Goetia

humans it had captured.

“Why was the demon holding captives here?” Leah asked.

“Because this is where it was,” Simon answered as he looked down at thecorpses of Darkspawn and humans. Part of him felt as though he’d failed. Thereshouldn’t have been any innocents on the battlefield, but he knew that wasn’thow this war was going to be fought. The innocents were the prizes the demons sought.

“I don’t understand,” Leah said. “The demon said it was down here looking fora book. I assume that book is the same manuscript that we’re looking for.”

“This place isn’t stocked very well as a library, now is it?” Danielle asked.

“No, but that doesn’t explain why the demon would have people caged down herewhile it searched. There isn’t anyone alive in these levels. It had to havebrought them here. I don’t understand why it felt the need.”

“To torture them and kill them,” Simon said as he moved on.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Having prisoners involved in an operation is acolossal risk.”

“The humans were entertainment,” Danielle said.

“I have trouble believing that.”

“This is what the bloody demons do,” Nathan said.

“They torture and they kill anything weaker than they are. When they don’thave humans around to subjugate and terrorize, they prey on each other.”

Simon listened to the words and remembered how his father had told him similar things all his life. As a child he’d accepted his father’s teachingswithout question. But as a young man he’d challenged everything—including theexistence of the demons.

“You’ve lived through this mess for four years,” Nathan went on. “Surelyyou’ve learned a few things during that time.”

“I’m trying to get a better idea of what they’re here to do. Understanding anenemy’s wants and needs are tantamount to fighting them.”

“Do you believe in good and evil?” Danielle asked.

“They’re concepts,” Leah said. “Architecture for processing behaviorpatterns.”

“No,” Nathan said. “Good and evil exist. At least, evil does. And in itspurest form, evil is the demons.”

The words sounded eerie and prophetic in the empty passageway. Simon felt chilled inside his armor and thought maybe that was a reaction to the injuries he’d received and the drugs in his system.

“They don’t operate on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” Nathan went on. “Theylive to kill everything weaker than them. From what we’ve learned, they’vedestroyed hundreds of worlds before they found this one.”

“But they’re terraforming the city.”

“The Burn?”

“Yes. They’re remaking it into something they want.”

“They’re remaking it into a place where anything human can’t live,” Nathansaid. “They’re taking away the hiding places and home of their prey. Have youever seen a forest fire? Not the fire itself, but the aftereffects.”

Simon had. He remembered how the grass had been burned to black ash and the trees had been stripped of leaves and small branches by the hungry flames.

“Yes,” Leah answered.

“The Burn is like that. It strips and changes everything. The animals thatare there, the ones that miraculously lived through the fire, are generally sickened by exposure to the fire. And they have no place left to run.”

“We—I—thought that the Burn was meant to acclimate our world intosomething resembling theirs.”

“So they could live here?”

“Yes.”

Nathan laughed. “You’re naive.”

Leah whirled on the Templar and brought her rifle up. Simon halted and turned back to watch even though he could see everything that was happening on his HUD. Danielle started to step forward.

Simon placed a hand on Danielle’s shoulder and opened a privatecommunications channel. “No.”

“She’s going to attack him,” Danielle objected.

“Wait.” Simon watched Leah. After having known her for four years, he feltcertain that if she’d decided to attack Nathan she would have already done so.However, the possibility of an attack still lingered.

THIRTY-THREE

“I’m not naive,” Leah said in a hard, cold voice. Anger twisted violentlyinside her. It was everything she could do to keep from hammering the Templar before her with the butt of her rifle.

The sights she’d seen down in the sanitarium were horrible even before they’dencountered the demons. She’d grown up with man’s inhumanity to man. Her ownfamily was dysfunctional. She’d become what she’d become in order to get awayfrom them.

“I’ve spent four years watching men, women, and children die and have beenunable to do anything about it,” she continued in a thick voice. “I know howevil the demons can be. I just want… I just want to understand them more.”

“That’s where you’re making your mistake,” Nathan said softly. “You can’tunderstand them.”

“We’ve had our share of monsters too.” Leah had personally encountered a fewof them. The worst were those that had lived under the same roof with her.

“We’re not like them,” Nathan insisted. “Not even the worst of us on ourworst day. No one we’ve designated as evil incarnate comes close to being asmalevolent as the demons. Not Hitler. Not the Countess of Bathory. Not Vlad Tepes, also called Count Dracula.”

Leah recognized the names, but it took a moment to put them into context. As evil as those beings had been, she had to admitthat they paled in comparison to the demons.

“All of those people wanted something,” Nathan went on. “Even it if wasn’tsomething we would want for ourselves, we could at least try to understand what motivated them. Control of the world. Eternal youth. To create fear in enemies. Killing, horrible killing and mass killing, was only a means to an end for them. For the demons, there’s only the killing.”

Leah still struggled with the concept. “What you’re describing is a rabidanimal.”

Nathan’s voice remained compassionate and understanding. “No, because rabidanimals are diseased. They don’t have complete control of their faculties. Thedemons aren’t diseased or suffering dementia. Have you ever read H. P.Lovecraft’s stories about Cthulhu?”

“When I was younger. They were too hard to read and I didn’t understandthem.” Leah hadn’t cared for them even though many of her fellow students hadthought they were brill.

“We believe he was one of the people who came closest to understanding thedemons,” Nathan said. “The Templar think Lovecraft had an arcaneability—everyone knows he had an interest in such things—to touch the minds ofthings that lie beyond human understanding. When he wrote his stories, he gave flesh to some of the visions