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“Just her face and eyes and her surroundings.”
“Will there be others?”
“Possibly. We go in quiet and see what we can see. Go from there.” Seer looked at him. “You got weapons?”
Zodak regarded him. “Only my gifts.”
He nodded a little at the windshield then regarded him again. “Can they protect you?”
“Yes,” Zodak said. “And much more if I’m not careful.”
“Good. And I have my blades.”
This surprised Zodak. “The son of great power carries a weapon?”
“I do. Weapons for the natural and weapons for the spiritual. Some devils need to be removed physically as well.”
“Devils,” he marveled. “You see the malevolence in people as…entities?”
Seer looked at him, appearing surprised. “I do, Kah-nah-lee-zah-tour. Because they are.”
He didn’t recognize the term. “What does this mean? Kah-nah-lee-zah-tour?”
“Means director of power.”
Zodak considered it, nodding. “You are correct.” But Seer already knew that. “How would you say…messy director of power?”
Seer chuckled. “Kah-nah-lee-zah-tour… doo-pour-vwar.”
“Doo-pour-vwar,” Zodak mused. “This rolls righteously on my tongue.”
“Well, let’s get your messy self in there and get it done.” He looked around and opened the door, climbing out and Zodak did the same.
He glanced around at the nearly abandoned area, save for a few human vessels full of things he needed to avoid if he was going to focus. The biggest risk of doing these jobs was over syphoning and being unable to cleanse quick enough. Often, it created a monster of him, one with indiscriminate vengeance.
Seer paused at the entrance, eyeing Zodak. “Gotta say, you lookin’ pretty badass in that.”
Zodak stared at him. “It’s my work clothes. The excess chains are required for harnessing.” The long leather coat was to hide the freakshow that colored the white skin of his body.
Seer chuckled then entered the building. Zodak didn’t like that the Seer led them even while feeling the need to guard at his back. They passed broken human vessels along the way, sleeping in the arms of death and decay on the stairwells of what seemed to be a condemned apartment complex. A giant, filthy tomb for souls waiting to be discharged from their wretched body-prisons.
At the top of the fourth floor, Seer paused and looked around, heading left down one of the hallways. He suddenly stopped halfway down and turned, pointing to the door they’d just passed.
Zodak stopped him and moved in front, selecting his spectral analyzer lens that detected energy waves beyond barriers. In the very back room of the apartment, he found a condensed pool of darkness. Studying it, he held up his hand to Seer, holding up four fingers then pointing at the door.
Seer nodded and Zodak carefully tried the handle, not surprised it was unlocked. There was no need to guard a darkness that no light reached.
As he made his way quietly toward the fluid ink representing the malevolence in that one room, his curse of a gift began powering up. At the final door, he detected three kneeling and one lying on the floor. He engaged the stealth mode for his ocular gates, retrieving another filter with a blink of his eyes. He titled his head, still unable to discern which might be the girl they sought. The darkness of all four measured that of a small army, putting a hungry spike in his powers. It was the curse part of it. The darkness he consumed was an addictive intoxicant that made him invincible.
He blinked slowly, lowering all the gates but one. The Syphon Gate.
He opened the door even as his body opened to devour. He latched on to the first darkness, syphoning enough to put him on his knees before turning to the second and doing the same. The third crumpled to the floor and Zodak realized Seer had removed the darkness with his blade causing the foul energy to erupt within the room. He opened his arms and drew in a breath, sucking the energy into himself. He turned to the one on the floor and quickly removed the Syphon Gate, needing to see more than the malevolence.
Seer knelt before a woman that appeared to be only a shell, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, bright as a serene sky. Seer quickly covered her nakedness as Zodak moved his resonator gate in place to measure the malevolence within her.
The darkness inside snarled and filled his muscles at what he found. “She is a reliquary for malevolence,” he said. “She's not just carrying their wickedness, she's become the very essence of it, twisted and manipulated by those who seek power at any cost. She will surely perish if I syphon all of this darkness, and if she does not, I will kill her and possibly you when I do,” he said, his voice growling as the powers grew. He turned to the two humans he’d stunned and snatched up all their darkness with his outstretched hand, rendering them unconscious.
“Syphon enough for us to move her. We’ll have to bring her where you can do this in stages, so these demons don’t rip her to shreds.”
