Avenger of Sins (SPECTR Series 3, #6)

Chapter 12

TWELVE

“No,” John said, even before his mind had fully processed what Ryan was asking of him. “How could you even ask that?”

Ryan’s gaze remained steady. As if he’d come to a place of acceptance. “It’s the only way we can get out of this.”

John’s very soul recoiled. “I can’t. It’s against everything I believe in.”

“You can exorcise me after.”

“No.” He shook his head. “NHEs—our world isn’t meant for them. Our emotions, our physical feelings—they can’t handle it. It drives them mad. I can’t do this, to you or to some innocent entity from the other side of the veil.”

“Except for your vampires. They don’t seem mad.”

“Gray and Night had the cushion of being summoned into corpses. That’s not an option for any other NHE I’ve ever heard of—the others lack the strength to move the dead. They get memories, some sensation, but not enough to break them. And no single exorcist could bring a drakul through the veil.” John stopped and shook his head again. “You can’t go by them. If I did this…it would be just as bad as it was at the Center.”

“In a way,” Ryan agreed, and how could he be so damned calm about this? “I don’t want to do this, John. But no one is coming to save us, so we have to save ourselves. Just like we did before.”

John rocked forward, face in his hands, fingers pressing against his eyelids. Caleb and Gray were in terrible danger, and Night might be as well, depending on whether she could actually be killed in a dead body, or just set free.

If Ryan had his telepathic powers boosted, he could reach out to the guards on the other side of the door. Force them to unlock it.

No. No, he couldn’t even contemplate this. Using his gift to drag some NHE screaming through the veil, shove it into anyone, let alone someone he knew…

“If I had the supplies, I’d do it myself,” Ryan said wryly. “Any idiot can summon a lycanthrope or a ghoul with a circle and the right intentions. Or wrong intentions, maybe. But unfortunately Harlow didn’t conveniently leave us with the materials to create a summoning circle.”

John wanted to lash out at Ryan. How dare he ask him to do something against everything he believed? Ryan’s actions had led to this situation, and now he wanted John to save them, no matter what it cost.

Just like they’d asked Ryan to save them, back at the Center. To erase their minds, because any chance at escape was worth trying.

“Were you afraid?” He dropped his hands and looked at Ryan. “At the Center, I mean. Were you scared you’d give us all brain damage, or…?”

Ryan nodded gently. “Terrified. You were my brothers and sisters in every way that mattered. I was scared to death I’d kill you, or turn you into a vegetable. And when I learned what had actually happened, that I’d overwritten your memories with my own, the guilt was overwhelming.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” John protested. He’d never considered what Ryan felt about what he had done, but it seemed so obvious now. “You tried to save us, and you did, even if not in the way we’d hoped.”

“I’m glad you see erasing your identity as being saved.”

“We were kids, being exploited by adults. They didn’t have to keep up the pretense after, but it served their purpose, so they did.” The words were ashes on his tongue; it was SPECTR who had done this. “You did save us, Ryan. Please, never doubt that.”

Ryan blinked, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, and Goddess, this must have eaten into him for all these years. No wonder he’d jumped on the chance to fix things, to bring back John’s memories, then Jo’s, even if it meant making them all targets. This wasn’t only about revenge, or justice. It was also about absolution.

John held out his hand, and Ryan took it, squeezing his fingers. “Thank you,” Ryan croaked, then cleared his throat. “We might not be kids any more, but here we are, back in the same place. With nothing but bad decisions in front of us.”

John closed his eyes. He didn’t want this, any of this.

But he had it anyway.

“After exposure to our world, some NHEs want to return,” he said. “Maybe because they no longer fit in either plane, or their fellows who remained in the etheric plane avoid their madness, leaving them alone and desperate for anything to fill the void. I don’t know exactly why; no one does except the corrupted NHEs themselves.”

“I took a couple of online classes, thinking I might get at least an associate’s degree,” Ryan said. “There’s a term in field biology—trap happy. Some animals will keep coming back to the same trap over and over again.”

“It makes as much sense as anything else.” John licked his lips, a part of him unable to believe he was about to do. “In a place like this, where I’m certain summoning has been happening on a regular basis, they’re probably clustering on their side of the veil. It won’t be hard to find NHEs who have already been fucked up by the mortal plane, but want to come back.”

“Give ’em what they want, then,” Ryan said with a quirk of his mouth that might have been a wry smile. “Will you do it?”

Caleb and Gray needed him. He couldn’t let them be imprisoned here by Harlow, experimented on for years to come. Couldn’t consign Gray with his visceral love of life, Caleb with his artist’s soul, to a featureless prison.

Couldn’t consign himself, either. To helplessness. To despair. Not when he had the power to act.

John took a deep breath. “I don’t want this. But none of this is about what I want. I’ll do it. I’ll summon demons into both of us.”

Ryan recoiled, letting go of John’s hand. “What? No! That’s not what I’m asking.”

“I know.” Now it was John’s turn for calm. Decision made, there was nothing left to do but move forward. “But if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. Everything is on the line here. You, me, Gray, Caleb, Night. We can’t half-ass this.”

“But you don’t need the boost,” Ryan objected.

“I will after I summon a pair of NHEs without a circle. And…you forget what my job is. I know all the reasons people summon demons, and you’d be surprised how often a physical advantage is behind it. It will be too early in possession to truly exploit all the NHE’s powers, but it will still be an edge we can’t afford to pass up.”

Ryan stared at him for a long moment. Then he wiped his eyes. “Fuck, Jonny. I’m so sorry I controlled you. I thought I didn’t have a choice. I thought you’d come around to my point of view, thought I just needed to give you a little nudge. I was so desperate to reclaim ‘us,’ you and me and Jo, I lost sight of everything else. It was so fucking easy to convince myself I had to do it, that you’d eventually understand, that we’d have justice and somehow still be together…”

John’s heart ached. Their bond had been forged in terrible circumstances, but was all the stronger for it. Even before he’d gotten his memories back, he’d felt it. “I wish everything had been different,” he said. “At least, that we’d met again some other way. Or…I don’t know.”

“Do you regret knowing? If you’d never found out the truth…”

“No.” John didn’t even have to think about it. “This has been terrible, I won’t lie. But it’s real. No matter how painful it is, it’s the truth.”

“And the truth will set you free?” Ryan asked with an arch of the brow.

“Something like that.” John opened his arms. “Come here.”

They hugged for what felt like a long time, but was probably less than a minute. With his restored memories, everything about Ryan was achingly familiar. Tears stung John’s eyes, and he let them flow without shame, felt Ryan’s tears sinking through his shirt in turn.

Whatever happened next, it wouldn’t end well for Ryan.

They clapped one another on the back and parted. “Are you ready?” John asked.

Ryan nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

John took a series of deep breaths, stilling his mind. In the old days, doing an exorcism, he would have relied on candles, Florida water, and his silver athame to channel his intent.

Now, thanks to Gray, his sense for etheric energy required only the latter. The veil was right there, solid and real even though there was no physical way to interact with it.

He was used to pulling demons from this side and pushing them into a bottle, or else letting Gray feed on them. But sensing them on the other side was an entirely different prospect.

Or so it felt intellectually. But as his mind focused, he found it felt very much the same. Etheric energy crackled, close and yet far away.

All of his SPECTR training claimed that, while it was possible to summon specific classes of NHEs, the easiest summonings were simply to call on any entity that matched the energy of the faust. Loneliness and despair resonated with ghouls, and rage to lycanthropes. Just as humans were endlessly complex, so were NHEs. Or perhaps it was just those who had been corrupted by mortal needs.

Ryan’s rage spread through the etheric, like the flames of a campfire seen in a dark forest. John sharpened his will, felt the attention of a lycanthrope pressing against the veil, hungry to feel the very emotions that had driven it mad in the first place.

Maybe NHEs were more like people than he’d ever imagined. Drawn irresistibly back to the things that had broken them in the first place.

His will sharpened into the spiked hook he used to yank NHEs free from their hosts. But this time, he cast it toward the veil, felt the etheric barrier puncture and tear.

The lycanthrope took the hook with an eagerness that turned his stomach. He was used to fighting them, dragging them from their hosts, and the reverse felt so unnatural he was almost unable to bring himself to continue.

Almost.

He pulled on the lycanthrope, even as Ryan leaned back on his heels, arms spread. Opening himself, trying to make the process easier.

The NHE slithered inside. For a moment, John’s instincts screamed to yank it back out. Instead, he gently retracted the hook, making sure to leave the NHE behind in Ryan.

It was against all of his training. And what he was about to do was against all his instincts.

He reached out once again to the etheric plane, but this time he held nothing back. All of his grief, his fury, was on full display, a beacon crying out to the demons whose own pain resonated with his.

A sorrowful voice, full of compassion, whispered to him. “I see your sorrow. The ones who caused it should feel that same grief. They should suffer as you do.”

Yes, he whispered back, and felt something reach across the veil to him.

He took its hand and drew it inside.

“…the two former test subjects…”

Ryan. And John.

Gray was a silent void, and Night a heap on the floor, the exit door now sealed tight beyond her. And if that wasn’t bad enough, these fuckers meant to stick Ryan and John back in a fucking lab.

“Come now,” the woman said. “Surely this is preferable, is it not? Your NHE sleeps—you can think clearly again! And yet, you retain all of the benefits it has to give.” Her expression lost its smugness, and a troubled look briefly flickered over her face. “I know what it’s like,” she went on in a lowered voice. “The pain, the hunger, the…urges. But right now, your mind is free again. It will stay that way, so long as you cooperate and remain in this room. Surely you see this is for the best.”

Something clicked. “This…are they looking for a way to create a demon army, but without the psychosis of possession?”

“Not an army. Operatives would be a better word.”

Right. “And when the forty days is up? What happens? Does the possession still become permanent?”

Another flicker. “All your questions will be answered eventually, if you just cooperate.”

“You don’t know, do you?” he laughed incredulously. “You don’t even know if you’re doomed.”

“I’ll be exorcised long before it becomes an issue,” she snapped back, but his words had clearly shaken her. “Now shut up and wait.”

He reached again for the aching place where Gray should be. He’d never been alone in a situation like this. Gray was the hunter, the fighter, not him.

Caleb took a deep breath. He’d been a semi-competent human being before meeting Gray. He needed to act.

He had to save them both.

“No voice in your head, but all the benefits?” he asked.

She gave him a smile, clearly thinking he was coming around. “Exactly. Speed, strength, your paranormal ability more powerful than you ever dreamed.”

“Right.” He swallowed. “Listen, for what it’s worth…I’m sorry.”

And used his TK to slam her back into the wall.

A startled shout escaped her as he closed in, but she managed to bring her knee up. He twisted so it impacted with his thigh, only to have her punch him directly in the jaw.

Bone snapped and his head jerked back. Pain blinded him for a moment, but he was used to pushing through it by now. He tried to grapple with her, but without claws and fangs she slipped loose.

Fuck. Apparently manifesting physical changes was off the menu without Gray.

“Backup!” she yelled, staggering away from him. “I need backup! Someone call?—”

He sprang onto her back, wrapping his arms around her neck and his legs around her waist. She stumbled under his unexpected weight, then grabbed his wrists with her hands, trying to peel him off.

If he could get more etheric energy into them, maybe Gray could break free of the exorcist’s control. John wouldn’t like it, but this was a life or death situation for all of them.

This was going to suck. More for her than him, but still.

Caleb bit her as hard as he could on the neck.