by M. R. Forbes
"Have you ever heard of Matthias Zheng?"
"I can't say I have."
"He's a third generation Chinese-American. He got his doctorate in engineering at Stanford, before moving on to doing government work at a lab in New Mexico. From what my people have been able to learn, the startup was working on some kind of advanced robotics project for the military."
I laughed. "Since when do vampires care about what any government's military is doing?"
"I don't care about the military. I care about Matthias Zheng. By all accounts, the guy is a genius, maybe even as smart as me." He followed it up with a dark cackle. "He's been seen talking to the enemy."
"The angels? He's Touched?"
"Not according to my sources. Just a regular guy, same as you appear to be. Obviously, looks can be deceiving."
"I'm a special case."
"Maybe you aren't as special as you think you are. Anyway, you know Valerix?"
"The west coast archfiend? She's been quiet for a while." When a powerful demon like her was quiet, it meant they were up to no good. By telling Randolph that I'd noticed, I was suggesting I was keeping a close eye on her.
"She was the one who told me that I needed to find you, and give you the tip. If an archfiend is worried about it, there has to be something to it, no?"
"Or it could be a setup."
Hearst laughed. "How the hell are we going to set you up? We don't even know how to find you since all that bullshit with the Beast."
I turned my head to look back at him. "That only means you have to try harder. I'm not an idiot, Randolph. Getting me to come to you would be step one in any play."
He put his hands out, trying to look innocent. Like a vampire could ever look innocent. "She wanted me to tell you about Zheng, I told you about Zheng. You know me, Landon. I'm a survivor. I'm not going to start with the likes of you without some serious odds, and they just aren't there, not yet, anyway."
I couldn't argue his logic. Since he wasn't gifted with brute power, he had to be willing to be patient and highly calculating in his approach to gaining his share of the pie. I was still too much of an unknown quantity for him to take that kind of risk.
"You gave me a name and suggested he's a fan of God. You haven't told me everything you know."
"Astute, as always. Valerix said she sent a succubus over to the apartment building where he lives and set her up as a neighbor. She put the full moves on him, and he waved her off like some kind of mosquito or something. So, she thought maybe he likes boys. Nothing. He's immune to demonic power."
I glanced back at him again. It wasn't possible for someone to be immune and not be Divine.
Not unless they were like me.
"Kind of a kick in the ass, isn't it?" he asked. "There's something going on out west, diuscrucis. The angels have been quiet for the last two years, letting you clean up the mess the Beast made and get things right again. That's two years they've had to plan, to prepare. To destroy us... or to destroy you?"
Or both.
"If you want more information, you'll have to talk to Valerix." He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and held out a slip of paper. "Her address. She'll be expecting you to stop by at some point."
I took it. It felt like it could be a setup, but the idea that there was someone else out there with immunity to the Divine, who was working with the angels... it was a curiosity, and I was feeling very curious.
"I'm sure you know the rest of the way," I said, stopping the car in the middle of the street. We were still a good ten blocks from Merov's penthouse uptown.
"Where are you going?" Randolph asked.
"You were told to deliver a message, and you delivered it. I'm going to see what I can find out." I opened the door and stepped out. I leaned back in and looked at the vampire. "Watch yourself, Randolph. Putting the family back together... it's dangerous."
He scowled at me, clearly unhappy with his choice to either walk the rest of the way home, or have to drive himself. "You know I stay on the right side of caution."
I slammed the door closed and started walking back the way we'd come. I did know that.
It was the reason I was nervous.
CHAPTER FIVE
My current home was the corner unit of a crappy apartment in the theater district. It was a nondescript, unassuming little hole in the wall that was marked only by a small etched address in the cornerstone and a never-locked door that allowed access into the building. It was as standard as they came, and it was the truest meaning of 'hiding in plain sight'.
I made my way into the small, mailbox-lined foyer, and then through the second door into the main stairwell. It was coming up on four-thirty, and everything else around me was dark and silent. I put my hand over my stomach while it rumbled again, and then started the climb up to my tenth floor apartment. I could have taken the elevator, but it was old and cranky, and wouldn't do much to keep me from drawing the neighbors' attention.
I reached the top of the steps and rounded the bannister, finding myself looking down the familiar hallway, with its fairly new striped carpeting, and persistent smell of wet paint, even though it hadn't seen a fresh coat in at least ten years.
I paused when I noticed my door was cracked open.
Who would be at my place this time of morning? There were only three people who even knew where I lived. Dante would never go through the door, Elyse was on a run in South Africa, and Obi knew better than to just drop by.
It was another curiosity.
I resumed my walk, keeping my pace steady. The quarters were too close here for the sword to be of much use, so I found the stem of my power in the base of my soul and stretched it like elastic through my body, into my muscles, enhancing and extending my strength and speed. It was enough to give my hundred and sixty pound form the juice to keep up with the Divine.
I reached my door and put my palm to it, spending a few seconds listening before I pushed it open, the heavy creaking of the stiff hinges giving anyone inside plenty of warning that I was coming in. I stepped over the threshold and paused, taking in the air.
Perfume?
My apartment could only be described as spartan. I had a bedroom with a mattress on the floor, and living room with a sofa and desk I'd bought at Goodwill. A couple of towels and some standard toiletries rested in the bathroom, and a fridge with a freezer full of ice cream, an unused stove, and not much else defined the kitchen. To most, it would have been kind of pathetic, but I didn't need much. Clothes weren't an issue, and I didn't watch television. I kept my laptop hidden in the ceiling when I wasn't around, and the rest of the inventory was in a rented storage unit in the basement.
A purse was sitting on the corner of the sofa.
The faucet was running in the bathroom.
Whoever it was, they were female, and not very smart. The running water would have masked my entrance. I stepped quietly over to the bathroom door and pressed myself against the wall. The faucet stopped, I heard hands against the towel, and then the door began to swing open, leaving me behind it.
I saw her through the crack. Medium height, shoulder length brown hair with a modern cut. Narrow build and a chest that was out of proportion to it. She was wearing a maroon sweater and a pair of jeans.
She wasn't Divine.
When she saw the door had been pushed open, she produced a gun from under the sweater, moving with the confidence of someone who had plenty of practice with firearms.
I shoved the bathroom door closed behind her, catching her wrist as she spun and tried to aim, pinching the nerve and forcing the weapon to crack against the linoleum floor.
"I would have knocked, but I live here. Who are you?"
She had brown eyes, and a pretty face. Her face tightened at the same time she tried to punch me in the jaw. I let the strike land, and kept looking at her without reacting. She threw a kick at my knee, and I shifted just enough. It landed on my leg, hard enough to leave a bruise that would heal in a couple of seconds.
>
I let go of her wrist.
"It really isn't polite to attack someone in their own home," I said.
She didn't speak. She went for the gun, picking it up and putting it to my chest. I didn't try to stop her. She couldn't hurt me like that.
"Can we talk about-"
The pop of the gun made my ears ring. I felt the bullet rip into and through me, coming out of my back and planting itself in the wall. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the energy wrapping around the wound and putting everything back in place. I'd felt pain a thousand times worse than being shot.
She dropped the gun and stepped back.
"Holy shit," she said, speaking for the first time. "You mean it's true?"
"That it isn't polite to attack someone in their own house? It's normally considered good etiquette."
She kept backing up. I picked up her sidearm and held it out to her.
"What if it wasn't true?" I asked. I had an idea what she meant. "I would be dead on the floor right now."
"This can't be real," she said. "It can't be." She blinked her eyes a few times.
"You came here for a reason." How did she find me? How did she know who or what I was? What the hell was going on?
"I... I..."
"Do you have a name?"
"Rosita. Rosita Marquez. You can call me Rose." She reached the corner of the sofa and flopped down onto it, next to her bag. "Please don't kill me."
"Why would I do that?" My stomach grumbled again. "I'm going to get some ice cream from the fridge. You want a spoon?"
Her eyes followed me into the small kitchen. When I re-made myself, I took back most of the characteristics that defined who I was before I died, traits that put me closer to being human than a soldier of Purgatory. That included hunger and thirst, and a desire to sleep even if there wasn't much of a need. It kept me grounded, helped me remember what I was doing this for, and as a side effect returned my vicious love of ice cream, now exacerbated by the fact that I could eat however much I wanted and not gain weight.
I put the gun down in the sink, found a half-gallon of mint chip in the freezer, pulled a pair of spoons from a stiff drawer, and rejoined Ms. Rosita Marquez, whoever she was, on the couch.
"Spoon?" I asked, holding it out to her. I sat next to her, far enough so we weren't touching, close enough that she could help herself to the snack.
She reached out slowly, taking it from me as if I were offering her poison. Her eyes stayed glued to mine.
"You're Landon Hamilton?"
"Yes. How do you know that name?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "I can't believe I found you."
I took a spoonful of ice cream, stuck it in my mouth, and stared at her.
She reached up and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm crazy. I'm sorry for shooting you." She stuck her spoon into the ice cream, taking a small bite. "Like I said, my name is Rosita Marquez. My sister was Anita Marquez. We were twins..."
I swallowed and put up my hand. "Please, Rosita. Let's start at the middle. How do you know who I am?"
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her voice was smooth and flat, projecting someone else's words from memory. "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."
I stared at her, feeling my body go numb. Obi had helped me create the web site on the deep net nearly two years ago. It was the pot of gold at the end of a long, twisted rainbow. A test of mettle intended to bring the right kind of people into the war, the first step in my goal to bolster the ranks of my rebellion and add the fault-tolerance that the Beast had lacked.
Two years, and no one had ever found me.
Two years, and no one had ever found the site.
I'd given up on it, forgotten about it, accepted that the Awake didn't want to fight. That mankind just wasn't ready.
Until today.
CHAPTER SIX
"I can't believe you found it," I said. My hands were trembling, the ice cream rocking like a ship in a storm. "Who are you?"
"I told you, my name-"
"No, I mean... Who are you?"
"I was trying to tell you. This whole thing is very strange."
"You know about the Divine?"
"I know about demons." She reached into her bag and pulled out her cell. She turned it on and opened up a photo of her standing next to an identical version that could only be her sister. They even had the same breast implants. "My sister, Anita. She was killed by one, sixteen months ago."
I started to take another spoonful of ice cream before I remembered myself. Sometimes it was easy to forget what empathy was. I put it aside, close enough for her to reach if she wanted some. I put my own appetite on hold.
"I'm sorry. Tell me."
"Anita and I both went to school at MIT. We were getting our degrees in engineering. I was supposed to meet her in the library after class, when she sent me a text that she met the most gorgeous guy. She said she was leaving the library early so she could go home and change, that some guy named Jonathan was going to be picking her up at seven. They were going to have dinner together at a local restaurant. Just a date, you know?"
"I didn't think anything of it at the time. I wrote her back and told her I was happy she met someone, and that I would see her later. If we weren't going to meet to study, I thought I would go back to the lab and put some extra time in."
I didn't need a degree from MIT to know where this was going. "She never came home?"
"Not exactly. She never left home. Anita and I were renting a house together off-campus. She was smart enough not to tell him where she lived. She was smart enough to keep the date local, and public. He must have followed her, or something."
Her eyes began to fill with tears again, running down her cheeks and dripping onto the sweater as she spoke. "I got home around ten. At first, I didn't think she was there." Her face started to flush, and she looked down at the floor. "Then I heard her moaning, and I thought that maybe the date had just gone better than she expected. Except... there was something wrong about it. Its a little embarrassing, but I had heard her with other guys before, and we were twins, so I just knew...
"I ran upstairs, screaming her name. The moaning stopped. She came out of her bedroom just as I was coming up. She was dressed in her exercise clothes, and she was sweaty. She closed the door behind her. 'What's the matter with you, Rosie?' she asked me. 'I thought you were in trouble,' I said. Then she laughed. It sounded like her, but it was... I don't know... off. There was something about it. 'I'm going for a run,' she said, and she went down the stairs and left."
She shook her head and wiped at her eyes with the sweater. She was still sobbing pretty hard. "I went back downstairs to get something to eat, but I couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness. The moans I heard... it wasn't that kind of exercise, you know? I always respected my sister's privacy, and she respected mine... I got this fear in me, and I ran back up and opened her door. Anita was there, on the bed. Her face was in one piece, her eyes and mouth open like she was in the middle of the world's greatest orgasm."
She looked at me, the tears rolling from her eyes, her voice shaking, her arms covered in goosebumps.
"The rest of her... There was blood all over the sheets, enough that it was running down and dripping onto the floor. Her body was cut open from her vagina to her sternum. Whatever that thing was, it had been chewing on her lungs when I came up, and there were other parts that were already gone."
She stopped talking, turned her head, and threw up. I watched it splatter on the floor, and then silently got up and made my way into the bathroom to grab a towel so she could clean herself.
I knew my demons. The sex part sounded like an incubus. Eating the organs? A hellhound might feed on a body that way. I didn't know of anything else that would.
Then there was the fact that it took on her sister's appearance. The weres could shift from a
quasi-animal form to full human, and a number of demons could cast a glamour that would make them look like someone else to mortals and less powerful Divine. They didn't get the memories of the person they glamoured, and they wouldn't be able to fool their victim's twin, not even for a second.
There was nothing that could do that. At least, nothing I had ever heard of before.
It was a day for curiosities.
I grabbed a couple of towels from the small bathroom, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I did. Sometimes it was a surprise to me to see that I still looked human. Sometimes I had to look to remind myself that I was. I stared at myself, not really paying attention to my tousled hair or my lean, slightly weathered face. I focused on my eyes, bright gray eyes that were wholly unique to me in all of the universe. Eyes that belied the threads of power that coursed within my soul beneath them. They were different. They were also human.
I took a deep breath, blinked a few times, and headed back towards the living room.
She was sitting back against the couch when I returned, her eyes puffy and her nose still running. I handed her the towel, and she used it to wipe the wayward vomit from her face. I took a second towel and draped it over the mess on the floor.
"I'm sorry. It's just..."
I sat down next to her and put my arm on her shoulder. "I'm sorry about what happened to your sister. I need to know... how can you be sure it was a demon?"
She let out a dark, heavy laugh.
"Are you kidding? I didn't know what to do, what to think, so I called the police. Things got worse then, because they couldn't see what had been done to her. Her body was ripped open, and they said she had been stabbed. I told them that whoever did it had taken her appearance, and they wanted to send me in for blood work, like I was on drugs or something. Then they talked to a neighbor, who swore they saw one of us leave the house in a sports bra and yoga pants, and they arrested me as a suspect! The only reason I got out was because they put the time of death at seven thirty. I was in the lab at that time, and had the video to prove it. That little paradox still has them confused. Anyway, there's a detective assigned to the case, but as far as they're concerned it's cold as ice."
