I started towards the door, but Izak put his hand on my shoulder. When I turned back, he pointed at his chest. The brand. He motioned at the floor, and then took a seat.
“What are you doing?” Lylyx asked.
“He has to stay here,” I said. “Gervais is his master. He’s been branded.”
Lylyx’s face softened. “How?” she asked quietly.
Izak glanced up at her, and then turned away, embarrassed.
“Leave him be,” I told her. “It’s none of our business. Let’s go.”
We headed out of the room, finding ourselves in a long, straight stone corridor that didn’t appear all that different from the sewer we had just escaped. There were a few doors spaced along either side of the hallway, but opening them showed the rooms to be no more than standard household storage – cleaning supplies, sacks of grain, tack for horses, and anything else a rich French noble might need to enjoy the comfort of his chateau.
The end of the corridor brought us to a small, open room that split at a pair of narrow stairways headed in opposite directions.
“Up or down?” Lylyx asked. I closed my eyes and focused my Sight, but still there was nothing.
“Which way?” I asked, reaching out for Josette. I knew she could hear me, but her response couldn’t pierce the solitude. I wanted to search her memories, but the idea scared me. Here of all places, I had no idea what I would find, what I would experience, or what it would do to me.
We had determined it was my power, my connection to Purgatory that was obscuring our ability to communicate. It was a river of energy that couldn’t be easily crossed. She had done it on occasion, with help or in moments of strong emotion, and I could always feel both her and Ulnyx’s pulse running just below the surface, fluctuating in and out of reach. It was clear that the key to letting her through was to stifle the connection, to put a finger in the dam, but I had no idea how, at least not consciously. All of my efforts up to now had been to learn to amplify the signal, not suppress it.
I opened my eyes and considered the steps. The chateau was huge, at least forty rooms, and that was only the upper floors. I knew Gervais had also built a laboratory somewhere underground, as well as a prison. What else had he constructed beneath the surface that I didn’t know about, but maybe Josette did? I could have used her help.
“Down,” I said at last. It was the lab that decided it for me. Just the tiniest sliver of a thought that Sarah could be down there was enough to turn me cold.
We descended the stairs, following three narrow flights into the bowels of the chateau. Still, the estate seemed deserted.
The steps finally fed out into a large, unlit corridor that I recognized immediately as the prison. Rows of cells lined the passage, and I stopped to take note of the runes that covered each individual bar. This wasn’t an ordinary dungeon. These were cells designed to hold demons.
All except the last one. The last one had runes too, but they were different. The entire hollow was different. It was three times the size of the others, with a soft pillow-top mattress in the corner, along with a recliner, end table, lamp, and a shelf full of books. It was warmly decorated, and strangely homey. I lost myself at the sight of it.
The demon looks in at me with inquisitive eyes. I’ve seen this one before, I know, trailing along behind Gervais, attending to his needs. I remember chasing him outside of Notre Dame, only to have him vanish around a corner like no more than a ghost.
Izak. That’s what Gervais calls him, but when I hear my brother’s voice echo through the dungeon I see the demon bristle, and I know that isn’t his true name. Why does he call him that, I wonder? Does it have meaning, or is the moniker a flaunt? I can see the runes on the fiend’s arms, and I know he has power of his own.
He’s standing there, looking at me, his hands wrapped around the bars that bind me to this place, preventing me from returning to Heaven. He’s been coming around more often lately, and staying longer to stare at me.
“Good morning Izak,” I say. I began speaking to him a few weeks ago out of boredom and loneliness. He doesn’t bristle when I say the name anymore. When I say it, he almost looks pleased. “Have you come to check on Sarah?”
He never speaks back, either with his eyes or his hands. I know he cannot use his voice, because he has no tongue. It was taken long enough ago that he doesn’t try.
I put my hand to my stomach, feeling the small bump of it. So much fear at the truth of the pregnancy, but I am a servant of the Lord, and the Lord has seen fit to bless me with this child. She is innocent of the crimes of her father. She is innocent of her heritage. I know the others would disagree, but it is my right to believe in a just, kind, and merciful Lord. It is my right to believe He has a plan for Sarah, or she would not be developing in my womb, the first diuscrucis born in nearly two millennia.
The demon is still standing there, staring at me. He looks sad.
“Why don’t you come in?” I offer. “It’s early, and I’m sure your master is still in bed.”
His eyes widen at the suggestion, and he moves to leave, but then hesitates. He looks at me for another minute or so, and then cautiously unlocks and opens the door. His eyes stay glued to me while he enters and locks the cage behind him.
“The Lord has said that the fallen cannot be redeemed,” I say, “for hate that has grown in the heart of an angel is hate that cannot be undone.”
He walks over to where I am resting on the recliner and kneels down in front of me. I reach out and put my hand on his forehead. He jerks backwards, frightened, and then leans back in. His brow is tinder.
“You aren’t fallen, Izak,” I say. “The Lord will forgive you, if you but ask.” I am Calming him, but he is letting me. My ability pales in comparison to his strength.
Tears run from the demon’s eyes, and he shakes his head in disbelief over the Lord’s forgiveness. I take his head and rest it on my lap, singing softly to him. In minutes, he is at rest. I could take the keys and make my escape, but I remain. I will not turn this creature away from the redemption he so desperately needs. The Lord will decide my fate.
“Landon?”
My vision returned. Lylyx was there, holding me up from behind while I clutched at the bars to Josette’s former prison. I should have seen that one coming.
“I’m okay,” I said, rebalancing on my feet and removing my hands from the bars. There were imprints in the skin where the edges of the runes had dug in. I studied them for the few seconds it took my body to repair.
“That’s the second time you’ve gone dark on me,” she said, letting me go and backing up a step.
“Have you ever absorbed a soul?” I asked her.
“Not yet,” she replied. “What’s it like?”
“When you absorb a soul, it becomes a part of you, but it still retains its own sense of itself, its own memories. Ulnyx can see everything I can see, he feels my pain when I’m hurt, and I feel his…uh… happiness, when I look at you. It’s a lot more symbiotic than I expected.” Five years, and I was only now beginning to reach any true understanding of it. “Different things trigger different memories, and sometimes they’re overwhelming.”
I shouldn’t have mentioned feeling what Ulnyx felt. No sooner had I stopped talking than Lylyx’s arms were back around me, and her mouth was pressed against mine. I could feel Ulnyx pushing inside me, practically begging me to return the affection. In that moment I understood that even the most vile of the First Fallen’s children was not immune to love. I opened my mouth and returned the kiss, giving the experience up to Ulnyx in payment for his advice. One kiss, and one kiss only. That was the remainder on the balance.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” I said to her, breaking the embrace. “That wasn’t from me.”
Her smile was lustful. “Tell me there was no part of you that didn’t enjoy it,” she replied.
It was a small part. “Come on,” I said, leading her past the prison cells and into a small antechamber. I focused on my Sight aga
in, and started to run.
It was faint, but it was there, the smallest trace of heat, the barest sign of life. It could have been anyone, or anything, the signal was just too slight to know, but even the thinnest hope was better than none at all.
The antechamber fed into a separate large room that reminded me of my own place at the Belmont; a wide open space, a rack of various weapons, stuffed practice targets, and singed walls. I noted the piles of ash as we sped by. They could have been incinerated dummies, or they could have been the remains of Divine.
The training room exited into another, more gruesome space, most easily described as a torture chamber. I only recognized a few of the evil tools, the most popular standards of the middle ages. An iron maiden, a rack, a scavenger’s daughter, and a host of other cruel devices lay in haphazard order about the space. They all had some measure of staining from the blood of their victims, though the judas chair appeared to be one of Gervais’ favorites. At the end of the room was a metal door, covered in demonic runes that had been painted with blood. Whatever I was chasing, it was behind that door.
I focused my will on it, demanding the bolts to corrode and dissolve, insisting that it crumble and fall to the floor. I watched the runes begin to glow, and felt the feedback building.
“Get down,” I shouted, turning my energy to myself instead, using the power to leap towards Lylyx, grabbing her and throwing us both aside as a gout of hellfire launched from the door.
We hit the wall hard, and I heard Lylyx’s back crack under the pressure. She hissed in pain and lashed out, catching my shoulder with her fist and rocking me off of her. I prepared to defend myself from her rage, but she wasn’t even looking at me.
She got to her feet, growling and shifting, her body growing, changing, healing. With a roar, she rushed over to the door and began kicking it. “Son of a bitch,” she howled, each blow leaving a deeper dent in the metal.
I got over my initial stasis and joined her, pulling on Ulnyx’s power and using it to become the monster. We hammered at the door together, using brute force when Divine energy wouldn’t do. A dozen smites later, the iron flew off its hinges, headed into the room. I focused, pulling in the air behind it, giving it an unnatural density, stopping the bullet before it could hit anything that might be important.
“Nice catch,” Lylyx said, returning to her human form. I shifted back as well.
We had smashed our way into the archfiend’s lab. Computers ringed the perimeter, interspersed with all kinds of medical equipment and paraphernalia that I couldn’t name or understand the use of. Near the rear of the room were a couple of gurneys, and one of them had a corpse on it. The corpse wasn’t what I was Seeing.
That was in the center of the room, not ten feet from where the door had come to rest. He was hanging from a chain that had been bolted to the ceiling, his arms bound above his head, his legs swinging freely a foot above the ground. A dagger was sticking out of his chest, dug straight into his heart. It was a cursed blade, so it hadn’t killed him. Instead, it was keeping him incapacitated and weak, unable to die, but also unable to heal.
His head lifted slowly, and looked unsteady at the end of his neck. A curl of black hair rested over his right eye, or rather what had once been his right eye, which had been gouged out. In a surely-not-coincidental irony, so had his left. It must have been done by a demon’s claw, because that was the only way it wouldn’t have healed.
“Gervais,” I said. “Where the hell is Sarah?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
So many memories. So much pain. In that moment, I didn’t suffer one specific flashback, or fall into a single dark hole of Josette’s past. In that moment, I went headfirst into a pool of blackness and hurt that was beyond compare. Every memory of the archfiend’s torture and betrayal ripped through me, a terrifying primal scream that ran through me like a nuclear blast. I crumpled to the floor, putting my head in my hands, trying to resolve the emotions. The destruction was physical, spiritual, and mental. It was beyond intense, and it felt like it lasted forever.
Behind me, I could hear Lylyx calling my name. In front of me, I could hear Gervais struggling to breathe, trying to speak, or laugh, or gloat. I swam through the maelstrom, my anger building. One thought, a memory of my own. Josette trapped under the weight of the angel Moses, struggling for survival, the elder seraph chiding her for her brother’s evil deeds. In that moment, her anger and guilt and pain had driven her to become nothing more than an object of rage, a broken visage of goodness that had brought her to violence and caused her to fall. I didn’t have to worry about falling.
The tidal wave pushed me to my feet, and the dagger in Gervais’ chest came to my hand with barely a thought. The scream that left my lips was inhuman and cold, more feral and raw than any demon could manage. I wanted to stab, and cut, and tear, and rip, and continue to plunge the blade into the archfiend over, and over, and over again. I wanted revenge, penance, balance. I wanted to put a bloody, agonizing end to the evil creature before me, and I wanted to do it slowly.
I stepped forward and raised the knife, ready to extract my payment, when I was hit from inside for a second time.
“Landon, no,” Josette cried, her own shout rising over my turmoil, overwhelming my anger, and breaking my momentum. “This is not the way.”
The knife clattered to the floor, and I stood transfixed, staring at Gervais but not seeing him. The chaos of my soul began to quiet, and reason began to filter back in. Sarah. I couldn’t help Sarah if Gervais were dead. He was the only one who knew where she was. My body shook at the thought of how close I had come to complete failure. I was a fool.
“Diuscrucis,” the archfiend said. The hole in his heart had closed over, and his breathing was returning to normal. Still, he didn’t attempt to remove himself from his chains.
Josette was a bastion of peace in my soul, sending me soothing thoughts, stealing away the anger that remained. I looked up at the demon.
“Gervais,” I repeated, my voice more powerful in its newfound calm. “Where is Sarah?”
He spoke in a soft French accent, his voice smooth and confident despite his situation. “Of course, she told me you would come for her. She told me you would be angry.” His head shifted forward, as though he were focusing. “She left me here as a gift to you. She said you would appreciate the state she left me in, before you killed me. Oh, but I knew. I knew my dearest sister wouldn’t let me down.”
My anger was rekindling, but as quickly as it could rise, Josette’s soul tempered it. “Who told you?” I asked.
His smile was mocking. “That vampire bitch of yours. Reyka.”
“Rebecca?”
My heart skipped, but I held onto my center. Rebecca? Back in the mortal realm, back from Hell?
“She’s used that name before,” he said.
My mind began to spin with the possibilities. She was back, and she had taken Sarah from Gervais, leaving the archfiend incapacitated for me to find. I wanted to believe she had returned to help me with whatever was happening, whatever plot the Demon Queen had cooked up for me to fall into. I wanted to think that she had been on my side the entire time, and that the last five years had all been for some esoteric purpose whose meaning I would discover once we were reunited.
I wanted to believe in the dream, but the fact was that I couldn’t. I had heard her lie when she left me paralyzed on the floor. I had seen in her eyes that she knew exactly what she was doing. Why would she have done that if she really had cared. Survival, she had said. Survival was about doing whatever it took. Survival didn’t leave room for friends.
“She’s no friend of mine,” I said. It was a hard thing to let out, because I had avoided it for so long. Still, I couldn’t stop that small piece of myself that remained naive from holding on just a little bit. “Tell me what happened.”
The smile remained, and he shook his hands in their shackles. “I’ll tell you everything, mon ami, but I have terms.”
Of course. No demon
would trade something for nothing. “You aren’t exactly in a strong bargaining position,” I said. “All I have to do is stick this dagger back into whatever passes as your heart.” I focused, bringing the blade up so that the point bit into his chest.
“I beg to differ,” he countered. “I‘ve already lost my eyes, and I know you won’t kill me. Sweet Josette protects me still. What is it they say about family? The family that lays together, stays together.” He paused, allowing the words time to cut. I didn’t give him the satisfaction. “No matter,” he said. “You need me to tell you where my beloved child has been abducted to. I need nothing from you. I can hang here for a thousand years, someone will be along sooner or later.”
“If Rebecca has Sarah, I think I already know where to find them,” I said. Where else would she go? “Which leaves you nothing to bargain with, except your life.”
“Can you be sure?” he asked me. “Are you willing to risk Sarah’s life on what you believe of this creature you say isn’t your friend? I have seen her. I wouldn’t, if I were in your position.”
What did that mean? Rebecca had spent the last five years in Hell. Who could know how she had changed? What I knew for sure was that the Demon Queen was moving against me, and she had employed no shortage of powerful demons to hinder my progress in getting here. Were Charis and Rebecca working together? Or did Charis seek to delay me because she knew Gervais had lost Sarah? In either case, what did they want with her in the first place? Too many questions, and no answers. The archfiend could help me with at least one of them.
I plunged the dagger back into his heart. “I’m done playing games with demons,” I said.
He laughed. “You think this is pain?” he asked with his last strong breath.
“No,” I replied. “That’s just to keep you still for a minute.” I walked over to him and tore open his shirt.
Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) Page 12
