chapter 30
It was one step into the circle, another step out of it. I didn’t wait to get my bearings before I tried to propel myself away from the Rift, to put some distance between Reyzl and myself and get a better idea of what I was up against. It was a wasted effort. As soon I had cleared the circle a pair of hands wrapped around each of my arms, and a knee came down on my back to push me to the ground and hold me in position. My assailants bent me backwards, twisting me upwards at an awkward and painful angle. It caused me to drop the Chalice, sending it tumbling to the ground a few feet away. Reyzl bent over from the waist and scooped it up into his hand. He held it up over his head, admiring it in the light of the flames coming from the Rift. His eyelids fluttered minutely. I could only guess he was realizing what I had helped the Demon Queen do.
He recovered from his discovery and turned to me. “Thank you, Landon,” he said with a surprising sincerity. I suppose he was grateful I had done his dirty work for him. “I had suspected that filthy hell-spawn would be expecting me to stab her in the back again. That being the case, I just need one more thing from you.” He started walking towards me.
I tried to focus my will, to make myself stronger so I could break free of my captors. Another wasted effort, I was in too much pain to get my mind where it needed to be. I glared up at Reyzl as he approached.
“You’re in for a surprise if you think killing the Demon Queen will be so easy,” I said.
He crouched down in front of me so we were at eye level. “Since she was expecting my betrayal, I can only assume she’s prepared for my arrival,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I’m aware of that bitch’s tricks. That’s why I couldn’t let you keep the Chalice. That’s why I need to do this.”
His arm whipped out, the blessed dagger I had dropped gleaming in the firelight. I felt the coldness of the blade as it dug into my neck, and then the warm wetness when my blood began flowing from it. Reyzl placed the Chalice under it, collecting my plasma.
“With your blood, I have no need to waste time with crystals,” he said.
I closed my eyes, trying to convince myself that I didn’t need to breathe. The wound was already healing, but my trachea was still wide open. I knew I had to stop Reyzl from doing whatever it was he planned on doing with my blood. I tried to focus again, reaching for my Source and coming up empty.
“Having trouble concentrating?” Reyzl asked, laughing. He stood and whispered something to whoever was holding me. I couldn’t see them, but I could see the archfiend dip his finger into the Chalice, could hear the sucking sound as he fed my blood to each of them.
“Delicious,” one of them said. I knew that voice.
“I’ve never tasted anything like it,” the other agreed in the same voice, confirming their identities. I had run into them once before, when they had tried to kill me before I had ever left Purgatory. Mephistopheles's Collectors. What were they doing here?
Reyzl crouched down again, dipping his finger in my blood and taking it into his own mouth, making a show of the violation. “You have no idea how powerful your blood is when combined with the power of the Chalice. If you had, you would never have made the deal with me in the first place. I’m so glad you did though. I would have been happy enough if the Queen had taken care of you for me, but everything has worked out more perfectly than I could have dreamed.”
What power did the blood give him? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good for the balance, or for me. I struggled against the fallen angels that held me, but their grip was iron.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Reyzl said. “I have an army to summon and feed.” He stood, kicked me in the face, and started walking away.
“What should we do with him?” one of the angels asked.
“I have what I need. Kill him,” he replied.
When one angel released my arm, the other one grabbed it, jerking me to my feet. I could see him now, his silver hair falling over his elfish face. He was wearing the same leather duster, though there was no sign of his wings. He circled around in front of me and drew his sword.
“Landon. I can feel you are here. What is happening?” The voice in my head was forceful, powerful. Josette. She was still alive!
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“For the moment,” she said. “We are chained to the ladder by the entrance. Obi is injured. Reyzl said he has plans for us.”
I already knew what kind of plans the archfiend had for Rebecca, and I could imagine what he would want with his longtime nemesis. Why he wanted Obi, I didn’t know, but just the thought of what the demon was going to do to them was the worst torture imaginable.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Reyzl has me. I’m going to die.”
“No,” she replied, her voice commanding. “You cannot. Not yet.”
The angel held his blade back, preparing the blow that would remove my head. “You were lucky the Outcast saved you the first time,” he said. “You won’t be so lucky again.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” I shouted back to Josette, even my mental voice panicked at my imminent decapitation.
Then it hit me. In my current state I couldn’t focus enough to pull my Source to me, so instead I pushed myself to my Source, feeling the shift from one realm to another. The world faded into a translucent mess. My current location on Earth had no counterpart in this dimension. Instead there was only pure white, the absence of everything, like the wall at the end of the beach. I could see the fuzzy transparency of the mortal world frozen in time, moments away from the end of everything.
“Landon.”
I turned, and she was there, in all of her heavenly glory. Not the fallen Josette, but the angel Josette, in lustrous white robes, her ivory wings stretched out wide from her back.
“Josette. I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said. It was all too much. She floated over to me and put her arms around me, holding me as I cried. “I’ve failed,” I told her. “You, Rebecca, Obi, the sanctuaries and the balance. I can’t stay here forever, and when I go back, I’m going to die. It will all be over, and it’s all my fault.”
She stroked my hair, and kissed my forehead. “It isn’t over,” she said. “You will not die. It is not my Lord’s will.”
I looked up at her, my vision blurry with my tears. “There’s nothing I can do.”
She used her finger to wipe the droplets away from my eyes. “There is something you can do,” she insisted. “Summon the Beast.”
The Beast? She must mean Ulnyx. With a thought, he was there. He laughed when he saw that I was crying, my state of hopelessness leaving me too weak to control him.
“I knew you would blow it,” he said. “When you die, my soul will be free to find another host. I doubt your sidekick will be able to resist me.”
His words snapped me out of it. I reached out with my power and constricted it around his neck, lifting him off the ground and choking him. “Your soul will never be free,” I shouted, my anger flaring.
“A demon can absorb the power of another demon,” Josette said. “You trapped his soul when he tried to take your body. You can take his power for your own.”
Ulnyx’s expression turned fearful.
“How?” I asked.
“Kill him,” she replied.
So I did. I wrapped him in my power, twisting and crushing and pressing in on him, watching as his body was compressed into nothing more than dust. He had no chance to speak, no chance to beg. My power was unequaled here, and he didn’t stand a chance. I could feel his soul floating unhindered by his shell, but unable to escape. I pushed it toward me on a gust of air, a small black cloud of energy. I brought it to my face and took a deep breath, taking it in for the second time.
Memories flashed before me, years and years of memories. Ulnyx was born a werewolf, killed his parents, and slaughtered his brother, the leader of his pack. His thirst for blood and destruction was insatiable, his need to destroy unending. His power was the power of pure evil, and I brought it into me, absorbed it into my soul and took it as my own. It wasn’t a painless process, the inherited memories vile and disgusting, threatening to drive me mad. I released a guttural growl, an angry howl. I could feel myself changing, losing control. I looked at Josette.
“Why?” I asked her, feeling betrayed.
“There is no other way,” she said. She continued to float before me on her angel wings, her beautiful, calm, loving existence the only thing keeping the demon’s evil from overwhelming me. “I will protect you fellow. I will save you, so that you can save your world. I believe it is His will.”
She reached out and took my hand, which I now saw was the clawed hand of the Great Were. I could feel the pressure building in my soul, could feel the darkness creeping in on me. I was only part demon. I was never meant to do what I had just done. I couldn’t survive it and keep my sanity.
She took the hand and put it to her face, kissing the grotesque, demonic palm. “Godspeed, Landon Hamilton,” she said. She took my evil claws and raked them down her face, cutting deep into her flesh. The black lines of the demon poison blossomed across her skin.
“No,” I cried, the passion of my emotion holding the darkness back for the moment at least.
“I love you brother,” she said. “Look after my daughter.”
She opened her mouth, and a burst of light shot out of it, catching me off-guard and splashing against my face. It blinded me with its brightness, and pressed hard against me like water from a fire hose. I couldn’t. No, shouldn’t turn my head. I opened myself up to it, opened my mouth wide and accepted the flood. Again, I was overcome with memories and images, Josette’s childhood, her mother and father, her brother, the pain of her violation, her death, her hundreds of years as an angel walking among the mortal, her unrequited service to God.
Then, the unexpected: her brother an archfiend, her capture, her torture, her pregnancy, and her daughter. Sarah.
I fell to the ground, my mind a battleground between good and evil, Ulnyx and Josette. I could feel them both vying for control of my soul, their memories conflicting and washing through me: death, destruction, love, charity, anger, selflessness, Heaven, Hell. Somewhere in the mix I rediscovered myself, regained my own identity, and stepped between them.
“Enough,” I cried to nobody, looking up and seeing I was alone in Purgatory, in my Source. I could feel them in my soul, could hear their voices, see their memories, pull the smaller flow of their power and mix it with my own. The balance. Josette had sacrificed herself so that I could absorb the demon and not go mad. She had saved my life to stop Reyzl and protect her daughter. Sarah had thought her mother was dead. Now she was. She had done it for me.
I pulled at the new sources of power, letting the feeling of it flow through me. I looked over at my still form, held by one of the fallen angels, about to be beheaded by the other. Josette had been training for hundreds of years. She knew how to escape from that hold. Now I did too.
The sword was already whistling through the air when I retook my body. Faster than I could ever have moved before, I snapped my head back to where I knew the angel’s to be, feeling the crunch as the force shattered his face and loosened his grip. In the same motion I dropped to a knee and threw my upper half forward, lifting my captor up and over, into the path of the blade. He cried out in pain as it dug into his back. His grip destroyed, I sent him into the air to slam hard into his counterpart.
Neither angel stayed down long, rolling to their feet once their kinetic momentum had been broken. The one who had been holding me looked like he had already healed from the sword strike, and he pulled his own sword with a grin.
“Thanks for the blood,” he said, flexing his back. “Delicious, and nutritious.”
My blood. Whatever Reyzl had done, it had made them not only impervious to damage from blessed weapons, but had increased their healing rate beyond my own. I dropped into a defensive crouch, waiting for the attack that I knew would come.
They struck together, their swords thin white lines of steel arcing toward me. I ducked and dodged, twisted and danced around the blades, somehow matching the impossible speed of their motion as I circled around the room. I could see that they were pushing me, herding me towards the wall. I couldn’t play defense forever.
I reached in and found the Great Were’s power. I felt the strength surge through my limbs, felt myself growing and changing. My hands stretched out into gigantic claws, my clothes tearing as my mass increased. The angels’ swords whistled towards me.
I caught the first with a massive paw, the edge of the blade sinking into my flesh but nowhere near deeply enough to harm me. I closed my grip around it and held it, then sidestepped the other attack and lashed out with my other claw. It caught the angel in the face, the razor sharp fingers ripping and tearing, removing most of the head in one swipe.
No sooner had I brought my hand back when I could see the intense wound beginning to heal, the face rebuilding, the mouth opening to laugh. I wrenched the sword from the other angel’s hand, flipped it in the air to take the hilt, caught it with a smaller human hand, and delivered the killing blow, removing the mutilated head before it could regenerate.
“No,” the other angel cried, seeing his partner’s headless corpse topple to the ground. I let the transformation reverse completely, shrinking back to my human form, reknitting my tattered clothes together, remaking myself as whole. Armed, I turned to face him.
“My condolences,” I cursed, darting forward, slamming him in the face with the hilt to knock him back, then whipping the blade around and through his neck.
I didn’t wait for him to fall, instead spinning around, looking for Reyzl. I found him near the Rift, speaking under his breath and scraping out another circle. He hadn’t noticed what had been going on behind him and probably believed I was already dead. This would be easier than I thought.
My plan was to dash in and remove the archfiend’s head before he had any idea I was still alive. It might have worked too, if he hadn’t finished the circle at the same time I started towards him. The runes burst into flame and the first of Reyzl’s army stepped through. A humanoid female with scaled red skin and bright yellow eyes. It saw me as soon as it entered, letting out a cry of alarm and shoving Reyzl away from my attack.
The archfiend rolled to the side, somehow keeping his hold on the Chalice, and rose to his feet as I decapitated the demon with the cursed sword. If he was surprised to see me alive, he hid it well.
“You continue to impress me with your persistence diuscrucis,” he said with a smile. “However, I’m afraid you’re in the way.”
A second demon stepped through the Rift, then a third, a fourth. They hissed when they saw me, springing forward to attack. Reyzl bent over and placed the Chalice on the ground, then began to unbutton his suit jacket.
I did the one thing that made sense. I couldn’t fight Reyzl and an army of demons on my own, so I ran. Not to get away, but to get help. Rebecca. I raced down the corridor, the demons chasing behind, still streaming in through the Hell Rift. I heard growling as hounds joined the devils.
She was standing next to the ladder, pulling against the handcuffs that bound her, the demon Yuli perched above. He was cackling at her futile attempts to escape, hopping back and forth on the rung. They both turned to look at me as I rushed in, Yuli freezing in fear, Rebecca baring her fangs in a half-snarl, half-smile.
“Hey,” I said to her, cracking the sword down on the chain of the cuffs. Freed, she grabbed the sword from my hand.
“Hi handsome,” she said, her eyes fading to black. “Nice eyes.” She leapt forward and tore into the devils behind me.
Nice eyes? I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I didn’t have time to think about it. I heard flapping wings, and saw Yuli flying away up the shaft. He wasn’t worth chasing. I started to turn back towards the fray when I saw Obi. He was lying on the ground behind the ladder, his eyes closed, a huge bloodstain on his stomach. He was still alive, but he was out of the fight.
My anger flared and I hurried to catch up with Rebecca. I used Ulnyx’s strength to throw around the devils like rag dolls, leaving them broken for her to dispose of. I had already lost Josette, and I didn’t know how long Obi would last without help. It was time to end this.
Reyzl was waiting for us when we reached the main room. He had removed all of his clothes except his underwear, having placed them in a neat pile next to the Chalice. His body was taut with lean muscle and covered in dark scars that formed more of the demonic runes. They burned on his skin, the flames bathing him in a red glow. His hands had morphed into talons, the ends dripping demon fire.
“I’ve grown weary of you, Landon,” he said. I felt his power all around me, pressing on me in an effort to freeze me as he had done before. I pulled on my own flow and pushed myself free, feeling his efforts dissipate from the force of my will. He observed his failure without emotion, and then launched himself at me.
I almost didn’t move in time, skipping to the side as a clawed hand raked across my abdomen. I felt the tips of his hands scrape against my skin, the demon fire burning worse than any real flame. I winced in pain as I dodged a second strike and blocked a third with my forearm. The wound wasn’t healing. In fact it was growing more painful as I moved.
“Does it hurt?” Reyzl asked. “You aren’t as impervious as you believed.”
I grunted in response, catching his arm when he threw it forward, twisting it and hearing a satisfying crack as it shattered. Reyzl moaned and backed away, his snarled lip defying his nonplussed expression.
I pressed the attack, but the arm healed almost instantly, twisting back into the proper position and coming up in time to block my punches. Each time my hand hit one of the runes I felt the pain of the demon fire biting into me. Each time I felt the pain I grew angrier. The anger made me sloppy.
An overthrown, off-balance punch later I found myself slammed up against the wall, four deep punctures in my chest and lungs, gasping for air and trying to get back up. Reyzl stood ten feet away, allowing himself just the slightest smirk while he watched me struggle.
My whole body was burning up, my soul was crying out in despair. Josette had given herself up for me, given herself up for nothing. My anger fell way, replaced by acceptance and a sudden calm. I had done my best, hadn’t I? There had never been any guarantees.
I looked around for Rebecca, finding a mass of demons near the opening to the corridor but not seeing her anywhere. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that I wished we had more time together, that I thought she and I could have been something special. I swallowed with a dry throat and licked my lips. Reyzl was still standing there, just looking at me, watching me die.
The demon fire. It was burning me up, preventing me from healing. I almost laughed when I thought of it, not that I could laugh with the holes in my lungs. I closed my eyes and relaxed, pulling on my Source and letting my focus fade. The air held moisture, moisture meant water, and water doused fire. Could it put out demon fire? There was one way it could. Josette hadn’t sacrificed herself so I would know how to fight like her. She had given herself to me for another reason, to provide me with something she knew I would need. After all, who knew the archfiend better than she did?
I reached for her power, picturing her bedroom, her simple straw doll, her carefree and safe life before her brother had become evil, before her mischief had brought down her parent’s ire. I mixed it with my own, sent it out with my will, demanding the vapor in the air to condense, demanding that it rain.
My eyes were closed, but I felt my body cool and heal as the air around me began to cry. This wasn’t just any rain, but holy rain, holy water, Josette’s tears. I finally took a deep breath, opening my eyes to glorious chaos. In front of me, Reyzl was hunched over, trying to escape the water, his skin sizzling wherever it touched him. Behind him, the demons were rushing back towards the Hell Rift, but the rain had extinguished it. With no escape, they shrieked and howled in pain as the flesh washed off of them like dirt. Where was Rebecca?
“How?” Reyzl asked, trying to straighten up. The runes on his body had been extinguished, but he had drank my blood from the Chalice, and he was healing as fast as the water could wound him. I knew from experience how much it must hurt.
I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye. With a thought, I stopped the rain. “Something you can’t begin to understand,” I said to him.
“And what is that,” he growled. His strength was returning, and he started moving towards me, his fury obvious despite his blank black eyes.
“Friends,” I said.
He caught on too slowly, sensed her too late. An instant later Rebecca was on his back, a hand on each end of the cursed sword. She winked at me, and then pulled the blade towards herself, slicing through Reyzl’s neck.
The black fog of his soul poured from the top of his headless corpse as it fell. Rebecca opened her mouth to accept it, her head tilting back in ecstasy as she absorbed the immense power of the archfiend. I sat against the wall and watched it happen, waiting for it to be done.
Then it was. The last of the black fog vanished down Rebecca’s throat, and she fell to her hands and knees, her breathing heavy. I rushed over to her and put my arms around her waist, holding her steady.
“Are you okay?” I asked. She didn’t respond right away. “Rebecca?”
“Just give me a minute, worm,” she replied. “I think it was something I ate.”
It was the perfect release. I closed my eyes and gave myself up to the joke, my laughter strong and loud. A moment later she joined me, laughing weakly, then coughing, then laughing again.
“Help me up?” she asked.
I let go of her waist and circled around in front of her. She reached up and took my hand, and I pulled her to her feet. She stumbled as she rose, so I wrapped her arm over my shoulder to support her.
“Nice work,” I said.
“You almost killed me with that rain,” she said. “I was lucky to duck under the sofa before I got too beat up.”
“I’m sorry Becca,” I replied. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”
She shifted her weight so she could drag my head down to hers. She kissed me hungrily. “Apology accepted,” she said. “It all worked out.”
“Reyzl?” I asked.
“I took his power,” she said. “Let’s grab the Chalice and get out of here.”
We walked over to where the Chalice sat on the floor next to the Hell Rift, surrounded by the wet ash of the demons killed by the holy water, and filled with the water itself.
“I’ve got it,” Rebecca said, bending over to pick it up. She couldn’t reach it with her arm around me, so she pulled away to bend down further.
“I know this is going to sound corny,” I started saying as she grasped the Chalice by the stem and turned it over to dump out the holy water, “and the timing kind of stinks, but I was thinking maybe you and I could, you know, be together. See how it goes?”
“I’m sorry, Landon,” she replied.
Huh? I wasn’t expecting the rejection. “I don’t understand,” I said. No reply. “Rebecca?”
That was when I noticed the flames of the runes around the Hell Rift had reignited. She turned to face me, her eyes as black as night, her expression sad but strong. She shifted forward and the pain in my stomach was renewed. Her claws made a sick sucking sound when she removed them from my gut. Blood ran down over my wet clothes, down into the Chalice.
“What are you doing?” I asked her. I didn’t even see her other hand sweep up behind me, her claws digging into my neck. My spinal cord severed, I dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, lifting the Chalice to her mouth and pouring the contents down her throat. After she swallowed, she dropped the Chalice to the ground.
“Why?” I asked.
“Survival,” she said. Without another word she stepped into the Hell Rift and was gone.
Physically, I couldn’t feel anything. Emotionally, I had just been ripped in half. She had saved my life more than once. She had been my friend, my companion, and I had hoped she would be something more. I had trusted her with my life, trusted her despite the fact that she was a vampire, a creature of evil. I had told Josette she was different. She was supposed to be different. I wanted to believe that absorbing Reyzl’s soul had done something to her, that there was no other explanation. As much as I hated it, I was having trouble with that. When she had said she was sorry, she had been lying.
I lay there alone, waiting for my body to heal, not knowing if I would ever see her again. The tears ran unabated from my eyes, and I didn’t think they would ever stop.