Gods Of The Stone Oracle Read online

  “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that our guest is human and therefore incapable of tolerating the sort of treatment we usually dole out?” a new voice asked. Molly guessed this man was older. She assessed the change in the space around her as he stepped through the doorway into the cell. Although her perspective was off from lying on the floor, she could tell he wasn’t nearly as tall as Zach, or even as tall as the demon standing beside her with the knife.

  “The girl is stronger than she looks,” said the slimy man. “But aside from making a mess, we haven’t been able to draw anything else out of her.”

  The demon beside her growled. “One look at my knife usually sends people into pools of fear.”

  The new man chuckled. “I can see how it would, Rega, but how would you expect that to work when the person you’re working on is unable to see the knife you’re wielding?”

  Silence descended on the cell, and Molly sank deeper against the floor. It was a bit late to be realizing the flaw in their plan, but if it gave her a reprieve, she would throw her arms around her savior in gratitude. They could go back to leaving her alone to rot. Likely, she would end up with some form of infection from the burns on her body, but losing herself in a fever would be better than undergoing another round of their torture.

  “We’ll kill her with too much physical pain, and I don’t want her dead. Not yet. Not until we have the daemelus and the orb in our possession.”

  “So what do you want us to do?” asked the slimy one.

  “How about we start with you showing some independent thought?” the older man said. “While we wait for that to happen, I suggest we play with her mind. Rega, fetch Frank, would you? I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to have a chance to put his particular skill set to work.”

  Panic grabbed hold of Molly’s chest. What did he mean? What were they going to try next?

  The demon with the knife huffed, but he left the room without another word. The demon on Molly’s right, with the hands of fire, remained where he was.

  “Do you think this will work?” the slimy one asked.

  “Possibly not right away,” said the older one, “but it would benefit us to be patient. We have time, Karl.”

  So this is Karl, Molly thought, understanding why Zach had taken such an instant dislike to the man.

  “Why not stop and enjoy each part of the process as its own separate learning opportunity?” the older man continued. “You’ll advance farther than my errand boy if you stop rushing things. How about you go see how our backup plan is going? I’ll oversee things here.”

  “But, sir —”

  “That’s an order, Karl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Molly listened as his footsteps headed down the corridor. The squeal of the hinges. The slam of the door.

  The older man approached, and Kesh moved away, the dragging sound of his footsteps moving out of her cell.

  “I apologize that you were forced to endure such needless pain,” the man said. “My men are ruthless when it comes to getting what they want. They are the hammer that sees everything in their path as a nail. They don’t understand that in life each obstacle needs to be treated as a unique entity, each with its own signature, its own weakness. Believe me, my dear, we will get what we want, but at least going forward, it will be a more targeted approach.”

  “Why?” Molly wheezed, alarmed by the weakness of her voice. Her consciousness was still wavering, but she’d accepted that she wasn’t likely to lose it just yet.

  “Progress, of course. I’m sure you have your reasons for not sharing your information, but it’s impossible that you know the true significance of what is happening here. I’m working to raise the otherworld up from the ditch it’s found itself in. This world is filled with so much untapped potential, so much unclaimed power. I just want to play my role in grabbing it, to make us as great as we deserve to be. If an apple tree is sitting in the yard, and the community only makes use of the lowest-hanging fruit, isn’t it the responsible act to climb the tree to claim the rest of it? Otherwise, it all goes to waste. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned while living in your world, it’s that waste can destroy a society. I simply want to prevent that from happening.”

  What a load of bull, Molly wanted to say, but she didn’t have the energy to speak the words.

  The vibrations of the door opening and closing rattled through her again.

  “Ah, Frank, wonderful. Welcome. I’m sure you’ve heard what needs to be done.”

  “Yes, sir,” Frank said. His voice sounded tight.

  “Cheer up. This will be the act that keeps you and your family alive, if you do it properly. Consider it a boon. This is for the greater good, Frank. Never forget that. We are on the path to greatness, but such progress comes at a cost. Are you willing to pay it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A clap, as though the older man had dropped his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Good man. Then set to, though you might want to ease yourself in with this one. Maybe clean her up first. Those oafs handled her like a bag of flour, and I don’t trust that she won’t collapse at the slightest push.”

  Frank approached, and Molly instinctively drew away from him, conscious of the dampness between her fingers as she moved. By the thickness, she suspected it might be her own blood. The pain in her arm flared with a fresh agony, and warm tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “It’s all right,” he said. By the movement of his voice, she guessed he’d knelt down beside her. “This won’t hurt.”

  He rested his hand over the burns on Molly’s shoulder. Warmth radiated from his palm, and within moments, some of her pain had subsided. Had he healed her? She wished she could be grateful, but she didn’t trust his reasons.

  From her shoulder, he moved his hand to cover Molly’s fingers. “This won’t hurt either,” he said. “But I’m afraid it will do much worse.”

  She braced for more torture, and when nothing came, she began to relax again. What was he doing? Maybe it wasn’t working. She crossed her fingers that the family curse that had left her deafblind might offer some protection against what was coming.

  Just as she began to hope she was right, a current shot through her veins, up her arm and into her skull…and the world exploded into brightness.

  Pain burst behind Molly’s eyes, cascading through her neural network to the back of her brain, where the pinches dug deeper — parts of her that had always been blocked and blunted now being forced to function as they were designed to do.

  The rest of her physical pain was forgotten somewhere deep in her subconscious, felt only as a dull and constant throb. In this moment, her injuries hardly mattered. She was standing in the miracle of seeing clearly for the first time.

  She reeled where she rested on the floor and nearly threw up again, but sucked in breaths to hold everything back.

  “What you see is a fire,” Frank’s voice said, worming its way into her head as though he were in the scene with her instead of kneeling beside her. The words were so clear — clearer than anything she’d ever heard before.

  Molly stared around her, taking in the flickering light consuming a building in front of her. A house. The tongues licked higher, spreading out. Screams from inside raised goosebumps on her skin and her stomach tightened.

  “This is your house,” the man said. “Your family is trapped inside, your whole world consumed in flame.”

  Nausea churned in Molly’s stomach as the significance of the destruction fell over her, and she hated that any part of her mind found it beautiful. The richness of the colors, reminding her so much of Zach’s blossoming energy as he’d come into his full power, danced and writhed in perfect synchronicity to the pops and crackles.

  She understood why some people might become obsessed with the sight. It was so easy to lose herself in the shifting glow, as though her mind were connected to the performance, allowing her to float away with its primal, violent beauty.

  But at what cost?


  When she’d seen Zach and the orb, they had only been vague shapes with a brightness of generic light. Never before had she seen like this, and the fact that this was the image that would be seared on her memory was beyond painful.

  She wanted out.

  “If I had a choice, I would show you beauty,” he said, and again the words dropped straight into her mind. She thought he sounded sad. “I would show you the wonders of the world and allow you to appreciate them on a level few have the opportunity to experience. Instead I’ve been ordered to show you what your world will look like if we don’t get what we want. The images will shock you and horrify you, but that still isn’t the worst of it. What you don’t understand — yet — is that after the brightness, the darkness is that much deeper. That much more isolating. I’m sorry.”

  As he spoke, Molly’s heartbeat began to race. Although she didn’t understand what he was getting at, she knew he was warning her about whatever was coming next. What further harm could come to her from having witnessed this devastation? From having her heart twisted with the acceptance that this might not just be a vision but reality?

  The lights were so bright that her head began to ache. The movements were so sharp, so disorienting, that she wanted nothing more than for it all to go away.

  As though Frank could read her thoughts, he complied.

  And although she got what she wanted, she couldn’t help but cry out as all the light and color were stripped away from her, and she was left to plummet back into the silent darkness.

  6

  By the time Zach and Daphne reached the Mayzell Industries factory, all traces of twilight were gone. A sliver of moonlight touched the tops of the trees and shone through Daphne’s car windows, but it wasn’t enough to give away any information about the building they were parked beside.

  “Is this a waste of time?” Daphne asked, peering up at the building through the windshield.

  Zach grunted. “Better than sitting around that house waiting for detective man to find something we missed.”

  “You never know,” Daphne said. “He’s gaining a reputation for a reason. Maybe he will discover something.”

  Zach curled his fingers on his knee, holding back the anger threatening to take him over. He’d brought Daphne in with the hopes that they could resolve the situation faster. Instead, they’d done nothing but wait around for more of the circus to arrive. Somewhere out there, Molly was in who knew how much trouble, and he felt as though he was dragging his feet.

  He stuffed his hand in his coat pocket and fingered the business card lying within. If it wasn’t for the fact that he couldn’t be sure they’d keep Molly alive if he turned himself in, he’d give Karl a call as the fastest way to get his hands on him. With a snarl, he curled his fingers around the card and crushed it, the sharp corners poking into his palm. “Let’s just move. I don’t want to be sitting here like an easy target if there is someone watching the place.”

  He got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him, sending the vehicle shaking with the force of it. He caught Daphne’s wince, but she didn’t say anything. A flicker of guilt wavered beneath his anger. She wasn’t the one he was angry with; he shouldn’t take it out on her or her sad beat-up Honda. He didn’t even think he was angry with himself. He was angry with Molly, but suspected it was the kind of anger bred out of concern, which was new for him and not something he was sure he liked. Most of all, he was angry with the bastards who’d taken her. Who’d once more teased him out of hiding for purposes he’d so far failed to uncover.

  Zach sucked in a deep breath to keep himself from slipping deeper into his rage and focused his attention on the building ahead, aware of Daphne in his periphery as she followed him across the parking lot.

  Sticking as much to the shadows as possible, Zach led them to the back of the building, to the same door he’d used when he’d infiltrated the plant three weeks ago. Although he doubted there were any cameras still working, he didn’t trust the front entrance. It was too easy. Too open.

  This time, the door used by the employees on their smoke breaks wasn’t being propped ajar with a rock, so Zach grabbed hold of the handle and channeled his demon strength down his arm to wrench it open. Around the metal bracing of the handle, the door wrinkled.

  Daphne shook her head. “You’re in the wrong business, big guy. Demolition, that should be your gig.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever looking for a career change.”

  For now, it was enough balancing the two sides of himself that had finally become one. All his life, he’d been working on controlling his demonic nature, but to have it compounded by his angelic heritage was posing an entirely new challenge. Even the advantages had downsides. His efforts to learn how to create his angelic swords at will had paid off, but the pain of having it happen never lessened. Same with the wings. As for the emotional rollercoaster that ranged the entire spectrum of anger, he rarely knew what it was to be calm these days.

  For Molly’s sake, he needed to keep his head.

  They stepped inside, and Zach paused on the threshold. The last time he’d been here, the plant had been humming with the voices of the factory workers and the machines plugging away at their assigned tasks.

  Now there was nothing. It wasn’t just quiet, but a sort of black hole of sound. Zach wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d shouted into the hallway only to have the noise sucked into whatever vacuum had devoured the rest.

  He jerked his head for Daphne to follow him and headed down the corridor toward the front lobby. Instinct told him to stay quiet, but he soon accepted it didn’t matter. There was nothing here to find them.

  “It’s so clean,” Daphne said. She summoned a ball of fire into her palm that cast light into the darkness, chasing away some of the shadows closing in on them. “It’s creepy. Like no one ever worked here.”

  They reached the lobby, where Zach had caught the security guard sleeping in his welcome booth. Tonight, the chair was empty, the screens not only dark, but gone. Every trace of them had been wiped away.

  “I accept that a lot can change in three weeks,” Daphne said, “but this is extreme, don’t you think? What was their rush to clean it out? To go from being one of the biggest factories in New Haven to this shell of a building so quickly. There must be a reason. Are they planning to tear the place down?”

  “What would be the point?” Zach asked. “With the location and condition it’s in, they could sell it and get twice what it’s worth.”

  They looped around to the hallway where the stairwell to the offices was located. The double-wide blue doors were still there across from it, with the large yellow writing warning people not to enter without proper safety gear, but the room beyond that appeared to be empty. Curious, Zach grabbed hold of the edge of one of the doors and forced it in, revealing the bare factory floor. It was now one large space, a bit smaller than an aircraft hangar.

  Daphne increased the intensity of the flame in her hand. As Zach watched, it rose from her palm and drifted to the middle of the room, growing into the size of a disco ball. Darkness danced in the corners, inviting them to join in. Zach ignored the beckoning flickers and focused on the factory floor.

  “What does all that say to you?” he asked, pointing to the pipes and rigging coming up from beneath the cement.

  Daphne went over to the construction and crouched down. “This is new.” She waved her hand at the fire ball, and it dropped lower. In the bright circle it cast, she ran her fingers over the floor. “All of this is new, freshly poured concrete.” She stood back up and the ball rose to hover over her shoulder. “And what the hell is that?”

  The fire ball drifted toward the back wall, where a series of chains had been rooted into the cement, their shackles hanging open and ready for use.

  “What does it mean?”

  “That it’s possible they’re not as finished with this building as we thought,” Zach said. Red tinged his vision, but he took a few deep brea
ths until it receded. Karl’s bosses were playing so many games, he couldn’t figure out how they all fit together. “Whatever they’re planning, the new factory on the coast is not the end game. They’re planning to come back to New Haven.”

  Daphne shuddered as she turned away from the chains. “I don’t want to imagine what for.”

  “Come on, let’s go check out the offices. There are enough of them — maybe someone got sloppy in their clean up.”

  Daphne allowed the fire ball to lead the way out of the room and into the stairwell, guiding their path. Zach remained braced for any noise or echoes to reach them from higher in the building, footsteps or doors closing, but the silence remained complete.

  When they reached the fourth floor, Zach forced the door open and started down the corridor toward the management offices. He listened for the elevators to clunk with their steady rise and fall, and it made him uneasy when they didn’t move. The doors to one of them were stuck open. He felt as though they were walking through the corpse of a great leviathan, its systems shut down and already starting to decay, except for the areas where apparently it was preparing to return to life. An industrial Lazarus.

  The door to the reception area was unlocked, and when Zach stepped in, the first thing he noticed was that the glass on the door to the corner office was whole and intact.

  “Lozak smashed that door when I was here,” he said, remembering the cries of the plant manager as the demon had thrown him across the room. Although they hadn’t officially met, it had been Zach’s first encounter with Lozak. He found himself wishing he could go back in time and take him down right then, before the demon had rounded up his lackeys. Zach swallowed his regret and focused on the office. “Why would they repair the door when the factory was supposedly being shut down?”