chapter 13
She put me down once we had neared the end of the sewer tunnel, which opened up into a larger area where multiple flows met and continued on in a single stream. We could hear voices through the large tunnel up ahead, a cacophony of sound that suggested more than just a wayward vagrant.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, the ground still a little shaky under me.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Can you walk?”
My head was still throbbing, but I could hold myself up. “Yeah, but I really need to rest for a while. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“The glass was impressive, but lets try not to have to jump like that again,” she said. “There are humans up ahead, a squatter settlement I believe. We can rest there.”
“What about Reyzl?”
“He won’t give chase, and Merov’s people will turn back once they see the headless henchmen. We’ve won for tonight. Reyzl is nothing if not patient.”
“So he knows he can take me out pretty much any time, and isn’t concerned?”
She giggled. “Something like that.”
“I don’t know why you decided to help me, but I’m glad you did,” I told her, looking into her eyes. She dug her fangs into her bottom lip and gave me a sheepish smile.
“Just something about you I guess,” she replied. “Come on.”
We didn’t have to walk too far down the larger adjoining sewer tunnel before it opened up into a much larger room. My guess was that it had been a pumping station many, many years ago.
There was a massive hunk of machinery resting just off to the side of the river of sewage, with old brass pipes jutting out and down into the muck. A shantytown had sprung up around it, home to at least three hundred people and complete with electricity and lighting provided by a hack on the pump’s former connection to the grid. They even had clean water that they were leeching from a pipe that must have once been used to cool the giant beast.
The town itself was a loose grid of tents, tarps, and cardboard boxes molded together into workable living spaces for the homeless who resided here. They were going about their lives oblivious to the strangers in their midst, collecting water from the open pipe to cook their food on propane heaters, or to clean their clothes in makeshift washtubs. What did they have to fear, since they had nothing to lose?
I leaned on Rebecca while we walked, thankful to have her shoulder to keep me from falling over. I could only imagine being one of the vagrants seeing us go by, me in my torn up tuxedo that I was too weak to fix, Rebecca in her ragged black dress. We must have looked as if we had just stepped out of an explosion, fitting because we sort of had.
We split the center of the encampment, looking for a place to sit and rest for a while. The people around us did their best to pretend we didn’t exist, even going so far as to turn away when we approached. It was ironic to me that the homeless were shunning us. Were they doing it to show us how others made them feel? I looked at Rebecca, who seemed unfazed by the community’s reaction. Was she used to it, or did she just not care?
“I see you demon. I welcome you.” The voice came from behind.
Rebecca and I turned as one to see who had called her out. A girl. A small girl, no more than ten years old, with a thin, frail frame, and shoulder length reddish blonde hair. She was wearing sneakers with a simple flowered dress; both surprisingly clean considering the amount of grime that covered everything else down here. That wasn’t the most amazing thing about her though. Her eye sockets were barren, the skin sinking into them. She was blind. Blind, and Divine. I don’t know why neither of us had known she was near. The feeling I got from her was different, unique. She was not a demon, or an angel.
“Do you address me child?” Rebecca asked. If she was surprised that a blind girl could see her, she didn’t show it.
The girl stepped forward, stopping a few feet away. She definitely knew right where we were standing.
“I address both of you,” she replied. She turned her head towards me. “Welcome, brother. My name is Sarah. Come sit with me. I can see that you are tired.”
The other people around us had ignored the exchange, and they hurried to move out of the way of the little girl leading us towards the center of the encampment. There was an old man resting there, in front of a larger nylon tent. He looked more like your stereotypical vagrant, with a long white beard and layers of jackets and sweaters covering a rail thin body. He looked up at us when we passed, but said nothing.
The inside of the tent was sparsely decorated, a thin air mattress in the corner, a small shelf with a few random books on it, and a stack of boxed and canned food and drink. The center of the tent had a bunch of old blankets and rugs piled on top of it, creating a somewhat comfortable cushioning to sit on. Sarah beckoned us to do so, taking position right in front of us, close enough to touch.
“Welcome to my home,” she said. “Please find peace and shelter here.”
“Thank you,” I said. The whole thing seemed surreal, and in my exhausted state I wasn’t positive it was happening. “Who are you?”
“I am Sarah,” the girl replied, laughing. “The question you should be asking is, why are you. Why are you, Landon?”
I was taken off guard by the question, and the fact that Sarah knew my name. How did she know? How could she see me? Why am I? It was something I hadn’t ever thought about. Even after dying and being returned to this world, I had never considered why I existed, why I had come back. I had agreed to it because I felt I had to, but why? It was so easy to ask, so hard to answer. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Why are you?”
She smiled. “Few of us know why,” she said. “Yet without knowing why we are, how can we ever know who we are? That is the secret to control, to power. The demons use it. The angels use it. They don’t want you to think about it. You don’t need to know to be Awake. You just need to question. Everyone here questions.”
The homeless people outside. All of them could see what we were. “Is that why they turn away?”
“There are three, brother, always three. One, those who do not know they are being controlled, who live their happy oblivious lives. Two, those who know and accept control in exchange for something else. Three, those who know and reject control, who always ask why and become outcasts to society. See them, for they are the true casualties. They are caught in the war, and cannot fight. They see the war, and cannot end it. They lose their families, their jobs, their homes, because they question why. The Sleeping call them crazy, because they do not accept.”
“I don’t want to control them,” I said. “I want to help them.”
Sarah nodded. “Yes. I know that you believe it brother, but you are young.”
“Why do you call me brother?”
“That is part of who you are,” she replied, “but just a part. You will need to learn why before you can be whole.”
“You are a half breed,” Rebecca said, her voice and expression filled with excitement. “A first generation offspring of an angel and a demon, a true living diuscrucis. Such a thing was thought to have ended thousands of years ago.” She turned to face me. “A direct offspring of such a union has command of much of the power you do,” she explained. “But in order for a demon and an angel to pair, they must bind their child to this world such that the soul is conceived inside a mortal shell. Thus bound, she is limited by the fragility of mortality.”
“What about when she dies?” I asked.
“I will have the same fate as all mortals,” Sarah said. “I will be judged by my actions as all others are.”
“If she is to return to this world in any form, her power will fully develop. That is the reason that such unions are forbidden.”
“It is doubtful that I will ever be allowed to return,” Sarah said.
The flap of the tent drew back and the old man stepped inside. He looked at us, then at Sarah. She patted the floor next to her, and he went to sit by her side.
“I should never have been,” she said. “But there is no greater temptation to true evil than the forbidden. My father is a demon of great strength. He captured my mother, locked her up as his prisoner, drugged her and took her purity.”
She spoke of such horror without emotion; her eyeless face a mask. “He impregnated her because he wanted to see a half breed for himself. When I was born, he murdered her in the delivery bed, and took my eyes so that I might never know who he was. For six months he had me raised as his own, to see if a diuscrucis could be made pure evil. He didn’t know I could see him, could feel his heart that he had worked so hard to cloak in darkness. He would have destroyed me if he had discovered that I could see the Divine without my eyes, and know them even without knowing their exact form.
She motioned to the old man sitting next to her. “Izak was my mother’s jailer, and he spent much time with her. He secretly fell in love with her, and then with me. He discovered first that I could See, and so he stole me from under my father’s nose and has hidden me ever since. He is the one who has taught me of our kind.”
“And your father?” I asked. I could make a guess who would do such a thing.
“I do not know,” she replied. “It is not the demon Reyzl as you think, brother. Izak will not tell me his name, but he assures me that is not so.”
It was a little creepy how she knew what I was thinking. I turned to Izak. “Why won’t you tell her?” I asked. “You claim to love her.”
Izak looked at me and said nothing. I was beginning to get angry when Sarah raised her hand between Izak and I.
“Hold your anger. Izak seeks to protect me from him. Even thinking his name could reveal me, and I am not yet ready to confront him.”
“How did you wind up down here?” Rebecca asked. Sarah’s story had brought tears to her eyes, which she now wiped away with the back of her hand.
“After Izak took me away from my father, we travelled for many months. He taught me of the world, of its beauty, and of how to see it without my eyes. I was in wonder of it all, and still am. In time we came to this place, hidden from the rest of the world, so that he could teach me of my power. Nobody lived here then, it was just Izak and I. I found that I could See not just the Divine, but also the Awake. Those who could see me, I could See back. I felt their anger, their pain, and their hopelessness. We began to bring them here, to give them a community.”
“Aren’t you afraid your father will find you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “None of these people will betray me. I can not give them their former lives back, but I have helped them make new ones down here, with others who understand.”
She turned her head towards me, and this time I could feel her entering my thoughts. I was still tired, still weak. I pushed her out with as little force as I could manage, for fear I would not be able to stay conscious with any greater effort. She did not resist, instead she giggled out loud.
“I am glad to have found you, brother,” she said. “Rest now demons. Find peace and shelter here.”
I had so many questions, so much more I wanted to know. I didn’t get to ask them, because she had both Calmed and Commanded me. I knew now how to recognize each, and I panicked at the thought of what she would do once I was out. I fought against her power, but I was too tired, too weak.
“Do not fear,” she said to me, right before the world went dark.