Key to Justice

by Talia Gryphon

  “Do not look at them directly, any of you.” Osiris’s voice was expansive, his words clearly stated. “It is forbidden to look upon an Angel’s face. Even for an immortal, it would be devastating.”

  No one wanted to point out that his advice was unnecessary. No one could see shit because the visitors were glowing like the surface of the sun. Everyone’s eyes were downcast against the glare, and all were covering their ears in case the Being spoke again. Vlad managed to recover first.

  “Holy Nephilim, it is your blood, your power, which brought us into your glory. I do not regret the Gift you have given, but I ask why I was left alone with no mentor, no teacher. I might have truly done great deeds, brought the Vampire into the light long before now. Instead I went mad. I committed many foul and unforgivable acts. My very soul is stained with my deeds.”

  Before anyone could react, he blurred forward, knocking the ancient knight’s sword away, grabbing Gillian from Aleksei’s side and locking her against him. She struggled but Vlad wrapped his fingers around her neck as Aleksei and Georg started toward him.

  “Do not try to take her from me, Rachlav. Get back, Frankenstein! I will crush her throat.” Vlad’s normally beautiful voice moved into an ominous lower range, setting everyone’s teeth on edge.

  “She cannot help you.” Aleksei’s eyes were full of fear and fury. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so completely powerless.

  “Yes . . . she can.” Vlad never moved his hand from Gillian’s neck, pulling her backward with him, closer to one of the pillars. “She is my savior, Holy Ones. My redemption and your justice. Take her for your own. She is as pure as I was stained; she is as redeemed as I wish to be. Release me from my acts and exploits. Forgive me all the sins that I have committed while blessed with your power.”

  “I can’t save you, Vlad. Only you can do that.” Gillian spoke as loudly as she could against the press of his fingers on her throat. Gingerly, she lowered both of her weapons. Shooting him would only piss him off at this point.

  “I am damned! I have already spent part of eternity in hell,” he declared with his voice breaking.

  Gillian’s stomach lurched. Vlad’s eyes were wild and unfocused. His whole aura felt brittle . . . disjointed, shattering. He had truly gone over the edge into madness.

  “No one is damned for eternity, Vlad, if they truly ask for forgiveness. But you have to forgive yourself as well. Let it go. Let go of all the hate, all the resentment. What happened to you originally wasn’t your fault. The actions you took afterward are your responsibility. Justice is served if you admit to what you did, ask forgiveness and make restitution somehow.”

  Gillian prayed she wasn’t being too blunt, but she honestly couldn’t think of a single diplomatic thing to say. She knew they were at an impasse. If she couldn’t get him to listen, to accept what he needed to do for himself, to get past his egomaniacal intent, he’d surely kill her.

  The Nephilim were staying the hell out of this, the giant, glowing light fixtures. She couldn’t blame them, and she thought she understood their reasons. They weren’t supposed to interfere in the first place, way back at the beginning of time, yet they had . . . And now they were only spectators watching her being nearly strangled in front of them. Prime directive, her ass.

  There was no way Aleksei or any of her friends could get to her in time before Vlad broke her neck. Yeah, she was screwed. Unless . . .

  “Vlad, listen to me. You have seen past your hatred and your grandiose plans. I’m not an actual virgin. It was just a side effect of a healing we did. That purity you are searching for . . . well, it’s not me. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. I wasn’t a virgin, and I can’t be again. Not officially, anyway.

  “I can’t redeem you. I can’t save you, and unless you let go of me, I can’t help you. If you kill me, you will never make it out of here alive and neither will your followers.”

  She could see Helmut out of the corner of her eye. He was nodding in agreement and motioning with his hands for her to keep talking. Great, because she was rapidly running out of things to say and starting to panic. Vlad’s fingers were ever so slightly tighter on her throat.

  He looked down at her. “I do not wish to kill you. I am offering you to them as a sacrifice. An even exchange: your soul for mine.”

  “Believe me, they don’t want mine either.” She forced a smile up at him. “Good doesn’t make deals, Vlad. Only evil makes deals. These Beings are only messengers and observers. Some of them screwed up by Turning you and the others. You may have gotten a bad batch of First Blood, but the bad things you eventually did, you did on your own. You have to accept that and forgive yourself for it before you can make restitution for your actions.”

  To her surprise, he released her neck and turned her to face him. “You believe this? You believe I can be forgiven? Do you think they will go back to their God and speak for me? Gillian, do you honestly know all that I have done?”

  She opened her mouth, but one of the Nephilim spoke first. “She is correct; only evil seeks to make bargains. Those of you who were given the First Gifts—Osiris, Dionysus, Odin, Shiva, Quetzalquatal, yourself . . . there are others—you were given the Gift irresponsibly by a few rogue Rephaim. Those you call Lycanthrope, or Shifter, have the Emim to thank for their existence.

  “We, the Anakim, were sent with the Rephaim and the Emim merely to breed. We were to strengthen the Human race so it might coexist more freely with the First People.” It seemed to radiate warmth and love toward the assembled Elves, who looked as if they were alternatively resonating joy and disbelief.

  The Nephilim continued. “To show them Free Will was a glorious gift to use to their advantage. The Anakim have failed in our efforts, in our one task. We were to monitor breeding. That is all we were to do.

  “When we saw what had been done, we returned to our fold, disgraced. The Gift, once given, cannot be taken back, but we had done the unthinkable. We had essentially allowed the evolution of new races to compete with Humans. Free Will was given as a Gift to every sentient creature . . . and so it was abused, even by those you call Angels.

  “Some of us were so shamed by their catastrophic interference that they willingly Fell, living out disastrous lives here on Earth, yet continuing to wreak havoc on their own. The damage they have done by Gifting those such as yourself, Vlad Dracula, Erzsébet, Dong Zhuo, Uesugi Ken-shin, Ghengis Khan, Attila and many others is incalculable. Some, like you, went mad, but some overcame their madness and rose to great power and stature. Who is to say that they would have achieved so much without our Gifts?”

  The glowing Being paused in its speech and looked over the entire crowd. “We cannot grant absolution, salvation or redemption. That is not within our realm of authority. We will not allow nor accept sacrifice. That is forbidden. That is not justice, nor is it just.”

  Sir Georg spoke up at that point. “This one”—he pointed his sword at Vlad—“wishes a new order to arise. One which will enslave part of God’s own children. He has earned his death many times over.”

  One of the Nephilim pointed a radiant limb toward Vlad, who was facing the pointy end of Sir Georg’s sword. Gillian wisely backed away while she had the chance, putting some distance between herself and her patient. “The disk is destroyed, and so must the mechanism be. It is not for you or anyone to abuse the right to call down the Nephilim. What you have done should never have been done.

  “Georg Frankenstein, you say you want his death. There are others here who also wish it. Which of you has earned the right to be his executioner? Which of you will sacrifice yourself for vengeance? It is not justice you seek, Knight, but revenge. We cannot and will not kill him, nor will we interfere with your Free Will. That is also forbidden. Who among you will take this life, if it is to be taken?”

  Gillian was watching Vlad, who was now absolutely white with terror. Not from Georg’s sword at his throat, but from the words the Nephilim was speaking. His megalomaniacal illusions and delu
sions had just been dashed against some very big rocks. She wanted to kill him herself, in a lot of different ways, but now he was only a patient in crisis, his mind on the verge of truly shattering. His need as a seriously troubled patient overrode her desire to blow his face off.

  “I will kill him. I do not answer to a Human concept of God.” Trocar’s timing was impeccable as always.

  “You will answer in your own Halls of Justice, Elf,” the Being spoke gently. “He is incapable of defending himself now.”

  Trocar looked at Gillian, who nodded. “The Angel . . . or whatever it is, is right. Look at him. He’s having a psychotic break. You can’t kill him like this. That isn’t justice, Trocar; that’s murder. I can’t let you do it. It’s dishonorable.”

  She motioned to Daed, who hurried over with a field medical kit. “He’s catatonic. Waxy flexibility . . .” She gingerly reached out, lifted Vlad’s unresisting arm and let go. It stayed where she left it. “Can you chemically restrain him?”

  “I don’t know,” Daed admitted. “I’ve never had to do this for a Vampire before. I don’t know what to give him or how he would react to it.”

  “Well, whatever you give him, it can’t kill him. Just make sure you don’t give him a stimulant or agitate him, or we’re all going to die.” She looked around. The crowd was pressing closer to see what was going on with their leader. Diversion time.

  She rose and, without directly looking toward the Nephilim’s face, spoke up. “He wants his humanity back. He wants to be who he once was.”

  “That cannot be, Gillian.” The Being’s voice was gentle but still shook the foundations of the Earth. “He holds the key to his own humanity. He turned his back on the man he was.”

  “Forgiveness lies within?” she asked, thinking she might already know the answer.

  “Forgiveness lies in word, deed and within,” was the reply.

  “Gillian . . .” Aleksei was standing behind her, but with the massive input of stimulus and shutting her own defenses down, she hadn’t felt him.

  “Aleksei, I know this is hard for you to understand, but I can’t let him be killed like this. He . . .”

  “. . . is your patient, first and foremost,” Aleksei finished for her. He reached over to tuck an errant strand of golden hair behind her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” was all she could think of to say.

  “Do not be,” he countered and pulled her against his chest in a tight hug.

  “We’re not going to blow anyone up?” Kimber sauntered forward.

  “Not today, Whitecloud.” Gillian grinned at her around Aleksei’s flexor muscles.

  “I do not forgive!” Sir Georg was apparently a feisty Vampire in any era. “In the name of God, of St. Michael, of St. George, in the name of all you have slaughtered, used, abused and abandoned, I condemn you, Vlad Dracula, to death.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “No, wait!” Gillian shot forward, heedless of Aleksei’s and Trocar’s attempts to stop her. She stepped in front of Georg as he lifted the massive sword over his head for a killing stroke. With Vlad frozen in place behind her, she lifted both hands in a supplicant gesture to the knight, hoping like hell he would hear her out before bringing the blade down.

  Gillian’s mind was frantically whirling. Her senses were overblown from the tremendous sense of goodness she felt from the visiting Nephilim, the fury and hatred radiating from Sir Georg, the antagonism from half the crowd, the sheer terror from the other half, Aleksei’s love and worry . . . She snapped shut every mental wall she’d ever had.

  Now she could think. Closed off inside her own mind, she could filter through what was happening and reason. Georg had an old grudge, a self-righteous one. He was stuck in his own era, like many of the older Vampires, and believed that as a knight he could be judge, jury and executioner.

  Vlad had threatened all of them. He had just kidnapped her, kidnapped Tanis soon after she’d arrived in Romania, ordered Tanis’s and Aleksei’s executions four hundred years ago, sent Jack the Ripper after her after they’d rescued Tanis from London and had been planning for years to create a Vampiric Utopia at the expense of every other creature on the planet. What was she arguing about? Why was she arguing? Why couldn’t she just shut up and let events play out, or kill Vlad herself? She had more than enough reason, and no one would blame her.

  She sighed. She knew why. Because right now he was helpless and sick, incapable of putting up resistance or objections. In Marine terms, she was about to screw the pooch, but she couldn’t watch Georg execute him. It wasn’t even a remotely fair fight, and it would be dishonorable.

  “I know, better than most, exactly what he’s done. But right now he’s sick. He needs help. Look at him! What kind of justice allows you to kill him in that condition? He needs to be well enough to answer for his crimes, not slaughtered here because he happens to be helpless and you have the opportunity.”

  She didn’t know why the hell she was arguing for Vlad’s life, but there she was. Hooray for impulsivity. The good news was that Sir Georg lowered his sword and his eyes, then backed away.

  “He came to use you.” Osiris’s rich baritone rumbled over her. “He came to force all the Lords into a confrontation, just like this; to cause a literal war between Humans and Paramortals. His intention was to force every Being who is not a Vampire into servitude. He is beyond your help or even the Nephilim’s capabilities, Gillian. Why do you argue for his life?”

  “Because he . . . If we kill him . . . If we remove him and his threat because he’s helpless and it’s the easiest thing to do right now . . .” She looked helplessly at Osiris, trying to find the right words. “Then wouldn’t we be just like him?”

  She realized there was a camera in her face at that point, and shoved its operator away from her with one hand. Sneaky CNN guy.

  The Egyptian Lord smiled down at her. “It is a wonderful thing to witness one so young gaining such wisdom. It is even more wonderful to hear that wisdom shared.”

  “I think I learned that from you, back in Egypt.” She grinned up at him.

  “I am proud of you, piccola, for so many reasons, but most of all because you are absolutely right.” Aleksei’s eyes were glowing with love and pride.

  “Mercy and forgiveness are both divine gifts,” the Nephilim spoke again. “Be merciful to one another. Forgive so that you are also forgiven.” There was a sudden shard of white energy that blasted down from somewhere and destroyed the Antikythera mechanism at their feet.

  “Do not seek to call down the Angels again,” it said in parting. All of the Nephilim shimmered, then whisked upward and away, back to where they came from. It was a rather anticlimactic departure from Gill’s viewpoint.

  Now they had another problem: there were less-than-friendly shouts coming from the assembled crowd now that the Heavenly Hall Monitors had gone. “I’ve called for a vehicle,” Daed said quietly. “We have to get him out of here.”

  “We have to get us out of here.” Gillian retrieved her guns and looked around. The mass of people was pressing closer, curious.

  “Lord Osiris . . .” Another new voice. Oh boy.

  A tall, platinum blond man with piercing sky blue eyes walked through the crowd toward them. He too had what could only be described as a big-ass sword, and was wearing what looked like very primitive garb. As he came closer, Gillian could see that his clothing was very dated. He looked like a Viking, felt like a Vampire . . . or like . . .

  “Odin?” Osiris asked before she could.

  The blond giant bowed with respect to Osiris and nodded in acknowledgment to the rest of the Lords, Elves, Shifters and Vampires in the inner circle. “I am Odin. I must ask forgiveness myself from my own kind for hiding away in my own lands all this time.

  “I thought to keep my flock and my own lands from his grasp. I succeeded, yet by segregating us from the rest of you, by not being visible or engaged, I may have inadvertently helped him succeed in this psychotic plan.”

  “None of
us could have predicted this, my friend,” Dionysus said.

  “No, no one would have believed such a thing was possible,” Osiris added.

  “Could we please do this later?” Gillian butted in. “Have you all noticed that we have an angry mob about ten feet away, and that they’re not pleased with their spiritual guru going down without a fight?”

  “I will be in contact, I give you my word.” Odin gave a slight bow, then misted off into the night.

  “She is correct. We will assist you in your escape.” Mirrin barked a few words in High Elven, and his troops snapped into two perfect lines, opening a path for them through the undulating former followers of Dracula and straight back to the Marine vehicles . . . and the Associated Press, Reuters and CNN vans. Great, just great.

  Gillian shot Daed a look that would have melted metal. He shrugged weakly, then scooped an unresisting Vlad up in his arms and headed for the caravan.

  “Go, Mellina. We will hold them away from you until you are safe.”

  “Thanks, Mirrin. I owe you a big one.” She hugged her friend in gratitude, grinning at her Elven nickname. “Come back to Romania with us. We all need some comrade-in-arms downtime.”

  “We shall. Now, go.” He shooed her toward Aleksei, who was waiting for her. They hurried off toward the safety of the Marine Corps escort. Due to the recent chain of events, it didn’t occur to her or anyone else that Erzsébet, Elizabeta and Sweeney had vanished from the area and were now unaccounted for.

  The Elves waited until everyone in Gillian’s party had been located and counted off. Some of the Shifters were a little rumpled from tussling with the crowd and keeping them off Gillian, the Vampires and Dracula.

  “That was an extremely courageous thing you did, Gillian,” a delicate- looking Vampire seated next to Osiris spoke in a voice like silvery bells.