His Dark Empire (Tears of Blood)

by Forbes, M. R.

  "Knowledge," I said, pulling my hand away.

  With the dirty tissue cleaned she healed without obstruction, and in moments the scar was gone.

  She stared at me then for what seemed like ages. Her eyes were locked on mine, and she was still as a statue. Her breathing evened out and her face flushed red. I could feel the tension between us while I waited for her to decide what to do.

  "Very well diuscrucis," she said. "You saved my life, so I will try to help you. Know that we are not allies, and never shall be. I am simply repaying my debt, which is well within the tenets of our laws."

  She smiled then, a big, wild smile that told me she had made up her mind, that she was throwing her caution to the wind, and that she still didn't trust that I wouldn't crush her with it. It was the kind of smile that comes from the strength of willful disobedience and the underlying fear of the consequences.

  "Now, grab your sword and follow me to the roof," she said. "I shall call this class Demon Fighting One-o-one."

  I went over to where my sword was resting by the window. I noticed it was dark outside. "Josette," I said, remembering Dante's rules.

  She bounced over to where I was standing. Her whole demeanor had changed, and she looked a lot more like a fourteen-year-old girl to me. She peered out the window.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "It's dark out," I told her.

  "Yes," she agreed. "The sun has in fact set." She stepped back and looked at me, her brow furrowing inward. "You destroyed a Great Were, and you are fearful of the dark?"

  I could feel the heat of my flush rise up through my cheeks. "Dan..."

  "Do not," she cried out, interrupting me. When she was sure I was done talking, she lowered her voice. "Do not say his name." Serious Josette had returned.

  "Why not?" I asked her.

  "He is the only person ever to volunteer to leave Heaven for the Middle realm," she explained. "His name is to be forgotten and unwrought for all time, as is that of his servant. That is our law. It is the only law that both Heaven and Hell have ever agreed to. If you absolutely must make reference, he is known as the Outcast."

  Wow, that was a lot of hate. I could understand why Heaven may have been cross with him, but what had he done in Hell to cause such disdain?

  "How old are you anyway?" I asked Josette, trying to turn the conversation away from things she wasn't allowed to mention.

  The seriousness faded, and the adolescent exuberance sprang back into view. "That is your non-sequitor, Landon?"

  The way she giggled changed her from plain to almost pretty. My face flushed again. Everything I said was making me feel dumber and dumber.

  "I know you aren't fourteen." It was all I could think of to say.

  She laughed louder. "You are concerned about this physical manifestation?"

  "I'm more concerned about having undressed your physical manifestation," I said. "I'm sorry for that, by the way. I didn't have any other choice."

  It was her turn to be embarrassed. It seemed she hadn't realized the efforts I had to go to in order to heal her.

  "Do not fear Landon, I have been a member of the Order of Seraph for over seven hundred years. I did die as a young lady, and have chosen to remain that way because I find it comfortable and familiar. The same goes for the underlying personality, although I do find it increasingly difficult at times to hold onto the joy and innocence of youth."

  Seven hundred years? So much she had seen and done; centuries of war and fighting and killing. Did she regret her decision to become an angel? I didn't ask, for fear of spoiling her mood before she had taught me anything.

  "Well then grandma," I said. "Let's hit the roof."

  The rain had stopped some time earlier, but the roof was still slick from the downpour, and the dropping temperature was already turning it into a sheet of black ice. My footing was unsteady, and I was shivering from the cold as we walked out towards the center of the rooftop. Josette didn't seem to notice it at all, her knee high white boots moving her effortlessly across the surface despite their four-inch heels. When we reached the center, she materialized her own sword and held it up in front of me. She noticed how much I was shaking and cocked her head to the side.

  "What are you doing?" she asked.

  "It's freezing out here," I told her, crossing my arms and rubbing my shoulders. I guess I could have changed my shirt into a parka, but I had never seen any movies where the samurai wore heavy, puffy coats.

  Josette laughed at me again. "Landon, you are Awake. Divine. You do not need to feel cold unless you choose to."

  "You make it sound so simple," I said through chattering teeth.

  "Your human mind believes you should be cold, and so you are," she said. "Don't listen to it. That is lesson number one."

  Don't listen to it. Right. Don't listen to it. I tried to distract myself from the cold. I imagined being on a beach in Florida, feeling the warm sun on my face. For a moment, I almost thought I might not feel cold. No, I did. It was freezing.

  "Can't do it," I said.

  The sword vanished again, and Josette walked over to where I was standing. She took my face in her hands and pulled me down so I was at eye level with her.

  "You are standing on a rooftop, with your face three inches from an angel," she said. "In the last six hours you killed a powerful demon, and swallowed its soul. You also healed from wounds that would kill any mortal. Now, tell me why you are cold."

  While she spoke, her golden eyes sparkled as though they contained all of time and space. She was using logic on me, and I was falling for it. I took a deep breath and nodded. She broke her gaze and stepped back.

  "Well?" she asked.

  I bent down and put my hand on the icy cement. I could feel the sensation of the freezing surface in my fingers, but it didn't make me feel cold. Cold was a mortal sensation, and I was no longer mortal.

  "I'm ready now," I said, standing back up.

  Josette smiled and her sword reappeared in her hand.

  "How do you do that?" I asked her. It would make moving around a lot easier to not have to manage the four-foot long blade.

  "Sorry Landon," she replied. "You have your own abilities, but that isn't one of them."

  "Why not?" I asked.

  She rolled her eyes, making me feel dumb again.

  "Excuse me miss seven-hundred-year-old-seraph, " I said, "but I've never been to the School for the Divine."

  She giggled again and dismissed her weapon.

  "Okay, I guess I need to give you at least a tiny bit of background before I start beating your brains in," she said, kneeling down and motioning for me to join her. "Most people talk about Heaven and Hell as if one is up there in the sky, and the other is somewhere near the core of the Earth."

  She scratched out a rough globe with a cloud above it for Heaven and a flame below it for Hell. I tried to be nonchalant about the fact that she was using her fingernail to make the scratches in the blacktop. She put her hands outside of the pictogram and squished them inward, so that the three scratches all sat on top of each other. How did she do that?

  "In reality, we're all on the same level, but we're not in the same... dimension, I guess," she said.

  She was squinting as she tried to come up with a good description. It was adorable.

  "It's not really a dimension," she continued. "It's more like a state of being. Our souls can travel these states, but our shells can't. Of course, its not like we can just go anywhere we want. There are rules, and that assures that Heaven is never overrun with sinners or demons."

  "And that the moderates are given a chance to prove where they belong?" I asked.

  She nodded. "That came much later, but yes. Purgatory is the buffer, the demilitarized zone if you will, but you must already know about that. It's the reason you and I can never be friends."

  I don't know why, but when she said that, it hurt. More than it probably should have, I hardly knew her after all.

  "You think the Raptu
re is a good thing?" I asked.

  Josette looked up at me, and her eyes flashed in anger, but she covered it up quickly.

  "Let us not get into that, Landon," she replied. "We will never agree. That is the nature of who we are, and it is best that we accept it and move on."

  She had a point.

  "So," she continued, "if Heaven is right here, but in another state of existence, than it is no large matter for a being such as myself who resides in both states to move from one to the other, at least in part. In essence, I can reach through from one dimension to another, where I know I left my blade."

  "Neat trick," I said. "But why can't I do it?"

  "Two reasons. The first is that you aren't powerful enough, not yet anyway. It took me five hundred years to learn how to reach through the dimensions. The second is because you don't exist outside of this state," she said.

  "You're saying that Purgatory is part of Earth?" I asked.

  "Yes. And no." She stood up and swept the scratches away with her boot.

  "How can that be?" I asked, rising to join her. "How could millions of souls be living here, and nobody has ever seen them, heard them, or knows that they exist?"

  "We are Divine, Landon. We decide what mankind knows about us. We control them, in order to protect them."

  Like in the park. The area where we had fought the Great Were had been deserted even though it was the middle of the day.

  "Why do the demons control them?" I asked. It couldn't be to protect.

  "To use," she said. "As you have already discovered, information is the highest form of power and control. People are easily corrupted by promises of knowledge that will give them an edge." The same way I had been. "Now put up your sword."

  She spent the next hour instructing me on how to hold a sword without cutting myself on it. She said I was a natural, but she said it sarcastically. By the end of the hour I could almost hold the thing steady, but it felt heavy and awkward in my hand, and I had no confidence at all in my ability to use it. We took a break, and I grilled her a bit more.

  "What happens when a Divine dies?" I asked. We were sitting cross-legged in the center of the rooftop facing one another, our blades resting across our legs.

  She shook her head. "Dying as a Divine is like dying as a mortal. Nobody knows for sure what happens, only that we do not return to where we came from. As my Lord has no knowledge of this end, I have always thought that we cease to be."

  "I've been making the same assumption," I said. "Demons can be killed by..." I hung the end of the sentence, waiting for her to finish it.

  "A seraph's blade, as you have already learned. Many demons also have a weakness to one of the four elements of life. Which one depends on the type of demon. Lesser demons like werewolves are susceptible to earth. All Divines can be killed by decapitation. Including you."

  Decapitation was not a pretty thought, but I had assumed as much. Once the head and body were separate, which one was going to grow back? I could picture myself like a hydra, duplicating every time something lopped off my noggin.

  "Silver, wooden stakes?" I asked.

  "It can slow earth sensitives down, but won't kill," she replied. "You've seen too many movies."

  "Part of it is true," I said in my defense. "What about holy water?"

  "Ineffective as a weapon," she said, "but it can heal any demon inflicted wound. It helps us to counter our greatest weakness."

  "Which is?" I asked.

  She started to speak, then thought about it. "Our greatest known weakness I mean. We need blessed blades to kill a demon. All demons can harm us with little more than a fingernail. As long as they break the skin, their touch is poison."

  "So what about mine?" I asked.

  "Yours?" She was confused.

  "My touch," I said.

  I had posed the question innocently enough, but her face flushed again. She stammered out her reply. "I uh... I really don't know. I haven't... I haven't been in that situation before. With a diuscrucis."

  "You sure are demure for a seven hundred year old," I said, trying to keep the conversation light. I found her reaction intriguing, but I wasn't about to press her on it.

  Josette conjured her sword and pointed it at me. "Shut up and fight," she said between laughs.

  She spent another hour teaching me basic technique, which meant how to swing the blade without losing control of it, and how to get myself back into position to either attack again or defend myself. The night was wearing on, and the weather was getting colder, so I appreciated the fact that I was now immune to temperature changes. The earlier rain returned as snow, falling in heavy flakes that clung to everything they landed on, including us.

  "Seven hundred years would mean you lived in the middle ages," I said.

  We were taking another break, and I had decided I wanted to know more about my teacher than I did about anything else. I was getting a little tired of demons and fighting, and it was the closest I could get to so-called normalcy.

  Josette nodded. "I was born in Paris. My father was a wealthy merchant who had close ties to the Catholic Church. I grew up in a privileged household, and wanted for nothing. It was not always an easy life, for my parents were very religious, and punished my brother and I severely for our sins. Still, it was a good life, especially for those times. You may think I was perfect because I am a seraph today, but I was not always the most well-behaved child."

  "Good enough for Heaven," I said. "Besides, what child can ever avoid making a little mischief?"

  "Yes," she agreed. "Good enough. My brother and I, we used to go down into the city dressed in rags and act as beggars. We would take the money we collected and spend it on sweets."

  Her eyes were alight with the pleasure of the memory, and I could feel the warmth of her radiating and soaking into my skin. She was silent for a moment while she reminisced, and then her mood changed.

  "When our parents found out, they took us out to the barn and tied us to a post, then used a riding crop to give us ten lashes each," she said. "Afterwards, they made us work to earn back all of the money we had stolen from the real poor, and go out to the city and distribute it to them."

  I couldn't believe it. "Are you kidding me? Your parents sound like monsters."

  She shook her head. "Do not misunderstand me, Landon. My parents could be as loving as they could be cruel, and the pain they inflicted served to teach us to be humble and always remember that service to God means caring for the less fortunate. I hated my parents for a time, because of what they had done, but after I had passed to Heaven, I realized what they had taught me."

  "I'm sure there were less violent ways to teach a child a lesson like that," I said. I was getting angry thinking about it. Not that there was anything to do. I reminded myself that it had happened hundreds of years ago.

  "You are right about that," she said. "My parents spent many years in Purgatory due to their treatment of their children. In the end they proved that their souls were essentially good, and they were misguided in their faith. They sought me out as soon as they entered Heaven, and begged for my forgiveness."

  That cooled my anger a little bit at least. "What about your brother? It sounds like you two were very close."

  Her eyes dimmed so completely it was as if they had gone black. So much emotion in those eyes, it was an amazing thing to experience, though it seemed to amplify her feelings to the point that I was experiencing them too. It felt as though a ten thousand pound weight had been dropped on my chest as a mixture of sadness and fury.

  "He did not respond as well to my parent's teachings," she said. "He became violent, angry, and withdrawn. He left home when he was sixteen."

  Tears started rolling down her cheeks, and I could tell there was more she wanted to say, but wasn't able to. The answer was written in her eyes, in plain sight to me. He had killed her.

  "Josette, it's okay," I said, reaching out and putting my hand on her shoulder. "You don't need to talk about it. I can see it in y
our eyes. I'm so sorry."

  Those same eyes widened when I said that, and she turned her head away from me. She hadn't known I could read her like that. Not knowing any better, I had just assumed it was normal.

  "Thank you," she said. "No matter how many years have passed, the memory is a torment on my soul."

  I didn't think, just acted. I reached out and put my arms around her, wrapping her small body up into a hug. She stiffened at first, not expecting the maneuver, then melted into my arms.

  "Seven hundred years, Landon," she said between open sobs. "Yet it still feels as if it happened yesterday. I joined the Order of Seraph because I didn't want such a fate to befall anyone else. I have saved hundreds of innocents from the hands of evil men and demons alike. Men that you will help one day."

  She just had to say it. Maybe it was just due to her emotional state, but I didn't appreciate it. I pushed her out of the embrace, holding her at arms length.

  "I'm all for saving innocents, Josette," I told her.

  She smiled at me, wiping away my anger in an instant. "I believe that about you. And right now you can do so without consequence. What happens when the balance is restored, should good begin to triumph? That is the nature of who you are, and the mission that you have accepted. For all the good you may feel and show today, there is a devilish side to you, or you would not be what you are."

  I didn't know what to say. She wasn't completely right, but she wasn't completely wrong. I had choked the Priest when he had resisted giving me what I wanted. I knew there was a part of me that could harm innocents if it meant achieving my goals. Admitting that to myself was difficult. It scared the crap out of me. Admitting it to her, impossible.

  "I guess I'll worry about that if and when it happens," I said, letting go of her. "I have a lot of good work to do in the meantime." I went over and picked up my sword from where it was resting against the rooftop ledge. "Show me something else."