Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) by Milo Fowler (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Plato points toward Samson, Daiyna, and the others on the east side of the ridge below. "Tell them Luther wants the daemons buried. Go."

Ali's grin fades. Nodding grimly, he takes a running leap from the ledge and glides through the air using the strong fabric of his cloak as makeshift wings. He floats, landing within meters of the group below. Hitting the ground in a forward roll, he springs to his feet, instantly the center of attention.

A smile spreads across Shechara's full lips as she watches. Was Ali's impressive display for her benefit?

"Luther." Plato beckons.

I follow him into the cave and blink my eyes as they adjust to the lack of moonlight. He takes a glowstick from his belt and cracks it. Instantly our path through the earthen passage is splashed in green light.

"Take me to Milton."

"Your ear—"

"Tend to it there. Please."

He nods mutely. I have yet to memorize all the twists and turns of these passages and caverns, but navigating them has come to Plato as second nature. Perhaps it's one of his gifts. He's promised to make a map for me, but he knows we'll eventually leave the caves. There's no reason to think of them as our home. We're here for protection only—from the sun and the daemons.

We turn down to the right, pass through two smaller caverns, then duck our heads through a low opening into a much larger cavern lit with glowsticks around the perimeter. The men and women lie asleep, divided by sex with the main floor between them. Milton's mattress is propped against the far wall. Old Rip watches over him.

"How is he?" I whisper, clasping my brother by his bony shoulder.

"Besides being comatose and possessed, you mean? Healing up, I guess." Rip chuckles quietly. "Hey, what happened to you, Boss?" He taps his own sagging ear lobe.

"Curiosity," Plato mutters.

"It's nothing." I kneel beside Milton's bed. "Get some rest, my friend."

"Don't have to tell me twice." Rip turns away. "How long until daybreak?"

"A few more hours."

"How'd we do out there?"

I nod, meeting his gaze. He nods in return.

"So we're on the warpath, then." He sighs heavily and leaves me with, "You know what you're doing. It has to be done."

I watch him go, hoping he's right.

Milton jerks involuntarily, lying on his back dead to this world, yet very much alive as a battle rages within him. Daiyna tended to his bullet wound, and it's healing well. No infection. But there was nothing she could do about the evil spirit inside him.

She says it's the same sort that entered the leader of her bunker and nearly a hundred of her sisters, driving them to mass suicide. They allowed themselves to be shut inside a cave southeast of our current location, and they died for lack of oxygen. Daiyna tried to save them, but they would have killed her if she hadn't managed to escape with Shechara and the others.

"Hold still, Luther. This'll sting a little." Plato opens a medkit at my side.

I wince as he cleans my wound with the bedside manner of a laborer. "What do you think? Where do the daemons come from?"

"The east." Plato shrugs.

"Yes, but...how did they come to be as they are?" My gaze rests on Milton's face, twisted, scowling as though he's having a nightmare. "Was it the radiation or biotoxins that changed them, or something altogether different?"

"The spirits of the earth?" Plato scoffs.

"Is that so difficult to believe? They changed us. Doesn't it seem logical that others could have been changed as well—in detrimental ways?"

"Very few things seem logical anymore, Luther."

"Do you deny your own gift?" Granted, it's a strange one, his ability to spit a blinding substance. He's always seemed ashamed of it.

"No." He wipes the blood off my neck with a swab. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm not sure." I blow out a sigh. "But I can't help wondering if other forces at work, malevolent ones, may have turned the survivors from an eastern sector into these...hostiles we've encountered."

"An intriguing hypothesis." Plato applies a healing salve to my pierced ear. "But I hope you're wrong." He gestures at Milton and snaps the medkit shut. Without another word, he heads over to his mattress for a few hours' sleep.

For Milton's sake—and ours—I do hope I'm wrong. But if the evil spirit intends to change him into a hideous daemon, then there is nothing we can do about it.

I envy Daiyna's ability to communicate with the spirits, to see them. Yet even she's been at a loss with regard to Milton. She can see the spirit fighting against his mind, striving to overcome him, but she can do nothing about it. Once it's entered a host, she says, only the host can rid himself of it. This she was told by the spirits who've helped us to survive this strange new world by giving us our gifts.

I place my hands on Milton's forearm and pray to the Creator of the universe for his healing. I see no spirits. I hear no voices. But I pray, knowing that my voice is heard. I pray it is enough.

It has to be.

The men around me are fast asleep, oblivious to the battle we've won tonight. Plato lies among them now, his eyes closed, his breath even and unlabored. I gaze across the cavern to where the women lie. We won't always be separated like this, divided down the middle. There will be coupling, and there will be children, firstborns on a new earth. Perhaps Ali and Shechara will be the first of us joined in marriage.

But not yet. We must strike back at an enemy that has terrorized us for far too long. Now is not the time for human mating rituals. For now, we must do our best to survive each day. The time will come for sexual relations, and I long for it as much as anyone else. One or two of the women have already caught my eye—

We must wait a while longer.

I