, then stopped himself before he could give his last name. He hadn't wanted to answer, but his first name was off his tongue before he knew it.

"Well, Warren," Edith said. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Staring at her, Warren noticed the dark, shapeless cloak the woman wore. It also had sigils, but these were sewn in black thread.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Much the same as you are." She smiled. "Trying to survive in difficult times. But I'm also trying to learn.

As you should be. Not everyone has our talents." She waved a hand in front of him. Yellow highlights dawned in her eyes.

Something coiled and twisted inside Warren. Although the woman wasn't touching him, he could feel her hands on him. The sensation made him feel uncomfortable, almost sick. Without thinking about it, he pushed back.

The tattoos on the woman's forehead and cheeks momentarily flamed lambent green. The effect was gone so quickly that he might have believed it was his imagination playing tricks on him. If he hadn't felt her touch inside his mind.

She staggered back as though struck. Glaring at him, she took a deep breath. "Where did you learn to do that, boy?"

"I didn't do anything." Warren turned from her, intending to go get Kelli and get home. The woman caught his arm. "Don't turn your back on me, boy."

Warren yanked his arm from her grip. "Get off of me."

"You knew you had this power," Edith told him in a calm, cold voice.

Warren didn't say anything, but memories of his stepfather and mother flashed through his head.

You've been spending our money on that c.r.a.p again, haven't you?his stepfather yelled.

It isn't c.r.a.p,his mother replied.I have power, Martin. I have the kind of power that they haven't seen very often.

You're a stupid, girl, Tamara. Very stupid. People as stupid as you pay for being stupid. Stay back! Don't!

The sound of the gunshot that had ended the screaming match exploded inside Warren's mind again...

"Did you have this power before the demons came?" the woman asked.

Walling off all those painful memories again, Warren ignored her. She had brought that memory to the surface with her mind-touch. He wanted to break her for what she'd done. He hadn't thought about his parents and that night in months.

"You knew you could turn that demon, didn't you?" the woman demanded. Warren hadn't known that for sure, but he wasn't going to tell her that, either.

"If you had the power before the h.e.l.lgates opened," the woman said, "the power is only going to grow stronger. If you don't learn how to harness it, it may well destroy you."

He felt her fingers inside his mind again, poking, probing.

...the smell of burning flesh and blood...the iron taste of blood in his mouth...the raw burn of power that made him feel ripped apart...his stepfather's final screams...

"Stay away," Warren said hoa.r.s.ely. He pushed against her with the angry force that had resided within him since the night his parents had died.

Staggered, the old woman shrieked and shrank back. She was sick for a moment, throwing up on the sidewalk in front of the comic book shop. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

"You need someone to teach you," the woman said. "Someone to guide you. Before you hurt yourself or someone else. I can help you."

Warren wheeled on the woman then, standing half a head taller than the tips of her horns. "I don't want your help. Don't you understand that? I don't want anything to do with you or your kind. If you try to touch me again, I'm going to hurt you."

The woman took a half-step back, obviously afraid of him. "You need us, Warren. You need someone to help you grow in your power before it burns through you like an electrical short and kills you." "That's not going to happen."

"You don't know that. A lot of us have gotten stronger since the demons came into our world. We're going to get stronger still. You need to know what to expect before you get caught up in it."

"I don't want your help."

Noise came from down the block. More sirens ripped through the night, punctuated by rapid gunfire. Warren a.s.sumed the police officer had had support teams show up. For all the good that would do. The sirens would draw the demons.

"I'm leaving," he announced. "Get out of my way."

"There's a group of us who have been meeting for years. We've noticed how more accelerated the power is in individuals since the h.e.l.lgates opened. We're helping them." The woman reached into her cloak and took out a pen and pad. "We could help you."

"No."

Edith wrote anyway. When she finished she held out a piece of paper with an address on it. "If you ever want to know more about what you're experiencing, come see us."

Even though he told himself he didn't want to, Warren took the piece of paper that she pressed into his hand.

"Come see us," the woman urged. "We can help." She smiled. "We can help you get stronger. Strong enough even to survive what's about to happen to this world."

Warren heard Kelli calling out to him. He turned back to the comic shop to let her know he was there. When he turned back around, Edith Buckner had vanished. Only smoke and fog drifted through the street.

Slowly, Warren thrust the note with the address into his jeans pocket. Then he went to get Kelli.

"I heard you, you know."

Back at the flat, Warren looked over at Kelli. They laid their precious cargo out on the table. George and Dorothy were out, presumably still searching for food as well. Warren wondered if they'd both make it home alive.

"Heard me what?" Warren smiled a little as if she were working a punch line. "Send that monster away."

Warren took out two jars of peanut b.u.t.ter and six tins of salmon. Those were going to be delicacies for George for the coming week.

"You were imagining things," Warren insisted. "You were scared and disoriented. You only thought you heard me send the demon away."

"No. I heard you."

Remaining quiet, Warren sorted the food. They'd made a good haul. Most of the stuff would keep for weeks or months. But they were still short on water. Water was the hardest to haul because it took so much of it to get them through a day and because water was so heavy and bulky to transport.

"You're delirious," Warren said. "You were scared out of your wits."

"I heard you," Kelli insisted. "Only you weren't speaking. It was like you were hardwired into my head." Irritated, Warren turned from his work. "Would you listen to yourself, Kelli? You sound mental. Like you're ready for the loony bin."

Her face tightened. Now that she no longer had to be scared for her life, she could be angry. "I know what I heard."

"No, you don't."

"How do you know how to talk to those creatures?" "I don't."

"Why do you want to lie about it?" "I'm not."

Kelli looked like she wanted to argue further, but she closed her mouth and walked away from him.

They lived in a converted warehouse area in Manchester, a two-story affair that had been converted into lofts. The area comfortably fit them, though Dorothy's paintings tended to overflow into the main room.

Kelli climbed the ladder up to her private area. She pulled the sheets that served as their walls, shutting him out. A few minutes later, the soft, sad chords of her acoustic guitar pealed within the loft.

Warren continued sorting the food. He'd been the one who had come up with the idea of inventorying everything they salvaged from the city so they would always know what they had and what they needed. He'd learned how to exist-he couldn't call it a life-organized and small while living in the state homes. Now those skills served him in good stead.

When he'd finished, with Kelli's soft playing still present in the background, he went to his own living s.p.a.ce and pulled the sheets. He knew he needed to go back out. They hadn't gotten any water, and they needed water. That had been one of the primary objectives of their foraging tonight.

But he lay back on his bed. Even in the middle of chaos, with demons roaming loose in the city, he'd made his bed. Every day, as soon as he got up, he always made his bed. Nothing else could take place till that was done. He'd learned that habit from a family he'd stayed with whose father was a Special Air Service member, a drill instructor.

Shelves held his comics, favorite books, and DVDs. The DVDs had been the hardest to hang on to while living with flat mates who tended to borrow things. In the end he'd made themuntouchable.

He didn't know what else to call it. He'd learned the skill while in foster homes. All of his life he'd been small and sickly, easy to take advantage of. But he'd learned to fight back in his own way.

He could manipulate people. As long as they didn't know they were being manipulated. Tonight Kelli hadn't noticed because she'd been so scared. Fear had been her overriding emotion. She hadn't even felt him tampering with her mind.

Through trial and error, he'd learned that he could gradually manipulate others he lived with to leave his personal effects alone. It worked on things like DVDs and books, but he couldn't keep them from taking his money. They'd simply wanted the money more than he'd been able to control them. Tonight Kelli had wanted to be safe. She'd wanted to believe him. She'd been easy.

But the demon...

He truly hadn't known he could do that. That had been pure fear. Just the way it had been the night his parents had...died.

Reluctantly, he took the piece of paper from his jeans pocket and looked at the address. It wasn't too far away.

Fear ached within him. He didn't know if it was a warning from that mysterious power within him, or a reluctance to embrace the beast he felt certain lived somewhere trapped within him.

Eight.

WALTER'SBAR CAPETOWN, SOUTHAFRICA.

For two days, Simon searched for some means to get out of Cape Town. All the commercial airlines refused to go that direction. He was getting desperate enough to attempt to go by boat when he heard about a mercenary pilot who'd been hired to fly English citizens back at least to France.

The man's name was Horner, and he'd set up in a back room in Walter's. The bartender, Flynn, sent word to Simon by one of the boys who hung around outside the bar to run messages no one wanted to use the phone for.

Horner was a big man. Tanned and gaunt, he was sixty years old if he was a day, and had a drinker's road map of burst veins across his nose and sallow cheeks. He wore an old Grateful Dead t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off and a bandolier of rounds crossed his chest. Amber-tinted aviator's gla.s.ses covered his eyes beneath an Australian Outback hat with one flap pinned up.

Two armed men sat on either side of the pilot. They held shotguns at the ready.

Horner looked up at Simon. "You Cross?" he asked in a voice scarred by cigarette smoke and booze.

"I am."

Nodding at Saundra, Horner asked, "Who's the woman?" "My friend."

"I heard you only wanted pa.s.sage for one." "I do."

"So who's going?"

"Me." Simon felt sad about that. He'd miss Saundra, and as yet they didn't know if she had a way to Australia. He promised he'd keep in touch to find out. If he could.

"If I'd have known how big you were before we set a price on this, I'd have charged by the pound." Horner grinned.

Simon didn't feel good enough to exchange witticisms. There'd still been no shortwave contact with London. "When do we leave?"

"First light in the morning. Do you have the money?"

Simon took out a packet of bills and pa.s.sed them over. The price had wiped out nearly everything he'd managed to save while in Cape Town. He'd even had to sell his gear and his weapons.

Horner thumbed the bills. "Looks like it's all here." He tucked the packet into a pocket and gazed at Simon speculatively. "You plan on going all the way to London?" "Yes."

Nodding, Horner took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. "I know a man in France. You can get a ride with him on his boat." He waved away smoke from his cigarette and dropped the spent match into one of the empty gla.s.ses in front of him. "They're still trying to ferry people out of there. The French ain't too happy about it, but that's how it is."

Simon shook his head. "That's all the money I've got."

Horner sighed and sucked air through his teeth. "Money would have made it easier, but I can still work it out for you. Those boat trips across the Channel aren't safe. Those alien beasts are pursuing survivors all the way to the sh.o.r.e."