chapter 17
The sun was sinking towards the horizon when I pushed through the revolving doors of the Waldorf and stepped out into the street. The city around me was bustling with life, the organized chaos of humanity a comforting sight to my changing eyes. Before, I had seen myself as one of them who had been picked up and carried into something much bigger than I could have ever imagined. After my experience in my Source, I didn’t feel as human anymore. I had grown, evolved into something... better?
I hoped so, but it wasn’t without its price. Watching people scurrying through the streets on their way here or there without a thought in their mind about what was happening out of their sight, they seemed so small and insignificant. My compassion was the one thing I least wanted to lose, because I knew there was nothing balanced in a total lack of feeling, and so I drank in the sight, took a moment to appreciate it, and continued on.
Dusk was creeping in by the time I finished the mile and a half walk down to the Garment District and came to a stop in front of the Holy Trinity Soup Kitchen, a small storefront at the bottom of an office building that looked more like a former deli than a food bank. I don’t know what had driven me there at this time of day, and I should have known that Josette wouldn’t be there, the place had closed three hours ago. Even so, I could feel her presence in the air around me, much like I had at the Belmont the day after her visit, and I found a certain peace and comfort in it. She was spending her mornings doing good in one of the simplest ways possible, and while I wouldn’t have thought much of it while I had been alive, I was coming to appreciate such simplicity now.
“Hey buddy, any spare change?”
I had been lost in thought, so the vagrant’s hoarse voice startled me. He was standing on my right, dressed in an assortment of sweaters and jackets, his head wound up in three or four different hats. He was clean-shaven, young, and round enough that I didn’t doubt he spent the money he begged for feeding himself.
“Sure,” I replied, reaching into my pocket and pulling out one of my last twenties. .
“Thank you sir,” he said as I handed it to him. “Thank you so much.” He turned to leave, but I stopped him.
“You don’t happen to know a girl who volunteers here, she’s about fourteen or so? Her name is Josette.”
The homeless man got all doe-eyed at the name. “Everybody around here knows Josie,” he said. “She’s the sweetest little thing. She likes to do magic tricks for us to cheer us up. She’s not in trouble or anything, is she?”
“No,” I said. Not any more than usual I’d imagine. “But if you see her, can you tell her that Landon was looking for her. She knows who I am.”
“Sure, buddy,” he replied. “Have a good night.”
“You too.”
I watched him wander off into the night, then spun around to begin the walk back up to the Waldorf. With any luck, Obi would have gotten what he needed before the evening wore on too long, and Rebecca would be as good as new after her nap. There was no part of me that was thinking my planned break-in of Merov’s apartment was going to be easy or straightforward, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible.
I was headed away from the soup kitchen when a flash of light from the rooftop caught my attention. I looked up and caught just the faintest recognition of someone Divine moving away from me. Josette? Had she been watching me the whole time, or had she just happened to stop by?
Assuming it was her, I wasn’t going to just let her go. I did know why I had come to see her. It was because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen over the next few days, and I wanted a chance to talk to her one last time. If it wasn’t her, maybe they could tell me where she went at sundown. I started running.
My pace was intense, but I handled it with ease, my legs pumping hard to keep me moving on the ground faster than the angel was crossing the air. I kept my eyes focused on the path in front of me while keeping my senses trained on them. The pedestrian traffic was a blur around me as something in their subconscious told the crowd to part and let me through. To my amazement, even as I dissected busy intersections there was never a car crossing at the same time I was.
The chase continued for a few more blocks before the angel came to a stop. I slowed to a walk as I got closer, taking in my surroundings and ensuring they were alone. Satisfied, I glanced up to the rooftop where I knew the angel was waiting for me. Why they had chosen Macy’s, the Macy’s, I had no idea.
I changed my appearance before I made my way into the crowded department store, going for a more conservative businessman look with a long wool trench coat, Armani suit, and Italian leather shoes. To the shoppers around me, I was just another guy who had decided to do his Christmas shopping after work. I headed straight for the perimeter in search of a way onto the roof. I could sense the angel was stationary, waiting for me to arrive. I wished I knew how Josette had made that call to my soul so I could get in touch with whoever was up there with a little less effort.
I made my way towards the rear of the store, following the flow of employees as they moved from the storerooms back out onto the floor. There had to be a service elevator back there somewhere, or at the very least a stairwell that would lead to the top of the building. I slipped in behind a pair of Santa’s elves that stepped out of the back pointing and giggling at each other, and then circuited the area until I found the maintenance stairs. Locked. I took the knob in my hand and focused, twisting the handle until I felt the whole mechanism crumble under the pressure.
“It took you long enough,” the angel said when I stepped through the doorway and out onto the rooftop. I knew in an instant that it wasn’t Josette. She was older, taller, and way prettier, with long golden locks, a golden complexion and a dancer’s body. She was wearing a fitted leopard print raincoat and funky red plastic boots over a simple blouse and pants. It was a weird look, but somehow it worked.
“Do I know you?” I asked, stepping towards her. I hadn’t bothered to bring a weapon with me. When would I learn?
“You do not,” Boots replied. “But I know you, diuscrucis. We have been looking for you.” We? I hadn’t felt any other Divine nearby.
They came from the sky, swooping down on pairs of great white feathered wings and landing on the rooftop without a sound. Three more angels, each of them dressed in something like a toga, draped around their bodies to give freedom to their wings. When they landed the wings tucked in behind them, compressing more than I would have thought possible so that they were almost invisible on their backs. Did Josette have wings? I hadn’t noticed them.
I tried to stay calm and confident. If all angels could fight half as well as Josette, I didn’t stand a chance. I could feel Ulnyx stirring within me. Now this was a fight he would be glad to join.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“Josette Confessed,” she said, as though that would explain it for me. The other three angels had taken position around me, putting me in the middle of a very holy box.
“Confessed?” I asked.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she reached into her raincoat and produced a manila envelope, which she tossed at my feet. I bent down and picked it up, unclasping it and turning it over to let out a small stack of printed images. Ulnyx. My room at the Belmont. The vampires. As I flipped through them, I realized that they had somehow extracted the pictures from Josette’s brain. Had she done this of her own volition, or had they forced her?
“We know that she Calmed you,” Boots said, after waiting for me to flip through all of the images. “She should have done an extraction. It would have been a misguided action, but it could have explained why she had helped you to that point. Instead, she just left. We knew you would come looking for her at some point, so we’ve been watching the area.”
She left? I fought to contain myself with the news. She hadn’t been using me as Dante had suggested. She had been honest with me.
“Where is she?” I asked, now fearing for what Confession meant. What had they done to her once they had uncovered her memories?
“That is none of your concern diuscrucis,” Boots said. “What you should be worried about is yourself. We know you have one of the amulets. What do you know about the Chalice?”
So that’s what this was about. They wanted the information that Josette hadn’t tried to take. They didn’t know I hadn’t known anything about it at the time, which in a way was kind of funny, but also kind of sad. They were blaming Josette for not getting intel that she couldn’t have gotten. Of course, I knew what they were after now, and I had a lead on where to find it. Maybe they could make themselves useful.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You show up back here in an hour with Josette and agree to help me, and we can take care of the Chalice together.”
There was no hesitation, no consideration.
“No,” she replied. “Our laws are not to be bartered. Whether you tell us what you know or not, we will still destroy you.”
I saw the swords appear in the hands of the other angels. It was time to plan my escape.
“It will hurt less if you talk,” Boots said.
Why was it that it always came down to tired clichés? I flicked my eyes around the rooftop, hoping to find something to distract them. My greatest weapon was that I was an unknown quantity. They had to know I could call on Ulnyx, which I guessed was why they had come as a group, but they might not know what other tricks I could pull out of my sleeve. Or maybe they did know; the roof was sorely lacking in spare projectiles.
“Your laws are the reason you’re losing,” I said, refusing to let them see me sweat. “You think you can manage on your own, but it’s pretty obvious that you can’t, and the only one of you smart enough to see it ended up in your doghouse.”
“What would a diuscrucis know of laws, rules, or righteousness,” Boots hissed. “The power of the Lord guarantees our victory. Those of true faith know it to be so.”
I could see by her eyes she was giving commands to the other angels. They were playing it cautious.
“Now,” she said, “tell us what you know or raise your blade, but do not continue standing there like a coward.”
I stood there like a coward. I remembered when Josette and I were in the park.
“You can’t attack me if I don’t defend myself, can you?” I asked. “It’s against your rules.” A demon would never hesitate to attack an angel, or defend themselves from one, so they never had a problem there.
“Defend yourself,” Boots shouted, growing frustrated.
“No,” I replied.
I turned away from her so that I was facing the stairwell back down into the store. One of the angels was standing between it and me, a tall muscular male with dark hair and a trimmed beard. I started walking away from them, moving to step around him when I got close enough.
Boots cried out in anger. “Do you know what we do to traitors,” she yelled. “How we make them Confess?”
I stopped walking and ever so slowly turned back around. Her face was a twisted mess of rage, her golden eyes blazing with hate. I knew what she was trying to do. She couldn’t lie, so she was making implications, hoping I would read malice and evil behind them. What I saw instead was desperation. I didn’t blame her for that, the demons had the upper hand and that had to be eating away at her soul. I resumed my walk towards the stairs, but Beard stepped in front of me.
“We cannot fight you if you will not fight back,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we have to let you leave.”
I looked up at him. I could feel Ulnyx all but begging me to let him out. The door was just a few feet away. I could be through it before they could stop me. All I had to do was get Beard to move over. We stood staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Then I stabbed him.
The single claw that had been my right middle finger pierced the angel’s heart, causing him to crumple to the ground. I had taken just enough from Ulnyx to create it, and could almost hear the demon in my mind, laughing at the results. I shut him off before he could get me into any more trouble, and then looked up to the stairwell door. It would be so easy to get away, but where would I go that they couldn’t find me? It wasn’t like I could just skip town.
I picked up Beard’s sword and once more turned to face Boots, unsure about what I was doing, but doing it anyway.
“You want to fight?” I asked.
Boots broke out her best supermodel smile and raised her sword up over her head. She seemed to float towards me, her feet leaving the ground and not touching back down until she was right on top of me. The other two angels had started moving too, and without a word, all three converged, their movements synchronized.
The sword I was holding was pretty much useless against them, and it wasn’t like I knew what to do with it anyway. I had one idea, one somewhat twisted, desperate, crazy idea, and I had about three seconds to make it happen.
I focused my will hard on the sword, demanding that it lose its adhesion, its rigidity, and its molecular attraction. The weapon shattered in my hand much as the windows of Merov’s apartment had. I held the pieces, twirling them around me as with as much velocity as I could manage. I could see the angels coming at me out of the corners of my eyes, could feel the rush of the air they were pushing toward me as they moved in, confident of their odds. They watched my maneuver with a measure of surprise, but didn’t even slow their attack. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and focused again.
Peppering them with shrapnel would be a minor diversion at best, and wouldn’t get me more than a few strides head start down the stairs. Instead, I sent the hundred or so slivers of metal hurtling forward on a different trajectory, one that put me right in their path. The pain of the steel passing through me was almost unbearable, but I convinced myself to stay lucent.
The angels cried out in pain as one, the shards exiting my body and entering theirs, coated in my blood. Josette had said all a demon needed to do to harm a seraph was to break the skin. Being half, I was betting my plasma wouldn’t be too healthy lodged deep inside of them. It didn’t matter if I were wrong. I wasn’t going to survive this fight any other way.
It wasn’t enough to stop their initial attack. The three blades all came down towards me at once, but the momentum had been broken, and I dropped and rolled backwards just fast enough to avoid the strikes. Their swords clanged and sparked against the rooftop. They turned towards me as one, ready for round two. My own body was wracked with pain, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to dodge another three-pronged attack. That was when I noticed the lines.
“What have you done,” Boots cried, a growing spider web of poisoned black veins climbing its way up her neck towards her face. She dropped her sword, her hand no longer strong enough to hold it. The other two angels weren’t faring any better, their own blades clattering to the ground as they fell to their knees.
In that moment, I felt nothing but guilt. Good was struggling enough as it was, and here I was destroying four of its warriors. I hadn’t wanted to, but what choice did I have? Maybe I should have run and taken my chances that they would have found me. It didn’t matter. It was too late to second guess.
Tears fell from my eyes as the poison continued to spread and their skin turned black. It was one thing to kill a demon, a creature that existed to create chaos, fear, and pain. It was another to destroy an angel, a being that worked to save lives, care for the sick, and empower the meek.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Boots toppled to the ground in front of me. When her body fell to dust, I began to cry in earnest.
I sat on the rooftop for almost an hour, my body healing but my mind feeling as though it would be forever scarred by the vision of the dying seraphs. This was what I had agreed to do. It was what war was about. Raw, violent, and painful, filled with impossible choices, and unwinnable situations. I should have never gone to see Josette. I should have stayed with Rebecca, curled up on the bed with her, keeping her company while she slept.
To make it worse, I knew Josette hadn’t betrayed me as I had thought, and that something had happened to her as a result. I didn’t know where she was, or if she was okay. When this was over, if I lived, I would find her and tell her I was sorry for doubting her.