Golems rose from between the cages, masses of stone pulled from the ground beneath the room.
"Rebecca, the sword," Max said. His face began to change, his body shifting into pure reaper.
The shirtless djinn appeared in front of me, sword in hand, ready to strike. I brought the blade around to block, and then heard the echo of a gunshot. He fell away from me as quickly as he had arrived, thrown to the ground by the force of the bullet pounding into his skull.
"Behind you," I shouted to Obi. He lowered the Eagle, a jagged Cursed blade appearing in his hand from somewhere on him. The golem threw a mountainous fist, but he jerked away and came back, the edge creating sparks along the stone shell.
"Man, why am I never prepared?" He slipped around another heavy punch.
"Rebecca!" Max had finished shifting, and his voice became deeper and more frightening. I put my eyes on the Damned, still hanging on the wall, though it looked like Abalita was going for it. I felt a wave of energy wash through me, a witch's power bouncing off Elyse's tattoos.
I started running at the same time I grabbed one of the knives from my boots. In one smooth motion I threw it at Abalita's back. I didn't know that much about djinn, and I knew even less about human-djinn hybrids, but I was sure she wouldn't have turned her back if it had left her defenseless. At the last moment, she ducked to the side, reached up and snatched the dagger from the air, then turned and fired it back. It was the move I'd anticipated, and I dove forward, rolling under it and back up. I'd forced her to slow, and gained a dozen feet.
I heard screaming behind me. I didn't know what Max was doing, but the witches weren't happy about it. Then I heard a grunt, and he tumbled past me, a golem wrapped up in his arms.
More gunfire echoed in the enormous room, and an unmistakeable cry rose from the back, proving bullets were effective after all. Two more shots, a thud, and then it stopped.
Abalita and I raced onto the pillows and beds, towards the back wall where the Damned sat. I almost caught up to her, lunging forward and getting a hand on the rear of her velvet dress, tearing it along the seam and finding myself with a handful of cloth. I almost caught up. She pulled the blade from the wall and leveled it at my face.
"You've lost, Reyka," she said. I didn't hear any fighting behind me, which wasn't a good sign. "Get up."
I took a deep breath and got to my feet. I dared a look to the back, to see Max being held by two of the stone golems, and Obi with the djinn's blade to his throat. Two of the witches lay in a growing pool of blood, and the others looked like they were ready to claw him apart.
"What about your sisters?" I asked. "The sword is darkening their souls, too. What did you save them from that the hatred and chaos of Hell is a better end?"
She looked back at them. "You have no idea."
"You know I do. They'll turn on you, and on each other in time. It may take hundreds of years, but it will happen. You've seen it happen already."
It was a guess, but the math added up. Abalita had to be nearly a thousand years old, if she had been alive when Max had brought the sword to Abaz.
"Only to those who are weak. Who don't truly believe."
"I'm not saying your father, or the djinn don't deserve to be punished, but at what cost to you? At what cost to these girls? How many have you had to bring in from the street to replenish your coven? How many lives have you ruined to continue your revenge?"
I understood it now. I understood why the witch had been out on the streets with the djinn. She hadn't been lounging, she'd been recruiting. It was the Damned, I knew. She had never been cut with it, but using its power had damned her all the same, only so slowly and subtly that she had never sensed the change. I also understood that once I would have done the same thing, and I wouldn't have needed the Damned to make it so. I had been born with that evil inside me.
Abalita looked past me, to the cage where her father sat watching the exchange. "It is my right."
"It is your undoing. Give me the sword, Abalita. Let it go, and there may be hope for you, and for your sisters."
She kept her eyes on Abaz. "They'll kill me. They'll kill us all as soon as they're free, and then they'll go right back to their misogynistic ways. You may be right that the sword has changed me, Reyka. Nothing will change them."
I followed her gaze back to Abaz and felt a cold shudder in my soul. His eyes weren't penitent, they were gleeful, anticipating that I would convince her to let the sword go.
"You see it," she said. "I can tell that you do. You know what it's like, because you have lived it the way I have."
I had, and I could. That didn't change what I had to do. My path was set, and God had put me on it. Wherever the djinn had come from, I wasn't going to let them stand in my way.
Abalita still held the Damned, the point aimed at my heart. I had the obsidian spatha in my hand. Who was faster?
I brought the blade up and lunged, feeling the pain of the flesh as the Damned bit into it, and the wrenching of my wrist as the spatha bit into her. My breath vanished with the piercing of Elyse's heart, and I felt the power of the weapon seeping towards her soul like a bottle of spilled ink. I pushed back against it, wrapping her up tight so it couldn't pierce me to reach her, at the same time I used my momentum to turn around and pull the blade from Abalita's grip.
I stumbled back towards the front of the room, impaled, gasping but lucent. The cages had been weakened by the death of the witches. They shattered at the loss of the sword.
Abaz's eyes were frightening joy. I used my free hand to pull the Damned from my chest, the skin on my hand ripped open by the blade.
It clattered on the ground.
"Daughter," Abaz said, practically dancing onto the pillows to stand in front of Abalita. The other djinn were free as well, and one grabbed the bare chested djinn from behind, taking his blade and running him through. The golems turned to sand beneath their power, and the other witches all fell prostrate to their will.
"Why?" Abalita whispered in accusation. I couldn't see her, but I knew the question was directed at me.
"She wants to die last," Abaz said. I heard the breaking of bones, and the soft drop of a body landing on a pillow.
I dropped the obsidian sword and fell to my knees, my hands grasping for the vial of blood around my neck. Elyse had said it would heal, and I could only hope she was right. I wasn't ready to lose her.
"Abaz." Max was at my side, and he picked up the Damned. "Heal her."
"And why should I?" he replied. "She just forced me to kill my own child."
Elyse was dying, her body faltering. I couldn't get her hands on the amulet.
Max snorted. "A child that you couldn't have cared less about. That much is plain. She saved your life, you owe her the same."
Abaz laughed, a childlike cackle. "I may be immature, but I'm not ungrateful."
I felt a hand on my head, a fountain of warmth, and my breath returned. I drank in gulps, refilling starved lungs.
"We're leaving with the Damned. Consider your debt to Malize paid."
"Of course. Now, Samael, take your toys and the sword, and hope we never meet again."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rebecca
"How did you know Abaz wouldn't kill us all?" Max asked.
We hadn't wasted any time fleeing the underground palace of the djinn, taking the motorcycle from Tambomachay back through Cusco to the airport. Max had wrapped the Damned in a swath of Templar scripted cloth and rested it in the sidecar with Obi. We'd made the ride, and then he'd bought us all tickets on a red-eye flight to Seattle. So far, my efforts to get him to speak about his past, and the name Samael, had been fruitless.
"I didn't," I replied. "But I assumed that if you had left the sword with him, there would be an expectation that he would give it back one day. From what I know of djinn, that meant there had to be a bargain or a debt involved."
"You couldn't have known he would heal you... well, your host, though," Obi said.
We
were already through security, the Damned safely glamoured to a walking stick, which Max was using to great affect, hobbling along on it as though he felt as old as he seemed to be.
"I know what you're thinking, Obi." His words at the train station echoed within me, and I knew he thought I was the same monster that had stabbed Landon in the back. "I was going to heal her myself." I'd zipped the leather jacket to hide the hole and blood stains, but now I unzipped it a little to lift the amulet out from under my shirt.
He took a few more steps away from me when he saw it. "Oh man, is that?"
"Yes. According to Elyse, Landon missed a few."
"And you're okay with hauling it around? Doesn't it remind you of anything, like the fact that you helped set the Beast loose?"
We stopped walking.
"I had nothing to do with the amulets."
"No?"
"No. Charis made the amulets to draw Landon in. I was only supposed to tail him until he got the..." I stopped talking, realizing this wasn't helping.
Max got between us before Obi could say anything else. "Children, please. Tit for tat, none of us are innocent. Let's focus."
"You're one to talk," Obi said.
"Yeah, Max. Who the hell are you, really? A demon Templar, who can turn into a reaper? Who goes by the name Max, but whose real name is Samael... oh, and you've been Malize's errand boy for how many hundreds of years?"
The demon looked at both of us and pursed his lips. Then he motioned to a row of seats in front of one of the gates. "I see the good will is running out. It's true I've deceived you and Landon. That is my forte, after all, so I will ask you this: how do you know you can believe whatever story I tell you? I can lie to the diuscrucis, and he can't tell. What hope do you think you have?"
Obi and I didn't sit, but we did look at one another, our animosity forgotten for the moment. "Damn it, Max," I said. "How am I supposed to help you save Landon, if I can't even trust that you want to save him? How can either of us believe a single thing you've said?"
He raised his index finger. "An excellent point. Res ipsa loquitor. You have witnessed my actions. You tell me which side of the balance they fall on."
We were silent for a minute.
"Neither side. You're fighting the Beast," Obi said.
Max clapped his hands together. "Yes! You have the Box, Rebecca. You have the Beast. I will help you rid this world of him, and return Landon to the place where he belongs. Whatever else I may do or say, that is the obvious truth."
"Fine, but the cat's out of the bag, Samael. Why not give us a little more context?"
"My name is Samael. I was human once, a mortal, many years ago in the time of Jesus. In my life, I was a singer, a womanizer, and a thief. I was handsome, and it made me good at all of these things, but most of all, I was a liar.
"Yet I followed the word of the son of God. I wrote ballads about Him, and worshipped Him while I lifted a purse or defiled a virgin. In some ways, I was the original diuscrucis, balanced in my deeds of good and evil.
"When I died and the tally was taken, the evil turned out to be greater. I should have gone to Hell, but Malize intervened. He spoke to Lucifer on my behalf, and I was brought to Heaven as an angel. Satan had Azrael to cultivate the souls of the damned. Malize made me his counterpart, the angel of death."
He closed his eyes and shifted, but not to the reaper form I had already seen. His face was light and delicate, his hair lustrous, his white robes flowing out around him, with tendrils of light trailing away and a massive pair of ivory wings spread out behind.
"Only Malize hadn't brought me up because he wanted death. He brought me up because he needed a liar. He told me about the Beast, and about his tree of possibilities. He asked me to serve him, and only him, even in the face of God himself, because of the threat the Beast posed to all that He had created. He convinced me of the need, and promised me an untold reward.
"In his name, I committed the ultimate sin and murdered a fellow angel, for no better reason than to fall. And I did fall, right into the lap of Baal, who took pleasure in my failure and made me a servant of Azrael."
His form shifted to that of the dark reaper. "I used my position of power to spy on Hell, and to keep tabs on the Beast, becoming Malize's eyes where he could not go. Many years passed, until one night I discovered a message from Malize, asking me to meet him. That was when he told me of the swords and bade me to collect each one and pass it into safekeeping. All except the Redeemer. I brought that one to him.
"I served Malize, and through him God, with my gift for lies. I tricked Satan himself into trusting me, and it afforded me the freedom I needed to know everything I needed to know. I noted when the Beast appeared, and followed the words Malize had forced me to memorize. Thousands of branches, and I needed to be aware of every one in order to do my part. So far, I have."
Max returned to his human form, and regarded us with serious eyes.
"Let's just get this done so we can all get on with our lives, or afterlives, I guess," Obi said.
The demon's intensity vanished, and he clapped his hands together. "Right you are, my good man. Our flight leaves in forty-five minutes. Shall we?"
We followed along towards our gate.
"I know we're going to Seattle. What do we need to do once we get there?"
"Not us," Max replied over his shoulder. "You."
"Me, as in, just me, by myself?" I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. After our experience with the djinn, I was leaning towards bad thing.
Max stopped walking again so he could look at me. "Not all of the blades are being held by half-djinn with daddy issues. Getting the Deceiver back is going to be a bit more of a precarious proposition. I had originally given it to a Templar named Gavin St. Croix for safekeeping. It turned out his skill at deception was equal to my own."
"He double-crossed you?" Obi asked.
"More than that. I understand that the war between Heaven and Hell is just that. I accept there is a risk that anyone can change sides, at any time, for any reason." His eyes burned into me at that. "What I didn't expect or account for was that Gavin would not only renounce his position as a Templar, but that he would sell one of the Swords of Gehenna to a mortal, for no better reason than to live out the remainder of his days in material comfort." His voice had been rising as he spoke, and he nearly shouted the last few words.
"You're telling me a mortal has the sword? How come neither side has tried to get it back?"
His laughter was laced with his anger. "They have tried, but the sword isn't called the Deceiver for nothing. Whoever holds it can not only lie, but it casts a glamour on the soul that few Divine can see through."
"A glamour on the soul?"
"Everything changes. Your perception of what you hear, what you see, how you feel. The Deceiver is unlike the other blades, because you don't know it's been used on you until it's too late."
"I take it there's a Heavenly version?" Obi asked.
"Yes. It's called Truth. It counters the effects of the Deceiver."
Obi laughed. "So, dumb question, but why don't we go get that one first?"
"An excellent question, old chap. There is a time for everything, and everything in its own time."
"Translation?"
"I have a plan to bring Truth to us. Besides, as I've said, Rebecca should be immune to the blade's power."
"Should be?" I asked.
"Don't fret, my salted caramel cupcake. Thanks to your run-through with the Redeemer, you are uniquely situated to be able to see the glamours, but not fall victim to them. It's one of the reasons we worked so hard to bring you into the game."
A tree with a thousand branches, and one of them with my name on it. Max had said it was math, not fate. A potential, not a pre-determination. I hoped for his sake he hadn't been lying about that.
"What's the other reason?"
"Our target is a twenty-two year old, unattached millionaire. I think Elyse has the look, and I know yo
u have the resume."
"Are you suggesting you want me to seduce him?"
"In so many words."
I closed my eyes, licked my lips, and tried to calm my suddenly pounding heart. It was a big ask, after what I had put Landon through. Except, that attraction had been real for both of us. This was just a game within the game.
"I'm not happy about it," I said.
"I didn't expect you would be, but our needs dictate our actions."
"Can you shut up with your turn of phrases?"
Max smiled. "His name is Brian Rutherford. He's the founder of Madalytics."
"No way!" Obi said.
"You've heard of it?" I asked.
"Called the next Google, worth a couple billion dollars. Heck, yeah."
The demon shrugged. "His father was Evan Rutherford, an entrepreneur in his own right. He was the one who bought the Deceiver from a collector in Belgium. I don't know about Brian, but Evan was Turned."
Obi deflated at the news. "Oh. You think he's cheating to win?"
"I think it's very likely."
We started walking again. The flight was already boarding by the time we reached the gate, and we waited our turn to be herded onto the aircraft. I shifted the pack from shoulder to shoulder, feeling the weight of it growing in my soul with every step forward. Science, I could do. Combat, I could do. Half-succubus or not, seduction had never been one of my strengths. At least, not intentionally. Now I wished I still had that Divine gift.
I settled in for the flight, thankful that Max had at least hooked us up with first class. The extra space was appreciated, and I stretched out and watched the take-off through the window. Obi had grabbed the aisle seat straight away, and offered the middle to the demon. Despite everything we were going through together, he hadn't thawed towards me at all. It might have bothered me, but I didn't need his approval.
"Elyse." I let go, giving my host a chance to have a body for a while. There wasn't much she could do on the plane, so I decided that was the best time to let her out.
Bound (The Divine, Book Four) Page 14