His chest was covered in dozens of runed scars, swirls, sigils, pentagrams and crossing lines. It took me a few minutes to find it, and I could feel the demon’s ragged breath on my scalp the entire time.
“What are you looking for?” he whispered. His voice hinted at fear.
I reached up and pulled the dagger out of his heart with my hand, leading him to take in a big gulp of air.
“Don’t worry, I found it,” I said.
The one I wanted was on his right pectoral, and I didn’t hesitate to sink the dagger into his flesh and cut it cleanly away.
“What are you doing?” he cried, watching the formerly scarred skin regrow clean. Somewhere in the distance, a shout echoed through the stone.
“It’s clear you don’t fear me,” I said, stepping back away from him. “That’s okay. I don’t need you to fear me.”
I looked over at Lylyx. She was grinning widely, understanding what I had just done. “You should have just told him,” she said to Gervais.
A strange coldness that brought back the recent memory of Abaddon preceded Izak’s entrance into the lab. The moment Gervais Saw him, he began to wriggle in his chains.
“What did you do?” he shouted, his fear now plain.
Izak looked at me, and then at the archfiend’s chest, smooth where the scars of the binding had once been. The fiend’s shirt was hanging open, his chest bleeding where he had mutilated his skin to remove the other end of the connection. He approached us, his eyes alight in anger. I raised my hand, putting it between the two of them.
“Not yet,” I said to Izak. “I need to know what he knows. Keep him alive. For Sarah.”
Izak didn’t look happy, but he nodded. A small ball of fire formed in the palm of his hand, and he held it up to Gervais’ face. The archfiend tried to move away from it, but the chains kept him static.
“Tell me what you know,” I said. ”I can’t be sure how long Izak can control himself after what you did to him.”
Gervais growled. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything, if you get him away from me and let me go.”
“Deal,” I said. “Izak?”
The fiend punched Gervais in the gut, sending him swinging on the chains, but he retreated.
“Of course,” he began, once he had stopped swinging. “I’ve been looking for Sarah for years. Ever since Izak stole her away. I combed the world in search of her, offering up everything I have at my disposal. Money, sex, power, information… nobody knew anything, or if they did, they were afraid to get caught between he and I. As you may have surmised, this one is quite a devilish fiend.”
And Izak wasn’t his original name.
“Sixteen years,” he continued. “A blink in time under normal circumstances, but Sarah is mortal. Her time here is limited, and there is no chance that the powers-that-be in the other realms will ever allow her to return. I was becoming desperate, and I am ashamed to admit, losing hope. You have no idea of what she is capable of. What she can become with the proper…education.
“She came to me two months ago, your little vampiress non-friend. I could feel the power radiating off of her the moment she stepped through the transport rift. Whatever you think she was before, think again diuscrucis. She’s been to Hell, and something happened to her there.”
My mind kept returning to the last vision I had of her before she disappeared into the Hell rift. Sad, but strong. Sure of her decision.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“She told me she would help me, if I would help her. She said she knew where Sarah was. I asked her what she wanted in return, and I offered her everything. She settled for my loyalty, and allegiance. It was a steep price, but such is the nature of my desire that I agreed. In any case, allegiance among demons is a fickle thing.” He laughed then, a self-defeated chuckle.
“She gave me the means to hide myself from Divine Sight, runes she etched into my back with her claws. She brought me to New York, and showed me how Sarah was living. I watched her walk to school, and I was disgusted. She’s wasting her life as a simple mortal when she should be Commanding them like a God.” His voice rose to a shout, and his body trembled with anger. “I would have taken her then, right out in the open, but Reyka forbid it. She insisted I had to wait, that it was not yet time. I was a fool. She wanted you to know she was taken. She wanted you to know that it was me. She wanted you to come here, because she wanted you to find me like this. I didn’t see her lies until it was too late.
“I found Sarah in her city below the surface, living like a vagabond instead of the princess that she is. She didn’t know me, because she couldn’t See me. She tried to call for help. I could feel her power reaching out, but I put her to sleep, prepared the rift to summon the wraith, and left. Izak was supposed to be killed. That bitch assured me that Izak would be killed.” He started screaming again, shaking on his chains. The anger left as quickly as it had come, and he hung still again.
“Just another deception,” he said, his calm and anger exchanging like the tide. “She’s quite good at the game. Sarah knew her as soon as we returned here. She asked her if it was time.”
Gervais paused and sat motionless on the end of the chain, deep in thought. “Why would she say that?” he asked in a whisper before continuing his tale.
“‘Almost,’ Reyka had said to her. ‘You’re safe now.’ And then the bitch put her vampires on me.”
“You got beat by vampires?” I asked, confused. In the earth-walking demonic food chain, Gervais was near the top, while vampires were close to the bottom.
“Really stretching your head muscles on that one, aren’t you diuscrucis,” he spat. “She’s done something to them. They’re stronger and heal faster than any demon I’ve ever seen. They even healed from my fire.”
I was ready to fire back on the first comment, but the second stopped me dead. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling I knew what she had done. The Grail, my blood, her blood. It made me sick to my stomach.
“I couldn’t defeat them,” he said. “Not without risking Sarah and bringing the entire chateau down on us. They chained me up, and Reyka stuck the dagger in my heart. She didn’t want my allegiance. She wanted to give you a gift, an apology of sorts. She said to tell you that Sarah is safe in her care and that she’s waiting for you.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Las Lajas Cathedral,” he said. “South America.”
He was lying. “Izak,” I said, turning to the fiend. “Your former master thinks he can lie to me.”
Izak clenched his fist, and it lit up in flame.
“Wait,” Gervais cried. “I swear that’s where she said she would be.” Truth. “I don’t believe her.” Truth.
I paused Izak. “Why don’t you believe her?” I asked.
“Do you know what would happen if she tried to hang out inside a church?” Gervais asked. “She’d be surrounded by angels within thirty seconds, and cathedrals have power of their own. She may be strong, but she isn’t that strong.”
“Even with an army of super vampires?”
Gervais fell silent. “Sarah,” he said finally.
“What about her?” I asked.
“Look at my eyes, diuscrucis,” he said.
“Rebecca took them,” I replied. “You deserved it.”
Gervais laughed. “Reyka didn’t take them. Sarah did.”
I felt Josette’s fear creep up my soul, where it was added to my own. “Sarah did?” I asked.
Not that it wasn’t understandable after what the demon had done to her, but it was still surprising. When I thought of her, I saw only the innocent, frightened girl who had slept by my side and named me protector.
“If she had tortured anyone else the way she did her father, I would have been proud,” he said.
I had another thought then. One that was more disconcerting than any other. Gervais had always wanted to raise Sarah to be evil, to tap into her power and use it for his own ends. Josette had believed that gettin
g her away from the archfiend would be her salvation. What if Gervais’ influence was unnecessary? What if she was breaking bad on her own? Sarah had tried to Command me. She had sent Izak with me against his will. She had cut out the demon’s eyes, and had asked Rebecca if it was time, as though she were in on whatever was going on.
“Why would Rebecca bring Sarah to Las Lajas?” I asked, gripped with a dread that I couldn’t shake.
“If Sarah’s power is maturing, she’ll be able to Command the seraph. She can make them fall, and she can do it faster than you can balance it. She’ll need time though, time to learn to control them. Las Lajas is the sandbox. The Vatican will be the battlefield.”
My fear evolved into anger. “Is this what you wanted?” I shouted, walking back over to the demon and planting the dagger deep into his flesh. He didn’t react to the wound. “Is this what you raped your sister for? Is this what you imprisoned her for?” I pulled the blade out and stabbed him again, and again. I could sense Josette in the back of my soul, but I still controlled her, and I pushed my power between us.
It was surprising that Izak would be the one to stop my mutilation of the demon. He grabbed me from behind and ripped me away from Gervais, leaving him as a shredded mess, blood streaming to the floor. He immediately began to heal.
“I want power,” Gervais said with unaffected calm. “Sarah was to help me control this world, not destroy it. Let Satan have Hell, let God have Heaven, let Dante have Purgatory. Earth could have been mine.”
He actually sounded remorseful. It made me sick. Gervais had occupied so much of the pain and anger I had been carrying around for the last five years, his treatment of Josette blasting at me from her memories and my reaction to them. I don’t know how many times I had been doubled over by those memories, left leaning or crouching with tears running from my eyes, my heart racing, unable to control myself. He was the boogie man in my nightmares, and like any kid growing up and finding out there were no monsters under the bed, I was discovering that his power was an illusion fed by the very fears that had incapacitated me. Josette’s ties to him were too personal to see through the charade, but now that I was looking on him, hanging blind from the ceiling, I almost felt pity. Almost.
“I’ve told you everything I know,” Gervais said. “Now set me free.”
“Lylyx,” I said, turning back towards the door to the lab, “stay here with Izak. I have to go meet someone.” I glanced over at the fiend. “Izak, I’m done. Do whatever you want with him.”
Izak smiled. He hadn’t pulled me away to stop me. He had pulled me away because he wanted to be the one to destroy the archfiend. I could feel Josette struggling within me, and I begged her for forgiveness. It was the second promise I had broken in less than an hour, but I decided that I could live with that.
I found a Ferrari in the carriage house outside the chateau. I could hear Gervais’ screams as I drove away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There was a certain comfort to the sooth purr of the Ferrari’s engine that helped me keep my mind in some kind of coherent state while I made the much longer mortal trip back to Paris from Gervais’ chateau in Besancon, not far from the Swiss border. It was nearly six o’clock France time, and I could only hope that whatever was occurring at the Eiffel Tower today hadn’t happened yet. Since I was running under the assumption that the party was in my honor, I was pretty sure that it hadn’t.
Of course, it didn’t offer me any more clarity. I had spent the last five years fighting every day to keep my emotions in check, to push them down into the recesses of my soul and try to lose them there. It had made my work maintaining the balance almost clinical, an exercise in efficiency. It had led me to scour the world for answers to Charis’ riddle, because the unfeeling soul meant an eternity worse than anything Hell could throw at me. In the end, it had cost me Sarah, because I had ignored the warning signs and plodded on my fixated course.
Now? Now it was all coming back in a flood of anger that was threatening to complete my failure. I had lost Josette and Rebecca that day under the Statue of Liberty, but at least I thought I had won the war for balance. I was beginning to see that I hadn’t won anything. At best I had just delayed some schemes for a while, taking the Grail out of the game and causing the forces around me to move on to plan B. The trouble was, I couldn’t figure out the game, or even who the players were. Charis was out there, and she had freed the demon Abaddon in Gervais’ tunnels. Did the archfiend know about it? In my eagerness to reach Sarah, I hadn’t even thought to ask him. She had also sent a witch and Lylyx to slow me down, to keep me from getting to Gervais too soon. Why?
What about Sarah? The fear of her maturation into a powerful diuscrucis who had chosen selfishness and power had been converted and joined with the rest of my anger. If she really had moved in that direction, it was because of what Gervais had dictated she would be. She had grown up in fear and hiding. Suppose she found she had the power to live a different way, to be in control of her own life? Could anyone blame her for using it? How much evil was ingrained by fate, how much by genetics, how much by fear and lack of independence? Her lineage made her the poster child for nature versus nurture, but even there I saw only balance.
Where did Rebecca fit in? She had given Sarah up to Gervais, but then taken her in and left Gervais for me. The archfiend had said it was a gift to me, but why leave me a gift unless she wanted something? What could she possibly want, if she already had Sarah, and with it the means to bring down Heaven? Unless Gervais was wrong, and she had taken Sarah to prevent that very thing. But the demon had said Hell had changed her. I couldn’t imagine Hell changing anyone in a good way.
Too many balls in the air, and none of them rotating in a predictable orbit. Trying to catch them all was out of the question, and the powerlessness of that truth fueled my anger even more. Obi had given me the only solid clue I had in anything. A message sent by anonymous, intended to be intercepted and lead me to the Eiffel Tower. I would follow it and let this part of the game play out, and then I would see the truth. Sarah had said it to me plainly the first time we had met - they can’t win if you don’t play. I wasn’t sure I had a choice. I jammed my foot down harder on the accelerator, an angry grimace playing across my face as the car burst forward with renewed force.
It was just after eight when I eased the Ferrari into a spot on the street across from the Tower. The spot had been a little too small for the car, so I had focused, giving the fore and aft vehicles just enough shove to make room. I changed my appearance before getting out of the car; an older gentleman with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed mustache in an expensive dark suit.
I strolled across the street and along the concourse leading to the Tower, my hands in my pockets and my Sight stretched out into the night. I knew right away that I was in the right place, at the right enough time. There were a lot of Divine here, most of them at the ground level, spread out and stationary. Waiting. For me? Or something else?
There was one up on the Tower, positioned at the second deck, their signature a hot beacon burning into my soul. I felt a familiarity to this one, something about them that I recognized some piece of, but couldn’t quite place. I had no doubts they were the one I was here to see. There was no motion from the other Divine, and I wasn’t hiding. Play the game, but be ready to change the rules.
“Hello sir,” the young french girl at the Tower ticket booth said. She was slender, with long, dark hair, brown eyes, and porcelain skin. A math textbook rested open off to the side of her counter, next to a small computer terminal.
I was pretty sure she was speaking French, but I had quickly learned that Divinity granted the gift of tongues. I heard everything in English, and spoke it that way, at least to my own ears.
“Hello,” I replied. “I’m meeting someone up at…” I looked over to the board behind here, where the destinations and ticket prices were listed. “Jules Verne.”
She smiled. “Of course, sir. Name?” She put her finger
s to the keyboard to type in my response.
Except, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure who I was actually going to be meeting up there. Was it Charis, familiar to my Sight but changed somehow? Was it Rebecca, her identity altered by her trip to Hell? I stood silent, trying to do all of the permutations, to guess the right password and gain access to the Tower’s second floor. Not that I needed the permission of the girl in the booth, but I preferred to go in quietly.
“Sir?” she asked.
There was only one name I could be sure of. “Hamilton,” I said.
Her fingers danced along the keys. “Ah, yes sir. Party of two. I see your acquaintance has already arrived. An escort will arrive momentarily to take you up. Enjoy your dinner, sir.”
I stepped off to the side and looked up at the Tower again. My ‘acquaintance’ hadn’t moved. A minute later a tall, handsome man in a tuxedo approached and led me over to the private elevator up to the restaurant.
The Jules Verne was a posh, elegant eatery located on the second floor of the Tower, about four hundred feet above ground level. Of course, it had fantastic views of Paris, and the dark, classy ambience mixed well with just enough chintz to call out the place as both a fine gourmet treat, and an obvious tourist destination. When the escort dropped me off with a second maitre-de in the restaurant proper, I could see that it was a full house. I imagined it always was.
I didn’t need the waiter to guide me to my table, but I allowed him to. My Sight was red hot now, though I still couldn’t identify who the signature belonged to. Judging by the layout, the table was in the back corner by the window, my line of sight obscured by a support beam. When the waiter pulled me around the obstruction, I smirked.
The man at the seat across from the empty one I took to be mine was a small, lean Asian, with a thick lawn of spiked black hair, a petite, well-defined face, and sharp grey eyes. He was dressed in an expensive suit, a gold Rolex dangling from a narrow wrist. He was playing the part of the businessman perfectly. He smiled and stood at the sight of me, his fangs sliding out to overlap his lower lip.
Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) Page 13