Balance (The Divine, Book One)

by M. R. Forbes

  Rebecca’s grip was painful as we plummeted towards the concrete under us. I had about seven seconds to slow us down enough to both survive the impact and heal before any of the demons above regrouped and came down in the elevator. I could only hope Reyzl wouldn’t follow us in the express.

  I forced my will on the air around us, demanding it to be denser, thicker, heavier, and to provide a greater level of friction and resistance in order to slow our fall. I could feel it responding around us, feel the pressure building and thickening. Not enough. The ground was still approaching at a breakneck pace.

  I demanded it to compress even more, the pressure threatening to pop us from the inside. Rebecca’s eyelids were raised in fear, though her black eyes told me nothing. I was going to say something comforting, but there was no time. I rolled myself so I was positioned under her just before we hit the ground.

  The second we made contact with the earth I let go of our airbag, the release of the compressed air causing a small explosion that shattered the windows of the buildings around us and flipped over a couple of parked cars. We hit hard, but not too hard, and I knew when I felt my back shatter that the damage wouldn’t be bad enough to prevent us from moving soon.

  I still held Rebecca on top of me, clutching her body against mine. I had broken her fall, but she hadn’t escaped unscathed. Her legs had been askew from my own, and her kneecaps had taken the same force as my back. She was alive and alert though, her eyes open and back to their perfect pale blue. Her face was twisted in pain.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Nothing that won’t heal,” she said through her grimace, “But I can’t do it as quickly as you.”

  I could feel my body was already mending. I maintained my grip on her as I pushed myself to my feet, lifting her up and over my shoulder. “Then allow me, Miss Solen,” I said. Direction didn’t matter, as long as it was away.

  We had gone up about two blocks when we heard the roar of the first demons out onto the street.

  “Put me down, Landon,” Rebecca said.

  I lowered her to the ground, being careful not to put too much stress on her knees. She pointed to a manhole cover near the end of the street. The sewer? Maybe I could turn off my sense of smell.

  “We won’t be able to lose them down there,” she said, “but it will give us a better defensive position.” She didn’t wait for me to argue. She kicked off her heels and ran down the street. I followed behind her. She pulled the manhole cover off and began descending into the darkness.

  It was pitch black underground, but I knew by now that it didn’t have to be. I adjusted my eyes to be able to pierce the darkness, being met with stone walls and a six inch deep stream of who-knows-what. The smell was horrible, but not unbearable. I moved to put the cover back over the manhole, but Rebecca pulled me away.

  “No time,” she said, pulling me behind her.

  We heard the splash when the weres hit the sewer. There wasn’t enough room for them to maintain their demonic forms down here, something I hadn’t considered but Rebecca must have. We could hear their footfalls as they chased behind us, moving just as fast as we were.

  “We need to take them out, or they’ll just catch us when we try to climb up,” Rebecca said, coming to a stop and turning around. She reached over her shoulder and pulled another dagger from a sheathe hidden on her back.

  “You can’t kill them with that,” I pointed out. The dagger was cursed.

  “No,” she agreed. “I’ll slow them down, you stop them.”

  I didn’t have a blessed weapon either. “How?” I asked. “I’m unarmed.”

  She smiled. “Landon, you’re a diuscrucis. You’re always armed. Be creative.”

  Her eyes turned black again as she morphed into killer-vampiress mode and dashed forward towards the oncoming weres. I could see that she intended to hit them when they turned the corner. Be creative, right. I heard a grunt of pain as the battle was joined, Rebecca’s element of surprise giving her a clear advantage. Be creative. I looked down at the sewage running past my legs. It was my turn to smile.

  When I reached the corner where Rebecca had vanished, she was having her way with the weres, her dagger lashing out like an angry viper to add to an ever growing number of cuts while they struggled to make contact with their own weapons. I recognized them as the two that had been guarding the elevator when Reyzl had made his entrance. It made sense that they would be the first ones down.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Rebecca said, ducking under a strike and stabbing one of the weres in the chest.

  I focused my will on the sewage at my feet, finding a pair of splintered boards and pulling them out of the flotsam. I held them aloft, moving them back behind my head and down the tunnel as far as I could. I didn’t want to take any chances that I wouldn’t get enough momentum.

  “Down,” I yelled, pushing the huge splinters forward with all of the force I could manage. I could feel I was reaching the limits of my strength, and my head was enveloped in pain as I sent the missiles hurtling towards the fray.

  Rebecca danced out of the path of the makeshift spears just in time. The weres weren’t so lucky. They had just enough time to identify the threat before they were skewered, the twin wooden stakes piercing all the way through their chests, hearts, and backs. They both emitted an ear-splitting howl and toppled forward into the muck. I leaned up against the side of the sewer. My head was on fire, and I was having trouble seeing straight.

  Rebecca pounced on the prone weres and used the cursed dagger to remove their heads, then hurried over to where I was leaning.

  “Too much,” I told her. “I need to rest.”

  “Don’t get too embarrassed,” she said.

  Before I could ask her what she meant, she had me over her shoulder, carrying me through the sewer like a child. I wanted to protest, but I was just too weak. I let her be my legs without complaint.

  Chapter 13

  She put me down once we had neared the end of the sewer tunnel, which opened up into a larger area where multiple flows met and continued on in a single stream. We could hear voices through the large tunnel up ahead, a cacophony of sound that suggested more than just a wayward vagrant.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, the ground still a little shaky under me.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied. “Can you walk?”

  My head was still throbbing, but I could hold myself up. “Yeah, but I really need to rest for a while. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “The glass was impressive, but lets try not to have to jump like that again,” she said. “There are humans up ahead, a squatter settlement I believe. We can rest there.”

  “What about Reyzl?”

  “He won’t give chase, and Merov’s people will turn back once they see the headless henchmen. We’ve won for tonight. Reyzl is nothing if not patient.”

  “So he knows he can take me out pretty much any time, and isn’t concerned?”

  She giggled. “Something like that.”

  “I don’t know why you decided to help me, but I’m glad you did,” I told her, looking into her eyes. She dug her fangs into her bottom lip and gave me a sheepish smile.

  “Just something about you I guess,” she replied. “Come on.”

  We didn’t have to walk too far down the larger adjoining sewer tunnel before it opened up into a much larger room. My guess was that it had been a pumping station many, many years ago.

  There was a massive hunk of machinery resting just off to the side of the river of sewage, with old brass pipes jutting out and down into the muck. A shantytown had sprung up around it, home to at least three hundred people and complete with electricity and lighting provided by a hack on the pump’s former connection to the grid. They even had clean water that they were leeching from a pipe that must have once been used to cool the giant beast.

  The town itself was a loose grid of tents, tarps, and cardboard boxes molded together into workable living s
paces for the homeless who resided here. They were going about their lives oblivious to the strangers in their midst, collecting water from the open pipe to cook their food on propane heaters, or to clean their clothes in makeshift washtubs. What did they have to fear, since they had nothing to lose?

  I leaned on Rebecca while we walked, thankful to have her shoulder to keep me from falling over. I could only imagine being one of the vagrants seeing us go by, me in my torn up tuxedo that I was too weak to fix, Rebecca in her ragged black dress. We must have looked as if we had just stepped out of an explosion, fitting because we sort of had.

  We split the center of the encampment, looking for a place to sit and rest for a while. The people around us did their best to pretend we didn’t exist, even going so far as to turn away when we approached. It was ironic to me that the homeless were shunning us. Were they doing it to show us how others made them feel? I looked at Rebecca, who seemed unfazed by the community’s reaction. Was she used to it, or did she just not care?

  “I see you demon. I welcome you.” The voice came from behind.

  Rebecca and I turned as one to see who had called her out. A girl. A small girl, no more than ten years old, with a thin, frail frame, and shoulder length reddish blonde hair. She was wearing sneakers with a simple flowered dress; both surprisingly clean considering the amount of grime that covered everything else down here. That wasn’t the most amazing thing about her though. Her eye sockets were barren, the skin sinking into them. She was blind. Blind, and Divine. I don’t know why neither of us had known she was near. The feeling I got from her was different, unique. She was not a demon, or an angel.

  “Do you address me child?” Rebecca asked. If she was surprised that a blind girl could see her, she didn’t show it.

  The girl stepped forward, stopping a few feet away. She definitely knew right where we were standing.

  “I address both of you,” she replied. She turned her head towards me. “Welcome, brother. My name is Sarah. Come sit with me. I can see that you are tired.”

  The other people around us had ignored the exchange, and they hurried to move out of the way of the little girl leading us towards the center of the encampment. There was an old man resting there, in front of a larger nylon tent. He looked more like your stereotypical vagrant, with a long white beard and layers of jackets and sweaters covering a rail thin body. He looked up at us when we passed, but said nothing.

  The inside of the tent was sparsely decorated, a thin air mattress in the corner, a small shelf with a few random books on it, and a stack of boxed and canned food and drink. The center of the tent had a bunch of old blankets and rugs piled on top of it, creating a somewhat comfortable cushioning to sit on. Sarah beckoned us to do so, taking position right in front of us, close enough to touch.

  “Welcome to my home,” she said. “Please find peace and shelter here.”

  “Thank you,” I said. The whole thing seemed surreal, and in my exhausted state I wasn’t positive it was happening. “Who are you?”

  “I am Sarah,” the girl replied, laughing. “The question you should be asking is, why are you. Why are you, Landon?”

  I was taken off guard by the question, and the fact that Sarah knew my name. How did she know? How could she see me? Why am I? It was something I hadn’t ever thought about. Even after dying and being returned to this world, I had never considered why I existed, why I had come back. I had agreed to it because I felt I had to, but why? It was so easy to ask, so hard to answer. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Why are you?”

  She smiled. “Few of us know why,” she said. “Yet without knowing why we are, how can we ever know who we are? That is the secret to control, to power. The demons use it. The angels use it. They don’t want you to think about it. You don’t need to know to be Awake. You just need to question. Everyone here questions.”

  The homeless people outside. All of them could see what we were. “Is that why they turn away?”

  “There are three, brother, always three. One, those who do not know they are being controlled, who live their happy oblivious lives. Two, those who know and accept control in exchange for something else. Three, those who know and reject control, who always ask why and become outcasts to society. See them, for they are the true casualties. They are caught in the war, and cannot fight. They see the war, and cannot end it. They lose their families, their jobs, their homes, because they question why. The Sleeping call them crazy, because they do not accept.”

  “I don’t want to control them,” I said. “I want to help them.”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes. I know that you believe it brother, but you are young.”

  “Why do you call me brother?”

  “That is part of who you are,” she replied, “but just a part. You will need to learn why before you can be whole.”

  “You are a half breed,” Rebecca said, her voice and expression filled with excitement. “A first generation offspring of an angel and a demon, a true living diuscrucis. Such a thing was thought to have ended thousands of years ago.” She turned to face me. “A direct offspring of such a union has command of much of the power you do,” she explained. “But in order for a demon and an angel to pair, they must bind their child to this world such that the soul is conceived inside a mortal shell. Thus bound, she is limited by the fragility of mortality.”

  “What about when she dies?” I asked.

  “I will have the same fate as all mortals,” Sarah said. “I will be judged by my actions as all others are.”

  “If she is to return to this world in any form, her power will fully develop. That is the reason that such unions are forbidden.”

  “It is doubtful that I will ever be allowed to return,” Sarah said.

  The flap of the tent drew back and the old man stepped inside. He looked at us, then at Sarah. She patted the floor next to her, and he went to sit by her side.

  “I should never have been,” she said. “But there is no greater temptation to true evil than the forbidden. My father is a demon of great strength. He captured my mother, locked her up as his prisoner, drugged her and took her purity.”

  She spoke of such horror without emotion; her eyeless face a mask. “He impregnated her because he wanted to see a half breed for himself. When I was born, he murdered her in the delivery bed, and took my eyes so that I might never know who he was. For six months he had me raised as his own, to see if a diuscrucis could be made pure evil. He didn’t know I could see him, could feel his heart that he had worked so hard to cloak in darkness. He would have destroyed me if he had discovered that I could see the Divine without my eyes, and know them even without knowing their exact form.

  She motioned to the old man sitting next to her. “Izak was my mother’s jailer, and he spent much time with her. He secretly fell in love with her, and then with me. He discovered first that I could See, and so he stole me from under my father’s nose and has hidden me ever since. He is the one who has taught me of our kind.”

  “And your father?” I asked. I could make a guess who would do such a thing.

  “I do not know,” she replied. “It is not the demon Reyzl as you think, brother. Izak will not tell me his name, but he assures me that is not so.”

  It was a little creepy how she knew what I was thinking. I turned to Izak. “Why won’t you tell her?” I asked. “You claim to love her.”

  Izak looked at me and said nothing. I was beginning to get angry when Sarah raised her hand between Izak and I.

  “Hold your anger. Izak seeks to protect me from him. Even thinking his name could reveal me, and I am not yet ready to confront him.”

  “How did you wind up down here?” Rebecca asked. Sarah’s story had brought tears to her eyes, which she now wiped away with the back of her hand.

  “After Izak took me away from my father, we travelled for many months. He taught me of the world, of its beauty, and of how to see it without my eyes. I was in wonder of it all, and still am. In time we came to this place, hi
dden from the rest of the world, so that he could teach me of my power. Nobody lived here then, it was just Izak and I. I found that I could See not just the Divine, but also the Awake. Those who could see me, I could See back. I felt their anger, their pain, and their hopelessness. We began to bring them here, to give them a community.”

  “Aren’t you afraid your father will find you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “None of these people will betray me. I can not give them their former lives back, but I have helped them make new ones down here, with others who understand.”

  She turned her head towards me, and this time I could feel her entering my thoughts. I was still tired, still weak. I pushed her out with as little force as I could manage, for fear I would not be able to stay conscious with any greater effort. She did not resist, instead she giggled out loud.

  “I am glad to have found you, brother,” she said. “Rest now demons. Find peace and shelter here.”

  I had so many questions, so much more I wanted to know. I didn’t get to ask them, because she had both Calmed and Commanded me. I knew now how to recognize each, and I panicked at the thought of what she would do once I was out. I fought against her power, but I was too tired, too weak.

  “Do not fear,” she said to me, right before the world went dark.

  Chapter 14

  I was only out for a few seconds. When I woke, I was sitting on my bed at the Belmont, naked and coated in a sheen of sweat. Ulnyx was sitting across from me, behind a piano, his fingers tickling the ivories. When he saw me, he started laughing.

  “Be quiet, Ulnyx,” a familiar voice said.

  The demon quieted and placed his hands in his lap. I looked over to the door. Sarah was standing there, looking the same as she had before she put me to sleep, except... different. It was her eyes. They were whole in this place, an incredible reddish gold that shimmered and danced like Josette’s.

  “I’m sorry, brother,” she said to me. “You were weak, and you will need to be strong to carry on with your purpose.”