by Reine, SM
“Benjamin is the stuff of gods.” Her hands hovered over Benjamin’s shoulders without touching. His spine arched, face ruddy with exertion. He was reacting to her presence. “This pain he’s suffering is because he’s warring internally with the soul of Nathaniel Faulkner.”
“Faulkner?” Seth knew that name. “You mean like…?”
“James Faulkner’s son,” Marion said.
The Son of God.
“I’m both confused and kind of offended,” Seth said. “You’re telling me that James put the soul of his son into Benjamin when…?”
“When Rylie was pregnant. She birthed James’s child.”
Okay, so now Seth was really offended. “Fuck that.” And to think that James had said Seth would stop hating him at some point. “Did Rylie know?”
“She’s never known. I only do because James and Elise told me.”
Benjamin’s whole body jerked. His eyes didn’t open. “Stop it. Leave me alone,” he groaned, tormented by the soul of another man inside of him.
Anger built within Seth. “Those assholes.”
Marion’s faint smile was sad. “This is only one of many terrible things that they did. Do you understand why I conflicted with my sister now?”
“I never doubted that you had reason to fight with them.” He stood, giving Benjamin space. “That doesn’t mean that you have any right to hold this guy captive.”
Benjamin breathed heavily through his nostrils like a bull. His eyes never opened.
“Does he look like he’ll be able to reach the Genesis warp in this condition?” Marion asked. “If Benjamin doesn’t go through the warp, then Genesis will not happen. The world as we know it will be unraveled. Time will revert to some year prior to 2015.”
“Time will be destroyed, you mean. I don’t know much about the…that thing, the Meta, that the Librarians talk about. But I know if we break it, everything will be destroyed.” James wouldn’t be worried about it if the destruction of the universe weren’t at stake.
“We only have theories about what will happen if Benjamin doesn’t enter the Genesis warp. The result may not be destruction,” Marion said. “In the meantime, I’m holding him safely.”
Considering how sickly he looked, “safely” was subjective.
“Where’s Leliel fit into it?” Seth asked.
“She hopes to separate Benjamin and Nathaniel so that she may better control Genesis.”
Alarm rolled through Seth’s existence. “She wants to change Genesis?”
“She believes that if she only sends Benjamin through—without Nathaniel’s soul—then New Eden will never have been destroyed. Genesis will still occur, but New Eden will be remade, just as cities like New York and Paris were remade.”
“You’re helping her with this?”
“I am watching Leliel. I am watching him. And I am watching these.” In turn, she nodded between Benjamin and the lake. “I also built that.”
She led Seth to a stone ring among the trees, just beyond the place where Benjamin was confined.
“It’s an angel trap,” she said. “I’ve told Leliel it will remove Nathaniel from Benjamin—and it would. But that is not how we will use it. Instead, I will confine Leliel so she can’t interfere with the Genesis warp. Once she is safely locked away, I will transport Benjamin to the warp.”
“Transport him like…that?” Seth asked. Benjamin didn’t look like he’d survive getting breathed on.
“You see now why I’ve been busy,” Marion said.
If it was true, then it was noble—even selfless—of Marion to put herself in the line of danger to keep everyone safe. But while Marion may have been noble, she wasn’t entirely selfless.
Just as she wasn’t being completely honest.
“What do you need from Konig?” Seth asked.
“I’m not a god. To reach far and wide, I need help. I need armies.” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “It’s a great idea, but it suffers in execution, since Konig has been holding the legions over my head.”
He folded his arms. “This is the truth? The whole truth?”
“It’s all the truth I have to give,” Marion said.
“There’s nothing there you couldn’t have told me from the beginning. You didn’t have to keep these secrets from me.”
A faint line appeared between her eyebrows. “How would you have reacted if I said that I was going to stay with Konig for the advantages it gave me?”
He wouldn’t have reacted well.
But he also hadn’t reacted well to seeing it happen without warning, either.
“Some things still don’t fit. Why did you put the hit out on yourself?” Seth asked.
She looked puzzled. “Who told you that?”
“The information is on the darknet. Lucifer told me.”
“You believe the deplorable denizens of the darknet in such matters? You’d prefer to get your information through a vampire like Lucifer than through me?”
“That’s why I’m asking you,” Seth said. “Did you put the hit out on yourself?”
“I didn’t,” Marion said. “Leliel thought I’d betrayed her when I lost my memory, so she tried to kill me to protect her plan. That’s all.”
Seth turned back to Benjamin without speaking. He felt the boy’s pulse again, and his temperature, and checked his pupils. He’d have been admitted to the hospital immediately if he’d wandered into Seth’s ER looking like this.
“You don’t believe me,” Marion said, hovering at his back. “The evidence is in front of you, but you don’t believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Seth said.
He’d brought the Metaraon statue for her. It now stood on the edge of the water, looking down upon the eggs. Marion had the image of her father, allowing her to idolize the one angel who’d had further-reaching effects than she did.
For better or worse, he’d given her what she wanted.
It meant that Adàn Pedregon could bring his people into Sheol. The demons were safe in the Barcelona undercity. Bargains had been fulfilled, and Seth had done everything he’d promised to do.
Benjamin had gone slack again. His eyes opened to slits. “You know she’s not going to let me get to the Genesis warp, right?” he croaked. “Marion isn’t holding me to be nice. She’s holding me so she can get there first. So she can…” His eyebrows squeezed together, and his eyes shut. “She’ll get into the Origin herself.”
Was it really Benjamin speaking? This voice was a little bit deeper, a little older, more worn down from time and exhaustion.
“I was God before you,” Benjamin said. He was staring intently at Seth now. “After Adam and Eve, before Elise and James. I went into the Origin that turns mortals into deities. If Marion keeps us from getting back there, she’ll change herself so she has all the power.”
Seth looked at Marion questioningly.
“It’s a lie, of course,” she said. “Or he’s confused.”
“I’m not confused about this,” Benjamin said.
Marion’s gaze went thoughtful. Not hurt, not sad, but contemplative. “Would it be so bad?”
“If you were a god?” Seth asked.
“If I were, you wouldn’t be. If things were disrupted in a thousand other ways…you’d never have ended up God because Elise couldn’t have done it to you.”
“But then what would the world be like?”
“I don’t know. Better, maybe.”
“It wouldn’t exist,” Seth said.
She sighed, her shoulders drooping. “Perhaps.” Her eyes flicked up to his. Her thick eyelashes were dark in Shamayim’s dimness, and it made the white-blue of her irises pop more. “Do you trust me?” Her fingers crept into his.
Seth wasn’t sure which of them leaned forward first. Maybe nobody leaned. Maybe the air simply bowed, creasing gravity in half so that there was no longer room between them.
She rested her head on his chest and hugged her arms around him.
Eve hadn’
t eaten the apple. She hadn’t wanted to know the truth about Adam.
“I trust you,” Seth said. He rubbed a hand down her spine. The back of her dress dipped low enough that he could have touched her shoulder blades. “What happens next? How do we protect Genesis?”
“Konig is bringing our army to bear upon the Summer Court now. I’ll need to make an appearance. When he is done with this maneuver, he should release the army to me, and I will use them to locate the Genesis warp. I have only days—but it should be enough time.” She bit the inside of her cheek, eyes shadowing. “It needs to be.”
She needed Konig. That was what she was saying.
Marion wouldn’t need him if Seth used his cosmic powers to help.
That was how he caught himself saying, “It’s not safe to go back to Konig. You should just stay here.”
“But I can’t,” Marion said. “Leliel is out there searching for the Genesis warp too. She won’t be able to find it. She lacks the spells—I’ve made sure of it. That means she’ll seek my help soon, and I’m as unsafe with her as anyone else.”
“What spells would she need?”
“She’d have to be able to find balefire. It’s harder than you would think. Its nature is—”
“Cosmic,” Seth said.
Marion’s fingers tightened on his lower back. “Exactly.”
“When is the Genesis warp opening?”
“November fifth,” she said. “Of this year. There will already be indications of its emergence, though.”
He nodded. “Then I’ll set you back at your house in Victoria. You can wait there while I find the Genesis warp for you.”
Her eyes brightened again. Jesus, she was beautiful when she looked at him like that. The amount of hope and relief she displayed were a drug headier than sidhe wine. “Really?”
“Of course,” Seth said.
Because in that moment, he’d have given Marion anything she wanted. Anything. Even if it meant he died on the spot and hurtled back to the conservatory for the rest of eternity, leaving the outcome of Genesis to fate.
7
Seth moved Marion to her home on Vancouver Island then followed the balefire.
It was no longer limited to Sheol. The balefire had escaped when Arawn attacked Dilmun, and now thin lines of it were creeping across the Earth. Paths burned straight through the soil into bedrock and emerged elsewhere on the planet. Seth exhaled his body from its corporeal form and reappeared where the balefire did.
Seth found himself in California.
And not just any part of California.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed.
He’d appeared beside a sign that said “Welcome to Ransom Falls”, along with a tourist-friendly carving of the twin waterfalls that had given the town its name. He knew that sign well. He’d driven past that sign thousands of times when working as Dr. Lucas Flynn at the local hospital.
When he looked down between his feet, he saw a pinpoint of blazing white. It was so tiny that it was like a single broken pixel on a computer’s monitor. But this was no computer. This was reality, and the balefire from Dilmun was approaching Ransom Falls.
Seth walked up the road to find the town the way he’d left it. There was his old apartment complex on the right side—a two-story structure that had been built during the lumber boom in the fifties. He’d paid his rent well in advance to help the landlord make ends meet, so Luke’s apartment was probably still waiting as he’d left it too.
And then there was the coffee shop, which made awesome donuts fresh every morning. It was right across the street.
There was also a store that sold both guns and liquor, and proudly advertised the fact on its sign. A very American sight that filled Seth with warmth. They knew Luke well in that store. He’d been a regular buyer of twenty-gauge ammunition, since he’d whiled away many a bored weekend hour popping off rabbits in the forest.
The grocery store was the same too. And the consignment shop. And the bus stop. All those little houses, with the tidy little gardens that reminded him so much of Rylie’s sanctuary.
Goddamn. This was home.
At least, it used to be.
It was raining at the moment, so most everyone was inside, and nobody noticed the not-very-triumphant return of Dr. Flynn.
He headed into the gun store. It was nearest to the welcome sign, and the man who ran it—a grumpy old boulder of a man named Buck—wouldn’t gossip about seeing Luke.
The bell over the door jingled when Seth pushed it open. Buck was at the counter, like he always was during daylight hours, and he barely registered surprise at the sight of Seth’s entrance. But that might have been because he was busily talking to someone who worked for the Office of Preternatural Affairs.
“Witold Rolfe,” Seth said aloud. He was surprised to see him. Not just because it was a government employee, but because Seth knew him.
Father Rolfe turned at the sound of his name. His mustache bowed up at the corners. “Dr. Flynn!”
They shook hands. The exorcist’s grip was weak for a man’s. His cushy OPA job meant he’d only performed a few blessings and cleansings. He’d never physically fought a demon before, and his most vigorous physical activity was probably walking between a victim’s house and his car.
“Don’t tell me you’re in town for an exorcism,” Seth said.
“I sure hope not,” Father Rolfe said. “I was talking to Buck here, trying to figure that out.” He touched two fingers to the brim of his trilby. “Thanks for your time, Buck.”
The old man just grunted.
“You want twenty-gauge?” he asked Seth, as if it hadn’t been two years since they’d last spoken.
He didn’t have any use for such ammunition. But it was possible that without Seth’s generous purchases, Buck was struggling financially. “Sure,” Seth said. He reached into his pocket—he hadn’t had a pocket until that moment—and drew out a fistful of cash—which he also hadn’t had until that moment.
Buck took the money and headed into the back to pull Seth’s usual order.
Meanwhile, Seth’s ash heart ached. It popped. It hadn’t liked the way he’d produced money out of nothing.
Father Rolfe hung out by the liquor case, pretending that he wasn’t watching Seth in the glass’s reflection. “I heard you weren’t working at the hospital anymore. You or Nurse Ballard. Rumor says the two of you eloped.”
That surprised a laugh out of Seth. “Eloped with Charity? No way.”
“So she’s single?” Father Rolfe looked a little too interested.
Charity probably considered herself single. Seth wasn’t sure about Arawn’s feelings on the matter. He was sure that Father Rolfe would lose a fight against a demon Lord of Sheol who could turn into an enormous jackal with endless teeth.
Seth settled for saying, “We didn’t elope. I had to leave abruptly to handle a family emergency. I’ve seen Charity, though, and she’s fine.” As fine as she could be living openly as a revenant in a new demon undercity.
“Probably good,” Father Rolfe said. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve heard happening in these parts.”
Seth would have asked if it had to do with balefire, except that he doubted an OPA exorcist knew what balefire was. “Is everyone okay?”
“For the moment. There have been a group of weird visitors asking questions, though.”
“The way that you’ve been asking questions?”
Father Rolfe chuckled. “They don’t have badges.” He patted his chest, where he’d clipped his OPA credentials. “They’re vampire hunters or something.”
Buck returned with ammo in a bag. He handed it to Seth with another grunt, and then shuffled off again.
“There aren’t any vampires in Ransom Falls.” Seth headed out the door.
Father Rolfe followed him onto the wet street. “Right. No vampires here. I’ve verified that. Which begs the question—why are there vampire hunters in town?”
“Have you seen them yourself?”
<
br /> “Nope. Nobody can tell me where they’ve been staying,” Father Rolfe said. “They just pop in to poke around, ask questions, then disappear again.” He pushed the brim of his hat back to scratch his forehead. “And you know what the coincidence is, Dr. Flynn? I’ve heard they were asking after you.”
“Hell yeah we were,” said a familiar voice.
Seth turned.
Dana McIntyre stood at the end of the street. She was two hundred plus pounds of anger draped in leather, cheap hair dye, and enchanted weapons.
No wonder everyone was aflutter talking about the vampire hunters in town. If Dana was stomping around looking like that in a place like this, then she couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d brought a tickertape parade.
“Sup?” Dana asked.
“Good question,” Seth said. He turned to Father Rolfe. “Report to the OPA. Flag it. Get Rylie Gresham’s attention.”
The exorcist’s eyes widened. “The Alpha?”
“Do it,” he said.
Father Rolfe hadn’t survived this long as an exorcist by being stupid. He booked it out of there. Good thing too, because by the time he rounded the corner, Dana was no longer alone. She was flanked by an older pair of people who were a lot less intimidating physically, though they represented their own challenges.
Brianna Dimaria was the closest thing to a best friend Seth had. Or at least, she used to be. She was carrying so many wooden charms that she clacked like a wind chime with every step. She was smarter than Dana, but not much less ruthless.
And then there was Anthony Morales, a forty-something Chicano who looked unarmed. He might not have had a weapon on him. He wouldn’t need one. He’d been trained in combat by the best of the best—by Elise Kavanagh before becoming God, in fact.
The sight of these three together could only be bad news, even though Seth had always regarded them as friends.
“The Hunting Club’s a long way from home,” Seth said lightly. He dropped the bag of ammunition he’d bought from Buck. It wasn’t like he needed it.
“You’re not,” Dana said. “Everywhere’s home for you now. Right? Because you did the thing? This isn’t an avatar anymore. This is you.” She directed the last part toward Anthony and Brianna, as if she were proving a point. Anthony rolled his eyes and slipped her a twenty.