“Mr. Hamilton,” he said, his voice too deep for his size, but smooth as the silk tie he was wearing.
“Mr… Cho, is it?” I asked, going along with the formalities.
He nodded. “At your service, my friend,” he replied. “Thank you for meeting me here. Please, have a seat.”
I slid into the offered chair, and he returned to his own. “To be honest,” I said. “I was expecting someone else to be here.”
He put up his hand. “Of course. There is much to speak about, my friend. First, a drink? I know it will do nothing for your senses, but some still find the act itself relaxing.”
I thought about Sarah, and Rebecca. No more stalling. “Skip it,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of time to waste on you.”
He laughed. “You have more time than you might think,” he replied. “But as you wish.”
The archvampire put his hands out on the table and lowered his head, his eyes falling closed. I heard a soft hum escaping from his mouth, a hum that began to morph and change in pitch and timbre. An amalgam of coldness and heat pierced the air, and the smell of a familiar perfume mixed with iron and blood. I could sense the tempo of my heart rising, my body reacting to the change faster than my mind could process it. Cho’s eyes opened and his head snapped up, leaving me staring at crisp, blue orbs.
“Rebecca.”
The name fell from my mouth and floated between us. She took a deep breath to suck it in. In that moment everything I had wanted to say scattered with the inhale, and I was left in a new type of purgatory, firmly entrenched between desire and disgust. It didn’t matter that she was using Cho’s body. It was her.
Her lips spread into a sensuous smile. “Landon,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
She wasn’t lying.
“Where is Sarah?” I asked. “Rebecca, if you hurt her…”
The smile vanished. “Hurt her? Why would I hurt her? Be assured worm, I have no intention of harming your sister. She is with me, and she is safe.”
There was nobody else who could make the nickname ‘worm’ sound like a good thing. “I just can’t believe it’s you, that you’re here. After all this time.”
I felt a pinch in my soul, the tiniest little push against me. Ulnyx.
“Did you like my gift?” she asked. “Josette’s brother all tied up? I would have added a bow, but I couldn’t find one large enough to wrap around his ego.”
“It would have been a nice touch,” I replied. “Although I think Sarah appreciated it more than me. So did Izak.”
There was the slightest twist in Rebecca’s expression at the mention of the demon. Another pinch from the Were, sharper this time.
“Gervais’ puppet? He’s with you?” Her eyes danced around the restaurant.
“No. He’s having his way with your gift,” I said. “Rebecca, I’m happy to see you, but I’m having a hard time trying to understand what the heck is going on.”
In fact, it was more than that. A third hit from Ulnyx, and it was like he had cracked a window, an invisible barrier that was up between Rebecca and I. A new distortion spread from the crack, one that was closer to reality. I saw it, but I didn’t understand it. Not yet.
“It is a wondrous time for us, Landon,” she said. “Not just for you and I, but for all Divine. A new age.”
I raised my hand. I could see it through the crack. I could see the veins running along my wrist, the flesh laid over the muscle underneath. I saw past it to Rebecca. Not just Rebecca, but also Cho. There was something there. Something I was forgetting.
“No. Start from the beginning. You bled me out and took a swig from the Grail. You left me paralyzed. Why?”
Her head tilted a fraction. “I did what I had to do,” she said. “In that moment, it wasn’t about you, other than the blood you carry in your veins. You could have been anyone, and I would have done the same. When a Divine drinks the blood of a diuscrucis from the Holy Grail, they change. They become more powerful than they could have ever dreamed.”
“Reyzl regenerated faster,” I said. “He didn’t seem like he gained any other power.” At least not compared to before he drank the blood.
She laughed. “We didn’t let him live long enough for the blood to get through his entire system, to effect a total change. Anyway, Reyzl was a fool. His ambitions were small.”
I felt Ulnyx again, and the single crack in the barrier lengthened and began to spider out. I saw Rebecca with my Sight now. I saw how she had changed. I saw the raw power that she possessed, even here, even now when the body and voice she was using were not her own. Through the distortion, I could suddenly see that all the time I had spent lamenting her betrayal had been wasted time. She couldn’t have betrayed me, because she had never been with me.
“So you knew what the Grail would do for you the whole time?” I asked, growing angry. “That’s why you saved me from Reyzl at your party?”
“Landon, wait,” she said. She hesitated, and then nodded. “It’s true. When I helped you escape I was taking a risk that you would be able to get your hands on the Grail, and I would be able to use it. Merov told me what it could do. He went on and on about it, about how he wished he could find a diuscrucis to bleed. Anyway, that was how it started, but that isn’t the whole story. I care for you. I really, really do.”
She wasn’t lying.
“Then why didn’t you just ask? I was raw enough. I would have done it.”
She looked sad. Genuinely sad. “Would you have understood that I needed to go to Hell? Would have have understood why? You were a Divine for all of three days. Even now, I’m not sure you’ll understand.”
“You went to Hell on purpose?” I asked. “You’re right, I don’t understand. But I guess that’s why we’re here.”
I felt one last pinch from Ulnyx, and the cracked glass shattered. It was like being released from a hypnotic trance, with all of the clarity and understanding flooding into me at once. I don’t know how Rebecca had done it, but the Were had helped me escape.
“It wasn’t enough to survive, was it? Not for a demon. You needed to become the Queen.”
This whole time I had been pinning the title on Charis, sure that she was the one trying to trip me up. Demon Queen was a title, not a name. The most powerful female demon on Earth. But why the glamour? Why try to keep me from seeing it? Another test?
“I need more than that,” she said, reaching out and touching my hand. “You once asked me if we could be together. We can, Landon. I want us to. I went to Hell because I needed to learn. I returned because what I was taught will allow us, you and I, to change everything. Angels, demons, and humans living together. A future for all of us. A future for the two of us.”
Some of what she said was true, but not all of it. I realized with a start that whatever spell she had put on me, it wasn’t to keep me from identifying her as the Demon Queen. It was to keep me from recognizing her lies. That she had told them at all was my hint that she had no idea the charm had been broken. Which part had she been lying about?
“Gervais told me about your plans for the future,” I said. I decided to keep dancing to her tune, to see what she might reveal.
“Gervais is almost as simple as Reyzl,” she snapped, her eyes flashing empty and black for the barest of instants. “What he thinks he knows, and what is true are two completely different things. There’s a war, Landon. A hidden war whose boundaries aren’t as clearly drawn as Heaven versus Hell. I know you’ve been tracking the messages. It’s how I lured you here.”
‘Lured’ was an interesting choice of words. Would I have heard it before, or would I have heard something else? “What is the war about? And what do you need me for?”
She smiled again, leaning forward so that her… Cho’s face was close to mine. “Change,” she said. “Justice. Power. The end of an old, tired God.”
Did she say God? I fought to stay composed. “Mankind is part of this new world order?” I asked.
“Of course, my love,” she
said, her eyes dilating, her voice a coo. “The dark brothers and sisters will need sustenance in the days to come, and all of us can benefit from slaves.”
It took all of my will to keep up the charade. She had said ‘my love’. It was no lie. She had also said she intended to use humans as slaves and meat. My stomach turned.
“As for you,” she continued, “your power is obvious. And there are other things I want from you.”
She was standing now, leaning towards me, her lips hungry. I wasn’t ready to show my hand, so I leaned forward and joined her in the kiss. It was deep, and emotional, and I could feel her power burning through her saliva and licking at my soul.
“What about Sarah?” I asked, once the kiss had ended. It had taken my breath away, despite the fact that a good part of me was finding her words repulsive. There was still some piece in there somewhere that knew absolute evil, that embraced it and found succor in it. It was the part of me that still cared for her, and it had a strong voice.
“She’s our prize,” she said. “It’s her power that will end the old God, and allow a new one to take His place.”
A new one? “How do you replace a God?” This wasn’t balance. This was betrayal beyond anything I could have imagined.
“Just say you’re with me, and you’ll see.”
I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes. I focused on Rebecca-as-Cho, mentally reaching for the strand of power that I knew had to be connecting them. It wasn’t hard to find, her energy was so great that it writhed and pulsated in a huge, bright, tendon.
“How can I say no to you?” I asked.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said, smiling.
It was time to end the charade. I took hold of the tendon and squeezed it tight, causing Cho’s eyes to open wide and his jaw to fall slack. “You’re the fool,” I hissed. “You either overestimated yourself, or underestimated me, but be assured that I’ll stop you. This is the realm of man, and it’s going to stay that way.”
I pulled the plug on her, and Cho tumbled backwards into his chair. His eyes closed, and then opened. The archvampire laughed.
“I told her you wouldn’t do it,” he said. “Her love for you clouds her judgement.”
I didn’t have time to reply, because it was all I could do to duck back away from his fingers that stretched and sharpened into razor claws. His pupils vanished in a sea of black, and his fangs hung out over his lip.
Screams filled the restaurant. Cho came at me, his body a blur of motion, leaping over the table. I focused, lifting the table up and slamming it into him, pushing him upwards into the ceiling. He left a dent in the plaster before he fell back to the ground, landing on his feet.
My Sight exploded as six more vampires revealed themselves. She had hidden them from me.
“Where is she?” I shouted at Cho, rushing forward, leading with my fists. He ducked away from the blows, the smile still on his face.
“You can still change your mind,” he said. “Stop this now. She wants to be with you. You saw the gift she left you.” He came back with an attack of his own, his claws moving faster than I thought possible, catching my chest before I could move beyond them. It hurt, but it healed.
I could still hear the screams. I twisted my head and saw that the other vampires weren’t coming for me. They were attacking the patrons. I looked back at Cho. He stood motionless, waiting to see what I would do.
“You don’t need to save them,” he said. “You aren’t one of them. Not anymore. It isn’t your job to protect them. Come with me, be a king and claim your queen.”
“I’d ask you to send her a message from me, but you aren’t going to live to do it,” I said, overtaken by the total calm of absolute understanding. I focused, throwing Cho against the wall and pinning him with solid air. “Wait there.”
I grabbed the closest weapon at hand, a steak knife lying on the nearest table. Screams still drowned out any other sound in the room, though the vampires were thinning the ranks in a hurry. I leapt on the nearest one and jabbed the knife into the back of his head, letting the silver blade sink through his skull. He cried out and dropped the woman he had been drinking from, falling face-first to the floor with a kick to the back of his spine.
He should have been out of the fight, a silver shard in his brain more than enough to keep him down. I watched while his hand reached around, seeking the blade. When he found it, he pulled it out, and the wound immediately closed over. I looked back at Cho, who was laughing in his prison. I realized why he had been familiar to me. I realized why all of the vampires were familiar to me. My blood was running in their veins, passed from the Holy Grail to Rebecca’s lips, and from Rebecca’s body to theirs.
The room fell quiet, the bodies of the people who had been enjoying a quiet night out at a fine restaurant left scattered on the floor. Some had been drained, others just put down like no more than meat. I reached for Ulnyx’s power, but I knew I couldn’t fight all of them like that. The Were’s form was massively powerful, but it was also massive, an easy target and difficult to maneuver in confined spaces. I swung my head in a circle, searching for anything that I could use. There was nothing that would be enough.
“You’re fortunate, Mr. Hamilton,” Cho said, still trapped in my cage. There was no point wasting my energy on it. I let him go.
“Why is that?” I asked as he walked over.
“She wasn’t lying when she said she needed you.” He reached into his pocket, taking out a small black box covered in seraphim scripture. It bore a resemblance to a Rubik’s cube, one made of polished ebony and inlaid with gold. “It’s hard to hold a diuscrucis. At least when they resist.”
I didn’t need him to tell me what it was, I had met its former inhabitants only hours earlier. So that was why they had been set free. I looked over his shoulder at the window behind him.
“You won’t make it,” he said, placing the box on the ground in front of me. “Avriel was careless. He didn’t ward his trap from use by demons.”
My mind was racing, trying to find a way out. I could reach the window, I was sure of it. Whether I would have enough left to survive the fall was the real question. I would have to find out.
Cho started speaking, his voice smoothly reciting the language of God’s children. The scripture on the box began to glow, softly at first but gaining intensity. I could feel it pulling at me, beckoning to me. I was out of time.
I heard the elevator door slide open. I heard the boom of a gun, and felt the sting of buckshot rip into my flesh. Cho stumbled backwards, his chest spreading open, his skin hissing. Three more shots fired, and I heard the cries of pain from the other vampires. The smell of frankincense filled the air.
“Well,” said a voice from the edge of the elevator. “Are you going to stand there, or are you going to escape?”
I was going to escape. I ran to the elevator, bending down and grabbing the box on the way. When I reached the doors, a meaty hand grabbed my shoulder and threw me inside. Two more rounds fired from the shotgun, peppering the vampires with more of the buckshot.
“How?” I asked. The shot was only slowing them, but it was working a lot better than the silver had. The elevator began its descent.
“Plastic shot,” he said, “filled with holy water.”
I looked up at my rescuer. Way up. He was a monster of a man, at least seven feet tall, with thick arms, thick legs, and a round middle. His long wool overcoat made him look even bigger, hanging from broad shoulders down to his size twenty something combat boots. He had long brown hair with huge sideburns and a heavy goatee that made his eyes look tiny and lost on his face. He was holding the shotgun in one hand like it was some kind of toy, using his other to reload it.
“We’re not going to make it,” I said. I focused my Sight above us. The vamps were forcing open the elevator door and starting to come down.
“Take a look around, Landon,” he said.
I looked down. The Divine I had Seen earlier were encircling the base of the
Tower. Touched, but not like any Touched I had ever met before. Just like the behemoth in the elevator with me.
“If you could get me a clear shot, I’d appreciate it,” he said.
I focused, ripping the metal around us away so that he had a good view of the vampires crawling down the side of the Tower. He fired again, and the lead vamp stopped moving as its face was shredded. A moment later I heard an even louder pop, and the demon was ripped from its perch and tossed aside like a rag doll.
“You know my name, but I don’t know yours,” I said.
“Ezekiel,” he said. “You can call me Zeek.” He held out his massive ham hand. I took it and gave it a strong shake. “You’re lucky m’lady has been keeping an eye on you.”
Two more pops, and another scream as a vampire was blasted from the Tower. A shout sounded from the ground, and I looked down to see that Cho had skipped the climb. He was already earthbound, finding the shooters and tearing them apart. The moment our ride touched down, I made to head in the archvampire’s direction. Zeek grabbed me.
“I said escape,” he said, pointing across the street to a plain grey van.
“They’ll die,” I said, throwing his hand from my shoulder.
He nodded. “They’re ready to die. I don’t like it either, but there’s no other way. You can’t beat Cho right now without bringing the world down around you.”
I knew it was true, and it wasn’t time to bring the world down around me. Not yet. I let him lead me to the van. I could see Cho watching us as we pulled away, his mouth covered in the blood of Zeek’s allies, that damn smile still on his face.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We drove in silence for the first ten minutes, Zeek’s mind surely on the fate of his comrades, my mind reeling from the discoveries I had made. The biggest one, the one that was twisting the knife in my gut deeply enough to be twisting Josette too - Rebecca was fighting for the wrong team, and Sarah was with Rebecca. No, that wasn’t it. Sarah was helping Rebecca. I had no proof, but I was sure of it.
Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) Page 14