You’re lying. Pain stabbed through Warren’s temples and he knew the demon was angry with him. But as suddenly as the pain hit, it disappeared. In its place was a vision.
The armored man—He is a Templar, Merihim said—stood in an underground tube with other armored men. Around them were several homeless people dressed in ragged coats and huddled around small fires. The armored men—Templar, Warren corrected—and some of the men worked on the pulling engine.
What are they doing? Warren asked.
Working on their escape, Merihim answered.
They’re going to use the train?
Yes.
For a few moments, Warren watched the Templar work, crawling through the engine and attaching new parts. How long has he been doing this?
Since he took your hand.
The vision started to fade. Warren tried to hang on to it, feeling again and again the cold bite of steel slicing through his arm. That man—that Templar—had hurt him.
He can be the last one to ever do that, Merihim promised.
What good is a demon’s promise?
I gave you my hand.
And you grew another.
I could have killed you. I could still choose another. Reject me and I will.
The vision faded away but Warren couldn’t forget that the man who had hurt him so badly was getting away. He would be gone from London and then Warren would never see him again.
Warren couldn’t stand that.
Take the hand, Merihim said. Make it yours and it will give you the power to destroy him.
Warren took a deep breath, scared of what he wanted so badly to do. Accepting the hand would mean crossing over to the darkness. Everything he’d read warned of that. But he looked at Kelli sitting by the door like a puppy, her mind almost a blank now, and knew that he’d already crossed over before he’d noticed.
What’s one more step? Warren asked himself. But he knew that he wasn’t stepping over because he’d already come so far. He was afraid. And he wanted the power that Merihim promised. If he had enough power, he could protect himself.
Even from the demon.
Opening his eyes, Warren stared at the demon’s hand at the end of his arm.
“Warren?” Naomi asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, and even in his ears his voice sounded stronger than it had in days. In fact, it sounded stronger than he’d ever heard it.
The miasma that had gripped him since his maiming left him, like winter fog blown off a radiator-heated window. He stood up from the hospital table.
“Do you want me to take off the—”
The physician never got the chance to finish his question. Warren flexed his hand, then made a fist. The halo that had been protecting it snapped into pieces and dropped to the ground. Then the spikes that had been stabbed into his fingers shot across the room and stabbed into the wall. They quivered and smoked.
Warren turned to Tulane. “I want transportation.”
“For what?” Tulane looked wary and irritated at the same time, obviously sensing things were beyond his control.
“I don’t have time for your questions.”
“You’ll bloody well have time for—”
Warren gestured without thinking, using his demon’s hand.
Tulane suddenly stopped speaking. Then he held his hands to his temples and screeched in pain.
“Don’t question me,” Warren said. “I don’t have time. Give the order for someone to bring a vehicle around to take me back to the city. Do it now and I won’t explode your head like rotten grapefruit. Do you understand?”
Wracked with pain, nose bleeding, Tulane nodded.
Warren lowered his hand.
Tulane fell to his hands and knees and started retching.
“What are you doing?” Naomi demanded.
Warren looked at her, noticing that she unconsciously took a step back. “You can go if you want to, but stay out of my way.” He walked toward the door, hearing Tulane rise and shuffle along behind him. By the time he walked out into the cave tunnel, Tulane was already calling for security.
They arrived on the double, rifles drawn and aimed at Warren.
For a moment fear touched Warren, but he brushed it away, feeling the power surging within him. He drew back his hand and threw it. Liquid fire materialized and flew toward the ceiling, clinging there and dripping down in long burning ropes.
Warren turned to Tulane, daring him to say anything other than what he’d been told to say.
“Take him,” Tulane said, eyes filled with pain. “Take him wherever he wants to go.”
Forty-Six
T ired and covered in grease, wearing coveralls instead of his armor, Simon sat on the Virgin Cross Country’s pulling engine’s fender and spooned stew from the paper bowl he’d been given. Through eyes burning from lack of sleep as well as grit, he gazed at the homeless he and the other Templar had spent the last week gathering from the broken buildings and tube stations. They’d guided them from wherever they’d found them, promising food and a way out of the city.
After the first few days, some of the men and women they’d rescued went with them to help with the scavenging. In the beginning, Simon had been worried about them, not certain they could protect them from the demons. But in the end the extra help had become necessary to gather all the food and supplies they needed to take care of the intended evacuees.
At first, the survivors hadn’t wanted to come with the Templar. They’d been more afraid of leaving what little shelter they’d managed to find than conscious of the inevitability that the demons would soon find them.
They’d found thirteen the first night who were willing to come with them. It had been an inauspicious number, and one that Wertham had considered unlucky. But they’d brought in double that number the next night. And the numbers had grown exponentially from there. Paddington National Rail station was in the heart of a residential area that also had a lot of hotels where people from other countries had gotten stranded.
At last count this evening, they’d had one thousand eighty-nine people housed in the Paddington tube station. Lack of
