Exile (The Oneness Cycle) (21 page)

Authors: Rachel Starr Thomson

BOOK: Exile (The Oneness Cycle)

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Slowly, a laugh began to sound in the warehouse. It grew, hundreds of voices joining together, until the horde of demons mocked their intentions with a single voice.

Mary crouched low, her sword ready. “Now.”

Chapter 17

When they were boys and Tyler was still battling grief and all the demons grief brought with it, Chris had made up a game. It was called “Berzerker.” The boys would go outside with their stick swords and pretend they were heroes being attacked by a gigantic army. And they would both swing their swords and howl and scream and leap around like maniacs and just fight and fight and fight and fight until Tyler found relief in exhaustion. Tyler didn’t realize until much later how much wisdom Chris had shown in making up that game. Maybe even Chris hadn’t known what he was doing—after all, he was only twelve when Tyler lost his parents.

But one thing Tyler learned from that game was that fighting was not actually all that complicated. The carefully choreographed routines in the movies were misleading. Talk of wartime strategy was inspiring but not all that useful in a backyard game of Berzerker. Real fighting was just a matter of swinging and hitting and not stopping until you won or dropped dead, and the other side would do the same thing.

In the warehouse, Tyler played Berzerker. The demons came in a swarm like wasps, and Tyler all but closed his eyes and just fought his way forward. The sword was powerful; the demons were only half-solid. Their only real advantage was in their numbers. Their presence darkened the warehouse so that Tyler felt he was fighting through a cloud, a thick shadow that made it almost impossible to see anything but eyes and spectral faces, but he knew where he was going, roughly, and he followed Mary’s advice in bludgeoning his way to the door.

He reached the exhaust-stained, artifically-lit air of the outside world with a burst of triumph, his body scratched and aching, his face swollen from the punch. He stumbled through the warehouse door and ran for the car, realizing he’d forgotten to get the keys and hoping someone else had them.

And then he stopped.

He was the only one who had made it out.

He waited a few antsy seconds and then went back through the door. From the outside of the demonic cloud he could see a little more clearly, so the centre of the attack was visible.

The others hadn’t moved.

Angelica was standing over Tony, and Mary was standing over Richard, and Tyler knew in a rush that they weren’t
going
to move. Either they were taking their unconscious friends with them, or they would all die together.

He couldn’t see Chris.

For some reason his eyes were drawn to the floor, and it seemed the thirty feet between him and the others closed up and he could see as though he were standing right there. Richard’s eyes were opening. He was staring up at the ceiling …

… or at something else high up there.

And Tyler heard his voice, rasping and coming with effort but coming nevertheless.

“Reese,” he said, “get out of here!”

Tyler looked up. Reese was there, frozen on the iron stairway coming down from the catwalk above. The look on her face was stricken.

And then she jumped.

And landed on David, taking him down to the ground.

The attack momentarily eased away from the Oneness on the floor.

Reese’s sword was drawn, white-hot, and she was holding its point in the hollow of David’s throat.

* * *

Reese stared down into the man’s face, lit by the heat of her own sword—a sword that could kill him, for he was Oneness, and Oneness was supernatural and vulnerable to the weapons of the Spirit.

Richard’s words sledgehammered at her soul.

Get out of here.

Go.

All the grief of rejection rose up in her throat and choked her, and almost blind with it, she pressed the sword farther. She was dimly aware that the battle had paused, drawn back to watch—that her grief was, for the moment, the focal point of the war.

She stared into the face of a man she had trusted and followed for most of her life. A man who had done more than slander her—who had projected onto her the darkest, most hidden parts of his own soul so that no one could see who she was, so that those she loved distrusted and rejected her, so that she was made to carry the weight of guilt for the death of a friend and to see herself as the enemy of all that she loved, of all that she was.

Her eyes blurred with tears. She did not move the sword.

Richard was saying something … trying to yell something at her. She couldn’t discern the words.

“It will save them all,” David croaked. “If you kill me.”

It was true, wasn’t it? It wasn’t revenge—it was the only thing to do. Without David’s leadership the core would lose its power. The hive would eventually disintegrate, losing the unity they needed to function together. In the moment, his death would lend her friends the strength to survive, confusing their enemies badly enough to allow them to fight their way free.

There wasn’t even an inch between them and freedom.

Tears ran down her face. Feebly, she tried to reach out for Oneness—to feel the companionship, the faith, the unity with the others that was her greatest strength. To feel the love that bound them all together.

She could feel nothing but the almost physical pain of exile.

“Reese,” she finally heard Richard say. “This is not the way.”

She closed her eyes, desperately trying to find some semblance of clarity—the conviction needed to stop herself from killing David in what she knew, deep down, would be nothing more than a desperate attempt to set herself free.

Maybe it would work.

After all, he was the cause of all this, and untold other pain. He had killed the hermit, had nearly killed April, had fractured a cell.

Justice had to be done.

Didn’t it?

Eyes still closed, she saw a woman’s face.

Diane.

And slowly, she backed away.

She pulled the sword tip back. The blade cooled and then vanished. She pushed herself off her knees, off David’s chest, and reached her hand out to him.

His eyes went black with madness, and he spat at her hand.

“There is no exile, David,” she said. “Not me, and not you. Love holds the Oneness together. And love does not give up on
anyone.”

She turned and faced the cloud of demonic beings hovering in waiting. The sword reappeared in her hand.

“We are here,” she announced. “And we are not running.”

The sword heated white. Across the warehouse floor, the swords of her companions did the same. Richard was crouched, sword in hand, smiling, swaying in his physical weakness but ready to fight as much as he could. In the doorway, Tyler stood with his feet apart, sword ready.

Reese looked across the entire warehouse to Chris, who had hidden himself in a corner away from the fight he could have no part in, and smiled.

The demons shrieked and threw themselves back into the fight.

But David ran, and some of the demons followed.

The core, fractured, shook with confusion.

They fought.

But the Oneness was stronger.

* * *

“Well,” Diane said slowly, turning around and around with the torch held high. “You do have eyes to see, don’t you?”

It was early morning. She had driven out here hours after Reese and Chris left the village, following the one thing Reese had told her that she felt courage enough to face.

It had taken her hours, but she’d finally found the cave.

The rock painting took on shadows and dimensions in the torchlight. In two places, figures stood out. One was a man wreathed in darkness, shadows going out from him like rays from an anti-sun. As they went out from him, they took on the shapes of demons and then of other men and women with their eyes lit by evil. The detail was incredible.

The other was Reese, standing in the centre of a battle. Smiling.

Victory seen and painted ahead of time.

Diane set the torch down, leaning it against a crop of rock on the floor, and gingerly lifted April’s head and shoulders, trying to administer water from a flask. It dribbled out—April couldn’t respond even involuntarily. Not surprising. It was Sunday; she’d been three full days and three full nights without food or water. And was injured besides.

Clucking softly, Diane put out the torch and set all her attention to picking April up. The girl was small and she was lighter than Diane expected.

“I’ve got an IV in the car,” Diane explained. “You’re coming home with me, and you’re going to be all right in no time.”

To her surprise and delight, April stirred in her arms.

“That’s right,” Diane said. “You’re coming home.”

Diane stepped into the sunlight with April in her arms. The bay glistened far below. A strong sense of peace, of rightness, pressed down with the warmth of the sun.

Diane did not put words to what she knew.

That she too, for the first time in twenty years, was truly going home.

The End

The story of the Oneness continues in Book 2: The Hive.

Coming in July 2013!

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