Hammer Down: Children of the Undying: Book 2 (28 page)

“Ares.” Zel’s rough voice betrayed a hint of something wild. “An ancient god. The god of war.”

There was no mistaking the pride in Aton’s face. “
A
god of war. Hardly the only one. My Sora has taught you well. I should have known she would not leave you ignorant.”

Devi laid a hand on Zel’s arm to check his anger. “And Aton was an Egyptian god of the sun. But those are mythological concepts, abstracts, not people. Not real gods
or
demons.”

“Are you so sure, Devindra? Or are you once again trying to tell yourself that the world is flat?”

The last thing she wanted to do was frustrate him further. “All right, then what changed? Why don’t we still worship you as gods?”

He shrugged one shoulder, a graceful, careless gesture. “Some of you do. Your New World here is cut off from the rest of the humanity. You huddle in your underground caves and play games that exist only in your minds, but not all the world is like this. The gods have returned to Greece and Rome. My brother once again roams the banks of the Nile.”

Talking to you is exhausting.
She wanted to say it, but she knew she couldn’t. “So you’ve been hanging around here for thousands of years?”

An innocent question, but it provoked tension, a tightening of Aton’s eyes that must have evidenced itself in something only Zel could feel. Next to her, he shifted uncomfortably, pressing into her side as if he wanted to squeeze his body in front of hers. “You’re not immortal. Demons die.”

“Death is a human concept.” Aton’s words all but shook with false bravado. The balance of power in the room had shifted subtly. Zel leaned forward and his father eased back, his next words quiet. “But things have changed. You are not human. And I—I am not what I once was.”

Maybe that was why he’d been obsessed with humanity, as Sora had said, and family. An immortal man would have no reason to worry about a son, or about continuing his line. “You’re becoming more human.”
But why?

“I’m becoming less godly. A distinction that matters in this case.”

“Not to me.” Zel’s eyes lit with the fire of a predator, one who sensed weakness in his prey. “Tell us why you’re here. What you want.”

Aton reached out and laid his hand on the small, compact server to his left. “It took three years to find this, and the lives of some of my best warriors to secure it. The answers I need are here, but the Templars have grown craftier over the centuries. Only someone mortal-born can enter this network and traverse the security. You, Devindra, are perfect. Human.”

She stared at him, unable to make his words make sense. “You want me to crack a VR system?”

“Enter it,” he corrected. “My warrior who understands human technology has assured me that once you are inside, a competent human with a mastery of network technology can use your presence to breach security. I believe your Marinella will suffice.”

Cache.
Her lips felt numb as she spoke. “I wouldn’t expect her to be cooperative. A demon killed her lover, almost killed
her
.”

Something stirred behind Aton’s utterly pleasant gaze, a dark reminder that he was far from human. “Then I suggest you convince her. I’ve allowed your transparent games thus far because your reckless fearlessness intrigues me. Mated to my son, you’d produce a line of warriors worthy of my blood. That will not stop me from destroying you.”

Zel snarled and rose so fast the bench scraped across the floor. “I’ll drive my knife into your other eye first.”

Even her hand on his arm wouldn’t hold Zel forever, but Devi tried. She kept her gaze locked with Aton’s. “What information are you after? If it’s something you plan to use against humans, I won’t do it.”

“The opposite, actually.” His hand drifted out to touch the server, fingers gentle. Reverent. “I hope this might tell me how to return home.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Cache’s private room formed around him with an uncomfortable shock that felt like the Global’s ADS. Zel schooled his features, but not fast enough. Cache winced and dropped into her chair, fingers pounding on the keyboard. “I can’t do anything about it. The only way to get you two this far out was to piggyback on the Global, and I can’t filter out the ADS.”

“It’s fine.” An annoying buzz, but not as bad as day-to-day life inside the network. He flexed his fingers as Devi appeared beside him. “Is Trip coming?”

“I’m here, mostly.” Trip’s voice materialized, but that was all. “The rest of me will be along momentarily.”

Instinctive fear skittered up his spine at the sheer damn creepiness of it. Trip’s voice, maybe, but whatever lived inside the network wasn’t entirely his friend. Zel shifted his weight, inching closer to Devi. “You okay?”

She glanced at him. “What, you mean Trip? I caught the circus act when he piped himself through the vault control panel and unlocked it for me.”

“Not nice, guys.” Cache shoved back and rocked to her feet. “At least Trip is human. I don’t like this. How do we know this demon bastard is telling the truth?”

“Because he has no reason to lie,” Devi answered shortly. She’d gone cold, analytical. This must be the side that had kept her alive for so long when most haulers had a brutally short life expectancy. “He could make us do this, and he knows it. He doesn’t have to lie to keep us cooperative.”

Cache capitulated with a soft sigh and waved her hand at a glossy black door on the opposite side of the room. “Trip is hooking us in now. I don’t think this system was meant to be accessed without a terminal, but we’ve got it rigged. Going through the door should drop us into its…” She made another vague gesture. “Waiting room, I guess? But what’s after that, I can’t even guess.”

“Could be anything,” Devi told her. “I don’t think Aton has a clue.”

“Did he really say it belonged to the Templars?”

Cache’s voice held a hint of awe that stirred unease in Zel’s gut. “Not in so many words. He said the Templars had become craftier.” It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but her curiosity made him wonder. “Does that mean something to you?”

The girl hesitated. “Have you ever heard of the Templars? The historical ones, I mean?”

“An order of knights.” Devi shrugged. “They formed around the time of the Crusades, I think, as a militant arm of the Roman Catholic church. They were disbanded fairly quickly, but there have been rumors about them ever since.”

Cache nodded sharply enough to send her bright purple hair flying. “But you know how it is in the network. People appropriate to make themselves sound badass. They say their little cabal is an offshoot of the Templars or the Illuminati, or that their great-great-grandpa was Bill Gates or descended from Turing or Babbage or Cleopatra. No one takes that shit seriously. Except…”

She trailed off, uncertain enough for Zel to prompt her. “Except?”

“Well, there
are
secret groups. Anyone who’s spent enough time poking around the far edges of the Global knows that. And hiding by letting everyone think you’re too absurd to exist isn’t the worst strategy ever.”

“So why would a group commandeer the Templar name?” Devi asked. “What’s the point?”

“Maybe they didn’t.” Cache crossed to the black door and pressed her hand against it, fingers spread wide. “Maybe for every hundred people who’d tell you they’re Templars, there’s one who wouldn’t say a damn thing…because he really
is
one.”

Devi rubbed her temples. “But
why
? I don’t understand what connection the group could have to the Templars. What are they crusading against, the demons?”

The edges of the door flared suddenly, light shining around it like sunshine into a dark room. Cache slid her hand down to a thin black knob and glanced over her shoulder. “Guess we could go find out?”

It wasn’t like they had a choice. “Let’s do it.”

Cache nodded and pushed open the door. Light flooded the area, so bright it almost blinded Zel. He blinked through tears and stepped forward, driven by instinct to take the lead. Whatever lay on the other side of that door held answers to questions he’d never thought to ask. Information was power.

Devi fell into step beside him as they walked down a long stone hall lined with doors. “No handles,” she murmured, nodding at the arched wooden doors.

Zel veered to the left and reached out. An inch from the smooth surface electricity sparked, arcing from the door to his fingers. “Fuck!”

Cache eased up beside him and pressed her small hand against the exact spot he’d tried to touch.

Nothing happened.

“Weird.” She pulled her hand away and shrugged. “They said the system doesn’t like demons. Maybe it’s got some sort of ADS.”

“It could be focusing the Global network’s anti-demon signal,” Devi mused.

Whatever it was, it wanted him to keep his hands to himself. Terrifying, considering what had happened to Trip, what might yet happen to Cache and Devi. The network had always been safe. Consequence free.

Not anymore. Claustrophobia closed in, and Zel backed away from the wall. “Let’s get this done.”

The long hallway spilled out into a sweeping circular room with misty walls, the boundaries better defined by the tall columns that rose from the floor and vanished into the blackness of the indistinct ceiling. As soon as Zel crossed the threshold, light exploded from the middle of the room in a glimmering pillar.

A form took shape in the center. A man, tall and garbed in an old-fashioned tunic belted with wide leather. A sword crossed his back, the hilt poking up over his left shoulder. When he stepped forward the column of light faded, leaving the man looking as solid as the rest of them. “Welcome to the Temple.”

Instinct urged Zel forward, in front of the women. “Who are you?”

“My name is John.” He studied Zel for a moment and raised his hand to the hilt of his sword. “Who are you?”

After a moment’s thought, Zel told him the truth. “Dominic Wetzel.”

He nodded and transferred his gaze to Cache and Devi in turn, almost as if scanning them. “Your companions are acceptably human. They shall be allowed to enter.”

Danger zipped through him. “
They
?”

“They.”

Without warning, a shockwave hit him, knocking him off his feet. Instead of landing on the stone floor, he landed back in his body.

Aton stood over him. “You lasted longer than I thought you would.”

Zel’s body ached, and he thought his head might crack open under the spiking pain. He closed his eyes as Aton’s face wavered. “I need to get back in there. Devi and Cache are alone with that bastard—”

“You cannot go back in. I found that out for myself.” He held up a finger. “One attempt. The program seems to retain a user log. When it boots you, it bans your signal.”

Zel rocked to a sitting position, then flowed to his feet and lunged, curling his fists in the demon’s vest. “What in fuck did you send them into?”

“A test,” Aton told him calmly. “If they pass, the system will grant them access to its archives.”

“And if they don’t?”

“As far I know, the system should boot them, as it did you.”

It would have been comforting a few weeks earlier. “If anything happens to either of them, I’ll kill you. Somehow, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Surprisingly, Aton nodded. “I find that acceptable.”

Zel forced himself to take a step back, more shaken then he wanted to admit. To consider his father’s motivations would be to consider his earlier revelations, and Zel’s brain shied away from anything that would force him to acknowledge Aton’s delusions of godhood.

The son of a god.
Someone had delusions, all right, and maybe it wasn’t Aton.

“You worry for nothing. Devindra will be fine.”

Zel pivoted and turned his back on Aton, striding to where Devi lay stretched out on a small pallet, eyes closed and breathing shallow. Crouching down, he reached out with one hand to smooth back a lock of her hair, tucking the corkscrew curl behind her ear. His fingers drifted to the sweet bow of her mouth, then to her tawny cheek. “She’d better be.”

Devi kept her hands to herself through sheer willpower alone. “What happened to him? Did he drop out of the network or—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Booted.” Cache’s lips pressed together in a tight line that usually meant trouble. “Can we back up a step? What the fuck does
acceptably human
mean?”

The man in front of them tilted his head, the look almost curious. “According to your genealogical profiles, you are eighty-four and seventy-nine percent human, respectively.”

Acceptably human.
“There must be some mistake. We’re both human.
Only
human.”

“Impossible. The last pure human died in the year two thousand fifty-two.”

It couldn’t be a coincidence. Devi almost stumbled as her knees weakened, and cold sweat rose on her forehead.

Twenty fifty-two. The year of the Fall, when the border between the human and demon worlds had opened up to spread hell on earth.

No.

“If part of us isn’t human,” she whispered, “then what is it?”

Cache snapped, stumbling back with both hands held up in front of her. “Fuck no, I am
not
part demon.”

“Demon is a colloquial term. Inaccurate, and ultimately meaningless.”

Cache hadn’t heard Aton’s explanations. His confidence. “Gods,” Devi said. “That’s what Zel’s father called them.”

“Dominic Wetzel, son of Aton and Sora. Thirty-seven percent human, fifty-four percent undying, nine percent celestial.”

The recitation was too mechanic, too rote. Cache’s eyes narrowed, then widened in something approaching awe. “It’s an AI. It’s a motherfucking AI. Jesus
Christ
.”

The man straightened again. “Jesus, son of—”

“Oh hell no.” Cache flung up both hands, something approaching panic in her expression. “I am so out of here. This is messed up.”

Devi caught her arm and tried to project a calm she didn’t feel. “Settle down. We came here to do something, and we’re going to do it. Right?”

Cache wouldn’t settle. “This technology? It doesn’t exist, Dev. Not like this. Not this real, this—”

“Impressive?” John smiled, looking like a pleased man instead of a program. “I’m capable of a modicum of vanity, and it has been flattered, Marinella, daughter of Stella and Joseph. Do you wish to continue?”