His Dark Empire (Tears of Blood)

by Forbes, M. R.

  "You don't like how I decorated the place?" I asked.

  He turned on me, a look in his eyes that caused me to take a few steps back. An instant later it was gone, and he was smiling again.

  "Not what I would have chosen," he said. "Now, why don't you tell me about the seraph."

  Josette wasn't there, but I should have known that Dante would be able to sense her. It was nothing that he could have physically seen, but I knew there was an indelible presence of her hanging in the air. I had felt it the moment I had woken up, and it still sat in the apartment like a spring breeze. Oh well, no denying it.

  "Just someone I met yesterday," I said. "The only one who didn't try to rip my face off. Well, she wanted to, but we came to an understanding."

  Dante sat himself on the dilapidated sofa. "You came to an understanding with an angel? What kind of understanding?"

  "Simple really," I said. "I kill some demons, she doesn't kill me."

  He laughed at this. "As if she could," he said. "No Signore, it is not as simple as you say. The seraph Calmed you."

  I didn't like the way he said it, and I didn't like the way it sounded. "Calmed?"

  "Angels don't have dirty tricks," he said. "They don't lie, at least not well, and certainly not well enough to fool you. They won't stab you in the back or aim to outright deceive you. Instead they have the power to Calm. To put you at ease, and make you start talking about whatever they want to know."

  I thought back to when we had sat together in the park. "Right, yeah, she did that to me. We came to the understanding after that. At first, she thought I was an angel, but she was suspicious, so she Calmed me."

  He seemed surprised and puzzled. "She thought you were an angel?"

  "Yup," I said. "I was in the Apple store up on Fifth Avenue, and she was in there with a friend. I noticed her, and I knew what she was right away, so I did my best to get out of there as fast as I could. It wasn't fast enough though, she spotted me and we left the store together. It was like she opened a port to my soul. I could hear her speaking to me, but she wasn't actually talking. She called me 'fellow'."

  "Interesting. Angels rarely communicate with each other verbally, it's just safer for them that way. The fact that she was even able to establish a connection with you is incredible. This is not a trait that I believed diuscrucis possessed, and I am certain it was not in Charis's repertoire. You said that Rebecca mistook you for an angel also?"

  I took a seat on the couch across from Dante. "Yeah. She said I smelled like an angel, but when she got up close she realized she was wrong. Here's the crazy part, I got marked as a demon by a couple of Touched. They would have killed me, but Rebecca showed up and stopped them."

  "Why would she do that?" he asked.

  His expression was pure confusion. His question was whispered, as if he was asking it of himself. I could tell he was fighting hard to make sense of the whole thing.

  "She said she's done the math and realized that if Hell wins, vampires are going to become the new food source. She's not so sure she wants to play on the Devil's team anymore, because there isn't much of a future in it for her."

  Dante didn't look convinced. "A vampire does not just change sides," he said. "To do so would make them a target for every demon on Earth. She may have helped you this once, but I would be wary of her true motives."

  I hadn't thought about it, but it made sense. "Agreed," I said.

  "Very good," he said. "Now, back to the seraph. You said you met her in Central Park, but she was in this apartment. She Calmed you in this apartment. I can feel the residual energy."

  Calmed me here? I didn't think so. Sure, I could feel the energy too, but that was just her.

  "Sorry Dante, but we were definitely in the park. We were attacked by a demon, a Great Were. We killed it together. She was injured, I brought her here and healed her wounds with some holy water."

  I hadn't finished speaking when his expression darkened, his eyes turned black, and he rose to his feet. The next thing I knew, I was pinned against the wall by an invisible force that I couldn't break.

  "You healed her," he shouted. "The seraphim are our enemies! How dare you!"

  I tried to move, but it was an overwhelming effort just to gather the willpower to make the attempt. Every muscle in my body cried out in exhaustion, and even my eyes began to feel heavy. I could feel the evil soul inside me stirring, offering me the power to break free of these bounds and destroy the one who held me here. I could sense my growing anger, and the temptation that accompanied it. I remembered what Josette had told me. Not this time.

  "What right do you have to judge me," I yelled back with all of the force I could muster. I doubted if it had come out as more than a whisper. "You dumped me here to fend for myself, the only thing you told me was that the balance had to be maintained. I don't know if you noticed, but the balance is totally out of whack."

  As quickly as his anger had risen, it subsided. He lowered me to the floor and bowed his head.

  "I am sorry, Signore," he said. "Your words are true. I have no right to judge you. Please forgive me."

  He spoke with such honest regret, my own anger faded as well. I shook my arms out to make sure I was back to normal. Everything seemed to be functioning okay.

  "It's all right," I said. "There's something else you should know. After I killed the demon, somehow I absorbed its soul."

  Dante's smile returned. "You killed a Great Were, and you captured his soul? Fantastico!"

  It was my turn to be confused. "Josette made it sound like it was a bad thing."

  "Maybe for her," he replied. "Do not be afraid to make use of every tool at your disposal, Landon. The seraph will tell you that capturing souls this way is dangerous, but while you remain in control you can use this power to your advantage."

  "What if I don't remain in control?" I asked.

  "You have more power than you realize," he replied. "I think it will be very difficult for you to lose control so completely that the demon can subsume you."

  Maybe not completely, but what horrible things would I do while I was under the influence? I wasn't so sure Dante was right about that one, his scruples seemed to be a little shaky when pitted against getting what he wanted. I decided that I would do my best to avoid absorbing any more souls, and to fight against the temptation to let the beast loose. I needed Josette to come back and teach me how to keep to that decision.

  Josette. Dante said she had Calmed me in the apartment, before he had gotten all ape-crap angry on me. I knew she hadn't. I could clearly remember when she had, so I would have remembered if it had happened again. We had fought the vampires, and then come back to the apartment. She told me to get some rest, kissed my hand, and that was it. I had fallen asleep immedia... Oh, crap.

  "She put me to sleep," I said to Dante.

  "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.

&
nbsp; "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 the 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 dev
oured 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!