"Maybe he ran out of fresh ideas?" Charis asked.
How many times had we died now? How many times had we watched Clara be killed? Since we had uncovered her secret, she had returned over and over again, bringing our power with her, and trying to help us escape from Ross.
"I don't see Clara," I said, spinning around. The deck was empty except for us.
"We're getting better at this, Landon, but this can't be all there is. We're still losing."
"I know." I leaned in and kissed her forehead. "We're getting stronger. Did you see his face the last time, when Clara bit him? He didn't expect us to get this far."
"We have eternity."
"Not if I can help it."
I'd been committing a lot of those thoughts to memory, too. In the beginning, it had seemed the only hope for us lay in Sarah and Dante to find a way to destroy the Box, and us with it. But without any way to understand the passage of time out of this place, I was more resigned than ever to be locked in this eternal spawn, die, repeat. It helped that we were slowly getting stronger, and living longer between resets, but the emotional scars remained. The torment, the anguish. It didn't fade. It never faded.
Still, there had been signs that we might not need outside help to overcome him. The fact that we were remembering more and more, and faster. The fact that Clara was getting stronger with each regeneration. Charis' realization that the Box would never have held him long without us. The balance, she said, and I knew it was true. I wasted a whole cycle of this charade railing about how Malize screwed us, because he knew what would have to be done and didn't say so. Complaining about it was a waste now, but if I ever got some more face time with him, I would be sure to speak with my fist.
"The balance can be tipped," I said. "The same as it can in the real world. We can overcome it, and destroy Ross here."
"Except we don't know what the consequences will be, or if they can reach beyond this prison."
"As in destroy the whole world?"
"Yes. Or worse."
Like, destroy everything. That was the fear, but there was a wrench in that consideration. "Do you think he's going to hesitate to tip things his way if he has the chance? That's what he wants after all. The results will be the same."
Charis smiled. "Better us than him, right?"
I returned her grin. "As far as I'm concerned it is. Maybe if we break him, break this place, we can get out?"
The elevator announced its arrival, and we turned to see who would be joining us. The doors slid aside. Clara.
"It took you long enough," I said to her.
She rolled her eyes at me and stepped out onto the floor. Before, she was a child of four or five. Now she was at least nine.
"That's your fault, daddy," she replied.
"Where is he?"
She looked back toward the elevator, and then ran to the windows. "Not in here. Not out there. I've hidden us from his eyes."
"You can do that?" Charis asked.
She giggled. "No, of course not. You can."
That was a new development. It wasn't like Clara was a conscious thing for us. She was our connection, which was only getting stronger the longer we were trapped in here. My opinion was that she grew at the same rate as our trust, understanding, and love. That she seemed to be able to sense Ross... I wasn't sure what that meant yet.
"Don't be so surprised," Clara said. "These are the things that he knows nothing about. Things he doesn't understand." She was part of me, of course she knew my mind. "He's stronger than you. His power is ninety percent of what's in here. Still, what you share is lost to him. Even one percent of that can hold its own against one hundred percent destruction."
Lost to him? Was she suggesting...
"No time, daddy," Clara said. She took my hand, and then Charis'. "Let's go."
"Where are we going?" Charis asked.
"Away. We're hiding right now, but we can't stay. He'll find us if we stand still."
"I don't want to run from him," I said.
She sighed like I was the dumbest person in the world. "We aren't running from him, daddy. We're leading him."
Leading him? "Where?"
"Circles," she replied.
Charis laughed. "The longer we survive, the stronger we get. We just need to evade him until we're too powerful for him to stop."
"You get a cookie," Clara said.
"Okay, so how do we keep moving? Where do we go?"
Clara smiled, the way only a precocious nine year old could. "Memories, mommy."
"What memories?"
"Yours."
The elevator doors dinged, and Clara twisted her head to look at them. "He's fast." She grabbed our hands, and pulled us towards the glass windows.
I pulled back. "Clara? There's nowhere to go."
The doors opened. I was expecting Ross. I got Abaddon.
"Diuscrucis," he said in his cold voice. Black tendrils of despair crept out away from him, slipping along the floor and ceiling towards us.
I felt the fear. I could tell Charis did too. "This can't be real," I said. Abaddon had fled to Hell.
I couldn't see his body through the cloak of black power. The center of him was a swirling mass of impenetrable emptiness.
"This can't be real," I repeated.
Clara pinched my hand, and I looked down at her. "Time to go," she said. She turned back to the window, and the glass shattered outward, letting in the heavy gusts of air that owned these heights. "What are you afraid of?" she asked me. "You've done this before."
Abaddon was coming closer, moving out of the elevator towards us. His darkness spread, wrapping around the rest of the windows and threatening to choke us off. "He isn't real," I said again. Maybe it was time to go, but I wasn't going to run away until I proved myself right.
I found Ross' power so much more easily now. I pulled it into me, and then squeezed Clara's hand and took only a single thread of energy from her. I wrapped it around the energy, and threw it forward at Abaddon, pushing with my will for the glamour to be lifted.
The entire facade fell away, leaving Ross standing right in front of the elevator in his pinstriped suit and sunglasses, an old-fashioned Tommy gun pressed against his hip.
"The game's starting to get interesting," he said.
We couldn't survive getting shot here. It was a good thing Charis had already made the decision to jump for me. I felt Clara's hand give a hard tug, and I gripped it tighter in response. I could almost see the bullets go flying overhead as I tumbled backwards out of the window.
If we couldn't survive getting shot, how were we going to survive a thousand foot fall? I kept my grip on Clara's hand and tried not to scream. The sky rushed away from me, and a few seconds later I saw Ross stick his head out of the broken window.
"Oyster, sir?"
What? I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to get my brain back up to speed. The tower was gone, the sky was gone, Ross was gone. I was on my feet... somewhere. A tuxedoed server was holding a silver tray of oysters a little too close to my face.
"Uh... no, thank you," I said, taking a step back The waiter was expressionless as he moved on. "Where the hell am I?" I whispered.
"Maine," Charis said, appearing behind me. "Seventeen-seventy-five. Nice tux, by the way."
She looked strangely gorgeous in a period proper gold hued dress with a modest hoop and lots of embroidery. Her hair was pinned up on her head, and she had an ease about the whole thing that made me a little uncomfortable. I looked down at myself, noting the black wool tuxedo coat and pants. It made me even more uncomfortable.
"General Montgomery?" I asked. I had all of her memories. I had a guess where we were.
"Yes."
Charis would spend the night in the arms of one of Montgomery's top officers. Two days later, the good General would lead a militia north into Canada to try to take Quebec. He would fail, in no small part to her sending advance warning to the Canadian and British troops stationed there.
"You we
re wearing a red dress," I said. I looked out past her, to where uniformed officers of the American militia were kibitzing with their patrons. We were in a small mansion belonging to a local businessman. It had a nice big downstairs for entertaining, and six bedrooms upstairs, which according to my memories were also being used for entertaining. Red dress Charis was likely in one of those rooms, without her red dress.
"Don't get jealous," she said. "This stuff happened two centuries ago, when I was still alive."
"I'm a little torn," I replied. "You were aiding the enemy, after all."
She laughed. "Your enemy, not mine."
"Not really mine either. I wouldn't be born for a long time after this. It's kind of crazy to be here now."
I looked around the room again. "Where's Clara?"
It was as if she was just waiting for us to look for her. She stepped out from the midst of the gathering, in a frilly white dress, her hairstyle matching Charis'. She came up to us and took my hand.
I squatted down so we were at eye level. Charis joined me. "Now what?" I asked.
"He'll try to change things, to undo what we've made," she said. "It will be hard for him, because the memories bind us and give us strength. They're more real to us than anything he can conjure up, and true creation is hard to destroy. He doesn't really know how to make, he just fakes it. The cracks are everywhere if you know where to look."
"He found us pretty fast in New York," Charis said.
"He knows New York well. It will be harder for him to find us here."
I didn't completely understand the rules of the game of hide and seek we were playing, at least not on the surface. Clara was an extension of us, so there had to be some base part of ourselves that knew what was going on.
"So we just hang out here until he catches up?"
She nodded. "Yes, daddy. Then we have to run again, and we have to be quick. Leave too soon and he'll be able to follow right behind. There is no leaving too late."
I knew what she meant. I could still hear the cracking of the Tommy gun ringing in my ears. "How do we know if it's the right time?"
"Things will change," she said. "That's the clue. It's the right time when we see him. We have to all be together, not touching but close by. Think of a memory. Any memory to get us away, but detailed is better. It makes us harder to find."
"Okay, let's just concentrate on staying together then," I said. "What happens if he kills us?"
She rolled her eyes at me again. It was super cute, but I hated when she did that. "He didn't know you could do this. Now that he does..."
She didn't need to finish. I got it. He wouldn't let us live long enough to remember again. Maybe he wouldn't let us live at all. I could picture an endless cycle of rebirth and murder, from now until never.
"So the longer we survive the more powerful we get, right?" I asked. "The more powerful we get, the easier it will become to defeat him."
"Yes, and no. Remember the balance, daddy. Always remember the balance."
The answer gave me a chill. I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "Thanks, Clara." She was so real sometimes.
I stood back up and looked out at the assembly of soldiers and citizens. There was nothing to do but wait for Ross to show his face. When he did, we would leave.
"Any particular memory you'd like to visit?" I asked Charis. I was trying not to think too much about this one.
She laughed. "How about the time you made out with Tammy Robinson?"
I could feel my face turning red. "I was sixteen," I said.
"It was very cute. Your first chance to get to first base."
She was patronizing me. "I've learned a lot since then."
"You guys," Clara said, tugging on my pants. "Let's get something to eat."
Charis laughed again. Could it be possible that we might actually be able to enjoy ourselves in this place, even if only for a few fleeting minutes at a time? It was nice to not have Ross right on our tails for once.
The three of us wandered through the house, drawing curious glances from the others because our kid was the only kid around. She didn't seem to notice, using her nose to track us to a table of American classics. Pie, turkey, potatoes; it was like the original Thanksgiving. It smelled great.
"You don't really need to eat," I said.
She looked up at me and stuck out her tongue. "Daddy, think in metaphor." She grabbed a loaf of bread and took a bite from the end. "I don't want to have to spell everything out to you." Her words were mumbled with a mouth full of food, but I heard them all the same.
"Quite a little darling," I said to Charis.
"I think she's perfect," she replied, her eyes holding mine.
"I never thought of you as the motherly type." Not that I ever thought of myself as a father either.
"Me neither, but I see you and I together when I look at her. I like that."
Together, but not quite. Being in the Box hadn't exactly left us any time to do anything even close to what I had shared with Tammy Robinson. Still, I knew what she meant. Watching her die so many times had been pure agony.
A murmur started to rise from the living room, and before I knew what was happening Charis... Red Dress Charis came running into the room, holding her dress wrapped around her and looking back over her shoulder. She slammed right into me, her face snapping up to look into mine, her eyes wide with fear.
"Get out of my way," she said, looking backwards again.
"Landon, this never happened," the real Charis said.
Ross was here already? I pushed fake Charis out to arm's length.
"Let me go," she demanded. Her foot whipped out into my leg. I felt the pain of my kneecap shattering beneath the force, and I fell to the ground. Fake Charis' eyes narrowed and flared an angry red.
"Not so fast," Charis said. She had grabbed a serving fork from the table, and she jammed it into her counterpart's neck, and then threw her across the spread.
I couldn't heal here, not like I had outside the Box. Charis lifted me up and put her shoulder beneath mine so I could stay off my leg.
"Excuse me, sir?" The waiter was back. Charis didn't wait for him to do anything surprising. She slammed the flat of her hand into his nose, and he flopped backwards with a groan.
"Is it time?" she asked Clara.
She was still chewing on the bread, taking smaller bites and looking around. "Not yet."
"Why don't you heal your father, like you did in the house?"
"Sorry, mommy. I can't. It isn't safe."
What did that mean? "Let me go," I said. "I can manage." She slipped out from under me, and I brought my weight down gently. It hurt, but I had a lot of experience with pain. "We need to get out of here."
I heard the sound of a musket hammer drawing back. There was a pop, and a ball of iron whizzed by my head. I found the shooter across the room, a soldier with a wide grin.
"Really? Not yet?"
She smiled up at me. I noticed a couple of her front teeth were missing. "Okay, we can go now," she said. "We need to get out that door." She pointed back at it, only ten feet away.
Ten feet was nothing unless your leg was broken. He pulled the hammer back again and took aim.
The waiter's silver platter was resting a few feet away. With a thought, I brought it up in front of us, just in time to catch the second bullet. I started limping backwards, until Charis scooped me up and tossed me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The entire house burst into flames around us.
"Going somewhere?" Ross asked. I felt him tug on the platter, and I countered it, showing him that I could.
"See you around," I said. I felt Charis shift as she kicked open the burning door. A wash of frigid air flowed in around us.
"Enjoy it while it lasts, kid," he said. He let go of the platter, ducking under it as it sped by. He crouched there while the flames engulfed him, his face framed by the fire.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rebecca
I sat on the edge of the bed
in a small room at the Hilton Hotel, right outside of JFK airport. I cradled the scripted stone that held the Box on my lap, running my finger along it, tracing the lines of pulsing blue power that proved that Landon and the Beast were still in there. I tried not to think about what he might be going through, or how much pain he might be in. I tried to concentrate on what would happen next.
The Leaf was quiet, but its range was limited. Ken had left a more conventional motorcade in Amagansett, three Cadillac Escalades to transport the Nicht Creidim back to base with their prize. I took the one that Ken held the keys to. It was too bad none of them would be coming back to claim the others.
The alone time while driving had led me back to considering how easily I had killed Elyse's cousin. He had redeemed me, had He not? I was doing His will, and His work. So why did I feel like there was a part of me that was still a demon, and a monster? The thoughts almost brought me to tears, and to questions I could only resolve with faith in place of understanding. I believed in my goal. I believed in my purpose. It had to be enough.
They would miss Ken's return, of course. They would send people out to discover what had gone wrong. They would find Elyse's knife in his chest, assuming Ulnyx and Sarah didn't hide or destroy the bodies. They'd miss the Escalade too, which is why I'd driven it to La Guardia, set it on fire, and then taken a cab to the other airport. They'd figure that out eventually, but not before I was on my way to... where?
I hadn't known, so I checked into the hotel and sat in the room there, holding the Box like it was a baby. I'd taken a little more time for myself, to be alone with it and think. To allow a minor calm before the major storm I knew was soon to come. Every party who knew anything about the Divine or the Beast wanted their hands on the Box, and now the only thing between it and them was me. And while I was almost indestructible, I was still dependent on mortals to be able to do much of anything.
One last deep breath, and I put the Box across the room, out of my own easy reach. I returned to the bed and reduced my grip on Elyse, allowing her to regain her body while I clung to her like a parasite.
"You did it," she said. She started to get up, but I clamped down on her again, and made her sit.
Bound (The Divine, Book Four) Page 8
