“Help me!” Leah cried. “She still has a chance!”
The Templar broke free from the paralysis that held them and rushed forward.
Leah tried to figure out where the lizard’s brain was. She hoped that if she could pierce the brain or sever the spinal cord she might save the Templar.
“Warning!”
The voice came from inside the suit. Leah hadn’t expected that. She still struggled to understand the 360-degree view the HUD afforded. Everything looked wrong.
“Warning! Second demon within range!”
Leah noticed the demon then. A second lizard had risen from the water and rushed at her. The scrawny legs were incredibly powerful. She turned to meet the new threat, but she knew she moved too late.
The demon opened wide its jaws. The black tongue uncoiled from inside the mouth and lashed forward.
Leah tried to move. The tongue hit her just left of center in her chest. If it missed her heart, and she wasn’t certain, it was a near thing. She was surprised that there was no pain. Shock already flooded her system and started shutting her down.
She stumbled backward but managed to grab the tongue with one hand. The barbs bit into her flesh as the lizard snapped its head back and reeled her in. Then the jaws closed on her with crushing force and she—
—was suddenly somewhere else. She choked back a cry.
“Quiet,” someone hissed. Then Leah felt her hand squeezed tightly. “Don’t interrupt the Voice.”
Leah sat cross-legged in a circle of people in a dark room. All of them ringed a strangely cut box that levitated in the center of the circle. Black curtains covered the windows, but the way the heavy material moved told her the windows were broken.
When Leah gazed at her companions, she realized they were Cabalists. Their robes and strange armor fashioned from demon hide announced their identities as much as the tattoos and demon body parts they had stitched into their bodies. Most of the wounds looked infected.
From the information that Control passed along, the Cabalists believed they enhanced their natural powers and added others by grafting the demons’ bodies to their own. According to reports, they were at least partially successful. But the grafts often didn’t take. Most of the time, infection set in and threatened the host body until the grafts were undone.
Others, too stubborn or believing that the infection would turn, died horrible deaths trying to adapt. Several of the Cabalists around Leah looked sick and weak. Hollow eyes burned as they stared at the floating box.
“This is Ordonar’s Box,” a man near the floating object said. “Homer and Aristotle wrote of the Box, but those writings have been concealed. They believed the soul of a demon was trapped inside. The Greeks didn’t create the box. Ordonar was believed to have been a priest in ancient Tibet, a holy man who acknowledged that demons walked in this world.”
The Box twisted and spun at a faster rate. At first, Leah though it was brass, then she saw the reddish gleam and thought it was more likely that it was copper. Strange sigils stood out in bold relief on the sides.
“Although the ancients tried to understand the Box,” the speaker went on, “none of its secrets were ever discovered. In time, when the Romans took over much of the Greek culture, they also recovered the Box. It was brought to England. A scholar here thought a crypt with similar markings had been found. Before the Box arrived, the scholar was found murdered. Some said it was the curse of the crypt, which was never found.”
Power grew in the room. Part of Leah knew what it was. The force felt like an electrical surge buildup. Her skin became tight and dry. Her hair stood on end. Electrical sparks jumped on some of the Cabalists in the circle. Leah wanted to get up and run.
“Easy,” the man next to Leah whispered. “The Voice knows what he’s doing. Everything will be fine.”
“While in England,” the Voice went on, “the Box was also lost. Stories of assassins, pagans, and jealous officers followed the Box. No one knows what the truth is. In the early nineteenth century, explorers found the Box. Until now, it’s resided in a museum. No one knew what it was. I do.”
The Voice stood. He was a tall, lean man with the face of a wolf. He looked like a ska fan, dressed in jackboots, his head shaven, piercings over his face.
“Tonight, brothers and sisters, we open the Box and free the demon soul inside. It will try to escape our circle, but we won’t allow that. We will hold on to it and make it do our bidding. Once we do that, our understanding of the demons and the power that we can wield will increase. We will all benefit.”
No! Leah tried to speak and couldn’t. Demons don’t have souls! She knew that from the research she’d stolen from the Templar when she’d first gone to the Templar Underground with Simon. She didn’t know what the Box contained, but she didn’t see that it could be anything but evil.
And powerful. That scared her most of all.
“Now,” the Voice said, “it’s time to open the Box. Ready your shields. Don’t allow it to escape.”
Magenta shimmering filled the darkened room, glowing like a lava bubble.
Leah tried to free her hands. Both Cabalists on either side of her held on.
“No,” the man hissed. “Stay strong. Believe. We can bend the demons to our will. That’s our destiny. It’s what we’ve been working toward.”
Leah couldn’t move. Her body wasn’t under her control.
The Voice spoke strange words that Leah couldn’t understand. The Box spun faster. Blue lights flickered over the Box’s copper surfaces. The Voice continued speaking. The words came louder and faster. Wind whipped free in the room. Blue lightning leaped
