Destroyer of Worlds by Jordan L. Hawk Read Free Book Online

set
into it. For feeding?
    Was Forsyth out of his goddamned mind? There
were dozens of demons down here. Maybe hundreds. These people
should have been exorcised, or given the release of death if it was
too late. Who would keep them like this, trapped in cells, meat
puppets for the demons within? And hell, what about the demons
yearning for all the tasty human flesh just on the other side of
their cell doors? If something went wrong and they got loose
somehow, RD would find itself overwhelmed by a small army of
monsters.
    An army.
    Christ. Was Forsyth building an army? Just
like Brimm, on a larger scale?
    But why? Against what enemy? Forsyth wasn’t
Brimm, locked away in a moldering house, slowly going insane in the
middle of his pet ghouls. A huge operation like this would take
government funding on a massive scale. Someone else must know about
this.
    Brimm. What had he said? “SPECTR isn’t what you think.” It had
worried Caleb at the time, but he’d listened to John’s
reassurances.
    John. No way did he know about this. He’d
never go along with locking up NHEs, still inside the humans they’d
possessed. Such cruelty went against everything he believed in,
everything he stood for. If he found out…
    It would break him.
    They came to a halt in front of another door.
The guards opened it and motioned Caleb through. Apparently, they
weren’t coming with him.
    Not reassuring, actually.
    “ Do they mean us
harm?”
    They all mean us harm. The only question is
if it’s immediate or not.
    Caleb stepped through, and found himself in a
large, round room, somewhat like the sunken floor of an
amphitheater. Smooth concrete walls, twelve feet high, enclosed the
area he stood in. Above them stretched a thick glass barrier,
beyond which were a couple of rows of seats.
    Caleb walked slowly to the center of the
pit-like area, staring up at the watchers behind the glass. Forsyth
was there, of course; he gave Caleb a smile and pressed an intercom
button. His voice came out of a speaker mounted on the pit’s
wall.
    “ Good morning, Mr. Jansen!” he said
cheerfully. “This will be your final test before your exorcism
tomorrow.”
    Caleb managed a feeble smile. “Um, great.” No
way a test in a place like this would be anything but awful. “What
do I need to do?”
    “ I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the
drakul in action, but we’d like to make observations in a more
controlled setting.”
    Gray perked up. “We will feed?”
    Unease roiled Caleb’s gut. Sounds like.
    “ What do you mean?” he asked
aloud.
    The door behind him opened again, and he
quickly stepped away and turned to face whatever came through.
    To all appearances, only a man joined him.
Early twenties, brawny, dressed in fatigues and with a
military-style buzz cut. But he stank of rancid fur and spoiled
musk. Like a demon.
    Like food.
    The man—soldier? SPECTR agent?—flinched back
at the sight of Caleb, and some of the color left his skin. But the
door behind him had already shut.
    Seeming to realize no escape existed, he
straightened and forced a sneer onto his square features. “What the
fuck is this thing?”
    His demon must have been able to smell Gray.
No wonder he’d flinched—it must recognize Gray as a predator and
want to get the hell away. And of course this douche decided he had
to mask his fear with aggression.
    “ Your opponent,” Forsyth replied
simply.
    Shit. Not good.
    The possessed agent smiled, although it
looked more like a forced grimace. “I’ll rip his fucking head off.
Hear me, monster? You’re going to die.”
    “ Monster? I am no
monster.”
    Caleb wasn’t about to debate semantics. Even
as his heart started to pound and his teeth ache, he backed up,
hands held before him. “Die? I’m not fighting you. Forsyth, this
guy is still human! He can still be exorcised!”
    With a low, animal growl, the man
charged.
    * * *
    The mortal alters as he charges. His teeth
overfill his mouth, his eyes darken from blue to dirty