by M. R. Forbes
Then it was over. I caught the dagger between the blade and the guard and twisted, pulling it from her hands and sending it tumbling away. She tried to go after it, but I managed to put the edge against her neck and stop her cold.
"I win," I said.
She looked at me and smiled. She had a hunger in her eyes. A hunger I'd seen before, in someone else. It made me uncomfortable.
Joe's clapping got my attention.
"Bravo," he said. "My dear, I'm amazed by how much you've improved." He looked at me. "And you. You're a virtuoso."
It wasn't really me. It was Josette's connection that guided me in the fight, but he didn't need to know about that.
"So. What can I do for you, Landon?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The blue door rolled open, exposing me once more to the outside air. It was much later than when I had gone in; too much later for my taste, but the fact that I was going out with the Deliverer in hand had made it worthwhile.
It had taken a long chat with Joe to convince him of my need to borrow the weapon. In the end, he had been wise in recognizing that the Beast was a threat to all of our ideals, not just those of the Divine. It didn't hurt that the Nicht Creidim had a credo that fell pretty close to my own goals. They believed the end of the world was unavoidable, and they wanted to be sure to have the best chance of defending the remainder of humanity from the coming Divine hordes.
I wish that could have meant they would agree to more of an alliance than a loan, but their goal was to survive the Apocalypse and get rid of the Divine once and for all, not prevent it and keep living in the current state of stalemate. From my position I could see where they were coming from, even if it meant that in the end, if I were the last 'Divver' left standing, they would be out for my blood too.
"Good luck, Landon," Elyse said, putting her arms around me and leaning up. I tried to turn my head to let her kiss my cheek, but her other hand came up and held it. Her lips found mine, sending me off with soft, warm passion. "I hope to see you again."
I didn't kiss her back, but she didn't seem to notice, or care. "You will," I said, holding up the sword. "I promised I would give this back to you."
That was the one hitch in my successful retrieval of the weapon. I'd sworn to Joe I would return it once the Beast was defeated. I swore on an ancient copy of the Bible, and I'd felt the inner chains that made the promise binding. I didn't know what would happen to me if I reneged, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be pleasant. Somehow, I had to convince Adam, Kassie, and the rest of their crew that it had been necessary, and they'd have to pay Joe a visit on their own if they wanted the Canaan Blade back. The good news was it only mattered if we succeeded.
I gave Elyse one last wave, and the door rolled closed. I stood out on the empty street for a minute and took a deep breath, and then headed back to the car.
"You should've taken her up on her offer," Ulnyx said. "A body like that."
Her body had been the work of a higher power. I was surprised they had shown none of the physical signs I associated with the inbreeding Max had claimed.
"Shut up," I replied.
"There was something about her," Josette added. "Not her looks, Were, before you comment. It was the way she fought. If she were a Divine and appeared that young, I could understand, but she was all of twenty years old?"
"I thought the same thing," I said, remembering her speed and skill. "I just assumed it was her Divver kit."
"It may be," she replied.
It also may not.
"Sure took you long enough," Adam said when I reached the car. "I've been stuck here with this one for hours. It's one thing that he's a demon. It's another that he never stops talking."
Max turned around. "You should appreciate my good humor, instead of sitting there pouting."
"I wasn't pouting, I was thinking."
"Guys," I said. I held up the sword. "Mission accomplished. Adam, it's time to fly."
The angel got out of the car, his eyes fixed to the sword. "May I?" he asked, reaching for it. I pulled it back.
"Sorry, Adam, but I'm not letting this thing out of my hands until Abaddon is disintegrating in front of me. I've been screwed too many times."
Adam nodded, but he didn't look happy.
"There he goes pouting again," Max said. "Chin up, my good man. You'll be caressing that lovely soon enough. How many did you have to kill? Were they tough? So many questions, so little time."
I turned the blade over so I could hold it against my body, and lifted my arms for Adam to get a grip. "I didn't have to kill any of them, but yeah, they were really tough. See you around, Max. Thanks."
Adam hooked his arms under mine and bent slightly. Max put his fingers to his forehead and gave me a mock salute. "Give 'em Hell. Or Heaven. Or whatever kills 'em the best," he said. Then we were going up.
I didn't get quite as much enjoyment out of the second flight as I had the first. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was headed for a direct confrontation with the most powerful demon on Earth; a demon that even Izak ran away from. I could still remember the cold feelings of hopelessness just being near him had given me. It wasn't something I was looking forward to. I gripped the Deliverer tighter.
"You won't be able to get too close," I said to Adam once he started descending. There was a thick layer of clouds here that left us blinded to the world around us. "You'll have to drop me."
I wasn't looking forward to that either. With the bracelet on, I couldn't slow my descent. All I could do was accept the broken bones and pain, and wait for it all to heal. It would be an excruciating and vulnerable couple of minutes, during which I was dependent on getting lucky that Abaddon wouldn't notice, or couldn't reach me in time.
"Are you sure?" he asked. I could tell by his voice he thought I was crazy.
It was crazy, but also necessary. I wasn't sure what would happen to the seraph if he got too close. "Positive."
The clouds gave way about a thousand feet over the monastery. Immediately I could see why they had chosen it. It sat on a level mountaintop, at least five hundred feet over the surrounding landscape, making it a difficult proposition for someone like me to approach unseen. Except, they hadn't been planning on me taking the Angel Express.
The second thing that registered was the desolation and destruction of everything around it. From up here, I could see the surrounding land, and the green of verdant field and forest. Until it got within a half-mile of the monastery. There, everything was brown and dead. Everything.
I knew there would be no other Divine, save for Abaddon and Avriel. I knew there would be no people either, that they would have been killed or have fled. Would they even know what had done it? To mortals, Abaddon was plague and pestilence, not a demon with a shrouded but very real face. Just more casualties in the hidden wars raging around them.
I could tell when Adam began feeling Abaddon's effects. His descent lost control for just a hair in time, his body seizing up and his grip on my arms tightening. He didn't let me go then, he kept trying to go further. We were still seven or eight hundred feet above the ground.
"It's time for me to drop," I said.
"I'll get you closer," he replied.
"Adam, let me go." I tilted my head so I could see his face. He was getting pale, and his forehead was beginning to sweat.
"I can get you down."
"Dammit, he's going to know I'm coming, you idiot," I shouted. I shoved my elbow back into his stomach, and he let go with a grunt. Trying to ignore my velocity, and block out the fear of the pain I knew was coming, I focused on making myself Sight neutral. I could only hope the demon hadn't caught me already.
To say it hurt would be understating the pain of hitting the ground from a five hundred foot free-fall. I did get lucky to land in a somewhat soft spot, my drop broken by a few branches of a tree before I smacked into the soft ground. I had held the Deliverer point down, knowing it would sink into the earth, which was better than having
it go flying off to wherever.
I felt the bones break. Ribs, arms, legs, spine. The shock ran up my entire body, and I think it may have even caused some brain damage, because my eyesight dimmed and everything felt off for a minute. I bounced once, high enough that when I let go of the sword I could see it buried in the ground to the hilt, and then laid there.
I did my best to keep my focus, to hide myself from Sight and beg myself to heal. In the moment I had dropped contact with the blade, I could feel the dark helplessness of Abaddon's power circling around me, trying to catch me in its emptiness.
"That rocked it pretty hard," Ulnyx said with a laugh.
"You don't feel the pain," I replied. "So, shut up."
I laid there for three or four minutes, looking out for the demon. In this case, his power was a benefit, because I would see the dark tendrils arriving long before the actual creature did. It was a tense few minutes, but my body mended itself, and Abaddon didn't appear.
I pushed myself up, pulling the Deliverer from the ground as I did. I was only a dozen feet or so away from the monastery walls. I could see the gold towers rising above them. Was Avriel somewhere in one of those?
The place was larger than I had expected. How long would it take me to find the angel, even if I did defeat Avriel? Time was still an issue. Even though the Beast couldn't find me now, I knew he was doing something in Mumbai, and I didn't need to know what to know it wasn't good.
I skirted the wall until I came to a tower with a porch and an open doorway. I stowed Excalibur and shifted, pulling on Ulnyx's power and giving myself the size and strength I needed to leap the distance. Huge claws dug in on the floor, and I climbed up, shifting back once I reached the doorway.
The inside was as stunning as I expected, filled with a mix of ancient oriental architecture and modern renovations. It was also deserted, dark, and cold. Dead monkeys lay huddled together on the floor, along with a pair of dead people. They were frozen on the ground, their mouths open, as though they had died of sheer terror.
I kept walking, letting go of the alterations on my Divine signature. Now that I was whole and inside, I wanted Abaddon to find me. It would make everything much easier.
It didn't take the demon long. I had only just reached the main courtyard when the pitch black tendrils of his power began snaking along the sides of the buildings and covering the sky in unnatural darkness.
"Diuscrucis," it said, the word reverberating through the tendrils. "Did you come to die?"
I couldn't see him, not yet, but his power was wrapping around me, trying to trap me. I held the Deliverer a little tighter, feeling it warm in my palm. The runes along the surface of the blade began to glow in a soft white light, pushing back against the demon's power.
"You know why I came," I said. "Give me Avriel, and I'll leave without a fight."
His laughter shook the entire building, spreading a film of dust and mortar. "You won't be leaving. There is no need for me to fight."
The tendrils moved closer bunching in, surrounding me, placing me in a cocoon of total darkness. I couldn't see anything around me. I couldn't see anything except the sword, glowing in my hand, preventing me from losing myself to the despair and disease Abaddon wielded like a sword.
"The Beast will destroy you too, once he has the power. You aren't immune because you're strong." It was probably pointless, but I didn't think it could hurt to try.
"Perhaps," Abaddon said. "But ask yourself this, diuscrucis. Where do you see yourself in ten thousand years?"
I was ready for a fight. Now I paused. I'd never thought about such a distant future. I'd only been here for five years. Heck, I wasn't even through a mortal lifetime yet. Was Abaddon that old? Older? What was the future like? What would it be, when the whole world had changed? If I had tired of the fighting and the killing in five years, where would I be in one hundred? Where would I be in ten thousand?
"No smart answer?" he asked. "No idealistic retort? Maybe now you begin to understand what the Beast has to offer? Torturing the angel has its enjoyment, but even that will grow old in a millennia or two."
He showed himself then, stepping out into the open, his body barely visible to me through the shroud of panic he threw out around him.
"This isn't about me," I said. "This is about the billions of people who live here."
"Think, child. One hundred years is a millisecond to those who cannot die. One hundred years and nearly every single person you are protecting today will be dust. All any of them lose is one hundred years. What do you gain?"
Rebecca had tried to recruit me. Rachel had tried to recruit me. Even Sarah had in her own way. None had made a case quite like Abaddon, but how could they? He was a destroyer, like the Beast. In fact, he had been made in that mold. He understood life and time in a way that they couldn't. What did I gain, fighting against them and surviving? More war? More killing? More death?
"Landon," Ulnyx said, trying to get my attention.
Ten thousand years. Could I picture doing anything for ten thousand years?
"Landon," Josette said.
"You're hesitation proves what you know to be true," Abaddon said. "Mortals think in such short terms, because it is all they have. You are a Divine. There is a bigger picture for you to look at."
I was looking at it, and I didn't like what I saw. Emptiness, hopelessness, sameness. Death, destruction, loss.
"Landon," Ulnyx and Josette shouted, together.
It was like an electric shock. I looked at the Deliverer, hot in my hands, the once glowing scripture turning black. Somehow, he was overpowering it.
I closed my eyes and focused, pushing my own power to my hands, trying to bypass the bracelet and feed it directly through into the sword. It must have worked, because the darkness began to retreat again. Abaddon shrieked, and attacked.
How do you fight a creature shrouded in blackness, when you could never be sure of where his actual form was? He had dug his claws deep into my shoulder and thrown me to the ground before I had a chance to find out.
The Deliverer wasn't enough to keep him from hurting me, I realized. Not when I had my hands full holding off the life sap that came from his innate design. I rolled to my feet in time to hop back away from the darkest part of him, and then struck out at it with the sword. It sliced only through air.
"Your weapon is impressive," Abaddon said, shifting himself so I could see his fanged mouth, his dark skin and sharp red eyes. "I have not seen its like before."
"That's because you were trapped in the Box, like a chump," I said, focusing and leaping towards one of the walls, avoiding a black blade that had shot from somewhere within his shroud. I bunched my feet against it and shot towards him, stabbing downwards where his head had been.
Except it wasn't there anymore. A leg came up at me, but I blocked it with the flat of the blade and spun myself over, landing on my feet. I jumped at him again, the Deliverer raised to strike from directly overhead.
He flowed out of the way like water, and a claw came out and caught me in the chest, holding me impaled. I coughed on blood filling my lungs, but turned the blade and lashed out at him anyway. He let me go, sidestepping the weapon.
"It has been so long since anyone has challenged me like this," he said. "It's an honor."
I wasn't expecting that. I brought the blade up and deflected two more strikes, and then went back on the offensive. I could never seem to get close, his dark, shrouded form slipping away as if it were carried by the wind.
"Just freaking die," I shouted, launching another flurry of thrusts and slashes, searching for him within the darkness.
He only laughed, and then clawed my face, sending me tumbling backwards.
"One last true challenge before the end," he said, suddenly sounding tired. "Thank you, diuscrucis."
I couldn't see him, because he'd ripped out my eyes. I couldn't See him, because of the bracelet. I held the Deliverer in my hand, but I knew it was over, because he would kill me before I h
ealed. We both knew it.
The bracelet. It wasn't doing anything to help me right now, but I couldn't pull it off without dropping the sword. Could I survive his power on my own for that long? I had no idea, but I needed to find out.
I let the hilt fall from my fingers, and reached over to the bracelet, ripping it from my wrist and dropping it. I focused, fighting against the despair and desperation, sure that he was right on top of me. I could feel the pressure against my soul, needling in to tear it apart.
I reached for the Deliverer again, but a clawed hand caught mine and held it. "I will enjoy the taste of your essence," Abaddon said. I could feel his breath against my face, and my eyes began to regain themselves.
Ten thousand years. At least I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. I got a blurry view of the demon's face right on top of mine, opening to literally eat my soul.
A gust of wind, a loud crunch, and Abaddon was gone.
I grabbed the sword and got up. Adam was laying against a wall, covered in blood. Abaddon was near him, getting back to his feet. I didn't waste any time.
"Sorry to be less than honorable," I said, grabbing his neck with my free hand. "But... you know." I brought the Deliverer forward, into empty air. "What the...?"
There was a dark spot on the ground, like a pool of spilled oil. The black tendrils of his power were retreating into it, condensing into a shrinking point of evil.
"He's retreating," Adam said. "Back to Hell."
The angel was still against the wall, and he looked completely dazed. He stared back at me with one eye open, the other with a gash over it, hissing from the demon's poison.
I ran over to him. "I guess it's your lucky day," I said, handing him the sword. As soon as he took it in his hand, the wound stopped sizzling, and began to heal.
He looked at the Deliverer, his eyes wide. "Amazing," he said, with reverence.
