Sawyer sat two rows from the back, a shadow amongst suits and jeweled wrists. In those seats in the Hyatt ballroom, alongside Ashley and Esteban, they watched Harland Morrow give his twisted BlackDiamond presentation. Sawyer’s fangs itched for revenge. Desperately, he wanted to drag Harland off stage by his ankles and force him to reveal Cormac’s location. If Harland was there, Cormac had to be close.

  A light pulsed down onto the stage, onto the mechanized object draped in cloth.

  Harland stood in front of the device in a tux with a patient grin. He clasped his hands together. “We ran into a problem fighting in battlefields with traditional weapons,” he said, pacing back and forth. “Conventional energy limits warfighting. Supply chains break. Ammunition runs dry.” He gestured to the sky. “Traditional engineers weren’t looking in the right place. But at BlackDiamond, our innovators looked beyond the Earth. We peered into another plane. We discovered a new source of energy to power our weapons. It comes from a field of energy we call Infernia. It’s untapped and it's inexhaustible.” He let that linger for a while. “We use proprietary channeling technology and confidential methods, but we’ve determined that it’s time to reward our shareholders and present our results to the private few who fiend for the latest and greatest BlackDiamond has to offer. Tonight you will witness the fruits of our tireless labors.”

  Sawyer didn’t blink. Ashley sat beside him, transfixed on the presentation. Esteban slouched in his seat on the other side of her. Around them, BlackDiamond executives whispered with brittle excitement like people who knew their stock prices were about to skyrocket.

  Harland opened his arms. “Demonamech is a hybrid weapons platform powered by Infernia energy. Helion platforms are simply one phase of our grand design. These machines never tire. This one is called Helion 9.”

  At his nod, stage lights splashed down. A team of staffers each grabbed hold of an edge of the tarp covering the hidden machine, ready to pull.

  “Your attention, please,” Harland said. “From the defense innovators at BlackDiamond Armaments: I am proud to present the Helion 9 Demonamech. It’s the next generation in spiritual artillery engineered to dominate terrain and redefine the rules of engagement forever.” He moved beside the cloth and pinched the hem between his thumb and forefinger. “Arachnid chassis. Eight limbs means stability across terrain. We’ve integrated heavy caliber machine guns for suppression and dual anti-air pods for area denial.” His eyes flickered over the room. “At its heart, the Helion Cannon is the real game changer, a stunning piece of hybrid spirit technology. It draws raw energy from beyond the veil. It does not rely on kinetic firepower.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  The staff members pulled the cloth away. The machine was revealed.

  Eight sabered legs arced from a central belly of black armor. Its surface was jacketed in ceramic black scales. A ringed iris formed at the head of it. Rocket tubes nested along the back of its spine. The whole thing hummed and rippled the air from its exhaust. Sawyer felt the hairs on his forearms lift as if the whole room had been submerged in ice. The itch in his teeth sharpened. His body recognized something, another predator in the room.

  “The Helion 9 can project ten combat ready wraith entities within a one mile radius of the weapon platform,” Harland said conversationally. “After their initial instructions, they can maneuver autonomously and strike independently. They ignore conventional supply constraints. Permanent neutralization requires annihilation of their anchors, which are held in secure offsite facilities separate from their weapons platform. Some conventional methods may suppress the wraiths briefly: holy water, salt, iron, ritual banishment—but only by destroying their anchors will they be permanently eliminated and sent back to Infernia to merge with the energy field requiring summoning to reactivate."

  A woman near the front laughed maniacally until her male partner, whose grin spread like a fiend, clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Harland rested a palm on the Helion 9’s flank like a man comforting a prized horse. “I see that someone in the audience is as excited as I am. Shall I hold you in further suspense or shall I show you the results of this equipment?”

  A smattering of cheers spread across the crowd.

  Harland spoke the activation phrase under his breath. The Helion 9 woke by rising and flexing all eight of its legs. It rose until its belly cleared the stage by the height of a coffin. The ringed cannon dilated and layers of its iris peeled away with a mechanical smoothness.

  The first wraith crawled out of the air as if materializing from invisible smoke. It was man-shaped, but the edges of the moon-colored ethereal being jittered like a bad signal in a storm. Its mouth was too wide. Its eyes were two hollow pits. Nine more wraiths unfolded around it, thin and wet-looking. They hovered around the middle one with a sorrowful look and held wicked translucent blades in their hands. The people in the ballroom knew the dead were among them. Even the vampires around him stiffened in their chairs.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Four hotel staff wheeled a cloth draped coffin onto the stage. They pulled back the cloth to reveal a frightened man dressed in a hotel uniform standing inside the glass coffin. His hands and feet were tied and his mouth was gagged. When the stage lights hit the glass, his eyes went wide. The moment his gaze shifted to the wraiths, he screamed and threw himself into the coffin’s glass door. But it wouldn’t open. He tried again and again, but failed.

  The wraiths all turned, one by one, and peered at the restrained man.

  “Observe their autonomous targeting,” Harland said mildly. He uttered another phrase. The Helion’s iris glowed red.

  The wraiths leaned and drifted toward the man like a shark who detected that scent of blood. Then, the wraiths simultaneously held their blades up and charged the man in the glass coffin, flying through him and exiting the other side without resistance. The man inside bucked as their blades sliced across his face, chest, arms, and legs. It took less than six seconds. The man staggered in place, blood splashed against the coffin’s glass walls as the man struggled, his eyes dashing wildly with panic.

  Silence found the room.

  Ashley and Esteban held their hands up to their mouths and cursed. Sawyer pushed himself back in his seat, visibly uncomfortable. He forced himself to keep looking at the horror being perpetuated.

  The chamber of monsters did not scream at the horrid sight; instead, they reveled in it. BlackDiamond was truly a nest of evil.

  Harland stepped neatly up to the glass coffin which was splattered with blood that dripped down its interior and pooled at the bottom of the dying man’s feet. He placed his cold hand on its surface which popped open instantly. The man wasn’t quite dead yet. He grabbed the man’s shoulders and pulled him out, then Harland sank his fangs into the helpless man’s neck. He didn’t hurry. He made no performance and the man didn’t fight him. He just drank until the man’s body went weightless and collapsed onto the stage, dead and bleeding.

  The scene was obscene.

  The aura of civility in the room tore apart. The BlackDiamond executives exhaled with shaky laughter. Others stared with amazement. A hedge fund prince smirked and held a wildly curious gaze.

  Sawyer was on his feet without thinking. The beast inside of him wanted to vault over the seats and lay waste to Harland. He could have moved. But he didn’t. The room was thick with BlackDiamond security and only half of them were human.

  He felt Ashley’s hand brush his, a phantom warning.

  Harland licked his thumb, then turned his head like a wolf catching the smell of something it enjoyed. “Sawyer Kestrel,” he said. His gaze pinned two more. “Ashley. Esteban. Why don’t you three esteemed and unexpected guests join me on stage? I don’t know how you slipped past my security, but now that you’re here, you’re perfect volunteers for the finale of this presentation.”

  From every guard around the perimeter, their guns turned soundlessly toward them and held their aim.

  The Helion 9 swung its heavy machine guns toward them. A dozen red dots settled on Sawyer’s sternum and throat.

  “Helion weapons are equipped with a bonus I didn’t have time to mention—they are equipped with silver rounds.”

  “What do you want?” Sawyer asked.

  “To chat,” Harland said. “Just for a minute. Like men—”

  Sawyer was gone before he finished his sentence.

  It was a combination of finesse, instinct, and hunger. He leapt over the crowd and cut toward the shadows in the back of the chamber. Finding the arched exit, he fleeted through it and searched frantically for the closest elevator.

  Sawyer slipped through a marble mouth and into another corridor. An elevator bank glowed silver down the hall.

  A guard rounded a corner too fast. Instead of reaching for his sidearm, he grabbed his radio. Sawyer unsheathed his dagger and stuck it up through the bottom of his chin. When he pulled it free, the man gurgled and choked on his own blood and died, dropping to the floor. Sawyer grabbed his security badge.

  He slipped into the elevator nearby, slid the security badge across the access panel, which flashed green, then pressed the button to the top penthouse suite.

  The elevator doors slid shut and then ascended.

  He formed a plan to search the top floor and work his way down. At that point, he accepted his suicide mission and determined that he’d find Cormac or die trying. He knew he left Ashley and Esteban back in the chamber, but they made their decision to go rogue on him anyways. They would only slow him down. If Ashley was still alive by the end of it, he would find her and he would retrieve the Black Ledger.

  He touched the spot at his throat where Harland’s fangs entered. It was where his old life had vanished and his new monstrous one had birthed. He imagined Cormac locked behind a numberless door and imagined him strapped to a chair while GCP tortured him for intel. And now that he knew that most executives in BlackDiamond were monsters, he imagined fangs piercing Cormac’s neck. The thought of that angered him so much it made him shake.

  Somewhere below him, the Helion 9 waited for him. The spider was probably setting its webbed trap. But he couldn’t worry about that.

  The elevator doors soon parted on a hushed foyer with white stone and a view of the bay which extended from the ceiling height windows like a grand painting. Even the hush in the penthouse sounded expensive. He heard the click of a crystal decanter on the closest bar and the whispers of leather shoes on marble tile.

  He stepped out of the elevator, gripping his silver dagger. He listened for more movement. There was a murmur to the left. Further down, someone breathed. It was probably just his imagination, but it sounded like Cormac.

  Sawyer went in. He didn’t sneak that time. He strode forth wanting to kill.

  ###

  Author's Note:

  This episode is published here up to the 75% mark.

  The remaining chapters—including the climax and aftermath—are available in the complete episode on Amazon.

  https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0GKQPKHJS

  Thank you for reading and supporting the series.