Balance (The Divine, Book One)

by M. R. Forbes

  "She Calmed you," Dante replied. "Putting you out is a more advanced form, but it is the same thing. A powerful seraph would be able to Calm you, and then press you for information while you slept."

  She had played me like a game of Pac-man. She had made me think she was helping me, when in fact she just wanted information, but about what?

  "What kind of information would she think I would have?" I asked Dante.

  I felt my insides being ripped out, the anger and hurt of her betrayal sending chills through my body. I was too inexperienced, too naive. I had trusted her way too easily. I could feel my pulse quickening, the heat rising to my face.

  "You are familiar with the Chalice, the Grail?" Dante asked. His words snapped my ricocheting mind back into focus.

  "The one from the Last Supper?” I asked. “The one I was guarding?"

  He nodded. "The same. It is the reason I came to see you today, the reason I am so thankful that you were delivered to me when you were. The demons have captured it, and plan to use it to complete their victory. You have to stop them."

  Stop them. Yeah, right. Me. I couldn't even take out a messenger demon without help.

  "Captured it?” I asked. “It wasn't exactly under guard. I mean, the demon who took it just waltzed right in to the Museum and plucked it right out of a bulletproof, tamper-proof case like it was made of fog."

  "No, Signore,” Dante said. “That was your experience, but not even close to the whole story. So that you will understand, let me first tell you the history of the Chalice. Do you recall what I told you about Jesus?"

  I nodded. It hadn’t been that long ago, though at times it felt like ages.

  "Then the important part that you understand is that he was real,” he said, “and he was the embodiment of God on Earth. From the moment he was born he knew when and how he would die, for it had been arranged by God in the hopes that his martyrdom would push the human race to a higher level of goodness. In some respects his plan was successful, for many mortals have done endless good deeds in His name. In other respects, it was a dismal failure. Corrupt kings under demonic influence used the name of God and the birthplace of His Son as an excuse for war and violence.

  The final night of his life, Jesus took the Chalice and filled it with his blood, granting it to his disciples to imbue them with the diluted power of God. It was in this way that the first of the warrior angels were ordained, though they did not gain most of their power until after their death. The Chalice, having held the blood of God, also developed power of its own. For humans, it could grant eternal youth and rejuvenation."

  "What about for the angels? Or the demons?" I asked. The story of the Holy Grail was nothing new to anybody. The fact that there was truth to the tale was the incredible part.

  "Nobody knows how it affects the angels,” Dante replied. “After the Last Supper, the Chalice was passed to a mortal warrior, a non-disciple who was loyal to Jesus. He was charged with protecting the secret of the Grail, and ensuring its safety for all eternity. Because of Judas, the secret did not stay that way among the demons for very long. The warrior spent many years in hiding, organizing a secret army known as the Knights Templar in order to help him guard it. The Templar Knights were granted a drink from the Chalice, and were armed by the angels with blessed weapons to assist in the battle against the demon hordes. For hundreds of years the Templars kept the Chalice safe.

  The Industrial Revolution has not been kind to the Templars, or Heaven in general. With the growth of science and reasoned thinking came the dilution of the faithful, with more and more turning away from religion in return for logic. The Templars have become unable to maintain their number, and so their power has continued to diminish.

  It was decided that the Chalice would be gifted to the Vatican and revealed to mankind so that it could be preserved in the open and guarded more easily. Once something has been brought to the human consciousness it becomes impossible to take away. The Grail became a part of the mortal world, and as such mortals as well as angels kept watch over it and protected it. The value of using the Chalice was minor compared to the harm that would befall Heaven should it be lost to the demons."

  "It has been lost to the demons," I reminded him.

  "Yes, Signore, it has,” he said. “The Templars underestimated the power of the Demon Queen. In your mortal mind you may have thought the Chalice was unguarded. In fact three angels and a dozen Templars were in or around the Museum on the day you were killed, including the warrior who was given the Grail by Christ himself over two thousand years before. The most powerful mortals the world has ever known did battle with the Demon Queen in the basement of the museum. All were defeated."

  I felt my breath get choked off, my terrified heart unwilling to draw in more oxygen. I thought back to my final living memory, to the woman who had taken the Chalice, and my life.

  "The woman who stole the Chalice. She was the Demon Queen?” I asked. “As in, the wife of the Devil?"

  "No,” he said. “When I use the word Queen, I use it in a more hierarchical term of power. She is not wed to the Devil. Rather, she is the most powerful female demon waging war in the mortal realm."

  "And you want me to stop her?" If I had been able to breathe, I probably would have laughed at the absurdity of the thought.

  "You do not need to confront her head on to stop her,” Dante said. “What you must do is recover the Chalice, and make sure it becomes lost for all time. Mr. Ross has told me that the demons are using it to create these."

  Dante reached into the inner pocket of his blazer and produced a simple iron necklace with a liquid filled container hanging from it. The container looked like glass, or crystal. The fluid was a blackish, reddish color. It undulated and flowed inside its cage as if it had a life of its own. It looked familiar.

  "They spill their blood into the Chalice and mix it with the blood of a mortal,” he explained, “then trap it in a crystal which has been cursed by a powerful demon. Any demon who wears one becomes almost invincible."

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the necklace I had captured from the Great Were. Dante looked at it with surprise.

  "It doesn't work if it isn't touching them," I told him.

  "Where did you get that?" he asked.

  "The Great Were had one,” I said. “He let the seraph run him through so he could show her how it worked. I pulled it off his neck before I killed him."

  Dante's face lit up with another of his familiar smiles. "Excellente! You have already discovered a weakness."

  I wasn't as enthused. "It isn't much of a weakness. It was closer to dumb luck, really."

  Dante was unswayed. "Maybe not a huge weakness, but any advantage will make this an easier task. Already demons are becoming bolder, attacking angels with a comfort level never before seen, and taking mortals for sacrifice in increasing numbers. If we do not stop them, Armageddon will happen sooner than we could ever want."

  I wasn't feeling very confident about this, but what choice did I have? For better or worse I had agreed to be mankind's Champion. Going down fighting had to be better than toiling away in Purgatory for the rest of eternity.

  "I could use some help," I said.

  Dante held his hands in front of him. "My apologies, but I have none to offer beyond Mr. Ross' extraordinary ability to gather information. I had thought to teach you basic skills before sending you from Purgatory, but you have learned so much more in a single night than I could have believed. Survival will educate you far better and more quickly than I ever could."

  I was being thrown to the werewolves. I don't know if Dante thought I stood a chance, but he seemed convinced that I did.

  "So what do I do next?" I asked.

  Dante rose from the couch and stood right in front of me, his face looking up at mine. His expression was grave.

  "Survive, Signore. Survive and fight. Find out where these necklaces are being created. Find out where the Chalice is being kept. Retrieve it, and hide it from t
he demons, from the angels, from the humans. Let none know where it resides. Destroy these amulets and the demons that wear them. Above all, survive. I will be in touch when I have more information for you. Good luck Landon."

  Without waiting for my reply, without giving me a chance to question him, to ask him about Charis, he vanished and I was alone. Maybe eternity in Purgatory wouldn't have been so bad after all.

  Chapter 9

  After Dante left, I made my way back down to the Deli, only to find my sandwich had already been trashed. Slightly annoyed, I bought another one and savored every bite. As I ate, I considered everything that Dante had said, and tried to decide what I should do next. I felt pressured to do as Dante had asked, but at the same time I knew that in my current state I was no match for anything much stronger than a Girl Scout. I had only defeated the vampires with a lot of help, and I wasn't feeling too good about letting the Were's soul take over again.

  Despite Dante’s opinion, nothing I had experienced the prior night had suggested that I would be able to regain control once I had passed it over. Add to that the fact that Josette had suckered me, and I was left feeling alone and powerless in the middle of a race to save mankind from being literally devoured by monsters. I had thought dying was the hard part. There was something funny in there somewhere, I was sure.

  I took the amulet out of my pocket and took a closer look at it. To think that there was some vestige of the embodiment of God trapped in that crystal. It was heady stuff and it kept me captivated for a while, watching the smoky liquid ebb and flow inside its prison.

  Power. That was the lock and key to all of this. Without power, I couldn't hope to carry through with my assignment. Dante was so certain I had power. He had said that Josette couldn't hope to defeat me in a flat out fight. Now that was comedy. The Demon Queen seemed to have the most power. Thinking about her ripping through the angels and the Templars to get to the Chalice made me shiver with trepidation. If I was going to survive, I would have to figure out what my power was, how much of it I had, and how best to utilize it. Did David go through this same mental exercise before he had to go out to face Goliath?

  I left the deli and headed back to the Belmont. I stopped at my room to grab the seraphim sword and demonic dagger, and carried them to the roof. Once there, I dropped into the pose Josette had taught me hours earlier. I ran through the limited exercises she had shown me with abandon, trying to free myself from the bonds of humanity that I knew I was clinging onto. In the last twenty four hours I had seen and done things that I knew were impossible as part of a normal human existence, but normalcy had been left far behind, and now I was part of something that rose above mortality, that lorded over it in a sickly sweet dance with one too many partners. I was the odd man out, and I would have to earn my place in line.

  When I slipped on an icy patch and landed on my ass, I gave up on the swordplay. Maybe this was how the angels handled conflict, but it just wasn't working for me. I was born in an age of weapons of mass destruction, missile toting drones, and frickin' laser beams. I needed my own approach.

  Embarrassed and angry for having fallen, I cast my gaze to a large piece of the building's frieze that had crumbled at some point over the last century. I thought first about the rain making exercise, and then changed my focus from condensing water vapor, to expanding the air trapped inside the cement. I felt the now familiar tug in my mind, and watched the chunk of wall burst outward as no more than powder. Now that's what I was talking about!

  I got a little bit punch drunk on my newfound ability to pulverize rock, and I spent the better part of an hour blasting small chunks of stone out of the roof of the Belmont. As time wore on, I could feel my concentration improving, my control improving. I still failed to get results three out of every ten tries, but it was progress, and I was happy with it. I felt alive, and strong! Better than I had ever felt before.

  I picked up the sword again and charged toward the metal door to the stairwell, racing forward and focusing my will along the blade, making it sharper, stronger. I took a nasty hack, and laughed as the blade ripped through the door, shredding it almost in half. Intoxicated, I threw a fist at the top half, and watched as it knocked the weakened door off its hinges and over the edge of the rooftop. A moment later I heard it crash onto the empty alley below. Power. It was raw, unchained, and somewhat uneven, but it was there, and it was mine.

  I left the rooftop in ruins before I retreated back to my room. I didn't know how much my display of rock-smashing would help me in a real fight, but if nothing else I felt a little bit less like a piece of meat dangling from a large hook. With any luck I'd at least be able to make myself look formidable, even if I couldn't seal the deal.

  I stripped off my clothes and hopped into the shower. I didn’t need it to stay clean or smell fresh, but I had always found the feeling of the water and the small space of the stall helped me focus my thoughts, and I had a lot to think about. First, there was the matter of the Chalice. I needed to find it, but I had no idea where to look, or even where to begin looking.

  I was pretty sure that the demon Reyzl would have the intel I needed, but there was no way I was in any shape to confront a major power like that. I doubted I ever would be. Moving stuff around for a few seconds was a parlor trick compared to what I imagined a major demon was capable of.

  No, I needed to start at the bottom, to find the lowest rung on the ladder that might be able to point me in the right direction, and to stay near the bottom of the barrel for as long as I could. Surprise was my only real advantage right now. I had used it to the fullest against the Great Were, and I needed to do the same here. I closed my eyes and let the water run down my body, listening to the sound of it as it dripped off my limbs and landed on the chipped and scratched porcelain below.

  My second problem was a little more complicated. Josette. She would be back to see me at some point, I was sure of it. Whether it would be as a teacher or as an inquisitor, I just had no idea. She confused me in so many ways. She could be sweet, impulsive, playful, and light, and within an instant serious, introspective, and frightening.

  She was good, and the goodness was beautiful. She had a sensitivity and empathy that I admired, and from the moment she had connected her soul to mine I had felt a bond to her that I couldn’t understand or explain. I wanted to be her ally, her friend, her... I didn’t know. I had thought that could have been possible, despite our differences in opinion. She seemed both open to it and against it at the same time. She had agreed to teach me even though it was against her laws. Then she had used my trust to try to wring information out of me. Information I didn’t have.

  What would I do when she returned? I could call her on her deception, and she would not be able to lie to me. That didn’t mean she would be honest. I was learning the difference, and just knowing that there was one sucked. My other alternative was to say nothing, pretend I didn’t know, and see what she did next. She hadn’t gotten anything out of me, so maybe she would try again. If I were ready the next time I could catch her at it, but wouldn’t I just end up right back where I was now? Either way my shot at friendship was lost, and that sucked too.

  I turned off the flow of water and pushed all of the moisture off my body with a thought. I was getting pretty good at small pushes. As far as Josette was concerned, I would make a game-time decision based on whatever emotions bubbled up the next time I saw her. There was enough dishonesty going around to deny the truth from myself too. With respect to the Chalice, I had an idea on that one. It was a long shot, but long was better than none.

  I finished dressing, altering my clothes into a simple black cotton collared shirt and a pair of destroyed blue jeans. Slipping back into the bedroom, I grabbed my iPad, hopped on the bed, tapped into the browser, and made my way back to SamChan. I may not be a Collector like Mr. Ross, but I did have at least one source to depend on for this type of otherwise insane information.

  I found the thread from the guy with the vampire video on t
he third page. It had been posted a couple of days ago, and he swore up and down in his post that it was legit, that he had stumbled across two vamps fighting each other in an alley as he was heading home from work that night.

  I recognized his screen name, ‘Oblitrix’. He had been on the Chan for years, working different hacking schemes for groups like Anonymous. There were a couple of replies on his thread, and they were filled with derision and jokes about random drug testing and drug-free workplaces. I spent some time staring at the screen before I hit the personal message button. I needed to get a line on someone who might have info about the Chalice, and vampires fit my decision to stick to the bottom of the power ladder to a tee. Oblitrix knew where to find them, or at least had a general idea where they might be found. I briefly thought about tracking Rebecca down on Liberty Island, but I couldn’t come up with any sane reason why she would help me with this. So, I started typing.

  O - GCT, 104 11 21 0900

  The message was short and cryptic, but I knew Oblitrix would be there. Getting a PM from a dead guy’s account would be irresistible to a guy like him. With that taken care of, there was little else to do but wait until morning. I had about sixteen hours before the meeting, and I needed to take advantage of every minute. I propped myself up against the back of the bed and ran through the rain exercise three or four dozen times. False starts were one thing in this environment. Failure in a tight spot could mean my end.

  As Dante had suggested, overexertion left me weary. I had continued my practice non-stop for almost three hours, alternating between making it rain and sending objects flying through the room. By the time my splitting headache and dead tired body demanded that I call it a night, I figured I was getting a ninety percent success rate on my efforts. During one attempt I had even managed to keep the sword, the dagger, and my socks rotating above the bed for about twelve seconds. Not too bad for a newbie.

  My mind was too tired to focus, too frenetic to sleep. Restless, I picked up the iPad and made my way over to YouTube. In my tired, restless boredom, I decided to check out some videos on sword fighting and martial arts. My own ability thus far had proven to be pathetic at best, and at the very least maybe I could learn to not be a greater threat to myself than my opponent.