A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) (21 page)

Perhaps an hour later, the slam of the cellblock door again came from the
hallway, followed by the clomping of demon feet. It sounded like three or four
at least.

Five demons appeared at the door. Jordan wasn’t with them.

“Why are they back without Jordan?” Ben asked.

Liv sat frozen under a giant wave of fear. Jordan was dead; why else would
the demons come back without him?

The demons entered the cell. Each grabbed a human and hauled its captive out
the door.

Liv’s demon grabbed her by her already-wounded shoulder. Fresh blood dripped
from her collar bone and the burning pain shot down her arm and radiated into
her chest. She forced herself to breathe through it.

The demons hauled them back up all the flights of stairs to the hallway
where they’d been captured, then through the door at its end.

From her vantage point, dangling from her shoulder with her neck all but
paralyzed, she couldn’t see Jordan.

She twisted her whole body to get a look around the room, but although the
demon’s claws dug in deeper, she didn’t even get a glimpse of him. Maybe he was
hidden by the demons’ bulk.

There was also no sign of the Wolf.

One of the demons thrust its face inches from Connor’s and held up a
wildfyre grenade. “What’s this?”

Liv tensed. Where had it come from? All of their equipment should have
vanished minutes after being removed from their possession. And if the demon
pressed that button they’d be toast. Burnt toast. If she just knew where Jordan
was, she’d be fine with that.

Connor’s expression was bored. “Sampling container. For Safe World. Now.”

Liv caught the command and reached for Safe World, but still couldn’t
Travel. As, presumably, the others couldn’t, since no one vanished.

The demon snorted and tossed the wildfyre grenade over its shoulder. Liv
breathed again.

Woolfe entered the room from behind some screens in front of them. “Welcome
friends! Welcome, welcome, welcome!” He sang the words in a cheery warm
baritone, washing Liv in a new wave of dread. A vicious charismatic leader was
one thing, but if Woolfe was insane, there would be no reasoning with him.

The demons presented their captives like 4-H lambs, albeit ones with their
arms pinned behind them. It made Liv nervous to have the demons invisible at
her back, and her shoulder protested by sending a fresh wave of blood down her
shirt, but at least she could finally see the room.

The first thing she saw was Jordan, standing calmly between two demons, each
of whom held an arm. She nearly cried out with relief.

“Hi guys,” he said. He was very pale, nearly green, but showed no obvious
injuries.

“What’s up?” Ben asked in an equally casual tone.

“Oh, you know, just having some fun with my new friends. They’re trying to
rip off an arm.”

Jordan smiled sadly at Liv as she gasped in horror, but the sound was
covered by Woolfe’s laughter.

“Hardly! It’s just that you needed some convincing.” Woolfe turned to the
rest of the team. “In fact, that’s why the rest of you are here!”

He clapped his hands, and a demon stepped out from behind the screen,
leading a woman and two small children by ropes attached to collars at their
necks. The children clung to her dress, tear tracks shining on their cheeks,
highlighting the bruise on the boy’s jawline. The girl’s eyes were big enough
to swallow her whole face.

Rage washed over Liv.

Woolfe gestured expansively, including the whole room. “If you give me the
information I require, I will gladly let you go. All of you.”

“What kind of information?” Connor asked, eyeing the boy’s bruised face as
if he was picking a piece of fruit at a farmer’s market.

Liv felt a surge of mad glee at his feigned boredom, proof of his underlying
fury. Woolfe was dead. He just didn’t know it yet.

The demon holding her crushed her arms tighter together, and she realized
she had been unconsciously straining to reach Woolfe. She immediately relaxed,
trying to get a better grip on her emotions.

Woolfe said, “I want to know about your Home. Where are the power centers?
How is the power structure organized? Who is the most powerful, and where may I
strike to bring him low?”

Ben looked horrified, only some of it an act. “You want to come to Home
World? Why?”

“You live in a world without demons, hellfire, and most important, a strong
leader. It’s fractured and weak. But rich. When I take control, I will reap it
from one end to the other.” Woolfe’s smile was smug and expectant.

“We aren’t going to tell you anything.” Connor’s voice was as calm as
Jordan’s had been.

Without warning, Woolfe struck the woman in the face. She cried out and
fell, choked by the collar and leash that the demon still held. The children
cried harder and the woman struggled to her feet, hampered by their clinging. Woolfe
lifted his hand to strike one of the children.

“Stop it!” Ben shouted, lunging against the demon holding him. It was the
most distressed Liv had ever seen him.

“Ben,” Connor said mildly.

Ben looked wildly around, but stopped struggling at Connor’s expectant look.

“Interesting,” Woolfe said, looking from one to the other.

Connor stared impassively back. “We won’t tell you what you want to know. But
I’ll tell you this: you’re dead.”

Woolfe laughed, a manic light in his eyes. “Promises, promises.” He suddenly
turned brusque. “But no matter. These worthless things are not the ones I want
to conquer.”

The light in his eyes kindled again, and he turned to stare unwaveringly at
Jordan. “This one didn’t even make a noise when my pets tore his arm half off. He
proved to me that you are very strong, individually. But I think that together,
you are weak. Perhaps the pain of these weak things will not break you. They
are nothing to you, after all. And I might break you each to pieces alone with
no result. But if you watch me break him into pieces, I’m sure one of you will
break.”

Liv’s stomach lurched.

Woolfe gave a signal, and the demons holding Jordan began to wrench his arms
out to either side. His face contorted into a horrible grimace of pain and he
fell to his knees, but no sound escaped him.

“No?” the Wolf asked with a broad grin. “This is not the one you will
protect? Or we have simply not yet given him enough pain. We must hear him
scream, no?”

He turned to the demons holding Jordan. “Take off an arm.”

Liv’s heart raced, her legs tingly with adrenaline. She saw her panic
mirrored in Ben’s eyes and the set of Connor’s mouth, but there was nothing
they could do.

The demons tearing Jordan apart doubled their efforts, and Liv heard a loud
pop
. Jordan groaned in pain through his
clenched teeth, his face now gray.

Before Liv even recognized her intention, she lurched forward. “No! Stop!”
She fell to her knees as the demon holding her let go. “I’ll tell you what you
want to know, just don’t hurt him anymore!”

The Wolf smiled more broadly. “Ahh, good. I knew you would break.”

Ben cried, “Liv, no!”

Connor said, “Liv, you will say nothing. That is an
order
!”

There was a shuffle and then a grunt from behind her as someone else was
struck. Gin.

She fell against Liv, and her hand scrabbled at Liv’s back. Suddenly
something metal was thrust into her hand as Gin’s weight was heaved off of her.
The demon holding Gin growled, “Do that again and I kill you.”

Liv threw a glance over her shoulder and saw Gin hanging in the demon’s
grip, glaring defiantly at it.

She pretended nothing had happened and crawled awkwardly toward Woolfe,
keeping the knife against her palm with her thumb. She glanced at Jordan, on
his knees, head hanging, body only held upright by the demons who each gripped
an arm. Now that she was armed, her mind raced through possibilities.

“Let him go, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Woolfe nodded, and the demons released Jordan. He fell to the ground with a
soft
thump
. He didn’t make a sound,
and Liv was almost struck mute with terror. Then she saw the line of
concentration between his eyebrows and knew that he was aware.

Careful to keep her expression from changing, she looked back to Woolfe.

She started talking, ignoring Connor’s warning, “Liv…”

“Our president is the most powerful man in our world, and our country is the
most powerful. He has a seat in Nevada, where our DEPOT base is.”

“I have heard,” Woolfe interrupted, “that the president’s seat is in
Washington.”

He glared at her with such malice that Liv’s mouth instantly went dry. She
hid her panic and hoped that was the limit of Woolfe’s knowledge. “He has one
in both places. He needed to have a second seat of power near the DEPOT. He
wanted to keep the power of Travel close to him.”

Woolfe’s eyes lit. His expression said it was what he would do, what he had
done. Liv knew the rest of the team would act as if her information wasn’t a
surprise.

“We have many corporations working directly for the president,” she lied,
trying to figure out how to get close enough without alerting the demons
holding her teammates.

“The corporation heads are called CEO’s, and they have control over all the
workers of their company. Each CEO is the president of his company, but they
all report to the president of the US.” She shifted her weight slightly to get
her feet under her, keeping her face blank and defeated.

“What are the president’s defenses?” Woolfe asked, his expression avid. He
leaned unconsciously toward her, waiting to hear her answer.

“He has an army with incredible weapons.” Liv hoped her action would
distract the demons long enough to let her team free themselves. She flipped
the knife in her hand, surged upward, and plunged it into Woolfe’s chest. His
gaze dropped from her face to the rounded back of a two-inch throwing knife
protruding from his chest. She gave it a last shove and spun to face the demons
who would attack her back.

*
         
*
         
*

Jordan lurched into motion as Liv did. The world went gray as he rolled onto
his bad shoulder and a monstrous wave of pain roared through his chest. When
the demon had tossed his wildfyre grenade carelessly aside, it had rolled
toward him. He had no idea why it hadn’t disappeared, but he wasn’t going to
question his good fortune.

Now, he lunged forward, grabbed the grenade in his good hand, hit the timer,
and launched it at the nearest demon.

The wildfyre canister snapped open and its contents exploded into fyre and
splashed onto the demon. It screamed as it
whooshed
into flame like gasoline-soaked kindling. It stumbled and weaved, either unable
to see its surroundings or driven insensible by pain.

As it flailed toward him, Jordan gave a monumental effort and staggered to
his feet.
You will not black out
, he
told himself grimly, and the waves of gray subsided.

He dodged clumsily aside as the flaming demon stumbled his way.

*
         
*
         
*

Liv’s team had freed themselves, or the demons had let them go. She turned
to make sure Jordan was okay and registered the ear-splitting noise when she
saw the screaming demon burning to death on its feet. As she watched, the
moving pillar of flame stumbled too near a second demon and it caught fire like
crepe paper.

The wildfyre clung to the demons just like the pygmies’ fire had clung to
Ben’s clothes in Fluffy Bunny World. The second demon panicked and flailed at
the flame, stumbling into a third demon. The wildfyre leapt from one to the
other like a starving animal.

As the third flaming demon stumbled forward, Liv caught sight of Jordan,
sidling out of the way of the flames. Liv let out the breath she hadn’t realized
she’d been holding.

She turned back to Woolfe, who still stood spluttering, blood pouring down
his chest. He coughed out a fine spray of blood, his face still frozen in a
look of surprise. A device dropped from his hand, bouncing away as it hit the carpet.

The remaining demons milled in panic as the three demons-on-fyre stumbled
and flailed, spreading flames. The first finally fell silent as it dropped to
the ground. The fyre leapt hungrily to the plush carpet.

One of the demons thrashed toward the helpless woman and children, still
tethered by the leashes around their necks to the demon who had brought them
into the room. Liv leapt forward, wondering how she’d free them.

The Wolf fell to the ground, and the demon holding the leashes dropped them
and fled his flaming comrade.

Elachai appeared next to his wife. He took in the room at a glance, his eyes
resting for an instant on Liv’s. He bowed to her.

Then he turned to his family, shouting, “Come with me!” All four vanished.

Typical,
Liv thought. She turned,
finding Connor in the pandemonium, only feet from her.

“Connor! We can Travel now!”

Connor cupped his hands to his mouth. “T36! Get to the ground floor, NOW!”

Jordan had worked his way around the room to Liv’s side. When he staggered,
she threw her arm out to steady him. “You okay?” she shouted.

He nodded and started for the door.

Wildfyre raced in a line across the floor between Liv and the door, lighting
up the wall tapestries with a
floomp
.
They burned through in seconds, and the fyre licked at the stone beneath.

Jesus, is there anything it can’t
burn?

Liv traced a path to the door, avoiding the three burning lumps that had
been demons, the two burning demons still on their feet, and the patches of
burning carpet. Gin and Ben had already disappeared into the hall, Trent was at
the door, and Jordan and Connor were right on her heels.