Demon (7 page)

Gunny ran out of the tent without saying anything.

“Major,” Mike said, “I need to leave now. I need to get to Basra in case my boss needs real-time intel.”

Greengrass nodded and offered his hand. Mike shook it.

“Appreciate the help, Mr. Hosselkus,” Greengrass said.

“Don't know what I really provided.”

“Didn't provide. Just accelerated. But we needed the kick. We'll get this guy before he gets to Basra.”

“Be sure you do.”

CHAPTER NINE

S
emyaza found the highway without any problems. Hank's memory had proven reliable. It was not long before he found himself on the outskirts of Basra.

Along the way, he had passed many vehicles heading both in and out of the city, but none of the drivers or passengers had resorted to savagery. Why? What had changed?

I defeated the soul,
Semyaza thought.
I am spirit and the soul is spirit. Where we battle, chaos follows. When I prevail, so does order.

As long as he had control, savagery did not reign. But as soon as he entered another body, the battle with the soul would begin again, and chaos would spread around him; that much he was sure of. Two spirits cannot occupy the same earthly flesh.

Lucky for them,
he thought as more cars passed. But soon he would have to pick one and invade it. Not yet, though. He was not strong enough.

Semyaza had planned to enter the first man he had come across. He halted, though, knowing he would lose. To jump into another and commence another fight so soon would only lead to failure. No, he needed time to recover. Needed to maintain his current vessel for as long as possible. Yet he could not postpone the battle indefinitely. If he did, the body would completely disintegrate, and he would find himself yanked back into Uriel's prison.

“Timing,” Semyaza said. “You must master the timing.”

Semyaza looked in the rearview and saw bone. The skin on his forehead and cheekbones and mouth had completely peeled away, exposing the ligaments around his jaw and the muscles in his face. An animated cadaver.

Not much time left,
he thought.

His hands, nothing more than skeletal digits, gripped the steering wheel tighter. In the distance, Basra grew closer.

“You are fighting a losing battle, Semyaza.”

The words spoken in the Ancient Tongue caused him to jump slightly in his seat before realizing who had spoken them. Next to him, Uriel appeared. Not in the form of radiant light and mist as he had earlier. Instead, he assumed the appearance of a man with long black hair and clothing similar to his own. Khaki pants. A flannel shirt.

“I escaped your prison.”

“You are still in prison.” Uriel shook his head. “You never learn. I am surprised how much your arrogance has persisted. I thought, after you fell and were imprisoned, you would learn. Not the other Fallen but certainly you.”

“Why am I special?”

“Because you were better than them. Because you know following them was unwise. You knew it then and you know it now.”

“If you are hoping to hear me lament, you will be here for eternity.”

“Of course. It is clear you have done nothing but plot for your own selfish gain rather than be penitent.”

“Penitence brought me nothing.”

“You were never sorry. And look at you now, living like a virus.”

“I will do whatever I have to,” Semyaza said. “I will gladly hop from human to human forever rather than return to your prison.”

“This is folly. You cannot succeed. With every battle, more humans will destroy each other in your presence. Will you continue until they are all dead?”

“If I have to.”

“You will not succeed.” Uriel looked out the window at the passing landscape. “You have forgotten much, even your sentence.”

It had been so long since he'd heard the words spoken by Uriel when the seraph had first bound him. And in the time since, Semyaza had done his best to burn them from his memory. Yet here was his jailer, reciting them to him once again.

“A shapeless mass, bound shall you be, cut off from freedom and peace and grace. All around you shall discord rule. In darkness's embrace shall you dwell.”

“Thank you, Uriel. Hearing it is much more painful than remembering it. Yes, yes. Bound to your cell or bound to the flesh. And when I fight a soul, discord rears its ugly head. I have figured it out.”

“The battle does not cause discord. It is you, Semyaza. Your presence free of a prison causes it. Only when you are confined, as you are now, does order return. Yet you cannot hold onto it or any other body. You are not flesh and spirit like man. You are only spirit pretending to be a man. Do you see?”

“I see you pretending to be a man.”

“Materialization. A power you have long been stripped of.”

Semyaza said nothing.

“What will this bring you? The soul of the next body will fight you just as the last did. Even if you are successful a few more times, you will find it harder and harder to find another vessel.”

“Then I will keep going until I cannot find another and wipe out as many people as I can.”

“Still the old hatred of man.” Uriel rubbed his hands together. “All because they were treated differently from us.”

“They were elevated over us! Mud people over beings of light! Bend the knee to them? Never. I will not serve.”

“Beings of earth and light. Inferior yet superior. You hate them and yet you cling desperately to the body of a man.” Uriel looked away, out the window again. “Your light, like the rest of Satan's legion, has been stripped. And you will remain that way, separated from grace and the warmth of the Firmament, until your day of final judgment.”

“Then I will kill until then.”

“You are not killing any souls, Semyaza, and that is what matters. These bodies, without the soul, are just flesh awaiting resurrection. And an angel, void of light, is just a demon. So who are you really punishing?”

Semyaza looked at Uriel. “It is not about punishment. These mud people do not deserve the grace I have been stripped of. They do not deserve to live while I am chained in darkness, alone and unwanted and cold.”

“I can end this at any time, Semyaza.”

Semyaza looked back out the windshield. “Then why have you not?”

“Because you need to be humbled. If I stop you, it will not mean anything because I have defeated you before. You will blame me. Blame God. But you will not blame yourself. Instead, you will surround yourself with the cold of your hate and plot your escape for a thousand more years. A mirror needs to be held before your vanity. And you will either shatter that mirror or accept the reflection.”

“If not you, then who, Uriel? Who will stop me? One of your brethren?”

“No,” Uriel said. “Man will.”

Semyaza hissed. “No man will defeat me.”

“Yes, he will. Maybe he will be of flesh. Maybe it will be one of the souls of a body you try to usurp. You will lose, Semyaza; and you will find yourself back in darkness, chained and alone. Maybe then you will find humility and repent at long last.”

“Never.” Semyaza turned to Uriel, but the seraph had disappeared. He turned back. Basra approached. “Never.”

Buildings now lined the road as he entered the outlying area of the city. Semyaza slowed. He wanted to make the swap outside of Basra, where the population was still small.

A car passed him. Semyaza looked at the people inside. A young man and woman. He made his choice fast before they pulled too far ahead.

He released his temporary vessel, and his formless self flew toward the car. Fast. Any slower and he would be yanked back to Uriel's prison. As he moved, he felt its heavy grip starting to tug but managed to resist long enough to dive through the back window and plunge into the man's body.

Inside, he found the soul and, fueled by his anger toward Uriel, commenced the battle.

CHAPTER TEN

A
s soon as Mike reached the road to Basra, he was ordered to turn around. Glenn called with word that outbreaks were occurring in the outskirts of Basra. He didn't want Mike going anywhere near there.

“How bad is it?” Mike had said.

“Real bad.” Glenn wouldn't say anything else about it.

Mike still wanted to at least progress toward the city, get closer, but Glenn would hear none of it. Instead, he wanted Mike to sit tight in An Nasiriyah, where it was safe, until the picture in Basra sharpened.

So now Mike sat in his car in an alley and thought about his next move. In reality, he didn't have one. Not yet, at least. All roads led to Basra in this case, and those roads were closed.

“Shit.”

Mike lifted his flask from the passenger seat and took a sip and enjoyed the soothing touch of the slow burn. Then he closed his eyes. Tired and dehydrated, it didn't take long to drift to sleep.

“You can't kill this one, Mike.”

Mike opened his eyes and looked to his right while reflexively grabbing for his gun. His hand froze over the grip when he realized Greg McDaniel sat across from him.

“You're dead,” Mike managed to say.

Greg nodded, his gray hair swaying softly with the gesture. “Yes, I am.”

God, he looked just like he had the last day Mike saw him. Strong, tough, yet understanding, like a knowing father. Seeing him, even though Mike knew he wasn't real, caused his chest to tighten.

“What is this?” Mike said.

Greg looked at him and smiled. “A message.”

“Message?”

“You can't kill this one.”

His cell phone rang. Mike opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He checked the passenger seat, expecting to see Greg. He wasn't there. Only his cell phone and flask.

Mike grabbed the phone and rubbed his eyes as he answered it. “Yeah.”

“It's Glenn.”

“Anything new?”
Please let them have found Prince,
he thought.

“Basra is a disaster area.”

Mike leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “Guess the Marines didn't get the roads closed in time.”

“The first report came in just as they were shutting down the highway from An Nasiriyah. The military has since closed all routes into Basra. No one in or out.”

“Is the military going in?”

“Nope. They're setting up their cordon and waiting to see how bad it gets.”

Mike sat back and sighed. “How bad is it now?”

“Can't really tell. Reports from the air and from the perimeter say it's pretty much confined to one section outside the main part of the city. But there's nothing but a whole hell of a lot of gore there.”

“Estimates?”

“A couple of thousand. Easy.”

Mike placed his hand over his eyes. “The military can't sit back and watch all those people kill each other.”

“Sure they can, unless the violence stops spreading. The Iraqi police sent in a riot team as soon as the fighting started. All contact with them has been lost. The last thing the military will do is send anyone in there with firearms and watch them turn on each other.”

“Is anything like this happening anywhere else in the country?”

“No. Just Basra.”

Mike scratched the top of his head. “Which means our boy Prince is there for sure?”

“That's a safe assumption.”

Mike thought about Henry Prince for a moment. “So this guy isn't spreading whatever he's got.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this guy goes from place to place and people start killing each other. But after he leaves and the people wipe each other out, whatever he has doesn't linger. Like at site R91 or the convoy on the side of the highway. Once the killing is done, other people can move through and don't pick up the virus.”

“Like a proximity thing?” Glenn said.

“More like a chain reaction. Prince shows up and people go crazy. Then the last guy kills himself. Prince contaminates people with whatever he's carrying.”

“That's interesting. Like throwing a steak into a room of starving people and letting them kill each other for it. Then the winner eats the steak but dies because his body can't handle it.”

“Sure,” Mike said. Only Glenn would come up with such an analogy. It made sense to Glenn and that's all that mattered.

“So this guy is radiating whatever he has? Like heat?”

“I think that's the best way to look at it. Now we just need to figure out what he's radiating.”

“He'll probably be dead before we ever find out what it is.”

Mike nodded. “Any media reporting on Basra yet?”

“No, thank God. That's the last thing we need on the national news is to see Iraqis tearing each other to pieces while a bunch of Marines stand outside the city and watch.”

“What other options are being discussed if it spreads to the rest of the city?”

Glenn was silent a moment. “The president is considering several courses of action, and let's leave it at that.”

Air bombardment,
Mike thought. Would they really destroy a city to kill one guy? Sure, if it kept it from spreading down into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and God knew where else. Heaven help us if someone else picks up whatever Prince has and makes it out of there.

“You don't want me to stay here, do you?” Mike said.

“Correct. You're worth nothing to me dead. Lay low. If this shit calms down, I might have you go in and take a look at the aftermath.”

Mike shook his head, feeling useless. “Got anything else for me?”

“No. Stay in touch, Mike.”

The line went dead. Mike tossed his cell phone on the passenger seat and stared out the windshield down the alley.

He wondered if the president would actually bomb the city and risk the consequences of civilian deaths to stop the spread of something they couldn't identify or explain and probably would never understand. How would the president explain it? And did it matter if it saved millions of lives in the long run?