CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Landon
We started walking, through the old subway tunnel and down the loop. We could have had Avriel air lift us back to the surface, but it just seemed safer in the enclosed space. I had no doubts that Ross would think of more monsters to conjure up and send after us. According to Clara, he was regaining his power, and biding his time.
She had also said that his death had allowed him to become stronger, like changing the locks on a door, or upgrading a computer. It was the balance, I knew. We were getting stronger, too.
I stayed next to Charis, while Clara and Avriel took point a few yards away. It was nice to have a little more time with her, even if was to walk in the dim light of the subway tunnel without saying much at all.
"It's great to have some calm time to walk with you, but I'd feel better if we had a plan," she said, echoing my own thoughts and breaking the silence.
We were walking a fairly long, straight stretch of track, headed uptown. Not because we had a destination in mind, but because that's where the path had led us. We were wandering right now, twisting in the wind, waiting.
I hated it as much as she did.
"You're right." I reached back and put my hand on the pistol, feeling the splintered wood of the grip. "We need to figure out how to use this thing, and then come up with a way to turn the tables on Ross. A trap of some kind."
"He has a knack for slipping traps."
"Maybe, but we can't play defense forever. Besides, I don't think we need to hold him, we just need to lead him to a predetermined point. An ambush."
"That's easy to say. I don't think it will be so easy to do."
"I don't know. He seems pretty intense when he gets close enough. If he thinks he has a clear shot at us, or Clara, he might get a little reckless to take it. I mean, that's how we dropped him in the first place."
"You want to put Clara out on the end of the stick?"
The repulsion in her voice surprised me. "Charis... she's not... real."
"She's as real as we are, in this place," she replied. "And she's ours. Yours and mine. As long as we're trapped here, this is as close to a family as we're ever going to have."
"With one major difference. If she dies, she'll come back again. Just like we do."
She stopped walking and put her arm out to stop me, letting Avriel and Clara get further ahead. "She still feels it, Landon. Just like we do. It still hurts." Her whispers were fierce and intense.
I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "She doesn't remember it, though. She isn't like us. She doesn't have a soul."
She swatted my hand away. "You don't get it, do you? She has a soul. Our soul. Yours and mine. A piece of each. She isn't a carrot, she's our child."
She started moving again, leaving me standing there, watching her back. I didn't hurry to catch up. A few minutes of breathing room might help her cool her head, and I needed time to come to terms with our difference in opinion.
I was still in the rear when Avriel dropped back next to me. His weathered face looked a little younger, and he seemed renewed for having a purpose.
"You look troubled."
Said the angel who I had betrayed, and then failed. His suffering was still on my hands, and I felt the guilt of it burning through my soul. "Avriel. I know this won't make any sense to you, but I'm sorry."
He gazed at me and nodded. "Penitence is the path to God's grace. I believe you."
They weren't comforting words, but they still found a place in me to warm. "To be honest, I'm worried about Charis." I watched her up in front with Clara. They were talking and smiling. Was she wrong? Or was I?
"You've made a lot of difficult choices. I can see that on your face and in your eyes. I'm afraid that won't end just yet."
"What do you mean by that? Is there something you aren't telling me?" The fact that he was even here was proof enough there was more going on than any of us had been let in on.
"I..." He paused. It was an uncomfortable pause, as if he was trying to decide what to say.
I reached forward and grabbed him by the neck, focusing my power to give me the strength to lift him off the ground.
"I'm sick of games," I shouted.
Avriel was calm, even as Charis and Clara noticed what was happening. They both started walking towards us. Clara froze.
"Mom!"
The tunnel changed around us, shaking and twisting, bricks and mortar and dust churning up into the air. By the time I let go of Avriel, Charis and Clara were gone, a wall of stone dividing us.
"What the hell?" I ripped at the stone with my power, Ross' power, desperate to get to the other side. "You're supposed to protect us."
"Landon!"
I heard Charis' voice. I doubled my efforts.
"Clara.... Abaddon... Save her."
I didn't want to save her. She would come back, she always did. What was Charis thinking? I threw my body into the stone, hearing it crack beneath my shoulder. I rammed it again, and again. On the fourth try, I fell through.
Two tunnels. In one direction was Ross, holding Charis with her arms locked behind her, dragging her away. I could feel their power reverberating against one another, like the static charge of a lightning storm. She was fighting, but we could only stop him together.
In the other direction, the dark mass of the demon that I knew too well. I couldn't see Clara through his veil of nothing, but I knew she had to be there. How had they taken us by surprise? Why hadn't Avriel warned me? How had Clara missed it?
"Go and get her," I yelled at him. "I'll go for Charis."
The angel didn't move. "I can't."
"What do you mean you can't?"
He looked like he wanted to die. "I'm not strong enough. I can't win."
Damn it. "You knew this was going to happen? The hard choice? It isn't hard." I turned to run after Ross. It would be better if we died together, than for me to lose her.
He took hold of my shoulder, his fingers digging in hard enough to draw blood. "No. I said that because of who you are. What you are. There are no easy choices for any who must walk the line between good and evil. It's a pattern that will repeat, again and again for all of your existence. The sooner you are able to come to terms with this truth, the more powerful you will become."
I looked from him, to Ross, to Abaddon. I could just make out Charis' face in the spectral light of old bulbs. She was resolute. She was willing to die so that Clara could live. No, so that we could both live. Ross needed both of us to restart the game. Charis was the carrot.
Avriel was right, this time at least. He wouldn't kill Charis because that would take away my incentive to follow. I threw the seraph's hand off me and chased down the demon.
Power fed strength into my legs, and I raced towards Abaddon with abandon, ready to tear him apart. I felt it when his cloak of despair folded around me. I felt my body weaken and my resolve begin to crack. It wasn't enough. Not now.
Then Clara was there, held tight in his arms. I grabbed on and twisted, hearing him scream as black blood ran from the broken limb and Clara fell free. She rolled on the ground, where Avriel scooped her up.
"That hurt," the demon said in his echoing voice. "You're stronger than the seraph."
I pulled more power into me, focusing on rejecting the pestilence and plague of his energy. I was reckless with anger and hatred, my fists pummeling into anything that looked like flesh.
Abaddon laughed. He let me hit him a few times, and then a black hand took hold of my wrist and threw me backwards. "Not yet, child," he said. His entire entity began to soak into a crack in the tunnel wall. By the time I got back to my feet, he was gone.
"Damn it!" I shouted, as loud as I could. The rage poured out of me, so hard that a burst of power exploded away, sending a shiver through the entire world.
"Dad?"
I looked at Clara. Her face was bruised, her clothes scraped and torn. So many emotions churned inside of me, but the maelstrom died at the sight of her
. I fell to my knees, overtaken by an instant exhaustion.
She put her arms around me, enveloping me in the warmth of her shared spirit. "We'll get her back. She's part of me, too."
"I don't understand," I said. "How could he do this? Why didn't you see him coming?"
Clara's eyes dimmed. "Abaddon. He hid him somehow. I thought he was further away."
"He can't be the real Abaddon. He's a shade, like Avriel. How can he be so strong?"
"Avriel destroyed the monsters," she replied. "Both shades are strong."
"I've been here for longer than I know," Avriel said. "Most of the power in this place is his and yours, but I know how to use what I have better than any of you." He pointed at the wall. "Except for him."
I fought against the feelings of despair that threatened to conquer me. I had lost Charis, and Abaddon had escaped. "What are we going to do?" I looked at Clara. "As long as you're here it means Charis is alive, doesn't it?"
She shook her head in the wrong direction. "No. You both need to die for him to change everything again. The good news is that for as much as killing her would weaken you, it would also weaken me. Ross doesn't want that to happen now."
I didn't understand. "Why not?"
"The balance. As much as he hates it, he can't break it without me. Not anymore."
"If he wanted to kill you-"
"He can't just kill me. As long as you and mother are alive, I'll only return. The two of you are like turbines. I'm a battery. He needs you both alive, but he also needs time to discharge the power you've collected. If he just kills me outright it will go back out into wild until I return. He can't simply claim it, because it's been tainted with the power of your connection."
I looked into her eyes, sparkling like gems despite the dim lighting. "He wanted me to chase him so that Abaddon could escape with you. He would have hid you from me, the same as he hid Ross."
She smiled. "Yes. If you had gone after him, he would have let her go and made his escape."
"Not if I had caught up."
"He would have let you kill him again. When he came back, he would know where Abaddon was hiding me and you wouldn't."
It made sense. It almost made too much sense. "How do you know all of this?" I asked.
"I don't. You do, when you take away all of the anger, and the guilt, and the joy. When you dive below the pain and look past the hope. Where your power, his power, is pure. That's where you can feel him, and begin to understand him. The Beast is a powerful entity, but he isn't without sentience or consciousness. He wasn't always the Beast. He wasn't always a harbinger of destruction."
She held out her hand and helped me to my feet.
"Once, many years ago, he was much like you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rebecca
Obi was waiting for me the day I knocked on the door to room number 341 at the Hotel Andra. I hadn't thought there would be anyone in the room at all, but I had been able to hear the television from outside the door. It was twenty-seven days after I had been exorcised by the Nicht Creidim. I had spent twenty-six of them as a disembodied spirit, a lost soul floating across the ocean at a speed barely faster than a walk.
He wasn't the Obi I had expected.
The door opened. He was standing there in a pair of striped silk pajamas, his head newly shaved, with a month's growth of beard framing his jaw. His eyes looked lighter than they had the last time I'd seen him, as if he were happy.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
I wasn't surprised he didn't recognize me. I was wearing the skin of a homeless woman, a vagrant I'd found sleeping in the park near the waterfront. She was dirty and matted, dressed in soiled rags, and her teeth were killing me.
"Obi? It's me, Rebecca."
He regarded me without recognition. "Did you say Rebecca?"
I nodded. "Yes."
Either he was fast, or I was rusty. His hand shot out from his side and tightened around my wrist. "I have a message for you," he said, smiling. "Sacerdos ab Ordinario-"
I still had a hand free. I brought it around and smashed him in the jaw, stopping him from going any further with the exorcism. I should have guessed by the fact that he was even here that I was walking right into a trap. Joe had gotten the Deceiver, and he'd used it to mess with Obi's head.
Obi stumbled backwards before recovering, getting his hand up to block my second swing. His face twisted into a scowl, and he used his bare foot to kick me in the gut. "Sacerdos ab Ordinario..." He started the rite again.
"Shut up," I wheezed. I pulled away, and he held my arms tight, just like I wanted him to. I shifted towards him, and he couldn't compensate in time. My head drove into his nose, and I felt it crumble beneath my host's skull. He let go of me, dizzy from the attack, and teetered back to the dresser where the Eagle was resting.
I jumped forward and took hold of his arm, straining to tug him away. He was too strong, and my shell was too weak.
I let him go and backed out of the room. I used the break to look around, to confirm that my pack was gone, the Box with it. I didn't need to be here, and Obi was useless to me like this. Where the hell was Max? Had he been caught by Joe, or had he escaped? I felt a moment's despair, but twenty-six days as a free-floating spirit had given me plenty of time to strengthen my resolve. As long as I was trapped in this world I was determined to either free Landon, or avenge his loss.
I pulled the door closed behind me and abandoned the bag lady. She looked around for a minute, confused, and then started wandering down the hall. I pushed myself from room to room, passing by an older man in a sweatsuit, a couple having sex, and a rich old lady with a poodle. The fourth try was the winner; a young man with blonde hair, dressed in a sharp three piece suit. He looked like a salesman, or a maybe a high-class drug dealer.
I took him with ease, discovering he was a marketing executive with a wife and a two year old daughter, that he loved baseball, and he was allergic to peanuts. Knowing he had a child made me hesitate to keep him, but I was in a hurry, and his meat suit was perfect for where I was headed next. I would drop him off unharmed once I was done with him.
I wasn't sure what my next move would be, but I knew I needed help, and there was only one person I could think of who might be available. I spent a few minutes getting a better feel for my new host, and then headed out of the Hotel, tracing my steps back towards the underground village where I had last seen Joe and Elyse. I walked past the alley and noticed the door I had entered was clearly visible now, though it had been chained four times over. I stifled the anger I felt at the memory, and kept walking. This time I wanted to go up.
"Can I help you, sir?"
The lobby of Madalytics was all silver, blue, and glass, with a semi-circular receptionist desk pressed against the back wall off the elevator and a massive flatscreen touting all kinds of data metrics behind the receptionist's head.
He was a scrawny man in his early twenties, with six or seven piercings in each ear, spiked blue hair, and a winning smile. It was a look, but it suited him. I glanced up at the cameras covering the area, and then returned his smile.
"I'm here to see Mr. Rutherford," I said. "I'm a college buddy. He told me I could stop by whenever I was in town."
Hearing I wasn't a customer, his formalities dropped. "Oh, cool. Yeah, sure. I think Brian's in a meeting right now, but I'll send him a message."
I closed my eyes and thanked God he was still in town and still alive. I could only guess the Nicht Creidim had more pressing concerns now than dealing with an angelic changeling.
The receptionist's phone buzzed a few seconds later, and he looked down on it, and then at me. "What was your name again?" he asked.
"Rebecca."
He raised his eyebrow at that, and then typed something into the phone. When it buzzed again, his eyes widened. I narrowed mine, prepared to have to either fight my way in, or run away.
"I'll show you to his office. He'll be with you in a minute." He put a little 'be right back
' placard onto the desk and stepped out from behind it, leading me through a solid wood door to the left. The offices were open and organized, with rows of people sitting behind rows of computers, in various stages of work and loafing. Neon arrows guided employees to the 'Spa' and the 'Nap Room', as well as 'Stuffy Stuff: Jacket Required'.
We were ignored on our trek past the workers and into a hallway, through a section of spaces that contained a gym, a ping-pong table, and a masseuse. Brian's office was all the way in the back, a huge expanse in the corner decked out much like the subterranean bar had been. I recognized the juke box.
Brian showed up before the receptionist left. He was cautious in his entrance and expression, unsure of what to expect. When he was confronted with a man, he gave the hint of a smile.
"Thanks, Pete," he said to the guy with blue hair. Pete left, and Brian walked right up to me. "Is it really you? I thought you were dead."
"Spirits are hard to kill," I replied. For all I knew, I was impossible to fully destroy in this state. Not that it mattered. Throwing me hundreds of miles away was more than effective enough to put me out of play. "I know Joe got the Deceiver. He used it on my friend and took something from us, something he can use to do a lot of damage to the world." I looked into his eyes. "Something that will either change all of mankind the way you've been changed, or kill it."
Brian was still for a moment, and then shrugged. "I don't know how I can help you with that. I told you, I'm not a fighter, and I don't even have the sword anymore. That man, Joe, he killed all of them. I only escaped because of you." He walked over to his desk, and opened one of the drawers. He placed the ward stone down in front of me. "He didn't even bother taking this. I've spent so much time staring at it, waiting for it to turn, waiting for them to come back for me."
"You'd rather live in fear than fight back?" I asked.
"I don't want to fight."
"I know, it's a choice between crappy and crappy, but I need your help. I need to stop him."
He stared at me. "I can't."
"Do you think God made you an angel so you could just tuck your wings in and hide when things didn't go your way? Do you think you were made unique to hang out in a dungeon and drink beer?" I walked up to the desk and picked up the ward stone. "If you do, you don't need this." I threw it to the ground, breaking it into two pieces. "I'm going to kill you myself."
Bound (The Divine, Book Four) Page 18
