His Dark Empire (Tears of Blood)

by Forbes, M. R.

  Chapter 6

  The punk-slash-emo guy running the front desk at the Belmont Hotel didn't even give me a second look when I lumbered in holding two large duffels. I was getting more accomplished with altering my outward appearance, and had dressed down for the occasion. My hair was long and greased, I had three days growth on my chin, and my clothes were worn and dirty. On the walk over, I had also discovered how to repair my inward appearance, fixing the rips and tears in my clothing so I could see and sense myself with some semblance of physical dignity.

  "How much for your best room?" I asked, approaching the desk.

  Punkmo shrugged. "It's twenty-five per night, all the rooms are priced the same." He reached under the desk and produced a padlock with a key. "Just find an empty room and lock the inside. When you leave, lock the outside."

  The modern world sure made being limited to cash a frustrating proposition, especially when trying to find a place to hunker down for a while. Most upscale hotels required holding a credit card on file, which meant bypassing anything a person might want to spend any amount of time in, and instead making do with something that someone could spend time in if they had to. I had to. I turned my back on him so I could count through my stash without him being able to see how much I was carrying. I handed him three hundreds.

  "Good for twelve days, right?" I asked.

  He furrowed his brow and looked at me. The math was a little too much for him. "Sure man."

  He snatched the cash a little too eagerly and pushed the lock forward. I put down the sword to pick up the lock and stuck it into my jacket pocket.

  The Belmont. The name made me laugh out loud. The place was about half of a step above the condemned projects where I had watched Rebecca drain a good guy. I was sure it had been a fine place a hundred years ago or so, but it seemed like it hadn't been renovated since, well, ever. The interior was old, drab, and dirty, with peeling faded wallpaper and either missing or busted furniture. The rooms weren't much better, decorated with ripped sofas, old mattresses stained yellow from all kinds of bodily fluids, ancient fridges of which maybe fifty percent were functional, and a varying but always present amount of mold. Every room had roaches. Only two of the rooms I passed had people. The place was more for quickies with hookers and drug exchanges than living in, but I didn't have too many housing options.

  I settled into 7G, a room on the top floor in the southeast corner. It gave me a decent view of the streets below through small grimy windows that would hide my own visage from anyone looking in, and a mattress that had a better than fifty percent chance of not housing an STD.

  I gently slid Josette off of my shoulder, placing her on top of the bed. She was still unconscious, but her breathing was steady. Her wounds continued to ooze blood, refusing to close over, and the gash on her cheek had some nasty black spider veins reaching out across her face. I had no way to judge the effect of a demonic wound on an angel, but going by what had happened to the Were when I stabbed him, she was suffering from damage that wouldn't heal on its own. When I put my hand to her forehead, I could feel that she was burning up, maybe literally.

  "Josette," I whispered.

  She didn't respond. That raised the question - how do you heal an angel who was wounded in a fight against a demon? Answer - holy water. Maybe it wouldn't work, but it seemed like the best option and I didn't have much to lose. I wasn't going to let her die, not like this. She had spared my life, and I was going to return the favor. Maybe she'd even be grateful. If she wouldn't let me out of our deal, the act of kindness might be enough to convince her to at least offer some measure of help in completing the task without having my soul destroyed. Not an alliance, but maybe information.

  "I'll be back," I said to her prone form as I ducked out of the room, put the padlock on the door, and headed out to find a church.

  The sun had vanished behind dark, heavy clouds, and it started pouring while I walked. I needed a vessel for the holy water, so I dropped in on a liquor store and bought the cheapest bottle of wine they had, which I dumped on the pavement outside. I got into a small argument with a passing vagrant about wasting heat, and then resumed my hunt for a house of God. When I pushed through the twin doors of Our Blessed Lady Mary RC Church I was soaked to the bone, the water dripping off of me creating a slippery mess on the cold marble floors.

  "That rain's right devilish."

  I had been hoping to avoid running into a priest, but he was already mopping the floor when I walked in. He was an older man with short reddish-white hair, a fair complexion, and a kind smile. He wore the wisdom of age on his face and the creases around his eyes. Irish, if his accent was any indication.

  "It sure is Father," I said, not making eye contact. "I'm sorry for the mess."

  There was an expanding pool of rainwater gathering at my feet. He looked down at it and chuckled.

  "Don't ye worry yerself child," he said. "Ye look like ye could stand bein' outta the rain."

  I had disguised the empty wine bottle as an umbrella. He looked at it, then looked at me, then looked back at the umbrella.

  "Might've helped ye a wee bit if ye had used that thing," he said, a strange look on his face. "Then again, an empty wine bottle ain't much help in a rainstorm, is it?"

  He could see right through my glamour. Were all priests Touched? There was no point being ambiguous.

  "I need your help," I told him. "Holy water."

  "What does someone the likes of you need with holy water?" he asked. "More like to poison you than heal you crossbreed."

  I had to know. "How did you know? Are you Touched?"

  He laughed then, an old, wise, hardened laugh. "I didn't just come out of the potato field laddie," he said. "And I don't need the blessin' of a pure angel to make my eyes work proper. Ye may fool some of 'em, but I'm a humble servant of the Lord, and I know me own. Besides laddie, what darn fool carries an umbrella, but isn't using it to keep himself dry?"

  Dante was proving to be a little unreliable when it came to who could and couldn't sense my true nature. Here was a self-proclaimed plain ordinary mortal, and he saw right through the glamour, past the blood and lineage, straight through to the truth.

  "It's not for me Father," I said. "I have a friend who was injured by a demon, a Great Were." I didn't know how much he knew, but I figured if he were familiar with angels and crossbreeds, he would know demons too.

  The priest rubbed his hand along his chin. "A Great Were eh? That's a nasty beastie to get into a scuffle with. How many seraph were involved?"

  "Just one," I told him. "You know about weres?"

  "Aye, of course I do laddie," he said. "Always a treat to watch a werewolf movie, and laugh at how weak they portray those foul creatures ta be. A Great Were, now that's a hundred times nastier than your nastiest werewolf. Mean and smart, they are. Did you say one?"

  I shrugged. "Well, one and a half I guess."

  "Aye, a half," he said, his tone harsh. "The seraph was injured, and ye're here for holy water to heal it?"

  "Is it so hard to believe father, that I would try to heal an injured angel?"

  My voice was rising, and he put his finger to his lips to shush me, motioning with his eyes to the few scattered people kneeling behind the church pews.

  "Actually boy-o, it is," he said.

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me off to the left, through a door and into his private office. He closed the door behind us, then let go of my arm and reinstated his direct glare. "Look here laddie, it takes at least three seraph to take down a Great Were on a good day. Ye're saying ye helped one seraph do it, and not only did ye win, but the angel survived?"

  I hadn't known what we were fighting, and now I realized that was probably a good thing. If I had thought about how powerful it really was I probably would never have made my kamikaze move against it.

  "That's right," I said. "Although, I can't be too sure about the part where she survives unless you decide to help me. I would think you would be eager to see one of
yours back to good health."

  "It's not a matter of what I want boy-o, it's a matter of trust. Do ye even understand what ye are? Ye don't have a side but fer yerself. Ye can cross back and forth on a whim. Ye can employ all manner of trickery and deceit to meet yer aims, and only the most astute of the Divine will even have an idea they're bein' double-crossed. Ye can cause all sorts of mayhem, discord, destruction for no other reason than because it suits ye, all while smellin' like roses and gettin' all the blessins' of Heaven."

  His face was turning beet red, and his anger was growing beyond reason. Without thinking, my hand shot forward and wrapped around his neck. His eyes widened in surprise, and he stopped talking.

  "Listen to me Father," I said then, my own anger stewing. "My aim is only to heal the angel. She saved my life, and I intend to return the favor. Don't make it at the expense of your own."

  I let go of him then, drawing back in a shock of my own at the violent outburst. I had never been like this before. A wave of guilt washed over me.

  "I'm sorry Father," I said, lowering my head. "I'm pretty new at this gig, but the one thing I know is that I'm not your enemy." I turned to leave.

  "Wait," he said, rubbing his neck with his hand. I looked back at him, feeling doubly foolish for almost choking him to death. "Why do ye think the seraph survived?"

  I hadn't expected the question, especially after what I had just done. "Excuse me, father?"

  "A Great Were can kill an angel with one blow," he said. "Why didn't he?"

  I didn't know enough about weres of any kind to know the injury was uncommon. I told him about the fight. I gave him all the details. When I was done, he took the wine bottle and left the room. When he returned, he blessed it himself. He didn't speak again until he handed it back.

  "He was gloatin'," he told me then. "He let the angel run him through so he could do it, and made straight sure not to kill her with his first cut. He didn't know what ye were. He didn't expect ye to recover. Ye got lucky killin' him." He walked over and held out the bottle. "I don't like ye laddie, and I don't like yer kind or whom ya be workin' fer, but if helping ye helps a seraph, I'll do it this once. Darker days are comin' when a demon lets himself be stabbed, and Lord knows we need all the help we can get. Now go, and don't ever show yer face in my church again."

  Chapter 7

  Josette was still unconscious when I returned to my room at the Belmont. The bedding under her was red with her blood, still running out through the wounds on her face and chest. I didn't know how much blood an angel could lose, but judging by the coolness of her forehead and the shallowness of her breathing, it couldn't be much more.

  As I stripped off her shredded clothes so I could treat the wounds, I had to remind myself that even though she appeared to be in a child's body, Josette was not a child. Even so, it felt so wrong to be undressing her this way, but I had no other choice. Her flesh underneath was pale grey, and the same lines of black veins that I had seen on her face were also spreading from the cuts on her body.

  The linens were already ruined, so I used the sword to cut out strips of cloth, dipped them in the holy water, and placed them over the gashes. The affected areas hissed and steamed as I did so, causing Josette to let out a soft moan and the familiar scent of frankincense to fill the room. Almost immediately some of the color began returning to her skin, and I could see the black lines receding from under the edges of the cloths. I went over to one of the empty hotel rooms to get a sheet to lay over her, then grabbed the box for the iPad and sat down at the side of the bed.

  I slid the device out of the box and turned it on, then kept my eyes on Josette while it booted up. The cut on her face was super deep, and had taken two cloths dipped in the holy water before it had stopped bleeding. I wasn't sure if it would ever heal completely. Otherwise, she was looking a lot better already, her face flushing as the blood returned to it.

  Wi-Fi was pretty ubiquitous in Manhattan, and I didn't have any trouble finding an open connection I could leech off of. I started with the basics. I typed 'how to kill a demon' into Google and hit enter. It didn't surprise me that all of the results were filled with media fed, superstition based thoughts on destroying evil beings, without a hint of truth to any of them. Holy water, wooden stakes, garlic, blah, blah, blah. I hadn't thought I would come up with anything there. I needed better sources.

  At the height of my illicit dealings in credit card numbers, I had belonged to a message board called 'SamChan', so named after Samuel L. Jackson, motherf**cker. If anyone knew anything real about the war between angels and demons, I could probably get a line to them there. The channel was filled with all types of hackers, crackers, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted societal chafe that would buy and sell any data they could get their hands on. I wasn't too sure I should try to use my old account, but getting access wasn't as simple as entering an e-mail address and password. If anyone noticed they'd probably think my credentials had been compromised, which would result in a good laugh for all involved. That was assuming my account was still active. It was.

  I was eyeball deep in a thread posted by a guy who was looking to sell or trade a video he claimed was of a real vampire when Josette woke up. I wasn't looking at her at the time, but I could just feel her presence change. It reminded me of a butterfly bursting from a cocoon - one moment there was this ugly emptiness, the next a fullness of spirit and beauty that caught me off guard. When I turned my head to check on her, her golden eyes were open and alight with an internal sparkle, and she was smiling at me.

  "Thank you," she said. I hadn't known what to expect, but gratefulness was a good start.

  "I should be thanking you," I told her. "If you hadn't tossed me your sword, we'd both be dead right now. How do you feel?"

  She took a moment, shifting in the bed a little bit. "The poison has been purged. The wounds are healing, but I still feel a little weak. Why did you save me?"

  "Like I said, you saved my life."

  She shook her head. "I saved my life, diuscrucis. You may have benefitted from that, but it was not an act of benevolence."

  No, I suppose it wasn't. Had I really thought she was doing me a favor?

  "Whether it was intentional or not, you did. Look, whatever you think of me, I'm not a bad guy. I'm just trying to make sure that mankind is allowed to govern its own future. Letting you die would have been a negative on the scorecard, and besides I don't think you deserved to go like that."

  Her eyes turned thoughtful, the sparkle shifting inwards.

  "You must understand, Landon," she said. "This isn't about whether or not you are a nice guy. This war has been going on for thousands of years, and now after spending centuries gaining ground we are beginning to lose, and badly. There was another who came here making the same claims as you. She earned our trust and respect even as our enemy. She fought against us, and she fought with us, but we believed she would never seek to deceive. We were wrong."

  "You mean Charis?" I asked.

  The name kept coming up. Was she the reason my inception here felt like such a disaster?

  Josette nodded. "She used our trust to trick us, then gave us up to Reyzl. She knew the outcome would shift the tide of the war, would go against everything she claimed to be fighting for. She said we didn't understand the bigger picture. We lost a dozen angels and countless mortal allies in the nights that followed."

  As she spoke, tears began rolling down her face. She winced in pain as one slid under the bandage and touched the wound there.

  "What happened to her?" I asked. Dante had said she was gone. He hadn't bothered to mention that she was a traitor. Why not?

  "She disappeared," Josette said. "We have heard that Reyzl double-crossed her, and stabbed her in the back while she was enjoying the fruits of her betrayal."

  I was being racially profiled, except as far as I knew there were only two of us. It figured this Charis had to go and ruin it for me.

  "We may have similar bloodlines, but we're not th
e same person," I said.

  "It is unjust I agree," she replied, "but you must consider our perspective. Unlike demons, it is very difficult to replace a lost seraph. Heaven is a wondrous place, and few enough are willing to give it up to fight a war that has no definitive end. To lose so many in such a short time was an event that none of us can bear to see repeated. So we do not trust those who are not of our kind, and we forbid alliances because the gain of an ally cannot compare to the potential devastation that could follow."

  She put her hand on the sheet to hold it in place and sat up. When she dropped the sheet, she was wearing a white leather raincoat over a plain white blouse. A large diamond cross hung from her neck. She reached up with small, delicate fingers and pulled the bandage from her face. As I had feared, the wound had left a thin black scar along her snow-white cheek. She ran her finger over it, her eyes dimming in sadness.

  "I should have known it was a trick," she said. "I have to go. You have my gratitude for saving my life."

  She moved to head for the door, but without thinking, I stopped her. I put my hand to her face, surprised by how small and soft it was in my hand. She didn't resist my touch.

  "We both should have died today," I said, looking her in the eyes. "We got lucky. I won't keep getting lucky forever."

  Her lips were trembling as she waited to hear me out, and to see what I intended to do with her. Her wounds might have been healed but I could tell she was still weak.

  "If you can't or won't be my ally because of your laws, I can accept that," I said. "But please don't leave without giving me the one thing that can help us both stop this war from being won by the demons."

  "Wh...What is that?" she asked. Her voice was soft, scared.

  I didn't know if it would work, but I had to try. I focused my will on my hand the way I had focused on the air to make it rain. I tried to feel the damage to her face, to pick out every molecule of imperfection that was marring the otherwise flawless surface. I ordered the damaged cells to disconnect, pulling the remaining demonic filth into my own body, and removing it from hers. She shook as I did it, her eyes glowing brightly in surprise.