The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

The closest black mark was under an abandoned subway platform three blocks from Grand Meridian.

Austin Veyron took point with Rin on his left, Veyra behind them, and Calder bringing up the rear. Wet concrete and dead electricity flavored the stagnant air. Volunteers above had painted white marks along the tunnel walls tracing the common ledger escape route. Unless someone from the Freehold chose to keep that line monitored at all times it would disappear when they left.

The black mark was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

”It is feeding on memory,” Calder said.

The first bait shimmered into view at the far end of the platform.

A woman stood beneath a shattered timetable board, calling Austin Veyron’ name. She wore the coat of a man Austin Veyron recognized from when he volunteered at the old Grand Meridian homeless shelter. Her face was Austin Veyron’s face. He couldn’t recognize it.

”Help me,” she said. ”They left me here.”

Rin’ knife was already in hand. ”That is not her.”

The woman smiled too widely.

The platform cracked open.

Human mouths scaled the walls from underneath the tracks, each wearing a face ripped from someone the Freehold had tried and failed to save. They didn’started attack right away. They screamed names. They apologized. Promised that just one moment of hunger could settle their debts.

The Devour seed answered for each of them.

[CONSUME NEST CORE.]

Austin Veyron could sense the nest beneath the platform. Single massive core. Single bite. That scout mark would die.

People would die. If any part of their memories remained tied to that seed-core once it died.

”No,” Austin Veyron said.

The mouths screamed again.

Veyra moved first, swinging wide and clearing a path through the shifting black shapes. Her blade passed only through feeding tendrils, leaving the stolen faces untouched long enough for Rin to tear them free of the tracks. Calder reached into both hands and punched through the tunnel wall, exposing the nest’ sprawling network of thin black tendrils leading from every hollow mouth back to a single root chamber deep underground.

”There are three anchors,” he said. ”If we sever them all together the core will be unable to awaken the other scout marks.”

Austin Veyron nodded. ”We split up. Don’let anyone else do this alone.”

Rin and Veyra moved north. Austin Veyron and Calder went south. The common- ledger line at the top of the stairs blinked out behind them as the nest attempted to reopen that escape route.

The bait changed in the south tunnel.

Austin Veyron watched himself stand alone in the dark, hands slick with demon blood and eyes surrounded by body- after-body. The image offered him the nest core.

”You know what you are,” it whispered. ”Eat first. Regret later.”

Calder stepped between them.

”You are not the only one who knows him,” Calder said.

The copy of Austin Veyron charged.

Calder didn’t overpower the false image. He used the seed’ s resonance to pull the black hunger straight out of its shape and pin it against the wall. Austin Veyron sliced through the anchor line exposed by Calder’ health DEVOUR, taking only the feed command that rooted that memory shape to the tunnel floor.

The false Austin dissolved.

Their first anchor snapped.

Somewhere up north, Veyra’ scream cut screamed across the tunnel. Second anchor broke.

Feeding lines tore free from the walls as the nest panicked, flooding the platform with black hunger.

Lines Austin Veyron and Calder had to reach the stairs and abandon the common- ledger retreat.

Rin was holding up the last anchor with knife blades while Veyra punched her way through three mouth-shapes. ”Now.”

Austin Veyron reached the third anchor. Nest core twitched beneath his hands, bulk immense and starving.

The seed offered Austin Veyron the easy way again.

”No,” Austin Veyron said.

Calder rested his hand next to Austin Veyron’ and their seeds pulsed together without linking. Rin and Veyra held the tendrils of the feeding lines apart with blades at the ready. Between them Austin Veyron and Calder tore through the command signal making the nest feed on human memories.

The scout mark collapsed in on itself.

The faces ripped from homeless survivors rose off the tracks like dying lanterns, fading up into the station ceiling.

One piece remained stuck near the nest core. Like dried black blood knotted around a tooth.

Austin Veyron placed it in a container from Nahlia’ tool belt.

The feeder spoke to him through the glass.

”There are nine doors,” it said. ”Nine doors the Emperor will open.”

”And the first is always you,” Rin whispered.

”What do you mean?” Calder asked.

The feeder shifted and turned away, tiny black shape tunneling into the white route line they had fed towards Grand Meridian.

”The ledger wants to feed.”

It took two people to kill the scout nest.

The station didn’t know it was under attack until the nest was dead.

Water rushed through new holes in the ceiling with clouds of broken tile and twisted copper cable. The black tunnels crumbled away into dust. Austin Veyron signaled for retreat and the group fell in behind him, white route curling around their ankles like cat tails as they climbed towards the stairwell.

Halfway to safety the common ledger blinked out.

”Not the nest,” Rin said.

Calder pressed a hand against the tunnel wall. Eye glimmered gold- red as it mapped the interruption. ”Someone used the feeder’ last words as an entry point. It’ activating a connection to the ledger from the other side.”

Voices above them sounded through the route. Marcus’ voice first, caught and hollow from echoing through too many empty halls.

”The false signature is in the ledger already,” Nahlia said from inside the Freehold. ”It’s designed like a route keeper, demanding control over the subway line.”

”If we accept it,” Calder said, ”another nest will grow between us and the street.”

”Then we don’t accept it.” Nahlia cut the ledger connection. ”I’m locking down the entire line. Whoever it is needs to earn every inch of tunnel.”

”Do not compromise the street route,” she repeated when no one answered. ”If the Emperor has already found a way in we will need it intact.”

The black knot twisted inside Austin Veyron’ secure container.

”You made a common door,” it said.

”A door that everyone can open,” Rin finished for him.

”A door that anyone can walk through.”

”We didn’t know that,” Austin Veyron said. He pressed his white seed into the container’ secure seal and twisted it tight.

”All doors can be opened,” the feeder agreed. ”That is why you fear us.”

”We seal it now,” Veyra said, white root vines wrapping around the container.

...and learned how to lock it tomorrow.

Together.

The group reached the street as the station vanished around them. Underground tracks slid beneath coal-black water. Emergency lanterns glowed from windows along Grand Meridian. The city’ largest safehouse looked small to Austin Veyron from three blocks away.

They had become a target by choosing not to become its gatekeepers.

”They’re coming,” Veyra said.

Hospital survivors and clinic staff emptied onto the street, filtered to Grand Meridian after the court evacuation. If the Emperor sent another feeder towards that line, they wouldn’t need to fight.

Children would bring it in.

The hospital route offered easy access to every population center along its path. Court families. The east hall dormitories. If the feeder could only convince one terrified human to trust it, none of that mattered.

Austin Veyron lifted the fragment container.

”MOVE ON THE HOSPITAL,” he said.

The first counter- hunt was over.

But the second had only just begun and it would take place where the Freehold could least afford to lose ground.