We find ourselves on the deck of a massive ship, close to a swimming pool. Deck chairs are strewn about the place. Bodies everywhere, ripped to pieces, stomachs carved open, heads and limbs torn loose. Puddles of blood merge and spread slowly, seeping into the cracks between the planks. The water of the swimming pool is a deep, dead red.
Beranabus ignores the corpses. He's seen worse in his time. I have too. But it still hits me hard whenever I walk into a nightmarish scene like this. It only takes me a few seconds to recover but Beranabus doesn't even need that. He's instantly alert, looking for threats, sizing up the situation. I see him relax slightly and, once I overcome my initial shock, I realize why. The area is charged with magic. We're on Earth but it feels like the Demonata's universe. We can operate at full capacity here.
"We're encased," Beranabus says. "The ship's been sealed off by a bubble of magic. They must have a lodestone."
Lodestones are rocks which were filled with magic by beings known as the Old Creatures. They ruled our world in the distant past, holding the demons at bay. They fled many generations ago, but left the charged stones behind. Many have drained of power over the centuries, and Beranabus destroyed most of the others, to stop the Demonata's power-hungry mages from making use of them. But some remain, secreted away, either unknown to him, inaccessible, or indestructible. Demons or evil mages sometimes find them and use them to open limited tunnels between universes, allowing the Demonata to spend more time here and wreak maximum havoc.
"Where's Juni?" Beranabus asks.
"Lower down. I thought it would be wiser not to face her until we'd assessed the risk. I don't know if anyone's with her, but there's an open window. It's not very sturdy. Only weak demons could cross through it."
Beranabus thinks about that, then says, "I'm going back for the others."
He steps through the window, leaving me with the dead. The silence is disturbing. I play out crazy scenarios inside my head, imagining the corpses coming back to life and attacking. I've never seen a zombie film. I heard about Night of the Living Dead when I was a child, but my parents wouldn't let me watch it.
I don't have any hair-I've always been bald-but if I did, it would be standing on end. I've got a bad case of what my mother used to call the heebie-jeebies. I want to duck through the window after Beranabus. This ship is bad news. We'll wind up dead if we stay, bleeding sacks of flesh and bone.
Before I can bolt, Beranabus returns and the others cross after him. My nerves settle and I laugh away my fears. Zombies-ridiculous! I've seen enough of the universe to know we need never fear the dead, only the living.
The Disciples are nervous. Bec scans the lower decks and says there's only one demon onboard with Juni. I tell the others about the open window.
"We should go back," Sharmila says. "Juni has set this up to ensnare us."
"Why would she be expecting us?" Dervish asks.
"Lord Loss may have reasoned that we would target Juni. Perhaps everything-the attacks on Dervish, Juni revealing herself on the roof of the hospital-was designed to lure Beranabus here. The demon master might be poised to cross and finish us off personally."
"Not through that window," I tell Sharmila, certain no demon master could make use of the opening close to Juni.
"Then through another," she says. "We have never been able to explain why Lord Loss can cross when other masters cannot, or how he goes about it."
Beranabus sighs. "You could be right, but we might never get a better shot at Juni. If she's not expecting us, it's the perfect time to strike. If she is and this is a trap, at least we can anticipate the worst. The magic in the air means she'll be dangerous, but it serves us as much as her. If Lord Loss doesn't turn up, we can match her. If he does cross, we'll make a swift getaway."
"Are you sure of that?" Sharmila frowns. "If we have to open a new window..."
"We won't," Beranabus says. "Kernel will stay here and guard our escape route. You'll know if any other windows open, won't you?"
"Yes," I say confidently.
"Then keep this one alive and watch for signs of further activity. If you sense anything, summon us and we'll withdraw. Is everyone satisfied with that?"
Sharmila is still dubious, but she shrugs. I'm not happy either. I don't want to stay by myself, surrounded by corpses. But we need to protect our only way out. Besides, I'll be safer up here than down there. Beranabus is doing me a favor, though I'm sure he's thinking only of his own well-being, not mine.
As they make their way across the deck, I move closer to the window and pat a couple of patches back into place. Windows never remain stable for more than a few minutes, but I have the power to keep them open indefinitely. If demons were able to manipulate the lights like I can, mankind would have been wiped out long ago.
The minutes pass with agonizing slowness. The sun is relentless and my mouth is dry. I could easily find something to drink but I don't want to abandon my post. I'm sure I could open another window if this one blinks out of existence but I don't want to take any chances. I'm not sure how lodestones work. Maybe Juni could use its power to slow me down.
As I'm concentrating, trying not to obsess about the mounds of corpses around me, the smaller, unpredictable patches of light begin to pulse. "Not now," I groan, but the patches ignore me. Moments later come the whispers. Faster, more urgently than before. I tense, expecting to find myself acting against my wishes. Maybe they'll make me close the window or head after the others, to die with them in the ship's hold.
But nothing happens. If the lights are trying to influence me, they're failing. Ignoring them, I focus on the window, holding it in place, keeping the shape.
Something flickers to my left. I turn and see a group of the small patches click together. They swirl over and around one another, a mini vortex of various hues and shades of light.
More patches are attracted to the cluster. It grows and spins faster, changing shape, pulsing rapidly. The whispers grow louder, become shouts. I don't know what's happening, but it can only be bad news. I wish the others were here, so we could abandon this place immediately.
When almost all of the small lights have joined and are whirling around, they suddenly zip towards me. Yelping, I throw myself aside. I expect them to chase me, but then I see that I was never their target. They were aiming for the window. They slap into it and shimmer across the face of the white panel. As I sit up and stare, the window becomes a multi-colored rip in the air.
The whispers die away. Silence falls. I stand but don't approach the window. I study it cautiously, fearfully. The lights pulse rapidly, then slide towards the center, all the colors angling to the focal point, drawn to it as if by gravity.
Then-an explosion. A ball of light bursts from the heart of the window and shoots across the ship's swimming pool, circling it in a spiral pattern, like a punctured balloon careening across a room. The window resumes its white color.
The ball circles the pool a few more times, then drifts towards the deck and comes to a halt three or four feet above it. The ball is rainbow-colored, about the size of a large dog, though its shape changes constantly. It reminds me of the jellyish substance in a lava lamp, the way it oozes from one form into another, altering all the time.
"What the hell are you?" I gasp, not expecting an answer. But to my astonishment I receive one.
"I have no name."
I've seen a lot of crazy stuff over the last few years that would leave most people's jaws hanging. I thought I was immune to surprise. But this blows me away. All I can do is gape at the ball of light like a five-year-old who's walked in on Santa Claus.
"You must come with me," the voice says. I don't know where the words are coming from. They seem to be forming inside my head.
"Come..." the voice insists.
"Come where?" I croak. "Who are you? What are you?"
"There will be time for explanations later. We must depart this world before..." The voice stops and there's a sighing sound. "Too late."
"What do you mean?"
Before the ball of light can answer, my crazy fantasy of a few minutes ago becomes a reality. All around me, the corpses on the deck shudder, twitch, then clamber to their feet. As impossible as it is, the dead have come back to life, and they're focusing their glinting, hungry eyes on me.