by M. R. Forbes
She wiped at her eyes again, her sadness slowly receding into steely anger. "I knew what I had seen, and I knew there was no reasonable way to explain it. Something had killed my sister, and her loss, the emptiness... it was tearing me apart just like she had been. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't think. The only thing I could think to do was try to find out what had really happened, to find whatever had done this. I went online, I did some research. I discovered SamChan, and then I started seeing things about angels and demons, crazy shit about vampires and werewolves and a war. There was this guy there, Oblitrix, always asking people if they'd witnessed anything strange like that. Part of me thought he was crazy, but after what I had seen I knew he wasn't. I knew the stuff he was talking about was really out there, and Anita was a victim of it.
"I dropped out of school, and ever since I've spent every waking hour of every day trying to find any leads I can on the thing that killed her. I also started training. I took classes in martial arts, guns, archery, anything I could think of. If I was going to find the demon, I had to be able to fight it, right? I also wrote to Oblitrix to ask him what he knew. He sent me a code."
"The code led you to me."
"Indirectly. It was a cipher, and not an easy one to break. It took months."
"It was meant to see how badly you wanted it."
"Now you know how bad." She wiped the excess tears away.
"I do. What I don't know is what you're hoping to achieve by being here."
"I wrote a program to start tracking murders that matched the description of Anita's. I got a hit or two every week going back about two years, all in the New England area. I found your site last week, with another cipher pointing to this apartment. I was nervous about coming here, afraid that what I had read was true, and at the same time hoping it was. When I picked up another hit here in Manhattan, I knew I had to come. Now I find out everything I was reading, everything you wrote is true? You took a bullet and then offered me ice cream."
She held up her cell again, so I could look at the picture of her with her sister.
"Anita was taken from me, from this world, way too soon. Other girls are being murdered. I know you can help me find the demon that's killing them."
I stared at her. After the Beast, I'd decided that the best way to help mankind was to teach them to help themselves. Now my first student was sitting right in front of me, and I could feel the anxiety and doubt creeping into my soul. Would I be doing the right thing to drag her into this? If she died or worse, and it was likely, would it be my fault? Was I ready to accept that responsibility?
"You know my fight isn't just a fight against Hell? There are demons, lots of them, but there are angels, too. They're the furthest thing from evil, and at the same time the death of humanity rests in their devotion, just as much as it does the Devil's chaos. If you want me to help you, you need to become part of that world, that fight, that war. You need to be ready to kill both sides. It isn't just about your sister. Thousands died in Mumbai because of the Beast. Thousands more have lost who they were. You made the effort to find me, now you need to decide. If I help you, my fight becomes your fight. There's no other way. If you can't accept those terms, the door is over there."
She didn't blink. She didn't sigh. She didn't waste a breath.
"I found you. I know what you're about. I'm here. You need me to sign something in blood?"
"No. No blood. It wouldn't be binding anyway."
I spent the next two hours getting Rose up to speed on the most current events. I gave her a basic rundown of what I knew about demons, and how I had never heard of one that met her description. The timing was a concern to me, because according to her the attacks started not long after the Beast was freed, which suggested we were dealing with a changeling of some kind. I didn't think any new demon types had been born from the damage. Then again, I didn't know everything.
Once that was done, I left her on the couch and went to bed.
I didn't need to sleep right now to stay strong and alert.
I needed it so I could dream.
In my dreams, I saw Charis and Clara the most often. They would be waiting for me in a sea of grass and flowers, a picnic blanket spread out, the sun shining. It was wholly cliche, and somehow that made it more real, and more comforting. We would eat and play games. I would chase Clara through the field, picking her up and tickling her when she was caught. I would sit with Charis' head on my lap and stroke her hair, and stare down into her eyes.
It brought me peace.
Other times, I would be walking the city alone, and Josette would find her way to me. She would laugh and tease in that way she had, and goad me into sparring with her. She would point out all of the flaws in my form, her form, and then cheat by using her seraphim wings to out-maneuver me.
It brought me energy.
On the rarest of occasions, I would find myself face to face with Ulnyx, the Great Were, my first true enemy, and in the end one of my greatest allies. We would sit in a bar together and drink, and he would regale me with stories of conquest and tell me I was weak and stupid. He would push my buttons and open my eyes.
It brought me strength.
Then I would wake up, and I would be ready.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rose was using the empty space in the apartment to do pushups when I came out of the bedroom. It wasn't the exercise that caught me off-guard, but the fact that she had stripped down to do it.
I stood in the doorway and watched her pump out fifty in rapid succession, her lean, solid muscles flexing and shifting with each rep, her naked form staying flat and perfect through the entire set. She shouted from the effort when she did the last one, pushing off with enough force to get herself up off the floor. She tucked her knees in and stood in one motion, bringing me into her field of view.
She smiled when she saw me, not the least bit embarrassed. "Hey, Landon. I hope you don't mind. I figured if we're going to be spending a lot of time together in close quarters, it would be stupid for me to be uncomfortable around you, and I didn't want to get my only pair of panties all sweaty. Besides, I'm not a shy girl by nature."
She was pretty, and I was sure the implants brought her a lot of attention from most men.
I had other things on my mind.
"Obviously." I glanced out the grimy window in the corner. The sun was up. "You don't own any other clothes?"
She laughed. "I left them at my hotel downtown. Maybe we can pick them up later? Or do you want me to stay there?"
"No. The apartment next to this one is empty. We'll get you settled over there at some point. Have you eaten?"
"I checked your fridge. You don't get a lot of visitors, do you? Ice cream and soda?"
"There's a deli downstairs. Hit the shower and get dressed, and I'll buy you breakfast."
She saluted me, teasing out a soft smile, and headed for the bathroom. She grabbed her neatly folded stack of clothes on the way.
I took a deep breath. It had been a couple of months since I had spent any amount of time around anyone, and I was getting rusty.
The water started running a minute later, followed by her mostly in-tune voice belting out some top forty hit or another. Definitely not shy. I looked up at the ceiling, extending my hand and stretching the power from it, latching it to the surface and shifting a small square of it aside.
In the past, my power had come from Purgatory, and been confined to Purgatory. When I focused my will, I was demanding change in this world, but things were really happening in that one. Those changes created a kind of ripple effect, and because Purgatory was so close, the ripples made things happen here. It was convoluted, but it had worked, though the sheer amount of power needed had kept my overall strength limited.
Now that I was working under my own power... I had only kept a small measure of it, a pin-sized sun, like an ethereal Tony Stark. I could stretch it away from me, or spread it through me, or otherwise treat it like a piece of play-doh, molding it and sh
aping it however I needed to do what I wanted to do. Mostly I used it to make myself stronger, or heal my wounds, that kind of thing - I was trying to fit in after all. I could also use it to push or pull, and had on a couple of occasions held the invisible energy like a makeshift lightsaber, but since it wasn't blessed or cursed, it meant having to decapitate, and that was a lot less efficient than the obsidian blade.
I shifted the energy, and my cell dropped out of the small opening and into my hand. I pushed the square back in place and looked down at the phone. When I had held the full breadth of the power, I could have done anything. Created a new universe, challenged God Himself. What I had kept was nothing more than a crumb, a pittance, and I was grateful for that.
The phone rang twice before Obi picked it up.
"Landon, man, I thought you forgot you even had a phone."
"Why didn't you tell me you gave out the code?" I asked. Obi had been my first ally after my original return from death. He'd suffered as much as anybody who had been on my side. Maybe more. Through it, despite it, he remained my closest and most dependable friend.
There was silence on the other end.
"Obi?"
"I... oh, crap, man. I didn't think they'd really find you, and I didn't want you sitting around waiting for them." He paused again. "Yeah, I gave it to someone calling themselves 'demon huntress twenty-three'. I was a little wary about that username, but she, I'm guessing she's a she, she sounded serious."
"Yeah, she's a she. She's in my shower right now. Where are you?"
"Back in Paris, man. I had a couple weeks vacation saved up, and Sarah asked me to come visit. It beats waiting around for you to decide to call me." He laughed.
"How is she?"
"You haven't talked to her lately?"
"Not in a few months. She's eighteen, I figured if she wanted to talk to me she'd call."
"Yeah, well, to be honest, between the work she's doing to bring safe haven to the Awake and the less dangerous changelings out here, and her little romance, she hasn't had much time for me either. It's all good, though. I'm enjoying doing my part to make the world a little less crazy for the ones that know about the war and want to stay out of it. It's a nice break from being on the front lines."
The Awake were the people like Rose who knew about the Divine. She was lucky because she was strong. The ones that weren't... they usually ended up homeless, jobless, and sometimes insane. It was tough to know the truth when hardly anyone else did.
"How many does she have there now?"
"Three hundred or so. More changelings than Awake. We're still trying to find a good solution for them though; they need fresh blood to survive. Cows and goats are doing it for now, but their genetics are screaming for human."
"Rebecca was investing in stem cell research way back when. Did you try to get a lead on the team that was doing it?"
"Solen family vampires? Maybe you could ask Hearst about it?"
"I will. He's going to owe me one. He tipped me to some strangeness with the seraphim and a scientist out in New Mexico."
Obi didn't respond right away, and I knew why. He was my ally, and my friend. He was also a good guy. He'd helped me fight demons, and he'd helped me against the Beast. He wouldn't help me with angels, and he didn't want to know about it either.
"Yeah, well, if you do find out, let me know," he said at last, his voice strained.
"I will. Anyway, I wanted to check in with you about the new recruit. Two years, Obi. I can't believe someone showed up."
"Me neither, man. Try not to get her killed on day one."
"I'll do my best. Tell Sarah I said 'hi', and that she should give me a call sometime."
He laughed again. "Okay, I will. Take care of yourself."
"You too."
I hung up and went over to the window, staring through the dirt to the growing volume of humanity below while I waited for Rose to finish her shower.
Today was going to be a good day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"So, you're telling me that Dante Alighieri, the guy who wrote the Divine Comedy, is alive and well in Purgatory?"
We were sitting on the steps to my apartment building. Rose was downing an egg and cheese bagel while I finished the last of the quart I had carried down.
"He isn't alive, technically. His soul is in Purgatory. He's the boss there. He was the one who brought me back here, after I was killed. It's a long story."
She shook her head. "I'm still trying to wrap my pathetic human mind around-"
I put up my hand. "There's nothing pathetic about the human mind. We have our own sets of strengths that neither Heaven or Hell can match."
"Name one."
"I'll give you two. Emotional and unpredictable. The seraphim struggle because they have to follow the rules. The demons falter because they don't have any. There's a pattern in that kind of chaos."
"Okay, but I would think emotions are a weakness."
"They can be. The Beast became the Beast because of love, believe it or not. But even the strength of his destruction was born of his emotions."
"And the demons and angels don't have emotions?"
I laughed. "Of course they do, but their understanding of the world around them limits the vast majority of them. There are always the outliers, the minority. The angels who are temped by the promise of personal gain, or maybe a demon who falls in love." My mind flashed back to Izak, Mephistopheles, whose love had saved Sarah from her father. "They're good or evil. They can't be good and evil, not like you or I can. We can see the whole picture. We can feel a full range. That doesn't mean we're destined to survive, but it helps balance things out a bit. Anyway, wasn't it your love of your sister that brought you to me? Didn't the pain of her loss make you strong?"
She looked at me, and I could see the fire there. "Good point."
She didn't shed any more tears, though I could see the tightness in her face. I waited it for it to soften before I spoke again.
"So, MIT... that's a pretty serious school."
"It can get a little heavy sometimes, sure. I've always been up for a challenge."
"You said you were in engineering. What kind?"
"Biological. Genetics."
"Am I the only one who thinks that's ironic?"
She smiled and shook her head. "No. If I had known some of the origins sooner, I might have gone into a different field. In any case, I was only into my second year. I still had a lot to learn. You don't get cold, do you?"
I looked down at myself. I had stayed with the jeans and leather blazer, which were abnormally light for the forty-degree weather. "I could, if I wanted to."
"That's a nice trick."
"I could teach you, but you'd have to die first."
"I'll pass. Though I do have a question. If I'm helping you fight Heaven and Hell, what's going to happen to me when I die?"
"To be honest, I hadn't really thought about it. When you die, your soul is weighed for all the good and evil you've done in your life. The scale isn't too precise, so if you're helping me, the odds are good that you'll wind up in Purgatory with Dante. If that happens, he'll take good care of you. It won't be as awesome an eternity as Heaven is supposed to be, but I'll make sure it's cushy."
I waited for her to react. To change her mind. Losing the promise of Heaven was a powerful dissuasion.
She downed the last few bites of her bagel and got to her feet. "So, are we going to find the demon, or what?"
"We are. You said you had a lead?"
"Yeah. A girl was killed in her dorm over at Columbia University. I got her name and looked her up on Facebook. Twenty-one, attractive, smart. Like my sister. From what I read, she was stabbed to death, and her boyfriend was arrested a couple hours later."
"You don't think he did it?"
"I know he didn't do it."
"How?"
She got angry at the question. "I just do. I've been tracking this asshole, I know the signs."
"I'm not saying I don't
believe you. I wanted to see how much you believe in yourself."
She cooled and nodded. "I did some research. Homicide victims get dropped off at the medical examiner's office over on First and Thirtieth. I thought if you turned out to be a real thing, we could go there first, so you could see it for yourself."
"A real thing? Former people have feelings, too."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. I can't even imagine what it's like for you." She paused. "So, I guess you're immortal?"
"Don't worry about it. I was trying to be funny. Sometimes I end up spending too much time alone, and I start to drift away from this." I waved my hand at the world in general. "I'm mostly immortal, as in I don't age, get sick, can take a bullet or twelve. I'm like Wolverine, or Connor MacLeod. Cut off my head, I die, except as far as I know you don't get my power. Bury me in tons of concrete, trap me ten miles underground, I don't know if I can get out of that."
"Connor MacLeod?"
"Highlander?"
"Never heard of it."
"If I were alive, I'd only be thirty-one. That isn't so much older than you that I should be getting the confused head shake at my pop culture references."
"Maybe I'm the wrong kind of geek girl? You look thirty-one to me."
I smiled and shifted my power, using it to smooth lines, tighten skin, and bring me back to my pre-demise appearance. "How about now?"
She stared at me. "You look better with a few more years on you. More trustworthy."
I used my power to go forward again. I had thought so, too, which is why I had aged myself in the first place.
"Better?"
"Definitely."
"Good. Let's go down to the morgue. I don't know if seeing the victim will help us figure out what we're dealing with, but it's a start."
CHAPTER NINE
"How are we going to get in?" Rose asked.