"Hey, Max," she said. "Rebecca's given me a little playtime."
He'd had his eyes closed, but now they popped open and he smiled at her. "How's my favorite human holding up?"
Obi leaned his head forward. "Wait. I'm not your favorite?"
"You don't count. You may not be Divine, but you still have some of Landon's gift in you. Elyse has gathered the power she has on her own."
"So, you're saying I'm your favorite overall? I can live with that."
Max and Elyse both laughed. In the moment, I wished that I could sleep without taking her body back.
"How are you holding up, Obi?" Elyse asked. "Max gave me a summary of what happened in Mumbai."
Obi was black, but his face paled. I thought he would be angry, but he stared down at his feet while he answered.
"It's more than that. To learn there's so much more out there, and that it's even more ugly than mankind can be. To meet someone who wants to fight back against it, and learn that even he can't protect us without turning some shade of ugly himself. To still be a friend when half the time you want to punch the guy in the face, and the rest of the time you want to do everything you can to help him stay alive and sane. To fall in... I don't know. Not love, but there was something there. She died, and almost killed me. I still have nightmares.
"I spend my time always looking out of the corner of my eyes. Always ducking, always listening. Paranoid, traumatized, whatever you want to call it. I tried to go back to work as soon as I got a flight out. First call, a guy who was beating on his wife." He turned his head, to catch Elyse's eye. "I've never felt so angry before, as I do now. I barely have control of it on good days, and I have to drink myself to oblivion on the bad days, or else I know I'll kill someone. I'm not someone I ever wanted to be, and it hurts like hell."
"I'm sorry," Elyse said.
"You're sorry?" I asked. "You'd have no problem killing anyone in your own family to get what you want."
"That's hardly fair, Rebecca. In many ways I'm the same as Landon. I just want humankind in control of their own destiny. Anyway, I was born and raised to fight this war." She was speaking to me out loud. Now she reached across Max and put her hand on top of Obi's. "I am sorry. Rebecca thinks I'm nothing but a killer, because of the things I've had to do. She doesn't always see beneath the surface of things."
A tear rolled from Obi's eye, down his cheek to splash onto the seat. He split his mouth into a half-smile. "Thanks, Elyse. I'm sorry you got stuck carrying her around. I had to find out what she was about the hard way."
I didn't say anything else after that. If I could have, I would have let go of Elyse completely, and let the plane fly off without me. Vampires were superior in strength, intelligence, everything. But now I saw that I was an idiot. All the years I'd chased after the demonic dream, to be at the top of the food chain and look down on everyone from above. It had left me a novice at truly understanding anyone beyond what I needed from them. For as sure as I was that it was my mission from God to save Landon from the Beast, I had to admit the truth to myself.
I wanted to be redeemed. I wanted to go to Heaven. It was as much about what saving Landon could do for me as it was about what it would mean for him.
If I could have cried, I would have done that too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Landon
"Waiting for her?" I asked, still trying to wrap my brain around what had just happened, and what was happening now. How could he be waiting for something that only existed because of Charis and I?
The seraph didn't move. He just looked up at Clara.
"I accept," she said, taking the sword from his offered hands.
"What's going on?" Charis asked.
Avriel got to his feet, and Clara leaned in and kissed his cheek, then handed back the blade. "He's here to help us," she said.
"Avriel isn't in the Box anymore." It seemed an obvious statement, but now I wasn't so sure.
"No, he isn't," Clara replied. "He's only a piece, a small piece. A shade of the angel you knew, the one whose life you forfeit, and whose death haunts you."
She knew because she was half me. "How can that be?"
"It is in the construct of the Box. When he escaped the piece was held behind."
"I need to take you somewhere," Avriel said. "There is something for you. A gift."
I had a thought. A frightening thought. "Clara, if a piece of Avriel was left behind, couldn't a piece of Abaddon have been left behind too?"
"It's possible. I don't know. If the binding was intentional there has to be a reason for it."
"I have something to show you," Avriel repeated. "A gift."
"Show me," Clara said.
Avriel bowed. "Follow me. We must be careful. I can feel their power building."
"Whose power?" I asked.
"The Beast," Clara said. "He can't find us yet, but his energy is re-forming. He'll try to slow us as much as he can."
"Come," Avriel said. "A gift."
We had no choice. We followed behind Avriel, back out of the park and into the street. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled, hailing a cab like a lifelong resident. We piled in, with Avriel taking shotgun.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"City Hall," Avriel said.
"You said a gift. What kind of gift?" I said.
"I don't know. All I know is that I must remain to bestow a gift, and protect you until it is bestowed."
Not very helpful. "How come you didn't show up before now? We could have used your protection a few ugly deaths ago."
"I couldn't find you. Your energy was too weak. The longer you survive, the stronger it grows."
And the older Clara became. It made as much sense as anything else did in here. "Strong enough to defeat Ross?" Why not? He was still in the process of re-forming, while we were getting more powerful.
"No," Clara said. "Remember the balance. You can try to find him now, while he's weak, but his power grows faster than yours, because your power is his. He has a natural affinity to it that you don't."
Like a fish versus a dolphin in a deep dive. We'd need to come up for air. "Do you think this gift will help?"
"It can't hurt."
It was scary how much she sounded like me when she said that.
We rode in silence. I watched the city streets go by, trying to find things I recognized from before I'd died. The world was a little different here. We were in Charis' memory, a New York from before I had even been born. So much was identifiable in a vague understanding of the past, and yet now it was the real present.
I was just beginning to ease into the thought when something hit the side of the cab and sent us careening towards a parked car to our left. I reached out to put my arm around Clara, to protect her from the force of the crash, while the driver screamed and Avriel threw open his door.
The windshield shattered and something grabbed the driver and ripped him out, still screaming. A large, twisted face peered in, a broken monster I'd never seen before.
It howled when the angel powered into it, throwing his shoulder against it and sending it flying off the car.
"Ross?" I asked Clara.
"No." She looked scared.
If it wasn't him, it had to be something else. I focused, throwing open the door from the back of the cab and climbing out, with Charis and Clara right behind me. Avriel was on the sidewalk to our left, standing opposite the creature, sword in hand. Almost twenty feet tall, with tree-trunk limbs and massive claws, it put Ulnyx to shame. The seraph looked outmatched against it.
"No time to spectate," Charis said, pointing. Three more of them were crowding us in, racing down the street from both directions.
I focused, feeling the power come pouring in, feeding my energy and strength. I pulled air towards me, condensing it, crushing it into a tiny space, and then tossing it out at the oncoming monster like a transparent bullet. It slammed into the creature, forcing it to the ground while half its torso vanished beneath th
e pressure. The results caused me to smile. For once, this was going to be easy.
Maybe I spoke too soon. I heard shattering glass, and a fourth monster exploded from a window above, coming down at me like a twisted knife. I focused, bunching my legs and springing up towards it, breaking its expectation of my fear and taking it by surprise. I wrapped my hands around its head and twisted, snapping its neck and leaving it dead before it hit the ground.
Still airborne, I could see we were in more trouble than I'd thought. Every side street had more of the creatures running down it, headed towards us like a hill of angry ants, and the first one I had downed had recovered and found its legs. I focused to soften my landing and hurried to Charis and Clara's side.
"You're sure this isn't Ross?"
"Yes," Avriel said. He was splattered in black blood, but was unharmed.
"So Abaddon is here." As if things weren't bad enough. "He might want you, but we need you, so I guess we're your protector." I turned to Clara. "Can we leave the memory?"
"Avriel has been established here. You'll lose the gift."
It wasn't what I wanted to hear. The first round of reinforcements turned the corner and came into view. I looked around, desperate for a street sign. Greenwich and Warren. We weren't that far away.
"Come on," I said, running east down Warren. There were monsters coming at us westbound, which meant a collision was unavoidable.
"Right into them?" Charis asked.
"We don't have a choice."
We were in New York City. There was stuff everywhere. Trash cans, parked cars, street lights, windows. I didn't need to tell Charis what to do. Together we used our energy to pull everything in and throw it forward, peppering the oncoming creatures with whatever we could find. The front lines fell, coated in glass or smashed with sheet metal and steel. It reminded me of Mumbai, only here we had the power to break through the enemy. Here, we were the Beasts.
The realization was sobering. Destruction, chaos... was that all we were capable of, when it came down to it? What else had I done in the last five years? Every time I tried to take a break, to relax and create something - a relationship, a friendship, a life of my own - it all fell apart in another wave of bad mojo. Was that all there was to me? All that I existed for? Maybe Abaddon had been spot on. Ross had tortured Charis and me with visions of the life we could have had, or should have had. Would we ever get the chance to try that afterlife on for size?
Not today.
I could hear the hissing and howling behind us, and when I looked back there was nothing but a sea of monsters, tongues lolling, fangs bared. They chased us down the street, towards City Hall and whatever gift was waiting, their huge legs giving them greater gains than our own.
It wasn't much of a challenge to stop them. With a bit more focus and effort, I was able to start pulling blocks of cement and brick from the surrounding buildings and send them backwards into the onrush, knocking them over, dropping them back. Few of the blows could kill but most of them could slow, and all we needed right now was time. I reached further away, finding mailboxes and televisions, bottles and cans. I sucked them in and threw them back out, in a rhythm with Charis that we couldn't have managed without Clara beside us. It was the truest test of our connection, the purest form of our innate togetherness.
Then Avriel fell.
It seemed impossible, an angel tripping in the street. Did he catch a foot on a crack, or was he pushed by an unseen hand? What mattered was that he wasn't moving and so we weren't either. We'd been able to slow them. We needed something more dramatic to stop them.
"There's too many," Charis said.
I reached out and grabbed Avriel's hand, pulling him roughly to his feet.
"How can a shade do this?" I asked. "How can a piece have so much power?"
Clara stood next to us, looking a bit older than she had only a few minutes ago. "We found Avriel. He must have found Abaddon."
"Or Abaddon found him," the angel said.
We turned to run, but the monsters had gotten smarter. They held cars up as shields from our debris, and the ones we'd felled were back on their feet. They drew in closer, threatening to surround us. The memories of Mumbai flowed back in.
"Now what?" Charis asked. The four of us stood with our backs together. I scanned the environment in search of anything we could use.
A raindrop fell.
Had we created it, somewhere in our subconscious? This was our world after all. I looked up at the sky, a starless sky. There were no clouds either. There was just... nothing.
I closed my eyes, feeling Avriel's wing against my back from below his jacket. I remembered Josette, who had given me the gift of holy rain to defeat the demon Reyzl. We could make it rain. We had an angel.
I smiled. I was sure Charis was smiling too. So was Clara.
"Avriel, got any good prayers?" I asked.
The creatures were closing in. With the connection, I was able to do something I had never done before. In a single thought, a single command, we pulled the rain from a cloudless sky and at the same time threw a wall of debris between us and them. Avriel began to chant, holding his arms up to the nonexistent heavens, and sending an arc of blue energy from us into the air.
The rain continued to fall, but it was different now. It tasted of salt and hope, and all around us were deafening screams of pain and the sound of sizzling flesh. It was my first effort on a much grander scale, and it didn't disappoint.
We stopped the rain when the howling stopped. We dropped the wall a minute later. The monsters were gone. Every last one of them.
"It feels good to have a winning streak," I said, first hugging Charis, and then Clara. Even the seraph looked satisfied.
"The gift," he said. "This way."
We weren't far from City Hall. It seemed odd that the gift would have been left there, but it was as good a place as any. We walked empty streets for the final few blocks, and then made our way onto the grounds.
"There's an old subway station," Avriel said. He brought us onto the grass, over to where a line of metal grating rested. "The gift is down there."
"Where's the entrance?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Lost."
I looked down at the grating. It wasn't a problem to move it, or to make an entrance of our own. I focused on the metal, forcing it to corrode. It only took a light kick to make it crumble, and then I could see the blue glass of a skylight beneath it.
"Be careful," Clara said. "He can feel the power. He's getting closer."
We needed to get in before Ross found us. "I'm going down."
I didn't mess with the glass. I just jumped.
The skylight shattered as my feet smashed through it, leaving me tumbling towards the cement below surrounded by blue slivers that reminded me of Christmas ornaments. The fall would have broken my legs at least, but at the last moment I seized the air and used it to break my fall; a single dash of heavy power for just an instant.
Avriel fluttered down behind me carrying Clara. He launched back up through the new opening and returned with Charis.
We were in a subway station. A beautiful, ornate subway station. I looked back up at the other skylights that remained and at the tiled walls and arches. A sign over one of them said 'City Hall'.
"There." Avriel pointed to a spot on the ground directly beneath a round skylight. A spectral light was filtering in through glass that had no access to the outside, its beam focused on a dark bulge on the ground.
"That's it?" I asked. I walked over and knelt before it. I don't know what I had been expecting. Something impressive, magical and ancient. An artifact, or maybe even the Box's version of the Holy Grail. Something with runes, at the very least. Templar script would have been even better.
I reached out and wrapped my hand around the grip, picking up the revolver and turning it in my hand, examining it. I knew it was old, because it was layered in dust, the exterior of the steel rusted and pitted. The grip wasn't much better - the wood dry, cr
acked, and separating. It didn't look like anything special, or anything that could harm Ross. It didn't even look like it could fire.
I opened it up, looking into the cylinder. There was a bullet. A single, ordinary bullet. I knew it was ordinary because I dumped it out into my hand, rolled it over, and checked it for runes. Nothing.
"I don't understand."
I said it softly, a whisper, more to myself than to the others in the station with me. A single bullet to shoot Ross? It was the most obvious answer, but I couldn't understand what made this weapon any different from any other gun we could conjure up or steal from a pawn shop. It didn't radiate any power. It didn't suggest any special capability.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and twisted my head. Clara was there.
"Maybe it isn't time for you to understand," she said.
I put the bullet back into the chamber, closed the cylinder and got to my feet. I turned to where Avriel and Charis were waiting. A shade of the angel had been held behind, to protect us and to lead us to the weapon. Clara was right. Maybe the power was there and I just couldn't feel it. Maybe we weren't strong enough. I looked the gun over one more time.
We just needed to stay alive long enough to use it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rebecca
The first thing we did when we got to Seattle was pay a visit to Staples and buy a laptop for Obi. I was in charge of getting through Brian Rutherford to the Deceiver, but he was in charge of getting me in front of the guy in the first place. He'd picked out something thin and light, muttering about installing a secure operating system on it while Max paid.
After that, we'd settled in at the Hotel Andra, a boutique hotel near the center of the city, offering us quick movement to wherever we needed to be. Max also preferred it because its small size would make it easier to monitor and defend if need be. It was his opinion that we were stupid if we didn't think Sarah and Ulnyx would catch up at some point, especially with Dante able to show up anywhere at a moments notice. One one hand, he didn't sound like he was too happy at the idea of their involvement. On the other, I had a feeling he wanted them back in the game before it was over.
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