The ache and weariness washed through her in a sudden rush and she began to cry silently. She didn’t cry much these days, but every now and then she couldn’t seem to help herself. She grieved for those in the compounds, men and women who had struggled so hard to survive. She grieved for everything the world had lost, for the common ordinary things everyone had taken for granted, for what had once seemed so dependable and lasting. She had not been alive then, but she knew something of what it had been like from the stories the old ones told.
A few had been born in those times and remembered a little of what it had been like. But they were mostly gone, and the memories of the old ones now were much darker.
She wondered if she would ever be able to have memories that were sweet and treasured and welcome when they surfaced. They would have to be memories she would make later, she knew. Such memories would have to come from the future.
After a last look back across the broken walls and collapsed roofs of the buildings stretching to the compound pyre, she turned away. With Los Angeles gone, the demon-led army would begin to move north toward San Francisco, where the whole scenario would be repeated. She wondered if there was a Knight of the Word defending that city. She guessed she would find out when she got there.
That was where she was going. It was the only place left for her to go.
Ahead, the escaped children and the women herding them appeared in a ragged line. Some of them were clutching favorite possessions as they trudged through the ruined city streets. Some them were crying and hanging on to each other. She could imagine their thoughts in the wake of losing home, and parents, and everything they had ever known and loved. She could imagine their despair.
She hurried to catch up to them, anxious to do what she could to ease their suffering.
*
IT TOOK DELLOREEN a long time to extricate herself from beneath the collapsed stairway. She had lost consciousness, knocked senseless by one of the supports that had struck her head. When she woke, everything was black and the weight of the rubble was pressing down on her. She pushed and shoved and finally worked her way free, clawing up from the debris to the air and light and the silence of the hotel lobby. She stood and looked around, already knowing what she would find. The Knight of the Word had escaped her.
She was in some pain, but her pain was secondary to her rage, and her rage gave her renewed strength. She looked down at the tear in her arm, at the white of the bone. Injuries like this would cripple a human, but not a demon. Using her fingers, she pulled the flesh back together and held it in place until scales, which were gradually spreading over her entire body, closed the wound.
Her human flesh was weak, but her demon scales were like armor. She hated the human part of herself, but there wasn’t much of it left.
When the wound was sealed sufficiently that she didn’t have to think about it anymore, she brushed herself off, wiped the blood from her face with her hands, and licked her fingers clean. She thought about her battle with the Knight of the Word. The woman was small, but resilient. She was stronger than she looked. Still, she should not have escaped. If not for the staircase collapsing, she wouldn’t have. Delloreen was more than a match for her. When they met again, she would prove it.
She walked to the door and looked outside. Down the street, from the direction of the compound, black smoke billowed into the midday air. The sounds of battle had subsided, and the solitary wails and groans that had replaced them bore testament to the result. She could go back now and resume her place at Findo Gask’s side, but she already knew she wouldn’t be doing that. She would not go back until she had found and killed the Knight of the Word. She would not go back until she had the Knight’s head on a stake.
That was what it would take for her to replace Findo Gask as leader of the army. He had set the conditions, and she had as much as said she would fulfill them. Crawling back to him now would be a clear indication to everyone that she lacked the strength to rule. It would be an admission of failure and a sign of weakness. She knew that. She knew, as well, it would be her death sentence.
But she was not compelled by any of this. She would not go after the Knight of the Word out of either fear or a need to prove anything to Findo Gask— or to the other demons or the once-men that served them or even to the Void, itself. She would go because no one had ever bested her. She would go to match herself against an adversary that might mistakenly believe it was her equal. Her failure to kill this female Knight of the Word was a humiliation that she would not suffer under any circumstances. It did not matter what she had promised Findo Gask, or what anyone else expected of her. It only mattered that she find this creature and set things right.
She looked down the street, away from the compound. The Knight would have gone north, taking the rescued women and children with her to the compounds in San Francisco. She would not be able to travel quickly with children in tow.
Not as quickly as Delloreen, who would be tracking her. She would not escape a second time. She would try, of course, but she would fail.