The Demon City Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Civilizations rise and fall with the regularity of the tides. Only to mortal eyes do they seem timeless. On any given earth, in any given universe, I have watched wonders blossom and horrors birth themselves with equal regularity, but only rarely have either of those things truly been significant in the scale of the universe. Most actions, while free and independent, result in the same as their inverse might have done.

  Choose to cross the street or not—the universe doesn’t care. A decision such as that ultimately gets folded back into eternity, causing not even a ripple in the flow of time.

  Not all decisions are so trivial.

  There are key moments in time, places where the universe may be struck just so . . . and by doing so, even a mortal can birth an entirely new destiny and an entirely new universe.

  I have seen these moments come and pass, unnoticed and wasted, and in their passing I grieved each time for what might have been.

  When a will is turned on them, however, and the universe is struck just so . . . the reverberations can sound across universes, back through time, and ring the walls of Eden itself.

  This is the story of such a moment in time, a moment grasped and not allowed to pass into the dark of the night, but rather dragged out by the light of a knight.

  I am Nimue. I have been here since the beginning. I will be here at the end.

  It is my honor to watch those who walk the path of the knights and, very occasionally, offer them aid.

  When the moment comes for you . . . will you grasp it?

  Prologue

  Evacuations were almost complete. The realm had all but been sealed now, with only one remaining path into the white beyond.

  Those who remained were merely cleaning up the last details, ensuring that they had left no significant variables that might aid the horde on its path through the dimensions. In the midst of the final cleanup, one of the rearguard commanders paused and looked around in some confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” another of the Triad asked, noticing the expression and hesitation.

  “Something has changed.”

  “This realm is fallen. Everything here has changed,” the third of the Triad said with a derisive snort.

  The second mentally scowled. “Do not be so disrespectful. They fought well.”

  “They lost.”

  The first silenced them with a gesture of power, startling both.

  “I said, something has changed,” the first reiterated, piercing both with a stare that caused them to focus more. “Look.”

  They heard the tonal expression in the order, and both did as they were bade and looked.

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  “What changed?” the second asked, tone becoming urgent. “The dark is clouded, the future shrouded. This was not the way of things a moment ago, I know.”

  “We all know,” the first said calmingly. “I told you. Something changed. Find the source.”

  “In an entire realm?” the third asked, incredulous. “We are to leave shortly. There is no time.”

  The first glowered. “I will not leave until I know this realm is lost. Find the change. It must be close to the breach. Nothing farther out would cloud the immediate future this much.”

  The Triad abandoned their tasks and focused their intent and will on the breach world, the center of this universe, looking for something—anything—that could have affected the fates as it had.

  Somewhere down there in the limited dimensions of mortal man, someone had thrown a spike into the wheels of fate. They would find it.

  Chapter 1

  The rain came down in sheets, but the blonde girl on the cliff overlooking the sea ignored it as she focused inwardly. Elanthielle, now of the newly named island of Atlantis, could vaguely feel that she was soaked through, but the weather was warm, and the rain only slightly offered any chill. She had endured worse in the past, and as much as she hoped not to, she expected to endure far worse again in the future.

  She felt her body fall away as she slipped into the dreaming. Her own dreaming, at least. It was freeing to drift as she felt a deep and powerful vibration roar through her soul.

  She opened her eyes and looked around, recognizing the cliff she had chosen for her meditations and the sea beyond. As she turned around, Elan looked down on her own seated body and felt a sense of satisfaction, as she was certain she had succeeded.

  The dreaming.

  It had been a goal of her father before he’d been murdered, and it had become a goal of her younger self before she’d known even what it meant or was. A deep dive into the human mind and then beyond into what was known as the overmind, the dreaming was a potent source of insight and power of the human psyche. It had also been a curse as she suffered in the desert, tormenting her with water that would not quench her thirst, heat that would not warm her bones, and a chill that couldn’t quell her fever . . . yet it had saved her life by calling Kaern to her aid.

  Kaern.

  As she thought of her savior, she felt herself being tugged back to her body, a light sensation that doubled and then tripled again and again until she was yanked hard into her body, and then her eyes opened wide as she sucked in a deep, shocked breath. The storm threw water into her face, sea spray and rain alike, but she ignored it as her hair was plastered to her face and chest, her synthilk shirt clinging to her skin.

  Kaern, the demon who . . . wasn’t?

  She didn’t understand him, the man who had saved her. The man who’d seen something in her that made no sense to her even now, after everything that had happened. He claimed to be a demon, but he had seemed like just a man . . . or perhaps, not just anything.

  Elan sighed and climbed to her feet.

  She would get no more meditations done today, her success notwithstanding. The turmoil she felt when she thought of Kaern never failed to ruin her inner balance. She looked up to the gray sky, then walked back away from the cliff. She paused only to pick up her belt and sidearm from where she had left them hanging on an old dying tree, belting it back around her waist as she walked.

  The city—more of a village, really—was laid out below her as she walked. Stone buildings, constructed by hand and with help from Merlin’s machines, had risen shockingly fast, with room enough for everyone. She even had her own home, a space to herself,
thankfully. That had been something far more important to her than she had realized it could be—a place away from the press of people around her, a retreat from the noise and general chaos of the village.

  It wasn’t that Elan didn’t like people—she did—but she really didn’t know how to deal with them. She’d grown up with only her mother at first and then eventually her father as well. More than two people around her felt like a crowd, like something very wrong was happening. Her early life had been spent like that, and now it was just the way she thought it should be.

  Most of the time she only spoke with Caleb and Simone, the only two she knew now besides Merlin.

  Merlin.

  There was another part of her new life that Elan had not the slightest clue how to deal with or to categorize. Merlin was a spirit bound to the earth, something called an elemental intelligence. The two words made sense to her separately, but together they were nothing more than gibberish . . . which suited Merlin well, as everything out of his mouth—assuming that he had a mouth—was gibberish.

  Merlin had saved her, though, and had shown her a new path to fight the monsters that ruled the lands. She likely could never repay the odd intelligence for that guidance, but such as it was, she would take everything he had shown her and direct it to fighting the demons. That was the only thing she really had left in this life, other than Merlin, Simone, and Caleb.

  Everyone else . . . well, they were . . . strange.

  Elan didn’t know how else to describe the few thousand or so people they had managed to save from the city before the demons had destroyed it ahead of their escape. Before, her limited experience with them was largely being ignored, but since the wave had taken the demons and they’d arrived here on Atlantis, the people had changed. They looked at her strangely. They talked strangely when she was around. They were just . . . strange.

  She tried not to let it affect her, but it certainly didn’t help her want to get to know all that many people.

  Merlin’s odd little machines, things he called builders, aptly enough, were working on the outer walls as she approached. Stone fortifications that seemed to grow from the ground at need. She really didn’t understand how the builders did their job, but she had never seen stone so smooth or even before. The island was safe enough, but just the same, the first priority after shelter was to put in defensive structures. Elan didn’t know much about defense—frankly, her training under her father, and later, Simone, had focused on the offensive—but it seemed like people felt afraid without them.

  She didn’t know why. They hadn’t done much for the city as far as she could tell, but the builders would just be sitting around anyway, and of the people involved . . . well, everyone needed something to do.

  The city was humble even to her eye . . . and Elan had grown up in a stone hut that stood alone in the badlands. But Atlantis was theirs and hers. The crude liquid stone that the builders worked with made for simple buildings, but they were solid and strong. Arrayed around the island’s best source for fresh water, the village was peaceful, and one could almost forget the nightmares that existed beyond the shores.

  Almost.

  “Elan!”

  She glanced up at the voice, shaking off the dark thoughts that had started to take her and smiling slightly as she saw Caleb running toward her with a tanned skin flung over his head to hold off the rain.

  “Hail, Caleb.” She laughed at him as he approached. “Are you afraid you’ll wash away? I know you’re mostly made of the dirt you forget to scrub clean, but I didn’t know it was this bad.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Funny you are not, Elan. What are you doing out in this storm? It’s crazy out here!”

  “I grew up in the desert badlands, Caleb,” she told him simply as they walked toward her small home. “Rain, any rain, is a gift. I do not care what form it comes in.”

  He scoffed at her, keeping himself well covered as they reached the small stone home that Elan now called her own. It had a lock, something that Merlin and Simone had both tried to explain to her multiple times. Not the concept so much, but the idea of why it would be needed.

  It had taken Caleb saying one word before she was willing to understand.

  Venadrin.

  The betrayer, the man who’d taken her father’s trust and used it to kill him and her mother. She still had nightmares about him, more so than all the demons she had fought, more than the monsters of her dreams. He haunted her, more so in death than he had in life even.

  If a human could betray and murder, then they could enter and steal. She palmed the lock, deftly contorting her fingers to set the pins into their places, and then pushed the door open as she went through with Caleb close behind.

  It was warm inside—a fire burning in the corner saw to that—and Elan casually unbuckled her sidearm and set it on the bench that doubled as a small table when she wanted to eat alone . . . which was most times. Beyond that was a bed in a separate room and what Merlin referred to as a “positively barbaric” washroom that felt downright luxurious to Elan. The small home was bare of decorations.

  In that, however, she was normal among the survivors. Few, if any, had arrived with more than the clothing they wore, a few trinkets or valuables they’d been able to stuff into a pouch or pocket, and perhaps a weapon or two either taken from the city or claimed from demon kills along the way.

  Comfort lay in survival and safety, and in that they were, for the moment, quite comfortable.

  Perhaps too much so.

  “Why were you out in the rain if you dislike it so much, Cal?” Elan asked softly as she stripped her shirt off and laid it by the fire.

  Caleb flushed red almost instantly, turning half away. Elan found it funny, but of course she’d never had another person around her besides family growing up. Simone had been forced to take her aside shortly after arriving on the island to explain the “mysteries” of growing up. Little about it made a lot of sense to her, but she had noticed those few who were close to her age, like Caleb, sneaking looks at her. So far she had little desire to sneak looks back, though Simone told her that would come.

  Elan rather doubted it.

  “I . . . uh . . . I was just worried about you,” Caleb confessed, staring avidly at the wall, rather than where his traitorous eyes kept trying to flick over to.

  “There are no demons here, for a long way around,” she said softly as she grabbed a rougher tunic shirt and pulled it on, then tied it closed. “You can turn around now.”

  Caleb hesitantly did so, sighing as he saw that she’d put on a tunic. “It doesn’t take a demon to get hurt, Elan. This is a bad storm. Simone wanted me to check as well. She asked if you would come to dinner.”

  “Not tonight.” Elan shook her head. “I’ll be in the library.”

  “You spend too much time there,” Caleb gently chided. “You should come out, have a little fun.”

  Her face set, as though in stone. “The demons are still out there, Caleb.”

  “They always have been, Elan, and they always will be,” Caleb said, his tone a little plaintive as he tried to get through to her. “That’s the way things are.”

  “No!” she snapped. “No, they haven’t always been there. There was a time before. Look at this house. It was built by things left behind by our people, Caleb. People who grew up, lived their whole lives, and never saw a demon. If it was like that once, it can be again.”

  “Elan, you can’t put water back into a broken vessel,” he told her, using a phrase she’d heard from Simone in the past. “That isn’t how the world works.”

  “Then I will make it work that way,” she hissed. “My father died because he wanted to cleanse the world.”

  “And his war followed him home, remember?” Caleb said, then instantly clapped his hand to his mouth.

  “Yes.” Elan sneered at him, her expression cold now, as from ice rather than stone. “I do remember.”

  She pushed past him, snagging her belt from the bench as she did,
whipping it around her hips.

  “Lock the door when you leave.”

  Then she was gone.

  *****

  Elan stalked, now wet again and cold, into the old redoubt of the forebears at the center of the town. Those who saw her coming also saw the expression on her face and moved aside, though she tried to appear as if she didn’t notice them as she stomped by.

  Inside, she made her way to the transport center and, now with the ease of practice, selected her destination and vanished in a pulse of light that had become at least somewhat familiar to those around. The cold metal glowed brightly as she touched it, so slick beneath her fingers that she almost felt like it was sliding away as she tried to press her hand against it. The ancient outpost was such a mystery that few others had desired to use it—even fewer still were capable, in fact—but Elan treated the entire place with an almost proprietary air that only solidified her image in their eyes.

  The stories about her varied.

  To some she was just short of a warrior goddess, the elfin child who struck down demons with the power of the gods. Those who’d seen her march down the hillside, casting lightning from the oddly shaped bow in her right hand, would never see her as anything else.

  Others remembered watching her strike down a man in cold blood, demon collaborator though he might have been. To them, she was a killer. A killer for their side, perhaps, but a killer just the same.

  The only thing they agreed on in regard to the blonde was that she was not someone to trifle with. They always made way as she passed, especially given the various grumbling epithets she was usually muttering under her breath and the cloud of doom that hung over her.

  A few wondered what had angered her so much. Most didn’t really want to know.

  *****

  “Calm down.”

  Elan ignored the order as she stalked through the pristine halls of the facility known only as Avalon.

  Merlin sighed as he chased along behind her on the way to the library.

  Merlin had been the caretaker of Avalon for as long as it existed, which was technically longer than the world had existed—considerably longer, in fact. In all that time, he had yet to work out how to deal with an angry teenager, to say nothing of an angry teenage girl.