chapter 14
I was only out for a few seconds. When I woke, I was sitting on my bed at the Belmont, naked and coated in a sheen of sweat. Ulnyx was sitting across from me, behind a piano, his fingers tickling the ivories. When he saw me, he started laughing.
“Be quiet, Ulnyx,” a familiar voice said.
The demon quieted and placed his hands in his lap. I looked over to the door. Sarah was standing there, looking the same as she had before she put me to sleep, except... different. It was her eyes. They were whole in this place, an incredible reddish gold that shimmered and danced like Josette’s.
“I’m sorry, brother,” she said to me. “You were weak, and you will need to be strong to carry on with your purpose.”
“How can you be here?” I asked her, clothing myself in a simple black t-shirt and sweats before she could see me.
“You invited me,” she replied.
“How?”
Sarah giggled again. “You called to me, and I came. There is so much you still have so little control over. Like him.” She jerked her head towards Ulnyx. “You have trapped his soul, yet he refuses to do your bidding when it does not suit him.”
“I can’t make him,” I said.
“No? Ulnyx, stand up,” she Commanded. He kicked out the piano bench and stood. “This is your Source brother. If you cannot rule here, you will continue to fail.”
Continue to fail? I looked at the Were. His expression was contained, a mixture of surprise and anger. The way he had jumped at her Command. This was my dream, my world, and yet she had more power in it then I did. The thought drove me to anger.
“How do I learn control, when there is no one to teach me?” I asked, my voice almost a snarl.
“You do not need to learn, all you must do is ask why. Why are you?” She hadn’t reacted at all to my outburst. She remained calm, unaffected.
“I don’t know,” I said. Why were any of us? According to Dante, we were just pieces in a puzzle that did not fit, figures in a game with no end.
“The game cannot continue if you do not play.” Sarah hopped over to me and looked up into my eyes. “Why are you?” she asked again.
I looked from Ulnyx, to her, and back. Continue to fail... His static posture was a representation of every failure I had experienced since Mr. Ross had left me on Lady Liberty. Yeah, I was still alive, but I had remained that way because of dumb luck. Every scrape I had been in had resulted in somebody intervening to save my sorry ass. Even now Sarah was here, showing me how powerless I truly was. Ulnyx had been right. I was pathetic.
“I don’t know,” I growled, the feeling of hopelessness spreading from the inside out.
“This world is your Source, brother,” Sarah said, maintaining her perfect calm. “Its oceans are boundless, its mountains endless. Would you be a flea, or a titan? Why are you?”
“I don’t know. How did you find me?” I was losing control of myself. Every word she spoke increased my anger, my frustration, and my despair.
“I didn’t find you,” she said. “You found me.”
It was yet another statement that made no sense. I hadn’t been looking for her. How could I have been looking for her? “I wasn’t looking for you,” I yelled.
“And yet you found me. Why were you looking?” she asked, calm, emotionless, serene. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I wasn’t,” I shouted, willing her out of my mind. She cried out in pain and was gone. The anger did not subside as easily. I could feel it permeating the entire world around me, staining everything with its pallid darkness. I turned to Ulnyx.
“You! Where the hell were you when I needed you?”
The Great Were looked at me, but didn’t make a sound. I walked over to him and lifted him into the air by the throat. He didn’t react.
“Why am I?” I asked, shaking him. “Why am I?”
His lips split in a mocking grin. Even in my fury, I could not make him obey.
I held him aloft, my fingers sinking deeper and deeper into his throat. Everything around me was black, the room quivering and oozing as I stained my Source with my anger, my evil intent. It was more than just Ulnyx. I wanted to destroy, to ruin, to end. Why had I been chosen to be reborn, when all I could accomplish was failure?
The Belmont crumbled away, and I found myself standing in a wasteland, a world desiccated by my will. The realization was a ten-ton anvil, stealing all of the anger from my soul and slamming me over the head into an instant state of calm. I dropped the Were and took a step back. All at once, the world reversed itself, snapping back to its original state.
Why was I? It was such a simple question with such an elusive, simple answer. The question was a trick, a misdirection, and a lie. It didn’t matter why I was. Asking the question was more important than answering it, the point was that I made the effort to know and understand. To recognize who I was, and what I could become.
Sarah had brought me to anger to show me. No, I had brought Sarah here to show myself. I was of good, and of evil, and my power was a strange concoction of both. How could I hope to truly control any of it if I refused to accept equal parts? Everything rotated in balance, and I was no exception.
As I resolved the truth within myself, I could feel the power wash over me, a wave of energy that soaked into me like water, like blood. It came from nowhere, and everywhere. It had not been created, but released. It was my Source, it ran from my soul, and for better or worse, it was answering my call.
I looked over at Ulnyx, still kneeling on the floor, still wearing his crap-eating grin.
“Get up,” I said.
I could feel the charge in the air, as if it had just been ionized by a lightning strike. The smile faded from his face.
“Get up,” I repeated, my voice calm.
He didn’t look like he wanted to, but he rose to his feet.
“If I call on your power, you will provide it,” I told him.
His eyes burned with hatred, but he nodded.
What had I been looking for? Understanding - of myself foremost. Who better to help me understand than one who lived as I had died? It seemed crazy to think that I could have intended to wind up down in the sewers, taking a direct path to what was the world’s only directly descended half-angel, half-demon. It seemed insane that in the entire world she was in the same city, always so close by. Yet so many things could have happened to me. So many choices made that could have brought me somewhere else, led me in another direction, or pulled me off this course.
Maybe what seemed crazy wasn’t so crazy after all. Could I say for sure that I hadn’t been looking for her, that my soul hadn’t brought me here? Dante had said that in order to come into my full power, I had to let go of what I knew as a human and accept what I had become. My Source was a reflection of the world and my place in it. I would create, destroy, love, hate, and most of all survive, because my Source, my soul demanded balance. It was why I was. The question may have been a trick, but that didn’t mean it had no answer.