The Divine Whisper (18 page)

The man’s eyes quickly glanced down to Gemariah’s bloody chest before making it back to his face.
“I told them to shoot you in the head. Worthless humans,” he sneered. His response set off alarms that something was not as it seemed.

The man’s gaze darted down again, but this time, landed on Gemariah’s ax.
His reaction was instantaneous. He opened his mouth on a hiss, and in turn, showed his sharp, salivating yellow teeth. When he got down into a crouching position, his human like eyes turned blood red.

“Demon!”
He had just enough time to yell before it threw itself in his direction.

With precision and speed that only came from years of experience, he removed his ax, and swung.
It would have been a clean cut right across the neck, if the demon hadn’t lunged back at the last second.

When the demon dodged the blow, he accidentally stumbled into one of the tables, and tipped it over.
Machines crashed to the ground, metal hit against metal… the noise was almost deafening.

“So much for quickly and quietly.”

Gideon’s words brought Gemariah’s gaze to his teammate, and he heard the pounding footsteps from above.
It is about to get a lot more complicated
, he thought.

The momentary lapse in Gemariah’s concentration was all the demon needed to strike, and strike he did.

Pain erupted as the demon’s claws raked up his neck, stopping at the base of a cheek. The feeling of being burned was unbelievable, and he had to take a step back to regain his focus. As he watched, the demon smiled and licked the blood off his claws.

Just when the people started rushing down the stairs, Gemariah saw Gideon head that way.
He then knew that he was on his own with the demon.

Gemariah swung the
ax at the demon, but it deflected it with its forearm, and swiped its claws forward. Lunging out of the way, Gemariah switched his grip on the ax, and swung his arm in the opposite direction, using a back-swing. Still, the demon maneuvered out of the way, but while its attention was still on the ax, Gemariah grabbed a knife from his belt and jammed it into its neck.

He knew the knife would only piss off the demon, but at least it would slow it down, and possibly distract it as well.
Sure enough, the demon spun around to face a table as it pulled the knife free. Presented with its back, Gemariah couldn’t pass up the opportunity and lifted the ax, fully prepared to sever its head.

Before he could bring the
ax down, the demon spun back around, and threw a powdery substance directly in his face. Taken by surprise, he gasped and took a step back.

In a matter of seconds, it became hard for him to breathe.
Next, his eyes started to burn enough to where he had to keep them closed. What the hell? That son-of-a-bitch had just thrown Ricin at him.

Trying to open his eyes caused mind numbing pain, and he quickly shut them again.
No longer able to see, Gemariah took a few steps back as panic started to creep in.

Thinking he heard something to his left, he pivoted and swung out his arm, only to find air.
A soft chuckle sounded on his right and he swung his ax, but didn’t make contact.

Trying to even his labored breathing, he focused on what he could.
There were sounds of a struggle at his back, fists hitting flesh followed by groans of pain. Reaching out with his ability, he sensed panic, fear, anger, and… boredom. Gideon must be in control of the situation, because he would be the only person that could be bored in a situation like that.

It was amazing that he could pinpoint all the other emotions when the demon’s anger was threatening to cloud over them all.
He just needed to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. Left… Right… Gemariah slowly spun with the anger. Stopping where he was, he kept the anger to his left, and tightened the grip on his ax when he felt a rush of satisfaction and anticipation come his way. As if on cue, all the dark emotions rushed him, and Gemariah quickly pivoted to the side and swung his ax around.

He made solid contact with something before hearing a sharp hiss and a high pitched scream, both telltale signs that he hit his mark.
Stepping away from the heat of the burning demon, it didn’t take long for the smoke detectors to start going off. Beyond the loud blaring noise, it took him a moment to realize that the whole room had gone still.

The pause in the fighting only lasted for a few seconds until dull thuds sounded throughout the room.
Obviously Gideon had started to take advantage of their distraction and was knocking off the few remaining humans.

“You alright?”

The voice to his right took him off guard and he raised his ax once again to defend himself. Shit, he hated not being able to see.

“Whoa!”
He could tell that whoever it was, took a few steps back. “I just thought you might need some help.”

Reaching out his senses, he felt curiosity, fear, and genuine concern coming from the direction of the voice.
Among all the emotions, animosity wasn’t one of them.

Gesturing to his eyes, Gemariah croaked, “Water.”

“Okay. Take three steps forward.”

Gemariah cautiously did as he was told and waited for the next instructions.

“Turn to your right, and take two steps forward. There’s a small sink in front of you.”

Putting his
ax back in its holder, he easily found the sink and leaned down to splash water into his face, concentrating mostly on his eyes. The whole time, he never took his senses away from the surrounding area.

Standing up, he gingerly tried to open his eyes.
There was still a gritty feeling, but the pain had lessened considerably. For extra measure, he dipped his head under the faucet and let the water run over his open eyes. Finally, when he stood up and looked around, he could start to make out different shapes.

“Shut this fucking thing up!”
There was a loud crack, and the smoke detectors stopped blaring before the room fell silent.

Gemariah couldn’t be more grateful for the silence.
“Thank you. My head is killing me!”

“That would be the Ricin.
The powder is a high concentrated form. You must have inhaled some.” There was a slight pause before he continued. “You should probably get to a doctor as soon as possible.”

“Who’s your friend, G?”
The uneasiness in Gideon’s voice made Gemariah pause.

“Why?”

“Because he’s holding a gun.”

Making sure the emotions hadn’t changed, Gemariah cautiously looked at the figure beside him.
His vision slowly cleared, and he saw a young boy, that had to be eighteen or nineteen, standing there. Sure enough, he was still holding his hand gun. “He’s not going to use it though, are you?” Gemariah made sure to insert a certain amount of authority into his voice which caused the boy to straighten.

“Oh, this?”
He waved the pistol in the air, which made the two of them flinch. “No, of course not.”

Instead of placing the gun down gently, he tossed it across the room.
He saw Gideon move first, and as if on instinct, Gemariah grabbed the boy, and covered his body right before the gun hit the ground. He hadn’t seen a gun go off by being dropped in many years, but the memory of the faulty ones from years past was still ingrained in his head.

“Oops.”
The muffled comment from the boy made Gemariah step away. He was about to give him a small lecture on how not to throw guns, when Gideon came forward.

Without stopping, Gideon got close and grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt with both hands and lifted him up.
“What the hell is your problem?”

“I… I…”

“I… I…” Gideon repeated, mocking the boy. “Don’t ever fucking touch a gun again until you know how to handle it, are we clear?”

The boy didn’t speak, but nodded vigorously.
The scene was somewhat troubling to watch. Sure the kid did something stupid, but Gideon was using his superior strength to the boy’s disadvantage. Is that what it was like when Nicole saw him scolding the boy from the coffee shop?

Having seen enough, Gemariah grabbed Gideon’s wrist.
“Enough,” was all he said and made Gideon put the kid down. With an exaggerated huff, Gideon let go, and walked away.

“Thanks,” the boy whispered without looking in his direction.
Nervousness and embarrassment rolled off him in waves.

Gemariah nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder.
His chest hurt, and he didn’t want to talk more than he had to. Therefore, instead of telling the boy that it was going to be alright and try to comfort him, he transferred some calm into the boy to help him relax. The change in him was instantaneous. His shoulders slouched downward, and the breath he took was deeper than before.

Gemariah extended his abilities to cover the house.
Once again, he reached out to grasp the other emotions. As expected, he felt the three of them, but then he felt the two different terrified emotions coming from upstairs. He finally remembered about the children he saw before. “Are the other kids someplace safe?”

He looked startled that Gemariah had known about them, but quickly recovered and nodded his head.

“Holy Fuck.”

Gideon’s exclamation had Gemariah’s feet moving immediately.

When he got to where Gideon was, he saw his teammate standing in front of two different shelves and examining the content.
“What’s going on?”

“This could have been disastrous, if they succeeded with their plan.”

Gemariah stepped over bodies as he made his way to the shelves. Some were dead, other’s unconscious. There was one that drew his attention from the others. It was the woman that opened the door to them, the one he thought to be the mother of the two young children. Her throat was slit from ear to ear. “Gideon! What the hell did you do?”

Looking over his shoulder, Gideon shrugged and faced the shelves once more.
“You weren’t there when she came down the stairs. Her soul was as black as they come, and she wasn’t even a corrupt.”

Of course she didn’t have a corrupted soul, they would have felt that as soon as she opened the door.
The fact that she was one of the hostile emotions from before took him by surprise, though. It must have been the kids and the boy behind him that were the innocents he felt. If the boy was so innocent though, what was he doing with a gun?

Curiosity was written all over his face when he looked back at the boy; the boy that was now glaring at the dead woman on the ground.

When he looked up, he must have read Gemariah’s expression perfectly, because he started to explain.
“She was a horrible woman. She kidnapped me and my baby brother six years ago. He was only a year old at the time. She took the girl about a year ago. Carl and she ran this show.” He held his hands out to acknowledge the Ricin operation.

Carl?
“Who’s Carl?”

Fully expecting him to point out someone lying about their feet, he didn’t see it coming when he nodded towards the scorched area fifteen feet away.
Alright… Demon Carl.

Turning his attention back to Gideon, Gemariah made his way over towards the shelves.
Once he got there, he didn’t understand what he was looking at. There were boxes of half empty vitamin bottles, packages of seals, and other miscellaneous boxes. “What were they up to?”

“I couldn’t figure it out, until I saw this.”
Gideon showed him a box packed with full vitamin bottles.

Pulling one out, dread filled him as the word Prenatal showed on the front.
Without hesitating, he opened the bottle, broke the seal, and removed a pill. Breaking it in half was easy, and he picked up a couple scattered remnants and stuck them in his mouth. Just as he suspected… ricin.

Reaching into the box, he pulled out bottle after full bottle of prenatal vitamins.
Panic flared once again, and he rounded on the boy. “Have any boxes been distributed?”

His fear was prominent, obviously because of Gemariah’s change in behavior.
“I… I… I don’t know.”

“Shit!
Call it in. Call everything in.”

As Gemariah started to pace, he could hear Gideon talking into his phone.
He started to think of all the expecting mothers unknowingly poisoning their own babies, and his stomach clenched. That could have been Nicci. That could have been
his
baby.

What if she ran out of vitamins that week, and picked up a new bottle?
He would have never known. The thought brought on a whole new sense of urgency.

Pulling out his phone, he dialed Nicci’s number, only for it to go to voicemail.
Damn stubborn woman! Hitting a button to repeat the call, he put the phone to his ear, only to get the same result.

Running his hand aggressively through his hair, he stopped himself just short of crushing his phone.

Looking at the screen, he contemplated a different strategy.
Taking a deep breath, he winced at the pain, and wished he could banish the demon all over again. Dialing a new number, he waited while the phone rang.