Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) Page 22

  For a moment, Gibeah's man lay bent over the rail. He almost fell to the deck before he pitched backward onto the Wheel.

  Arrovet staggered to his feet. His feather-capped hood had fallen back, revealing an eggshell-pale scalp tufted with thin downy hair. He raised one hand to wipe a runnel of blood from his mouth and smiled.

  Go on, smile, Nakvin thought, remembering the Wheel’s lustful overtures and trusting that Arrovet was too weak to resist its seduction. When the dais began to glow with sharp white light, she knew that Gibeah’s man had felt the Wheel’s call—and had accepted.

  Arrovet giggled at what must have been his first taste of the Exodus’ vast power. His broad grin dissolved into a look of euphoric bliss that defied his hellish surroundings.

  Nakvin meant to retrieve Mikelburg’s gun, but a chorus of wet sucking and snapping sounds halted her in mid-motion. A pale, ropy knot of tissue lolled from Arrovet's lips, which she at first mistook for his tongue. As the mass emerging from his mouth continued to grow, she realized that the man was suffering an oral prolapse of all his internal organs. The look of ecstasy never left his twitching face.

  A scream welled in Nakvin's throat but perished on her lips. Before she gathered her wits enough to look away, Arrovet's inverted anatomy had been compacted into a fist-sized ball. When she dared to look again, all that remained of Arrovet was a faint stench of bile and blood.

  A swarm of black and gold motes streamed from Gibeah's mouth like flies made of cinders. Deim leapt in front of Jaren an instant before the buzzing cloud took him. The ember swarm vanished as it reached the young steersman, funneled into the talisman at his belt.

  “A useful bauble indeed,” said the baal.

  “It gets better,” Deim said as the amber eye loosed a thin silver beam. But his riposte struck the demon without effect.

  Jaren ground his teeth. The baal’s extreme heat tolerance made the rodcaster useless, and Deim’s Workings fared even worse. Only Sulaiman’s fire seemed to check Gibeah, perhaps due to its divine origin. Jaren drew his zephyr, hoping that the blessing would be good for more than just morale. He squeezed off a shot at the demon’s center of mass.

  A small, dark hole appeared in Gibeah's breastplate. The room went quiet for one breathless instant as a spot of blue empyrean liquid flowed from the wound.

  Gibeah burst into motion, his speed convincing Jaren that he’d only been testing his foes. He struck Deim to the floor with one hand and grabbed the zephyr's barrel with the other. Though the baal flinched when he grasped the blessed steel, his touch reduced the gun to a corroded ruin. Gibeah’s free fist struck Jaren across the face, and the deck rushed up to meet him.

  Jaren flopped onto his back. Through the haze that ringed his vision he saw that Sulaiman had grappled Gibeah from behind, pressing the demon's right arm into his back. The priest was chanting rhythmically. His hands—the flesh one as well as the steel one—were suddenly limned with white radiance.

  Gibeah snarled as the pebbly flesh of his arm boiled under Sulaiman's touch. The demon's grimace flashed into a smile as he spun to his right, pivoting until he'd turned to face his foe. Before Sulaiman could withdraw, their positions were reversed. The baal seized the priest's arms and forced his metal left hand outward.

  Gibeah marched toward the hidden door, pushing Sulaiman before him. The priest offered inspired resistance, but human strength proved useless against demonic might. The baal pressed Sulaiman's hand against the matte grey metal. At Iason's touch, the door slid upward, revealing a cube-shaped chamber beyond.

  “You have discharged your service,” the baal gloated as he squeezed the priest's throat. “I dismiss you back to your squalid slum.”

  I’m hallucinating, Jaren thought when Teg dove through the fiery curtain and fell into a roll on the deck. His wool coat was wreathed in flames, and the mercenary quickly doffed it. He drew his zephyrs as he rose to one knee, and opened fire.

  Jaren propped himself up on one arm and squinted in disbelief. Teg knelt in the center of the room; a gun cracking in each hand. Jaren smelled burning hair and saw the blisters mottling Teg’s skin. His shirt was stained red at the lower back.

  Teg pumped the triggers of his pistols, choosing volume over accuracy. Most of his shots went wide, but three slugs connected with the demon's back. Gibeah bellowed, dropping Sulaiman as his wounds wept blue fire.

  Teg's guns finally clicked empty. Rising to his feet, he reversed his grip on the zephyrs, clutching the barrels in his fists. Then he charged Gibeah.

  The baal evaded Teg's initial blows but made the mistake of lashing out wildly. The change from defense to offense occurred with blinding speed, but the slight delay gave Teg an opening. His left hand arced outward to block the demon's right. Then he hooked the gun’s grip around Gibeah’s wrist and pushed it across the baal’s armored chest.

  Teg followed through by stepping in, leading with his right. Gibeah tried to block, but his awkward position slowed his response. Teg pistol whipped Gibeah’s left temple and sent him reeling backward into the vault.

  The fog cleared from Jaren’s mind, and he saw his opening. Springing up from the deck, he rushed to Teg’s side with his splintersword humming.

  “Don't tell me you climbed all the way up here,” Jaren said.

  “I hate being left out,” said Teg.

  Gibeah dropped his guard, and Jaren slashed at his chest, carving a diagonal gash across the baal’s breastplate.

  Jaren pressed his attack, and Teg joined him in a fluid, lethal dance. Jaren's sword and Teg's hands moved in perfect symmetry, as if each man were somehow communicating his next move to the other. Fighting like a single mind shared by two bodies, they forced Gibeah back against the chamber wall.

  In that moment, the Baal of the Fourth vanished.

  34

  Jaren paced the vault, trying to ignore his throbbing jaw, while Teg scoured the floor for any sign of Gibeah’s trail. The stench of burned hair lingered, due to the singed spots on his sandy head.

  “You won't find anything,” said Jaren.

  “I found you three,” said Teg, “which is why you’re not dead.”

  “How did you know we were in the lounge?” asked Deim.

  “You can thank my obsession with detail,” said Teg. “I got suspicious when the distance from the hangar to the bridge didn’t match my count. I’ve been over most of the ship since then. Found plenty of weirdness that would make you lose sleep. About the only constant is that windows tend to have views that match their locations on the outer hull—except for the ones in the lounge.”

  “You knew where Gibeah’s score was?” Jaren half-laughed and half-groaned. “Why keep it to yourself?”

  Teg stood and faced Jaren. “I wanted to ditch this barge, remember? Telling you would’ve fed your damned curiosity.”

  With the eye that Gibeah’s blow hadn’t swollen shut, Deim stared intently at the brushed steel wall. “I wonder what he wanted in here.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Teg.

  “What’ve you got so far?” asked Deim.

  “This vault is a perfect cube roughly nine feet on a side. The pattern on the walls is an unbroken grid of squares, each about four inches wide. Except for us, it’s empty.”

  “Do you think Gibeah grabbed what he wanted and left?” Deim asked.

  “It's possible,” said Teg, “but he didn’t have much time to look.”

  “I doubt something kept in a hidden vault would be easy to find,” Jaren said.

  “What about Arrovet’s cargo?” asked Deim.

  A disturbing thought seized Jaren's mind. “Teg, how many squares are on the walls?”

  “A thousand, give or take.”

  “The exact number—including the back of the door.”

  Teg affected a look of exaggerated blandness. “Exactly one thousand.”

  Jaren approached the wall and slowly traced his fingers over the intersecting lines. “Gibeah's man didn't say cargo. He
demanded our passengers.”

  “Where are they?” asked Teg. “Hiding behind Deim?”

  Jaren held his arm out to Teg and repeatedly curled the fingers of his upturned palm. “Give me your zephyr.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “The door didn't open till Sulaiman touched it.”

  Teg handed one of his pistols to Jaren, who hesitated briefly before tapping the gun's muzzle against the wall. One brushed metal square slid outward, revealing a small block of grey stone ensconced within. Jaren watched the familiar cube rise and come to rest atop its drawer.

  “Looks like one of the rocks we lifted from that derelict,” said Teg.

  Another inconsistency dawned on Jaren. “Where’s Sulaiman?”

  Deim started as if he’d caught fire. He bolted into the lounge and cried, “He's gone!”

  “Calm down,” Jaren said. “He can’t have gone far.”

  “He’ll find her,” said Deim. “He’ll find her, and it’s all my fault!”

  “I’m gonna lock you in here unless you start making sense,” said Teg, but Deim was already running for the hallway.

  “Follow him,” Jaren said.

  “Nakvin's alone on the bridge,” said Teg. “What if Gibeah goes for the Wheel?”

  “Those stones aren’t the only secret on this ship,” Jaren said. “Deim and Sulaiman know it, and so does Gibeah. We’ve got to beat him to it.”

  Gibeah staggered down a cold, dark passage somewhere within the human ship. His chest, back, and head throbbed with pain, denying him the focus needed to shape the Circle. Centuries had passed since he’d last fled from battle, and his unsteady feet betrayed their disuse at the task.

  Rage eclipsed pain as Gibeah contemplated his wretched state. Iason and his minions had hurt him—worse, they’d nearly killed him. The baal shuddered. Vicious mortals slain within the Circles remained there, but the strange gods had delved the pit as a trap for lesser souls. Hell would not hold his spirit when it fled.

  Farther down the pitch black corridor a pair of even darker points appeared. Gibeah’s life as a fire elemental was far behind him, but he retained the ability to perceive objects—especially living beings—by their heat. Yet even his eyes saw only shadows. “What is this effrontery?” he asked, half in puzzlement and half in challenge. “Declare yourself, unless you would die unnamed!”

  “Little salamander,” hissed a voice so cold it threatened to quench Gibeah's fire. “You are far from home.”

  “Ignorant churl! You address the lord of this Circle. Fly lest I melt your brazen tongue!”

  The two darker points grew to the size of bucklers. Gibeah shivered, possibly from the deepening cold.

  “‘Tis not your domain,” the chilling voice said. “You trespass upon my patron's province.”

  Suddenly, Gibeah understood. “Tell Mephistophilis he can keep his ill-gotten spoils and this human sacrilege,” he said. “Now stand aside.”

  The icy voice chuckled. “No. Your talk of melting tongues seems passing fair.”

  Such a torrent of air screamed toward the black points that Gibeah thought himself in the heart of a whirlwind. Grabbing a fistful of conduits on either wall, he attempted a blind, desperate escape, but the space within the shell-ship remained obstinate.

  Utter silence fell, and Gibeah dared to hope that the owner of the chilling voice had gone, but the next instant brought the fury of the maelstrom. Gibeah was caught in a terrible acrid deluge that swept him along in its all-consuming flow. The fallen fire elemental's last thought was that he finally knew what it was to burn.

  Jaren lost track of time and distance as he chased Deim and Sulaiman through the bowels of the Exodus. He often found himself darting sidelong glances at Teg to curb the persistent feeling of total isolation. This ship plays cruel tricks on a man’s head, he thought.

  The light softened from red gloom to rose-colored haze as the three men entered a dead end hallway, wider than the others and guarded by a double row of angled pipes projecting from either side.

  Sulaiman stood pressing himself against the wall, groping feverishly like a prisoner searching his cell for a loose brick. Before he could solve the puzzle, shadows of diverse and startling shapes emerged from the nooks and crannies of the walls. They advanced on him from all sides, snickering as they came; whispering for him to join them.

  What the hell are they? Jaren wondered, once again afraid that he was hallucinating.

  The first walking shadow hooked its claws on Sulaiman’s steel arm. The priest recoiled and shouted a word unknown to Jaren. For one brilliant moment a pure, constant light conquered the gloom that ruled the halls. Jaren felt comforting warmth and saw the emptiness between pipes and conduits revealed to be just that.

  The blaze went out as suddenly as it had kindled. Rose twilight descended once more.

  Jaren saw no more moving shadows, but he saw the door. A circular convex hatch stood open in the once blank wall. Cables and pipes—seemingly every one in the ship's miles of corridors—converged on the bulkhead.

  Sulaiman approached the door, laid his hands on the wheel jutting from its face, and turned. Jaren heard the hollow ring of several bolts retracting in sequence, and then the hatch groaned open. A rosy glow filtered out, doubling the hallway’s half-light, along with a faint smell like lightning. Moving slowly but surely, the priest of Midras stepped through the door.

  “In there,” said Deim. “She's in there!” The steersman pulled ahead of Jaren and Teg, but the cloaked form of Vaun Mordechai bled from the shadows and beat him to the hatch. He did not enter, but brooded outside the pool of rose-colored light spilling from the half-open door.

  Jaren came to a stop between Vaun and Deim. The masked man stared through the door like a child peering through a confectioner’s window at delicacies beyond his means. Vaun’s desire was mixed with a fear that disturbed Jaren, but he liked Deim’s lean, longing expression even less.

  “Did we have one of those before?” asked Teg, pointing toward the open hatch.

  “Never, Master Cross,” said Vaun, “and always.”

  Jaren turned back to Vaun. “What are you doing here?”

  “Following our priestly friend,” said Vaun, “as are you.”

  “You know damn well what I—” Jaren started to say, but the opening hatch cut him off.

  Sulaiman stumbled out, gripping the door frame for support; his crimson mantle drawn tight about him like an old woman’s shawl.

  Jaren’s breath caught. The priest seemed a different man than the zealous prefect who’d stormed the ship. His sapphire eyes held a look of disgust; even defeat.

  “What’s in there?” Jaren asked.

  “Not what I expected,” Sulaiman said. He brushed past Jaren and wandered off into the darkness.

  Deim darted forward, but Teg caught and held him by the sleeve of his shirt.

  Jaren drew his sword and crossed the threshold.

  Stepping through the hatch was like entering another world. Jaren found himself in a hemispherical chamber suffused with rose-colored light. The air gradually warmed and thickened as he advanced, becoming a mist that gave off a telltale electric scent: pure ether.

  Jaren pressed a hand against the wall and found that it was covered with a dense jumble of conduits. He slowly made his way around the perimeter and stopped when he saw something at his feet. It was a tangle of thick cables.

  Like the power lines in ether-runners' engines.

  Jaren turned left, following the intertwined cords from the wall to the center of the chamber. There he saw the cause of Sulaiman's desolation.

  It was a young woman. She floated naked in the dense ether, curled up in a fetal ball. The cables ran into her back. The girl had worn a hood at their first meeting, and its absence aided Jaren’s recognition. Her eyes were closed, but he was certain that the lids concealed irises like rose quartz. The pale skin, the fine, sharp features, and the wavy mane of ginger-brown hair belonged to Elena Braun, daughter of the E
xodus' head engineer.

  35

  Five nights of bunking on stone, sand, and ice had made Teg yearn for his bed. But climbing to the ship had wreaked havoc on his back, affording him little sleep—so little that he nearly tripped over something in the hall when he shambled from his quarters.

  Teg looked down and saw a braid of cables as thick as his arm lying on the deck. The twining lines originated from somewhere around the corner and snaked down the hallway to enter a door on the left—Deim's door.

  The crew quarters’ matte grey halls were brighter than the ship’s lower passages. Nothing stirred as far as Teg could see. The only sounds were the soft rush of air through the vents and the engine’s distant thrum.

  Teg crept to Deim's door. The bundle of cords kept it slightly ajar. He peered in and bit his lip to keep from laughing.

  The girl they'd found the night before lay upon Deim’s disheveled bed, curled around a pillow with her long brown hair askew and her eyes tightly closed. Though the clutter hid the conduits’ trail, Teg presumed that they were still connected to her back.

  Deim lay tangled in sheets at the foot of the bed. His slow, rhythmic breathing told Teg that he was fast asleep.

  The girl, on the other hand, wasn't breathing at all.

  I should probably check on her, Teg thought, but caution overcame concern, and he returned to bed.

  “They fought bravely,” said Jaren.

  He and Sulaiman stood upon a high ridge overlooking the pass where the Freeholders had challenged Gibeah's much larger force. The battlefield was choked with snow and house-sized blocks of ice, forever entombing both armies.

  Sulaiman turned to Jaren. The chill wind whipped his golden hair across eyes that looked like cloudy blue glass. “They died bravely,” he said.