Blood Vivicanti (9781941240106) by Becket

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Wyn and Ms.
Crystobal stood before the Black Building.
It was night. They were wearing dark sunglasses, gray clothes, and
black overcoats.
    They looked confident. They
looked cool.
     
     
     
     
    The Black Building was
Lowen’s. It was 150 floors from ground to top. More floors delved
deep underground – like the Mines of Moria.
    Balrogs were thankfully
absent.
    Lowen the Dark Man had
stolen the Black Building through manipulation, trickery, and by
twisting almost an entire city into his little army of Sleeper
Devils.
     
     
     
     
    His Sleeper Devils were not
zombies.
    And it would not be
accurate to say that they were entirely mindless. They had minds.
They were simply forbidden to use them often.
    For some, it was not a big
change.
     
     
     
     
    Lowen would let his Sleeper
Devils think of him, and not much else. They thought of him and
they worshiped him, as if he were King Nebuchadnezzar at the outset
of his madness.
     
     
     
     
    Wyn and Ms. Crystobal
entered the Black Building.
    The main lobby was packed
with Sleeper Devils.
    Wyn and Ms. Crystobal had
been prepared for a good fight. So they were a little surprised and
a lot cautious when none of the Sleeper Devils tried to stop
them.
    The Sleeper Devils watched
Wyn and Ms. Crystobal enter. They gathered around the two and moved
with them through the main lobby.
    Playing in the background
was an elevator music rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller .
     
     
     
     
    Wyn and Ms. Crystobal
walked toward a corner of the lobby where there were stairs,
elevators, and the security office.
    Two very large Sleeper
Devils blocked the way. Their skin was ashy and they smelled like
rot. One was wearing a tattered suit. The other was wearing a
grocer’s uniform. They might have been simple and kind people in
life, before Lowen turned them into cannon fodder for his personal
host of slaves. Now they were decaying versions of the good things
they had been.
    They would not let Wyn and
Ms. Crystobal pass because Lowen was screaming inside their heads
that he would never let them die if they disobeyed him.
    Lowen’s power over them was
not to threaten them with death. Death would have been the
release.
     
     
     
     
    The reflection of the two
Sleeper Devils glinted in Wyn’s sunglasses. His expression was
unflinching and fearless.
    Ms. Crystobal
smirked.
    Wyn moved faster than
sound. He flung the two Sleeper Devils into a nearby pillar. Their
bodies crumpled. Their souls released.
    Ms. Crystobal held out her
hands. Energy in the shape of blue swirling light hovered over one
palm. Over the other hovered black droplets of something she
called, “The Ink Mass.”
    She flung the light at a
group of Sleeper Devils. It scattered them to atoms.
    She flung the Ink Mass at
another group. Those Sleeper Devils all tumbled backward like
ragdolls, spilling into a dimensional portal that opened up into
the heart of the Mojave Desert.
    They blinked in surprise,
suddenly surrounded by a pack of hungry coyotes.
     
     
     
     
    All the other Sleeper
Devils now swarmed around Wyn and Ms. Crystobal.
    He fought them fast and
mercifully.
    She decimated the rest with
a blast of violet energy.
    She and he fought with all
the graceful movements of ballet dancers in Swan Lake .
     
     
     
     
    More Sleeper Devils poured
out of doors along the walls, more came down from hatchways in the
ceiling, and more crawled up from trapdoors in the floor. More came
in, and more came in after them, and more and more and more came in
after them.
    Wyn thrust his way into the
security office.
    It was full of monitors
displaying greenish images of the hallways and rooms and toilets.
Each image was filled with Lowen’s Sleeper Devils. Not one floor
was free of them – except the 120th, where Lowen was keeping the
Red Man.
    It seemed as open and
spacious as the surface of the moon.
     
     
     
     
    Wyn studied the computer
layout while Ms. Crystobal remained outside, turning