“No,” I replied. “You can’t help me like that now that the balance is steady. Even if you could, if you did you would fall. I know how old you really are. You wouldn’t survive.” I reached into a pocket and pulled out a thumb drive. I handed it to her. “Please, just copy your database to the drive.”
CHAPTER TWO
I walked out of the Taylor building through the front door, a loaded USB drive tucked away in my leather jacket’s inside pocket. I slipped across the street and looked up towards the top of the building, expecting to see Rachel standing at the window, waiting for me to step out into the night. She wasn’t there. Unexpected, but not surprising.
I had been holding two bases of operation for the last five years. The first was the hidden excavation beneath the Statue of Liberty, where Rebecca had once lived. The second was my original room near the top of the Belmont Hotel. Rachel had spent months of her life trying to talk me into moving to a different location - she had gone so far as to offer me the penthouse of one of the residential towers her corporation owned. It had been tempting in the beginning, but what kind of mortal comforts did I need? I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I didn’t even void. I was a ghost with mass and kinetic energy.
The Belmont was familiar, and I could still feel the charge in the air from the night I had spent learning swordplay with Josette. I didn’t know if it was real, or my memories making it real. Either way I didn’t care. It was comfortable. The Statue... Everything about the Statue oozed Rebecca, right down to the bottle of perfume she had kept in the nightstand drawer next to her bed. I didn’t sit there and sniff it or anything as forlorn as that. What I had done was study her books, study the runes, and keep up the hope that one of these days I’d go down there and she’d be there waiting. Waiting to explain what she had done, and why. It was almost as big of a mystery to me as Charis’ words.
“Survival,” she had said. It could mean so many things. I had thought she had allied with me because I was her best shot at it. Obviously, I had been wrong.
I had been too sensitive. I had cared too much, too quickly. I had gotten burned by mortal fire, burned by hellfire, burned by trust. You couldn’t fight the Divine and care about anything. The alternative was to suffer pain and loss over, and over, and over again. When it was one of the only things that could hurt you, feelings became the enemy. Like I said, I liked to lie to myself.
I felt a slight pressure in my head and a tingle that floated down my spine towards the place that I identified as my soul’s cage. I couldn’t help but smile. I sat down cross-legged in the center of the street, ignoring the cars that swerved smoothly around me.
“I’m here Sarah,” I said, opening myself up to the connection.
“Hey, Landon,” Sarah said, her voice clear in my mind.
She had changed so much since the first time we had met, when she had helped me find the answers I didn’t even know I was seeking. She had been a child then, but never just a child. She was a true diuscrucis, the only one in existence, born of the non-consensual union between a demon and an angel. The angel was Josette. The demon was Gervais, her brother, an archfiend operating out of Paris, France. I had never confronted him for fear of revealing Sarah. That didn’t mean I didn’t know where he was.
Josette had asked me to protect her. Sarah herself had named me protector before I had even known it would come to be. Could she see the future? She said she couldn’t, but she was the one person who could lie to me. If she could, she never let on.
“What’s up kiddo?” I asked.
The only time I could feel my soul breathing was when Sarah connected to me. I was her protector, and I would never let her see me sweat, never let her see what my world had become.
“Just checking up on you. When are you coming by to do some more of that ninja training of yours?” she said.
Her voice was light, cheerful. So unlike how she had been the first time we had met. Knowing she was safe had allowed her to grow, to blossom, and to live as though she were almost normal. She was still residing underground with the other Awake, but she went to High School, had mortal friends, and even mortal crushes. Nobody in the world knew she was different except me, though she needed to be more careful about not revealing her ability to See.
I reached into my pocket and touched the USB drive. “I’m doing great sweets,” I said, pushing my mental voice up an octave to sound more chipper than I felt. “Maybe tomorrow night? I’m on my way back to the Belmont to do some research.”
I had spent hundreds of hours over the last three years teaching Sarah everything I... no, her mother knew about fighting. I found a certain measure of comfort in being able to give her something of Josette’s that she could hold on to, even if she didn’t know, or at least didn’t say she knew, where that particular skillset had come from.
Her laughter boomed in my head. “You’re sitting in the middle of traffic,” she said. “Do you have to do that?”
It was one of the differences between a directly descended diuscrucis and a facsimile like me. She knew exactly where I was, all of the time. All she had to do was think about me, and she could See me. I couldn’t do the same, but I knew it brought her great comfort to always know where I was.
“To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about it,” I admitted, getting back to my feet and finishing my trip across the road. I had become so accustomed to the mortal world circulating around me, at times I almost forgot it even existed. “How was school today?”
“It’s always an adventure,” she said. “Katie Winslow and her gang tried to prank me again by swapping my Coke for a can of urine. Somehow it ended up on Katie’s head. Just because they think I’m blind doesn’t mean I have no sense of smell.”
I laughed. A rarity these days, unheard of unless I was talking to Sarah. She had gotten into a couple of scrapes with the school princess already, mainly owing to her perceived disability and the complete lack of imaginative mischief that stemmed from it. She had always gotten the upper hand, and her payback was well measured and deserved.
“What did the principal say?” I asked.
She laughed again. “He said I should have made her drink it. I’m not the only one she tries to torment, I’m just the only one who fights back.”
“I’m sure you’d love nothing more than to put your foot up her ass,” I said. She had expressed as much in the past, but doing so would risk giving up her faux blindness. How would she explain that away?
“I’ve been thinking about that. What I’d love to do even more is Command her to put her foot up her own ass.”
The statement made me raise an eyebrow. Even though she was a diuscrucis, she had always leaned good. The way she took care of the Awake down in the tunnels, her desire to help her fellow targets at school. Commanding was a demonic ability, and not one to be used lightly. It was out of character.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
There was the slightest pause. Just long enough for me to know she wasn’t. “I’m fine, brother,” she said. “I’m just getting fed up with that witch and her cackling minions. Anyway, I’m headed to bed. I wanted to check in on you and say goodnight.”
I could feel the temporary relief waning into the background at the words. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know they were coming. “Goodnight, sister,” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she replied. I expected her to break the connection, but there was a pause. When her mental voice returned, it was hushed. “Brother, be careful. You may find the answers that you seek, but you may also wish you hadn’t.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant, what she had seen or felt about my future. I couldn’t, because she broke the connection. That was something else she had me beat on. The call was one way. I briefly considered heading underground, but there was no point. If she had wanted to say more, she would have.
“I love you too.”
The words echoed in my mind, bringing back a familiar memory that didn’t belong to me. I found des
perate purchase against the wall of the nearest building, trying to ground myself before the past could overtake me. My vision went dark, the sounds of the city fading out and history, terrible history taking its place.
I’m on a bed, my thighs are bloodied. The Archfiend takes my newborn baby and hands her off to his servant Izak.
He rounds on me, smiles and laughs. He is handsome, with a mop of curly black hair and delicate features. His nearly naked body is lean and strong and covered in runes. He’s carrying a wicked looking dagger in one hand, a decanter of water in the other.
He puts the tip of the dagger at my foot and eases it upward, the tip digging in just enough to make me bleed. When the poison begins the spread he pours the holy water over it, filling my senses with the smell of frankincense, filling my body with even more pain. I’m already healing from the birth, my stomach shrinking so unnaturally, my muscles tightening and reforming back into my petite young visage.
“I have heard that the diuscrucis were banned by Heaven and Hell because of the power they hold as mortals, and the infinite power they can command as Divine,” he says. The dagger reaches my inner thigh. “I am eager to see how I might use such a tool.”
I don’t move. It isn’t because I can’t, but because I know that resisting would be useless. This is his home, his domain, and if I want to live to see my daughter again I have to be cautious. “Please don’t hurt her Gervais,” I say, tears welling in my eyes.
He stops the motion of the dagger and leans in close, his blood-red eyes only inches from my own. “Sweet Josette,” he says. “I won’t hurt her.”
His words are a lie. I know it, but I’m powerless. The tears flow more freely. The knife moves up my abdomen, coming to rest over my heart.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “Even I’m not monster enough to kill my own flesh and blood. I want you to know that I could have. That I have shown you mercy today. I want you to know that you have a daughter, and that she is in my care.”
The words are worse than a dagger in my heart. He lifts the blade and places it and the decanter on a small table. He leans in again and puts his lips to mine. I return his kiss, knowing the consequences for denial. He moans. I cry. He breaks the kiss and puts his hands under my small body, careful not to damage my wings. He carries me over to the window. I can see the city off in the distance.
“Do not come back here,” he says. “I will kill her if you do.”
He throws me out the window.
At first I move horizontally, and then I begin to fall. Instinct takes over. My wings spread, catch the currents of air, and lift me back into the sky. No longer trapped by his power, I close my eyes and will myself back to Heaven.
When I regained myself, I was holding crumbled mortar, my tension causing me to dig deeply into the cement. The tears were streaming from my eyes, the same way they had the dozens of times I’d been assaulted by that memory. I fought the emotions, forcing them back down into my soul.
“Josette,” I whispered, hoping that maybe this time she would respond. She didn’t. I steadied myself, wiped my eyes, and took a deep breath. I had work to do.
The Belmont Hotel hadn’t changed much in the five years I had been there, outside of the police tape cordoning off the entire ‘penthouse’. I had put the tape there to keep the druggies, alkies, and whores away from anything they could hurt themselves on. I had added runes to the doors to ensure that the deterrents didn’t need to be effective.
As usual, I entered through the roof, gaining access from the neighboring building and leaping across the gap. I took the stairs down and put my hand against the hinges of the door, defusing the metal so I could push it open, checking the runes inside the frame, and re-soldering the hinge on the other side. The process seemed complicated, but it only took me half a second to complete.
I had torn down every wall on the floor that wasn’t weight-carrying, leaving myself with a large, almost labyrinthine studio which in the early days after the betrayal I had used to practice my craft, refine my control, and make sure I was never left powerless again. The space was nearly empty, with the exception of a small desk with a task chair and a laptop, a mattress on the floor that hadn’t been used in years, an old wooden steamer trunk, and a literal pile of weapons. Not just cursed and blessed pointed blades, but also assault rifles, handguns, and a number of other tools of violence. Some might have said that I kept the instruments of pain as trophies, but I had destroyed so many others it made the pile look like a pittance.
The reason I kept them wasn’t clear to me, but it was a compulsion I didn’t see a need to deny. They came from angels, demons, vampires, werewolves, the Turned and the Touched. They came from mortals too; I hadn’t limited my work to the Divine, especially when it came to violence against the innocent. On some level the stack reminded me of my purpose, a unique installation that spoke of what I had become. I unstrapped the sword from my back, and threw it onto the pile. Take the weapons away from the killers, and then use them to kill. Balance.
I looked over at the steamer trunk. I had found it at Obscura Antiques in the East Village, a popular shop that specialized in oddities and abnormal relics. What had made it special to them was the intricately carved series of patterns that when looked at from a certain angle bore an uncanny resemblance to the Virgin Mary. What had attracted me to it was that the carvings were seraphim runes of power. They rendered the trunk both indestructible and secure, able to be opened only by the angel or part-angel who traced the runes on the front in a unique pattern.
I had spent three months tracking its origins backwards. It hadn’t always been a steamer trunk; the wood had originally been installed on Pope Urban’s carriage, protecting him from danger both mortal and Divine while he would travel the countryside. I didn’t know who had reconstructed it in its current form. It’s discovery had been a bit of good fortune and a bit of gathered knowledge.
That knowledge had come from the contents of the trunk; hundreds of books, scrolls, and ancient pages that I had spent the better part of my two years on hiatus collecting, studying, and organizing. Some I had stolen from Universities, some from museums, and others I had tracked down in the possession of an assortment of demons and angels. The demons had been happy to trade the parcels for their lives. The angels had been more stubborn, and an unfortunate number had died not even knowing what it was they were protecting. In the beginning, I had felt some semblance of guilt, but Charis had been right; it was all a matter of perspective.
As for the texts, I knew they were a clue to the knowledge that she had wanted me to find. I had happened on it almost by accident. One of Rebecca’s books had included a reference to a scroll I now had in my possession. The reference had included an image, and the image had included an emblem, drawn so small on the paper that no human hand could have been responsible, and no mortal eyes could have seen it regardless. The emblem was a rune, similar to the number seven, with a zig-zag on the top line and a sharp diagonal slipping up and to the left from the foot. It appeared on all of the texts I had collected, and nowhere else.
I didn’t know what it meant, who had created it, or how to interpret it, but I was sure it was connected to Charis. I had spent nearly three years learning as much about the Divine on Earth as I could. I had followed thousands of dead ends, discovered leads and connections hidden across the mythology of human culture both ancient and contemporary, studied demonic and angelic texts, and learned to read as much of both languages as possible without a complete reference translation. It was the only character I had ever found secretly emblazoned across every level of divinity and humanity, carefully placed on specific pages of specific texts, the resultant strings creating a dialog of some kind. I couldn’t decipher it, because there was one string missing. One resource I had yet to find, an unknown item that held the key to learning the truth and finding myself once more. Even if I had it, I didn’t know if I would be able to solve the encryption, but I had to try.
I grabbe
d the USB drive from my pocket, hopped onto the task chair, and slid the device into the laptop. I typed in my password and navigated through to the drive. There was one file on it, a two hundred gigabyte flat file of transaction data. It was going to be a long night. Then again, they all were.
If there was a pattern to the data, I was having trouble finding it. IDs, dates, and dollar amounts streamed down the screen, scrolling for almost forever. I pored through the information, tried to match up dates to dollar amounts, dollar amounts to other dollar amounts, ids to dates and so on. The second most important lesson I had learned was patience. I had eternity to try to work it out.
The pressure in my head broke me out of my digital trance. I blinked for the first time since I had sat down, and opened up my soul to Sarah’s request.
“I’m here,” I said to her, reaching up and hitting the power button for the monitor. Twenty hours. I was supposed to meet Sarah for training an hour ago.
“You’re supposed to be here,” Sarah said, her voice trembling. “Something’s wrong.”
CHAPTER THREE
I took a deep breath, a feeling of worry crossing my deadened threshold.
“I’m on my way,” I said, already headed for the door. “What happened?”
“Kelsie. She’s one of my children. She’s missing.”
The words spilled out in a tumble of fear, worry, and guilt. I slipped through the door and leaped off the side of the stairwell, focusing on breaking my fall, and landing tenderly at the bottom of the steps. I blasted through the lobby and out the front door, not even giving the latest Punkmo a chance to see what had caused the disturbance.
Kelsie belonged to Trish, an Awake vagrant who had learned too late not to talk about the Divine. She had spent three years committed, and had nowhere to go once she had been released. She sold herself on the street to make money, and Kelsie was the result. Sarah had fallen in love with the little girl in an instant, and had taken the pair into her refuge. That had been a year ago. Sarah spoiled the little girl whenever she could, and in return Kelsie had taken to calling her ‘auntie’. She loved that.
Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) Page 2
