by M. R. Forbes
Evolution
The Divine, Book Five
By M.R. Forbes
Copyright 2014 M.R. Forbes
Published by Quirky Algorithms
Cover art by Mario Sanchez Nevado
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
In the beginning, there was God. Nobody knows where He came from. All any of us know is that He was there. That He has always been there.
After God came the seraphim, the angels. His warriors. His army. He created them for a special purpose.
He made them to fight the Beast: a foreign creature from another place, another universe, another thread of all that is. The Beast begged for succor from Him, and in His goodness He granted it.
Until the Beast lost his mind.
Until the Beast tried to destroy all that He had made.
From the defeat of the Beast rose the greatest of the seraphim, Lucifer, and in his shadow was another, the angel Malize.
Only he wasn't an angel after all...
The universe demands balance in all things, and the goodness of God is no exception.
Lucifer turned on Him, betrayed Him, and was cast down.
To keep the balance, Hell was made.
To keep the balance, Purgatory soon followed.
From his new place in the underworld, Lucifer lusted after what He had created. Lusted to create life of his own. Lusted to destroy what He had made.
The demons were born.
The war began.
The demons came to the Earth to spread chaos and destruction. The angels descended from Heaven to fight them.
To keep the balance.
Millennia passed.
The war raged on.
Mankind evolved, blossomed, were fruitful and multiplied. The world became theirs, or so they thought. Beneath it all the war continued. Beneath it all the balance rested, a universe poised on the edge of a needle.
One good push to send it to the arms of the demons, the enslavement of man, the ravage of the Earth.
One good push to bring the faithful to their maker, all others left behind in the wake of the Rapture, no more than fodder for the things that remain.
My name is Landon Hamilton.
Once, I was nothing more than a man.
Once, I was a diuscrucis: my soul a perfect balance of human, demon, and angel descent. I was a warrior of Purgatory, a champion for mankind.
Once, I fought a god and won.
Once, I was a god myself.
That was the past, and the past is behind me.
Today, my name is Landon Hamilton. I am not a man, not a god, not an angel or a demon, not even diuscrucis, though the title remains mine.
I'm just Landon.
A grizzled veteran. An old dog with some new tricks.
The war rages on.
The balance must be kept.
The future of humanity depends on it. Depends on me.
Depends on us.
If you've found this. If you're reading this. If you can see these words and understand them. If you want to join the fight...
Find me.
CHAPTER TWO
The winter wind cut through the channels between skyscrapers, pummeling against my left side, pushing my short hair into a weird non-bald combover, and snapping the unzipped front of my coat against my hip. I could feel the push of it, and hear the whistle against my ears.
I was glad I didn't feel the cold.
It was late, three in the morning. The city wasn't asleep. This city never slept. It was quiet though, most of the throng consisting of late-night partiers, people walking their dogs, that sort of thing. I maneuvered around them without paying them much attention. I was one of them, and at the same time nothing like them.
I passed the corner of a stone facade and peered down the dark alley. My stomach rumbled a complaint, a reminder that I needed to eat. I hoped the noise wouldn't give me away.
I kept walking.
It took three more blocks before they came, six in all, one from another alley, two from across the street, and three from the rooftop on my left. It was a long fall, but they could take it. They were demons.
Vampires.
"Lost, stranger?" their apparent leader asked.
He was clean-cut, in khakis and a polo shirt. I remembered seeing him at the bar. He must have used the street over to come past and double-back. I wasn't surprised. It was typical.
Two years since I had held the power of a god in my hands.
Two years since I had rejected it.
Two years since I had been reborn, no longer a creature of the Divine.
It was strange that these were the situations that always made me reflective, that always brought me back to the memories of Charis and Clara, my wife and daughter. I couldn't help thinking about them that way, even if Charis and I had never actually been married, never even been intimate. Even if Clara had been nothing more than a construction of the the prison we had been trapped in together, a manifestation of our power. A feedback loop, in a sense. I suppose it was because the ghosts of them reminded me why I was still here. Of why I had stayed behind.
"I asked you if you were lost," the vamp repeated. He was confident, and why wouldn't he be? I was surrounded.
They didn't have their claws out, not yet. I was sure they thought they were dealing with just another mortal, a piece of meat, my age and lean frame suggesting I didn't carry the taint of the Beast's power that had poisoned half of their food supply.
Two years ago, they would have seen me as an angel, or a demon. Maybe they would have even known who I was. Those days were gone. They had died with Charis and Clara. I was different now.
Re-made.
"I know exactly where I am."
Polo looked at his cronies, slightly confused by my unexpected confidence. There was no way for them to know what I looked like, who I was.
"Bind his hands and frisk him," Polo said at last, motioning with his fingers. "If your blood is clean, you'll make a nice meal."
I put my hands behind my back, holding them together to make the binding easier.
"What are you doing?" Polo asked. His voice was a little shaky. Unsure. Most people didn't volunteer to be vamp food.
I felt a pair of rough hands take my wrists.
I had given up the Divine power. That didn't mean I was powerless.
I shifted my weight, twisting and pulling the vampire behind me, swinging him like a meat hammer and throwing him into his partner on my left. They fell into a tangled heap, even as the others hissed and bared their teeth and claws, their eyes fading to an empty black.
They came at me.
I fell into a defensive crouch, keeping my eyes trained on Polo and watching the others in the periphery. The vamp was a blur from my left, and I caught his arm in my left hand and his chest in my right. I used his own mass and inertia against him, changing his direction and burying him into the cement.
His neck broke with a wet crack.
I ducked down, reaching into my pocket and turning again, throwing my hand out towards an incoming opponent. He found himself impaled on a four foot obsidian roman spatha, covered in both demonic runes and seraphim scripture. It slid easily between his ribs and out his back, and I wrenched it free and sent it away. It left me holding a small black stone, and I clutched it while I rolled to the right, avoiding the falling vampire as he steamed frankincense and died. I came up with the blade in hand once more.
I was greeted with a single mass of teeth and claws, the remaining vampires throwing all of their energy into taking me down. Their attack was organized and ferocious. They knew what they were doing. They knew how to fight.
I had on
ce held the soul of a centuries-old angel within my own. All of her memories, all of her knowledge had been mine. She had been an intimate part of me, a confidant and friend. Even though Josette was gone, those memories still lingered, still resonated in my mind.
They didn't stand a chance.
One took the obsidian blade in the heart, another got stabbed in the gut, and a third tried to run away. I threw the spatha, catching him in the back. He fell to the pavement and burned to ash.
I left Polo alone until then, grabbing him by the throat and throwing him against a wall. He hit it hard and slid to the ground, his claws retracting, his fearful eyes going back to their normal brown. "Diuscrucis?" he guessed, a little too late.
"I'm looking for Randolph."
"Hearst? Why?"
"He's been trying to regroup the Solen family."
They had once been the strongest vampire family in the northeast, until their patriarch, Merov, had picked a fight with his daughter and lost. The family had gone to her, and she had gone to Hell, leaving them rudderless.
Rebecca.
She was the reason the Beast had been freed. She was also part of the reason he'd been defeated. I hadn't thought about her in the two years since.
Not until recently, anyway. Not until I had discovered that Merov's former accountant was making a move to get himself installed at the front of what remained of the Solen family. He had to know that kind of work would catch my attention.
He was probably counting on it. If he had any idea who I was, or where I was, he would have just given me a call, or sent me a postcard. The Divine only saw me as a human now. It made it easy to blend in, to disappear.
"They won't accept him," Polo said. "He's a bean counter, not an alpha. You don't have to worry about that."
"Are you defending him?"
"N.... No. I know Hearst. He's a salesman. He always has an angle."
"That's why I need to talk to him. Why does his angle include me?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Do you know where I can find him?"
Polo's eyes darted around, as if he expected him to step out of the darkness. "He likes the strip clubs. 'Inventory', he calls it. Try the Penthouse."
His expression changed. He was afraid before, but now that he had told me what I wanted to know, he was terrified. His hands moved against the cement, scrambling to push himself further away from me.
I wasn't going to kill him. There was no point.
I turned and walked away, stopping only to recover the spatha and return it to its resting place. I wasn't worried about Polo telling anyone he had seen me, or that he knew what I looked like. Soon after he left my sight and I left his, he would forget all about me.
It had been one of Malize's abilities, and I had been smart to claim it for my own when I had been reborn. The anonymity gave me time to rest, to recover, and to think, without the worry of being assaulted by demons, or harassed by angels. It let me stay hidden and secure. It made me close to impossible to find.
At the same time, it kept me closer to the people I was protecting. It let me feel more human, because I could always be myself. I knew from the Beast it was the secret to keeping the balance. He forgot who he was, what he was fighting for. I couldn't afford to let that to happen to me. I could still see the destruction his failure had caused. I could still feel the emptiness. When he lost the one he loved, he lost it all. I had lost the ones I loved, and I had survived. It wasn't always easy, and there were times when it hurt as though it had just happened, but I refused to give in. It was the responsibility I had taken, the job I had accepted. If I couldn't keep some kind of balance in myself, it wasn't just me that suffered.
I closed my eyes, an image of Charis and Clara materializing in the corners of the darkness. I had survived, because somebody had to. I had survived so that she could spread among the stars, knowing that she hadn't failed.
I looked up into the night sky, those same stars barely visible through the clouds. Maybe one day I would join her there, when mankind was strong enough to defend itself from the war between Heaven and Hell.
One day, but not today.
CHAPTER THREE
The Penthouse was short for the Penthouse Executive Club. It was a higher-end so-called 'Gentleman's' club over on 11th and 45th, not far from where the Intrepid was docked. Even though I'd never been in it, I knew where it was. I knew where everything was in this town.
I watched the front from across the street, bathed in the shadows of a dark corner. I could still hear the wind in my ears, and feel it brushing my hair. Across from me, a line of limos waited at the entrance to the club, their drivers standing patiently on the passenger side, ready to accept their charges the moment they made a break from the doors. Like me, they seemed to be immune to the cold.
For some, it was because of layers of clothes beneath pressed and fitted tuxedos and wool overcoats.
For others, it was because they weren't human.
I couldn't sense Divine anymore, not in a soul-tickling expression of heat and cold, Heaven and Hell. What I could do was See them, the way even the weakest Awake human could. Looking at them, I knew them for what they were. Out of five cars and five drivers, there was one Turned, a human who had sold their soul to a demon for power, and one vampire, leaning up against the hood of a classic Rolls and looking smug.
I could guess which car belonged to Hearst.
It was three in the morning, and the club would be closing soon. There was no good reason to go inside and risk the mortals there. Instead, I watched the thin flow of pedestrians, the people coming and going from the club, and the movements of the drivers. When I caught a break in the action, I stepped out of the shadows and headed for the vamp. As I walked, the jacket and jeans I was wearing reorganized into a crisp tuxedo and overcoat, a facsimile of the chauffeur's standard dress.
"Hey, buddy," I said, walking right up to the vamp. He didn't move much, shifting his eyes left so he could see me.
"Do you need something?" He was tall and thin, and he had a soft look to him. I stared at him for a few seconds. He wasn't pure.
When the Beast had been freed from his prison, his power had begun leaking out into the world at large. This power had infiltrated mankind, seeping down into their souls, and affecting anyone with even the smallest amount of Divine ancestry, which was a much larger pool than would be expected. Some got sick and died. Some were unaffected. Some were oblivious, and at the same time became poisonous to Lucifer's creations, who needed human blood to survive.
A few, less than one percent, changed.
What they changed into depended on the ancestry, and in the vast majority of cases, that meant demons of one kind or another. After all, it was the fiends and vampires and weres who were the rapists. God discouraged His angels from consorting with mankind, and as far as I knew there was only one mortal who had inherited angelic traits.
He was in France, smitten with my sister.
"Cold night," I said.
Now he turned his head. "I'm not in the mood for small talk, buddy."
The last word came out like a curse.
"Me neither."
I had my arm around his shoulder before he could react, turning him so that we weren't as obvious to the other drivers. I hit him hard on the side of the head, right at the temple, supporting his weight as he lost consciousness. A real demon would never go out that easy. I half-dragged, half-carried him around to the rear of the car, holding and chatting at him like we were old friends. He hung limp in my arms, and I found the keys in his pocket and opened the trunk. I watched the other drivers to make sure they weren't paying attention, and then quickly dumped him in. I slammed the trunk shut and leaned against it for a few minutes, making sure nobody noticed the switch. When everything stayed quiet, I circled to the driver's side and positioned myself behind the wheel.
I checked myself in the mirror, adjusting the cap so it was lower over my gray eyes, creating a shadow that would disguise me
for about three seconds. It was all the time I would need to make sure that Hearst hadn't brought a bodyguard.
Then I waited.
CHAPTER FOUR
I didn't wait long.
The back door of the Rolls swung open, and Randolph Hearst dropped onto the seat. I glanced over, not seeing anyone with him, while he pulled the door closed.
"What the hell am I feeding you for, eh?" he asked. "You're supposed to get the goddamned-"
"Randolph."
Hearst smiled. "Landon. I was wondering when you would get my messages."
He was old, with thin white hair and plenty of wrinkles. Every time I saw him, he reminded me of my Uncle Luther, kind and easy to underestimate. I knew Hearst liked that impression, because he wasn't the strongest specimen, and he didn't need to be. He knew how to manipulate, and he knew where to stick the knife when your back was turned. It made him a lot more dangerous than Merov ever was.
"Sending your boys out kidnapping drunks late at night... It isn't your most original move."
He laughed. "I would have stopped by, but nobody seems to know where you live. Anyway, simple is always better, and I needed to make sure you would ask questions first."
His voice was rough, with a heavy New York accent. He would have made a great Godfather.
"Instead of just killing you?"
"Better that you don't even try."
"Pulling the Solen family back together isn't the way to do that."
"Trust me when I say that you've got bigger fish to fry."
"I take it that's the reason you wanted to talk?"
"It is." He looked out the window. "Since you seem to have incapacitated my driver, would you mind taking me home? I'm sure you already know I had Merov's old place remodeled."
"Why not?" Once I was gone, he would remember we had talked. He wouldn't remember where or when.
"You're a true gentleman."
I started the car and eased it out into the street. "So, talk."
