by M. R. Forbes
"What was he researching?" Sarah asked. Izak stopped walking and turned to her. He frowned and shook his head.
"Okay," she said, dropping the subject.
I knew the way from here, so I took the lead. Out of the laboratory, past the torture room, to the cells where Josette lived during her pregnancy. It was here that Sarah stopped again, putting her face to the bars and looking in on the room. She didn't say anything. Her expression didn't even change. She just stared in until Izak took her arm and gently pulled her away.
Out of the prison and up the steps, down a hallway of rooms stocked with supplies, and into the small room where the rift between the Paris sewers and the Chateau sat. Still, there was no sign of any Divine, no suggestion of anyone mortal, immortal, or in-between. With each step I began to get more nervous, more concerned that we were being careless, reckless, thoughtless, and foolish. The doubt began to gnaw at me, picking its way into me and planting thorny seeds.
"This is a mistake," I said. Izak was bent over the rift, about to bring it to life. "It's too easy."
"What choice do we have?" Charis asked. "We need Avriel to help us with the box."
"Do we?" I was having second thoughts. "We're just assuming since he made the thing, he can work some kind of magic that will ensure it can contain the Beast. Maybe it already can? Or maybe, it never can?"
"Which is why we need to ask him," Charis said. "It's better to find out from a reliable source than to risk everything. Even if it feels like we're walking right into a trap. Again."
"It worked out okay last time," Sarah piped in. "The Beast thinks he's smarter than we are. He's arrogant. We can use that to our advantage."
I looked at her like she had two heads. This wasn't the Sarah that Gervais had turned into a whimpering mound of hurt. "It looks like I'm outvoted."
Izak had paused his work while we argued. Seeing it settled, he went back to the runes. Within moments, they flared up.
What happened then was nine seconds of pure chaos, so quick and so dirty that there was no time to even try to decipher it. The very moment the runes came to life, the room grew cold, so cold, and a shadow of a form appeared in the rift.
One second: Abaddon had come into the small room, so close to me that I could almost see the demon behind the shadows, a sharp, dark-fleshed, humanoid face with rich blood eyes obscured by the swirling darkness of his power.
Two seconds: Sarah started to scream, the words deep in pitch and tone at the slow-motion speed in which I remembered them. It wasn't a scream of fear, even though that was the effect of the vaporous tentacles that flowed out across the space. It was a scream of Command.
Three seconds: Izak dove towards Sarah, his hand getting a firm grip on her wrist, his body shifting and pivoting. Her words launched forward at the demon, and I felt her power as a wave of pressure on my soul.
Four seconds: I was close to it. I found my focus and fought back against the fear, pulling energy into me, cocking my fist back. The demon stood in its spot in front of the rift.
Five seconds: I heard the snikt of Charis' sword coming free of its scabbard on her back, as she prepared to face the demon. Maybe the fear subsided due to Sarah's command, or maybe I had just overcome it for just a moment, but it was enough for me to let the fist fly, shifting my weight and angle to I could pummel it from the side.
Six seconds: The blow struck Abaddon hard, making pure, solid contact with an actual creature of flesh and blood, and sending him toppling away from the rift.
Seven seconds: Izak had seen the attack, and he pulled Sarah, yanking her through the rift with him.
Eight seconds: I felt the breath fall out of me as Charis rushed me from behind, crashing into me and throwing us both through the circle.
Nine seconds: In the sewers of Paris, the fiend Izak, the demon once known as Mephistopheles, had already put his hand into the runes to shut the rift down. Hellfire crawled along him, and the smell of his burning flesh was overpowering. His face bore no sign of pain, though it must have been excruciating. Instead, he was deliberate and steady in his concentration, working to manually scratch away part of the still-burning circle to disable it.
Once it was done, he fell onto his back, clutching his forearm with his other hand. Smoke rose from the wound, and I could see that below where he held there was nothing but charred and useless flesh.
"Oh, no," Sarah said. "Izak." She bent over him, trying to offer comfort. He held out his good hand and pushed himself away.
"Izak," I said. I kept looking at the no longer identifiable mass of skin and bone at the end of his arm. I couldn't heal that.
He held his good hand out to me as well, and shook his head. His eyes squinted in pain, and he took a few deep breaths. Then he got to his feet, and motioned in the direction of the bone room.
"You are a serious badass," I said. He glanced over at me, and shrugged.
"There is no way to heal that. Not ever," Josette said. "That wound will fester and bring him pain for the rest of his eternity."
"He's played with hellfire before," I replied.
"He's never touched it. The fire he wields sits above the skin, too close to see, but it never touches."
I stared at the demon's back as he started walking down the corridor. Badass indeed.
We hurried to catch up to him, my mind trying to sort out what had just happened, and what it meant. Abaddon had obviously been lying in wait for the rift to become active, which meant that either the Beast had been successful in his recruiting efforts, or the demon had just decided he'd had enough and wanted to catch the next, closest train out. The former seemed a lot more plausible.
It didn't take much of a stretch to assume that Ross had believed Abaddon would overwhelm us, especially in ambush, and get a hold on Sarah. As before, he had underestimated our own resilience. Or maybe just the square footage of the room Gervais kept his rift in. I doubt that he had considered Sarah's ability to at least confuse the demon with her Command, or the power of my right hook. I certainly hadn't.
There was one thing about it that was bothering me above everything else, and as we turned the corner and spilled out into the bone room, my fear was confirmed. The huge wooden crucifix was still foisted in the center of the room, but Avriel was gone.
"This can't be good," Sarah said, breaking a silence that stretched out too long.
I approached the cross, scanning the ground around it for any sign of dust that might be the remains of the seraph. The area around the structure was clean. He might have still been alive. He might have been in the hands of the Beast, being tortured anew by something worse than the worst demon around. I felt the guilt welling up again, and I had to close my eyes to force it back down. This is what we had come for? This is what Izak had given up his hand and would live in eternal pain for? I had felt this was a mistake, and I hated being proven right.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Is he dead?" I asked. I wasn't asking anyone in particular, and I didn't expect a reply.
"Does it matter?" Charis kicked at the ground in front of the cross. "We're not going to get what we wanted this time."
"What if he tells the Beast how to disable the Box?" Sarah asked.
"There's nothing we can do about it, but I have a feeling it will take quite a bit to break him, after what he's been through with Abaddon." The guilt again.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded up piece of papyrus. I held it up to the others. "This is all we've got now," I said. "This, and no nearby rift."
I didn't even ask Izak if he could make us a new one. The script that formed the rift circles was more intricate than I could even describe, which is why so few demons could create their own. Izak had reached in to save us without thinking, doing so with his dominant hand. His writing hand.
"Don't forget that Abaddon is topside," Charis said. "Not that I'm trying to make things worse, but we know he's in play for the Beast."
"Closest rift?" It was the only thing that mattered
right now, unless we wanted to drive back to Gervais' chateau to challenge Abaddon. After barely getting away from him, I wasn't enamored with the idea.
"We can take the train from Paris to London," Charis suggested. "It isn't the closest by miles, but it's probably the fastest to get to. Izak, what do you think?"
The fiend hadn't moved since we came into the room. He just stood with a stoic expression, holding his mutilated hand across his chest. When Charis asked his opinion, he nodded once.
"Okay," I said. "That's our move. Let's go."
We traveled back through the sewers, along the path I had last seen at a full run while trying to escape Abaddon. The sewers were a cold, dark, empty place, more so now because the demon's dark existence had destroyed every manner of life it had encountered. Even the rats hadn't been safe from him, and a sewer without rats was an especially creepy thing.
I noted the dashes of Gervais' age-old blood when we passed them, Izak guiding us back in the reverse of the trail I had followed only a few days earlier. It would have suited me much better if we could still draw blood from the archfiend. It reminded me of a line I had heard in a movie once. "If it bleeds, we can kill it," they had said. What if it didn't bleed?
We didn't take the same route all the way back. We were eighty percent of the way there when Izak pulled us to the right, along a much smaller and more damp corridor with an odor that could have dropped a skunk. A few minutes later, we were slashing through ankle-deep muck, the source of which I was afraid to ask.
"This is the way out?" I asked the demon. He didn't turn around, or make any other motion. Just a simple nod. "This is how Gervais used to go out?" Another nod.
"He hasn't used these tunnels in years," Josette said. "Why would he wander through filth now that he is Lord of the City?" Her tone was sarcastic and mocking.
The stench-ridden passage finally ended at a ladder up to a covered exit. I took the lead, climbing the rungs and focusing to push the steel lid aside. I climbed out into a small alley, down which I could see the hum of Parisian urban life moving along at its normal flow. I bent down and held out my arm, taking Sarah's hand as she reached the summit, and doing the same for Charis. I held out my hand for Izak too, but the demon ignored it, emerging from the sewer on his own.
"I won't miss that," Sarah said. Neither would I. With a thought, I willed the fetid air away and hit us with a clean, fresh blast.
"Which way from here?"
I pulled out my cell, ready to hit it up for directions. I didn't need to. Izak glamoured himself, morphing into a tourist-type in a polo shirt, khaki shorts, knee high socks and sneakers, and walked out onto the street. We hurried to keep up, matching his ridiculous garb.
I'd thought he knew where we were going, and would lead us to the train station. Instead, he reached the street and raised his good hand to his mouth, spreading his lips and blowing in a sharp whistle. We caught up just as the cab pulled up along the curb.
"Where to?" the driver asked. He was mortal. Harmless.
"We need to catch the train from Paris to London," I said. I started digging into my pants pockets, searching for funds or something I could pass as funds. Charis tapped me on the shoulder, holding up her own credit card.
"You want Eurostar?" the driver leaned over and pushed the passenger side door open.
"Yes." I didn't know if that's what it was called, but I assumed he did. I opened the door for Charis and Sarah, giving Izak shotgun. The driver eased out onto the street.
I kept my Sight focused as we drove, a radar in search of any Divine that might even consider trying to get in the way. When I didn't sense anything, I pushed the focus, extending my reach out at least a mile or two from our position. At first, I considered that we were just in a slow spot, but we were in one of the oldest cities around, a place where even the architecture oozed Divine essence. Still, the further we traveled from the sewer, north through the city, the more uncomfortable I began to feel. There was nothing. At all. It was as if every Divine living or stationed in Paris had vanished. Or fled. Or died? Maybe they had learned what was lurking in the sewers below their feet?
"There are no Divine here," I whispered, leaning over Sarah so Charis could hear.
"None?" She was surprised. I had thought maybe she had been doing the same exercise.
"No. I've been a lot of places, but I've never felt such quiet before." Even in the Scottish Highlands there had been a Touched or a Turned keeping track of the locals, spreading the good works of God by tending to the homeless, or hustling them at cards.
"The Beast?"
It was possible. Gervais was the local archfiend, which meant he could have brought all of the nearby demons away from the city to wherever he wanted them. If the demons were gone, it made sense that angels would follow. But all of them?
"The calm before the storm," Sarah said, barely loud enough to hear. The uncomfortable feeling sprouted into a darker foreboding.
We reached the Eurostar station without incident, and without any hint of Divine anywhere close by. Charis paid the driver, and for the tickets for each of us on a train that was leaving in the next half-hour. By the time we made our way from the ticket office down to the tracks, it was already boarding. Getting the first train out was a bit of luck, and I was thankful that just once today something had gone our way.
It was a smooth flow to our seats in Business Premier, two by two facing one another in the back of the car. I took up the aisle seat against the luggage closet so I could watch everything happening in the car. Izak sat across with Sarah, and his eyes stayed glued to the inter-car doors.
The quiet and ease of the departure should have helped us relax, but it only served to make us more tense. It had been too easy to get from the sewers of Paris to here. Too easy to escape from a location where the Beast knew we were going to be, headed for one he hopefully didn't. Had he been that sure that Abaddon would capture Sarah, and either catch or kill the rest of us? Would he be that foolish, after we had fought our way out of his first trap? I didn't like it, and looking around at the faces of my companions, I didn't need to ask them to know they didn't either.
The trip time from Paris to London was a little over two hours. We were fifteen minutes in when my cell began to ring. I pulled it from my pocket. Obi.
"What's the good word?" I asked, picking up.
"Hey man," Obi said. "We need to talk. Are you alone?" He sounded more tense than I felt. His voice had a minor quake that betrayed his nervousness.
"No, why?" I glanced around the seats again. Sarah was staring out the window, Izak was watching the rear doors, and Charis mumbling to herself under her breath, talking to her demonic admirer.
"Get yourself alone," he said. "This news isn't good for mixed company." He lowered his voice. "It's about Izak."
I raised an eyebrow, looked at the demon, and stood up. Sarah turned her head and titled it questioningly.
"It's Obi," I said. "Nothing to worry about. I'm just going to take a walk while we chat." Sarah was satisfied, so I started walking down the aisle. "What's going on?"
Silence.
"Obi?"
Nothing.
"Obi?" I said it a little louder. I was near the opposite end of the car.
"He can't hear you." The statement came from my left. I turned my head, and felt my heart rate jump. The teenager with the blue mohawk was smiling at me. "Have a seat." He patted the empty seat next to him.
I considered shouting for help, or trying to run, or something. There was no point. He had known where we were the entire time. He had known we had gotten away. How long he had been waiting, watching, and following, I couldn't know. I sat down.
"Not Obi?" I asked.
He chuckled. "I'm a god, kid. Changing my voice and sending it over cell frequencies is something even you could do, if you'd ever thought to try."
Which I hadn't, but it might come in handy in the future. "So, why the sit down? Decided to give up?"
I got a half-smile for t
hat. "Truth be told, I came to gloat. You got the Box, but I've got its creator. Oh, and you already know about Abaddon. I am curious though. How did you get past him?"
"You came to gloat? Aren't gods above gloating?"
He leaned back in the seat. "I would say yes, but the thing is, I despise you. Always have. Any chance to rub salt in your wounds is a chance I'm going to take. Besides, you still see this thing as some kind of adventure or something, like you have a chance in Heaven or Hell of stopping me." He leaned forward, putting himself right in my face, and spoke with a quiet intensity. "I've told you before. You can't stop me, kid. My power's been growing faster than even I expected. I guess I got a little more of that little nut's juice than I realized." A laugh. "How's she been anyway? I hear those types can be hard to handle, especially under pressure."
He wasn't just gloating, there was more to it. "She's fine," I said, returning a smile of my own. "Better than ever, if you have to know." I lowered my voice, mimicking his tone. "You think this is a done deal, that you've already won. Maybe you have Avriel, but I'm pretty sure we can manage without him. It may all be a game to you, and that's awesome. There's a reason the game gets played though. Just because you think you know who's going to win, there's always the chance of an upset."
His arrogant smile corroded, if only for an instant. Maybe he thought I didn't notice, but I had. For all his loud talk, the reason he was here wasn't because he wanted to tease me. It was because he was afraid. Afraid because we had gotten past Abaddon, and evaded him yet again. Afraid because we were proving to be more of a challenge than he had expected. Did he really even have Avriel captive? My lie-spotting power didn't work on him, so there was no way to know.
"Not today, kid," he said, regaining his composure. "Not today." He pushed back the sleeve of his suit jacket to take a look at his watch. "It's been nice chatting with you, but I'm afraid it's time for me to collect what is mine, and be on my way." He turned his head and leaned up, so he could see to the rear of the train. "And there she is. So cute in that hoodie. Maybe I'll stuff her, make her into a little trophy commemorating your abject failure. After I bleed her out, that is."
