Bound (The Divine, Book Four)

by Forbes, M. R.

  "Leave it over there. We need to talk."

  "You want to know what to do now, correct?" She sounded amused.

  "It would be helpful. I'm not convinced this isn't the part where you betray me. You don't really need me anymore."

  "Don't sell yourself so short, Rebecca. I'm not going to betray you, and I do still need you quite a bit. You're crazy if you don't believe Sarah will catch up to us, or at least has the potential to. Besides, he's insisted that if I'm to get what I want, we can't do it without you."

  "Who has insisted?" I had searched her memories and there was nothing in there about her supposed clandestine meetings with an anonymous tipster. Or maybe it was in there, but she was somehow blocking it from me. I was never completely sure if I was taking control or if she was giving it.

  "You'll find out soon enough. For now, I'd appreciate a shower, a new pair of panties, a meal, and a little sleep. My head is killing me. Four hours, no more, and then we need to be on the next flight out to Peru."

  "Peru?"

  "Cusco, to be specific. That is where I was supposed to meet him once we'd recovered the Box."

  "This contact of yours, how do you know you can trust him?"

  "I have no choice. Neither do you, and neither does Landon."

  "You do have a choice. Dante said they had a way to destroy to Box. You could let him do it. It would solve your problem."

  She shook her head. "Dante is relying on a demon who was banished from Hell. Do you think I'm about to trust that over the person who has been right about everything so far?"

  I couldn't argue. We had the Box, which meant I had control over Landon's fate. All I had to do was hang onto it. "Fine. I'll do it your way."

  I wrapped myself around her again, taking away her control and relegating her to the subconscious. Controlling her was becoming so easy, it was almost as if I were alive again, and her body was my body. I stripped off my clothes, grabbed a fresh pair of undies from the pack, and went into the bathroom. Elyse might have had a headache, but I shut that part of her down, closing off the nerves so that I didn't feel a thing. I washed off the salt and sand and blood under a hot torrent of water, and afterwards wrapped a towel around me and ordered room service. I was nodding off when it arrived.

  The sound of the knocking surprised me, and I jumped to my feet ready for a fight. The aggression turned to embarrassment as I went over to the door and opened it for the porter. He was an older man with a thick mustache and a pot belly. He stared at me, his face flushing, before pushing the food into the room.

  "Bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a soda," he said. "Where do you want it?"

  I motioned to the center of the room, and he pushed the cart in. His eyes lingered on my bare legs.

  "I have some clothes that need to be laundered immediately," I said. "Can you take them, or do I need to call for someone else?"

  He arranged the meal on his cart. "Hey, cool lamp. Where'd you get it?"

  I saw he was looking at the Box, which I had been either tired or stupid enough to leave on the table. I was surprised he could see it at all.

  "An antique store in Montauk. Can you take the clothes?"

  He turned his head back to me, his eyes tracking top to bottom again. "I don't think we have launder services on site. We can't get anything back in less than twenty four hours. Did you say Montauk? I have a nephew who lives out there. Which store? He loves antiques, he'll be pissed he missed this one."

  He could see the Box, and he was showing a little too much interest in it. "You left the food. If you can't help me with the clothes, please see yourself out." I leaned down and back, my hand searching for a knife. He was making me uneasy.

  He put out his hands. "What, no tip?"

  I couldn't find a weapon, so I stepped towards him and put my hand on his throat instead, shoving him up against the wall. "Are you going to leave, or do I need to kill you to get rid of you?"

  His face turned white, and his body fell limp. "No... no... I'm so... sorry. I just wanted... you know... a tip. I'll go... please... please just let me go."

  I released my grip and backed away. He started running for the door. Once he was gone I slumped down on the bed, my appetite lost.

  I'd only had the Box for a number of hours, and already I was paranoid. Just because he was Awake didn't mean he was dangerous. He might not have even known he could See the Divine. Not everyone did. Besides, how could anybody possibly have found me so fast? I cursed myself for my foolishness. I had spent five years in Hell, and here I was falling apart at the first sign of trouble. Maybe instead of rejecting that part of me, I should embrace it? It might be the only thing that could help me in the hours and days to come.

  There was one thing I was sure of. The sooner I got to Peru, the better.

  I put the dirty, salty clothes back on, shoved the Box into my pack, and headed for the door. I should have just gone to the airport in the first place, and spoken to Elyse there, instead of wasting my time in the hotel room. I would't make that mistake again. I could eat and sleep on the plane.

  There was no point in checking out. I put the glove to my face, glamouring myself into a fat old woman before I fled the room, taking my time heading through the hallway and down into the lobby. When the elevator doors opened at the bottom, I passed by the still-scared porter, who had wrangled up a security guard. I had no doubt the front desk was on the phone with the local police, and depending on what was said, I was sure the Nicht Creidim would be back on the scent in a matter of minutes.

  I exited the hotel and grabbed the first cab I could, sliding into the back seat and slamming the door closed. I needed to get out of New York by land. The airports would be crawling with too many teams from too many sides before I could sneak a flight out. Which direction would they not expect me to go?

  "Penn Station," I said. I could get a train from there to anywhere, and the crowds would be thick enough to keep me obfuscated.

  A grin in the rearview mirror was my reply. The driver's head dipped, and I saw a flash of red behind his brown eyes. "My lucky day."

  He didn't know who I was. He couldn't have known what Elyse was. I'd made sure to cover the Eye, and he shouldn't have been able to see through the glamour anyway.

  "Excuse me?"

  I saw his smile again. "Penn Station. It's a good fare." He turned his head to look at me, his smile widening even more, revealing a set of sharp incisors. A vampire.

  "Hungry?" I asked, catching his eye.

  He returned his gaze to the road. "You don't smell like a Divine. I don't See a Divine, and you don't look like a Divine. Glamoured?"

  "Two pieces of advice. Mind your business, and keep driving. I'm not an angel."

  He laughed, but didn't turn around again. He was silent for a couple of minutes, but I guess he couldn't help himself. "You aren't a demon either. Not a were, not a vamp... hell, you aren't even one of those newbie pricks that have been popping up recently, screwing everything up for the rest of us."

  "Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

  "Not directly. Hey, I'm not trying to butt into your business. I'm just making some small talk with a fellow tortured soul, or whatever kind of soul you have. I'm not going to get to feed on you, I might as well chat. My name's Randolph, by the way."

  Randolph. I searched my memories. "Not Randolph Hurst?"

  That made him turn his head again. "Do I know you?"

  I tried to keep my face from betraying me. Randolph had been one of Merov's associates, in charge of the blood trade inside city limits. He'd always been a cordial vamp, a thinker instead of a fighter. Give him a sword, he'd just as soon prick himself with it. Give him a dollar, he'd turn it into a million within a week.

  I'd killed Merov and Landon had shut down the exchange, and then some. It seemed now Randolph was stuck working as a cabbie. Or at least he was posing as a cabbie to assist himself with some other scheme.

  "No, but I know you."

  For someone like Randolph, that was the
best way to break any thoughts he may have had about finding a way to profit from me.

  "Demon, then," he said, "and not a minor creature like myself. There haven't been too many of your type around New York since the assault on that church. It's been great for business, but you know how some of our kind can be. Take away the leadership, and they resort to all kinds of bull. The angels being busy with the bigger fish hasn't helped on that front. They used to be great for keeping the less subtle fiends out of the way. Anyway, you come to set up a new hierarchy? If you have the guts and the power to do it, and you know who I am, then you know how I can help you."

  He would be able to help me if that was my goal. He had connections to the entire global network of vampire families, and could swing me anything I needed. Except the one thing I did need. "I'm just passing through right now, but I may take you up on that offer later. If you want to get in good with me, tell me more about the angels and the 'newbie pricks', as you put it."

  "Promises don't mean anything to us, you know that. You'll have to give me something of value. Information?"

  I wouldn't have expected Randolph to be that easy. "The true diuscrucis is holed up in Montauk," I said. "I've seen her."

  His face appeared in the mirror again, and I could see the dollar signs in his eyes. "How do I know you aren't lying to me?"

  "I'll swear it on blood, if you pull over."

  He didn't pull over. "We can work it out when we get to Penn. The angels have been gone since the church thing. Not a single seraph has stepped foot in New York, not one. Demons are going nuts, taking humans at will, and getting more bold every day. I don't know where the hell they are, I mean, one seraph can do a pretty damn good job here, considering the mess the other diuscrucis left us in, before he got trapped."

  I wasn't sure if he had known about that. "You don't know where they went?"

  "I've been asking around, just out of curiosity. I've heard things are worse in other places where there are still archfiends lording over the rabble, and that the ranks of angels have gotten thin enough they can't be everywhere at once. The diuscrucis took care of Reyzl and Merov, so there's a huge power vacuum in these parts."

  Not enough angels to cover a city like New York? They were in worse shape than I had thought.

  "Crazy times," I said. "What about the newbies?"

  "You think the stuff about the seraphim is crazy? This is crazier. Ever since the diuscrucis got trapped, we've been getting more and more mortals turning up with pointy teeth, calling themselves vampires and trying to enlist in the families. Most of them we kill, but there have been a few who were strong enough to get in. It's not just vampires either. I've even seen a nightstalker wandering around the streets. Anyway, they're a problem. The weak ones are still strong enough to kill their own kind, and they aren't smart enough to do it without drawing the wrong kind of attention from the rest of us. Some of the strongest have worked their way into a few of the families, but they're still not the real deal. Who knows what will happen if they start reproducing, assuming they can. The whole freaking gene pool is being poisoned."

  I couldn't stop myself from laughing that time. Elyse was concerned the changelings were screwing up humans, and Randolph was afraid they were messing up demons. It seemed nobody wanted them around.

  "Only demons are appearing?" I asked.

  "Yup, but that's not all. There are the ones that change, the ones that don't change, and then there are the ones that die."

  "Die?" Elyse hadn't told me about that.

  "It's a mortal epidemic, and if you ask me it's just getting started. Five hundred reported cases on the East Coast alone, fifty just in the last week. It seems they develop some kind of nasty black rash, run a fever for a few days, and then drop dead. Even worse, if we drink any tainted blood, we get it too."

  Vampires getting a human disease? If there had been any doubt left that the Beast's power was at the root of this, it evaporated in that instant. "So how do you know who to bleed?"

  "We don't. Not completely. It's a new game of chance, but the elderly have been pretty safe so far. If you had been an actual person, I would have taken you somewhere and drained you, had my fill, and then sold the rest. With the diuscrucis gone, the exchange is back in business, only now we're trading for clean plasma."

  I didn't say anything else. I just sat and tried to absorb what he had told me while he finished the drive to Penn Station. Dante was right that just having the Beast in the Box wouldn't be enough. If his power was leaking out and infecting the world, it was only a matter of time before it either killed off or completely transformed humanity. Whatever we had to do to get Landon out, we had to do it fast.

  "Penn Station," Randolph said, about twenty minutes later.

  The cab rolled to a stop outside the entrance. I held my hand out so he could cut it and we could seal the deal.

  "Ah, no thanks. I believe you well enough, and I'm a little blood shy these days."

  "Suit yourself." I pulled back my hand and pushed open the back door.

  "Don't forget what I said about being able to help you, when you're ready." He flashed me his toothy grin one last time.

  "I won't forget. Oh, and Randolph?"

  "Yes?"

  "There is one more thing you can do to help me. I need a credit card that isn't connected to me."

  He shifted around in his seat, took out a wallet, and handed me a fancy card. "You have twenty-four hours, and then I'm going to report it lost. Don't forget I did this for you."

  I smiled. "I'll be back after I finish my current business. You're the first vampire I'll come to see."

  I pushed the door closed at the same time another older woman approached the cab. I considered warning her to the next one, but instead watched her get in and close the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rebecca

  Two hours later I was on my way to Kansas in the sleeper car of an Amtrak train. The waiting in Penn Station had been tense, but we'd gotten underway without incident and made it out of New York unscathed. I'd spent most of the time standing on the platform, keeping an eye on the stairs, and reconciling what Randolph had told me.

  The angels were dealing with archfiends, but the lesser demons were getting wild. It was an interesting approach, and it made sense. With the main power base gone in a given region, the other fiends would be spending more of their energy jockeying for position and fighting amongst themselves. It was a little more problematic for humanity, because there were some truly stupid Divine out there, but not as much of a problem as a concerted effort by a higher ranking demon could cause. As a side benefit, it would also allow me more breathing room to deal with the Box. The angels were stretched thin, leaving them mostly out of the picture. The demons were busy fighting amongst themselves. There were plenty of other players left, but every little bit helped.

  I also spent some time considering the longer term picture of the changed mortals. If they were integrating into the societies of their new species, eventually they would begin to reproduce. Once that happened, would they become stronger, or weaker? Would there be vampires that could stay outside during the day unaffected, who didn't need to drink blood, but maintained the enhanced stamina and intelligence? Or would they lose traits that made them superior, the strength and longevity? There was no way to know, but it was certain this was just the first push on a domino.

  My eyes glazed over from looking out the window at the landscape passing by. The trip was supposed to take a little more than a day to complete, with a couple of exchanges along the way, but I wasn't planning on going the full route. We'd be in DC in about an hour, and I would catch a flight there. It wasn't as far as I'd prefer to have gone, but I was navigating a delicate balance between time and distance. It wouldn't take the Nicht Creidim forever to figure out where I had gone, and if by some chance Sarah managed to get to Obi, the former marine could certainly hack into any transportation system he needed to help track me down.

  I took the pack a
nd pulled it up onto my lap, opening the zipper just enough to see the blue glow from the Box. It comforted me to look at it, and to know I was in control. With any luck, I'd be meeting with Elyse's contact before the sun had set again.

  The power pulsed along the surface, running through intricate channels, brightening and dimming in tune to whatever logic the prison followed. I knew so little about it, beyond how its creator and the demon Abaddon had become trapped in it. The Beast had told me where to find it, once he had deemed me ready to make my return from Hell. I had been powerful then, in many ways much more so than I was now. I only had one weakness, that the Redeemer had turned into a strength.

  I took a deep breath and put a finger on the box, feeling the warmth of the energy it fought to contain, the energy that was leaking into this world. I looked around at the people on the train. Would they change faster or die sooner because they had been so close to me? If the Box's power was like radiation, these mortals didn't stand a chance.

  Returning my eyes to the Box, I wondered what he was going through in there. The Beast had tortured me once when I had questioned the need to bring Sarah into his game. I could remember the pain of being torn apart and put back together, so slowly and purposefully that it made the agony more intense and immeasurable than any other kind of wound could. Torturing souls in Hell had been part of my training.

  None had screamed the way I had.

  "Final stop, Union Station," the voice said over the loudspeaker. "If you're transferring, please hold onto your ticket and check the board for track information. Thank you for riding Amtrak."

  I didn't stand until everyone else had disembarked. Only then did I sling the pack over my shoulder and make my way out, the hidden dagger in my jacket ready to be used. Nobody stared, nobody approached. I was still in the clear.

  A quick walk through the station, and I would grab a taxi to Dulles International. I had never been in D.C. before, and I was amazed by the construction of the station; a magnificence in marble and light that stood in stark contrast to the old dinginess that Penn Station brought to mind. The beauty of it distracted me, and that distraction almost caused me to lose the Box.