Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Read online

  Angel Descended

  The Awakened Book 6

  Matthew S. Cox

  Angel Descended

  The Awakened Book 6

  © 2014 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, places, or megalomaniacal psionics is purely coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without permission from the author.

  Cover Art by Jackson Tjota (Tjota.deviantart.com)

  Interior art by Ricky Gunawan (http://goweliang.deviantart.com)

  Cover layout by Alexandria Thompson (www.gothic-fate.com)

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-949174-34-2

  ISBN (print): 978-1-949174-35-9

  Contents

  1. A Devil's Bargain

  2. Child of Light

  3. High Noon Black

  4. A Queen’s Ransom

  5. El Tío de la Muerte

  6. The War Within

  7. Mercy for a Shadow

  8. No Signature Required

  9. Lead Me to Temptation

  10. Everyone’s Eyes are Blue

  11. The Presence

  12. Dominoes

  13. A Few Years Yet

  14. Hate, Love, and Fire

  15. Not So Frictionless

  16. A Prophet's Doubt

  17. The Devil’s Little Sister

  18. A Thousand Steel Claws

  19. Tactical Training

  20. External Influence

  21. Soft on the Outside

  22. A Choice That's Not

  23. Defenseless

  24. Penny and Spawny

  25. How to Flatline a Dragon

  26. Ambush

  27. Death Undone

  28. Better a Painful Truth

  29. Than a Comfortable Lie

  30. Exiled Again

  31. Down Came the Light

  32. Loose Ends

  33. No One Walks Away

  34. Nightwing

  35. Cry Uncle

  36. On One Condition

  37. Number Six Woodseer St

  38. Under a Dark Wing

  39. Night Terrors

  40. Sleepover

  41. The Ronin Returns

  42. Cracks in the House of Glass

  43. Threat Priority

  44. Showdown

  45. Legacy of Fire

  46. A Minor Emergency

  47. Girl Problems

  48. Uplink

  49. Making Wishes

  50. The Wings of Angels

  51. The Wrath of Legion

  52. Between Worlds

  53. The King’s Greatest Fear

  54. Fortress Breached

  55. The Death of Phantoms

  56. A World Reshaped

  57. Archon One, Arsenal Zero

  58. Honor

  59. Reinstated

  60. And Dominoes Fall

  61. A Shocking Stalemate

  62. Tears for the Wicked

  63. Anger and Chaos

  64. Daughter of Rage

  65. Some Men Deserve to Die

  66. Suffer the Innocent

  67. Honor Reclaimed

  68. The Awakened

  69. Falling Angel

  70. Succubus

  71. I am the Machine

  72. The Sky Burns

  73. Home

  74. Ol’ Jack

  75. Suijinsama

  76. Fog and Snow

  77. Inquest

  78. The Last Domino

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  A Devil's Bargain

  Mamoru

  Obligation weighed upon Mamoru’s mind as he gripped the ancient gunslinger’s hand and met the man’s unflinching gaze. Paper-thin skin wrinkled at the corners of red eyes, accompanying an anticipatory smile. In contrast to his frail appearance, the elder had an iron grip. Not a trace of sweat appeared upon him. Mamoru clutched the gloved fingers with committed strength, a single, curt nod cementing his acceptance. His sister lay at the precipice of death. He would not allow her blood to stain his hands, no matter what price this man before him asked.

  Carrion-scented air slipped from the old man’s broadening smile.

  Sunlight shimmering on the ground behind the old man brightened, reducing the rickety figure to a silhouette, a black distortion in the wavering heat. A whispery rush of thousands of voices in the distance built from a tiny prickle at Mamoru’s eardrums to deafening chaos. Cries of rage and terror swirled around, underscored by an unearthly roar that gained in intensity until he could not help but raise his free arm to shield his face. At that instant, the devouring tumult ended with the fury of a massive explosion—leaving behind only the stillness of the desert.

  Mamoru lowered his arm, and the old man was gone. He relaxed, glancing about at the open desolation, rotting semis, and the ruins of Hank’s Truck Stop. No sign of the old cowboy remained in the swirling dust, not even boot prints.

  Relentless sun battered the ground, creating a standing wall of heat that thickened the air and brought a scratch to his throat. Somewhere, metal rattled in the wind, the only noise aside from the faint whistle of the breeze. His gaze settled on his right hand, still outstretched as if in the act of shaking. A thin layer of pale brown silt coated his palm. He curled his fingers into a fist.

  “For Sadako.”

  The voice was Mamoru’s, though he had not spoken. He took a knee at his sister’s side. Her petite figure lay cocooned within the arrangement of straps and cords he’d rigged to secure her to the door he had scavenged from the crashed shuttle. Worry had left him, replaced by contained aggression. He opened her stifling black sneak suit, ignoring his discomfort at her lack of undergarments. Sadako didn’t move, moan, or react to him as he undressed her.

  Aware of its value, he bundled the high-tech garment and placed it next to the bottled water below her feet, at the end of the aircraft door. Dark purple and red blotches covered most of her skin, from neck to thigh. She shouldn’t have been breathing, but breathe she did.

  He jogged across the sweltering blacktop to what had once been the restaurant portion of the truck stop. The crumbling remains of an ancient Peterbilt slumped by the door, like a buffalo that had dragged itself to the edge of a watering hole to die. He rummaged inside the restaurant for a few minutes, finding a tattered yellow curtain, once white, that he could use to cover her. He ripped it from the rod and hurried back to her, tucking the coarse fabric into the cords to hold it in place.

  Her labored breathing had faded to a noiseless rise and fall of her chest. One narrow line of dried blood cut across her dust-caked face, a trail from her nose to her right ear. He rested his hand on the side of her neck, detecting a slow, but regular pulse. Her expression held calm, as though she rested peacefully rather than clung to life by a feeble thread. Snapshots of the crash flickered to mind as he stared at a face full of innocence. Asleep, she looked like a child to him. He remembered her screaming, remembered the smell of sparks and smoke, and the awful noise she made when her body careened into the console.

  The old man has saved her… somehow. Mamoru stood, squinting into the west. The angel must burn.

  Only his sister’s life mattered.

  Mamoru gathered a handful of the scuffed wires he had rigged to the door and stood. He pulled the cable over his shoulder and held it tight against his chest, leaning forward into a determined march in defiance of the early morning sun. Scraping metal and the rattle of plastic bottles followed close behind. The door-turned-stretcher slid with ease over the parking lot and out onto abandoned road. He glanced back every so
often; Sadako’s hair fluttered in a sad excuse for a breeze, her chest rising and falling with regular breaths.

  She no longer worsens. He set his jaw tight. Nothing about this felt right, but everything about it was his fault. Mamoru let his head sag, staring at his boots flashing in and out of view along the pockmarked paving. This confidence is not of my heart. Sadako would live; he knew but did not understand how—or how he could be so certain of it. What sort of Akuryō had he given himself to? Mamoru closed his eyes, ignoring the bite of the cabling in his shoulder.

  It didn’t matter. Sadako would not pay for his mistakes any more than she already had.

  Hours later, Mamoru hesitated, squinting at a metal building painted teal. White block lettering spelled out ‘East Mountain Pumping’ along one wall. A strange feeling lingered in the air here, attracting his gaze to a distant patch of charred ground. The chi of this place had shifted out of balance.

  “Something happened here. The death of many. Do you sense it, Sadako?”

  She continued sleeping, showing no reaction.

  He glanced to his left, down a four-lane highway heading into a shallow canyon, toward the setting sun. An inexplicable urge tugged at him, beckoning him in that direction. He dropped the cable and sagged to a seat at the edge of the highway, spending a few moments of rest brushing hair out of her face. He rummaged among the supplies he’d packed on the tail end of the door in search of water and food. Mamoru drained a bottle in one continuous pull and tossed it aside. A packet of raw OmniSoy came next, forced down his throat by a stone-fisted squeeze. He shivered at the flavorless slime.

  Sadako didn’t wake at his attempt to give her a drink. It worried and reassured him at the same time. He poured water little by little into her mouth, holding her head in such a way that she swallowed out of reflex. It seemed unlikely she’d be able to ingest OmniSoy in her condition. Mamoru squinted to the west.

  Have I done the right thing?

  The question formed in his mind but never made it past his lips. Surely, she would say no. She would rather die than see him suffer the claws of a dark spirit. Even after he’d failed to save her from the Nippon Shōgyō-Kumiai, she still regarded him as family. At the back of his mind, a cluster of voices whispered, as though a conversation went on in another room among at least a dozen people of varying age. Muted and indistinct, he couldn’t make out most of the words, though a handful pierced the fog.

  “He needs you,” said what sounded like a young boy.

  “Burn them all,” rasped an elderly voice.

  You were only ten, Mamoru, said Sadako, in his head. I do not blame you.

  “Had I been a proper son and trained as Father asked…” He clenched his fist in shameful rage. “I could have killed them all, even as a boy.”

  His knuckles creaked on the wire as he gathered it against his shoulder.

  “They all deserve to die,” said an unfamiliar woman.

  “We can kill them, too,” added a creepy little-girl voice.

  Who are you? Why are you in my thoughts? Mamoru shut his eyes, shaking with the effort to clear his mind.

  “We are they who seek vengeance,” responded a chorus. “You are our instrument.”

  Fear and doubt drowned in the onrush of noise. The ancient gunslinger’s knowing smile stretched the right side of Mamoru’s mouth. He would save Sadako this time, no matter what it cost him.

  Scraping metal echoed back at him from the scrub-brush-covered walls on either side of the highway. He had been walking for what felt like days without sleep, though his body did not demand rest—as if he could go on forever. The pain in his fingers from gripping the cable had long ago faded to numbness. This road would take him to his destiny. He knew it without a doubt. Mercifully, the chorus of vengeful voices had silenced themselves. They had seemed satisfied at his willingness to do whatever it took to protect Sadako.

  Mamoru lifted his gaze from the road when he sensed a change from uphill to level. A scattering of small huts and trailers to the right looked abandoned for many years, reclaimed by shrubs and small lizards. Straight ahead, the road descended into the carcass of a once-great city. Southwest of the old metropolis’s center, a built-up section less than a quarter of the size of the outlying ruin glowed with artificial light. A fortified, two-story wall made from slabs of metal and stacked cars packed between old concrete buildings glowed like an oasis in darkness. Shadows walked behind coils of razor wire, following a walkway that encircled the settlement.

  He squinted at it, watching the movement of what could only be guards.

  They would be of no consequence.

  His heart swelled with relief at the sight of the place where Sadako would be saved. He forced himself to a brisk walk, grunting each time the stretcher-sled dragged him to one side or the other. The downhill grade took the weight off his shoulder and let the next half-mile or so pass in a blur. At the bottom, the tops of the reinforced concrete wall simmered like a gargantuan bowl filled with light. Half on autopilot, half too weary to change course, Mamoru lumbered ahead into the ruined city.

  The night shifted around him. Spots of red and yellow—eyes—appeared in the darkness for seconds at a time before vanishing. Once, a dark grey wolf advanced enough to show its face, bowed its head, and backed out of sight. Whatever other creatures lurked in the alleys and shattered windows seemed fearful, or perhaps reverent, and did not approach. An inexplicable sense that these creatures ‘escorted’ him rather than hunted him confused and worried him in equal measure. The scuttles of paws and quiet breaths of animals followed for several blocks, never advancing close enough to be more than sound or shadow.

  A pair of large towers atop the wall marked what appeared to be the main gate, a pre-war auto parts store on one side, an unmarked white cinder block building on the other. The two-lane road between them stopped at a massive concrete slab marked with bloodstains and bullet gouges. He marched straight toward it.

  Scuffing from Sadako’s improvised stretcher on the road eventually drew the notice of the figures upon the wall, causing a cluster of silhouettes to gather on the near side. At the chirp of modern firing circuits arming, he stopped and held up his left hand.

  One of the men fiddled with something for a moment before Mamoru took a powerful flashlight beam in the face. The man let off a cry of surprise, followed by a series of curses as he fumbled with the light until the figure next to him, likely a woman, grabbed the flashlight away from him and trained it on Mamoru, though she was kind enough to keep it out of his eyes. The spot of light lingered on him for a few seconds before moving to Sadako and back.

  “How’d you make it through the ruin?” asked an older-sounding man with a heavy Spanish accent.

  “I walked,” said Mamoru.

  Sadako emitted a weak moan.

  “Ain’t likely you made it in one piece, what with draggin’ wounded behind ya.” Another shadow figure spit. “You either damn lucky or damn foolish.”

  Mamoru suppressed the growing urge to kill the man for his insolence. “My sister is dying. I seek the one known as the Prophet.”

  The sentries went quiet. Soon after, murmuring spread among their ranks, and a droning mechanical whine erupted, loud in the still air. The concrete gate rose upward at a laborious pace. When it opened high enough for a man to duck under, four figures emerged and approached.

  A woman led them, five foot nothing and dark skinned. Her clothing, aside from an armored vest, looked typical for the Badlands, though the compact assault rifle not quite aimed at him came from the modern world. She’d shaved the sides of her head, leaving a pad of tight, curly hair on top.

  Three men behind her muttered at each other in Spanish and fanned out into a horseshoe around him. One used a smaller flashlight to get a better look at Sadako. Mamoru kept his gaze on the woman, his expression one of weariness.

  She glanced him up and down. “What’s your story?”

  “Our shuttle crashed.”

  “What the hell�
��s a shuttle?” muttered a man in the back?

  She raised an eyebrow. “You two the only ones to make it? What happened?”

  “Everything failed all at once. We could not stay airborne.”

  The men exchanged glances, though whatever they worried about, they kept to themselves. One made the sign of the cross.

  “You armed?” asked the woman.

  Mamoru indicated his katana. “Just this.”

  “Only a sword?” The woman chuckled. “You got some set on ya, I’ll give ya that.”

  “La mujer se ve herida; traigala adentro rapido,” said the man squatting by Sadako.

  Mamoru tensed at the sudden realization someone had gotten close enough to touch her without his notice. His almost preternatural awareness of his surroundings had failed him. Was this fatigue or had the Akuryō done something to him?

  “He said your friend looks bad. I’m Sergeant Simms with the Watch,” said the woman. “Welcome to Querq. Come on; let’s get her to the hospital.”