chapter 21
I was looking out of the window, listening to Rebecca tell me about how she had come to live at the Statue of Liberty and marveling at the snowy landscape of the Catskill mountains when the darkness of the night was pierced by a blinding beam of white light off in the distance, shooting straight up into the sky. At the same instant I felt a distinct unease in my gut, my soul reverberating in alarm.
“Do you see that?” I asked Rebecca.
She stopped talking and looked around. “I don’t see anything,” she replied.
“It’s started,” I told her. “There’s a light shining out that way.” I pointed into the woods. “If you can’t see it, it’s for angel eyes only, I guess.”
“How far?”
“Five miles at least, maybe ten,” I replied.
We had been slowed by the snow, which was at least three inches deep and counting. While it had provided for a beautiful visual distraction, it was costing us now.
“Can you go any faster?” I asked.
She put her foot down on the accelerator. I could hear the wheels spinning, fighting to find traction.
“Not if you want to stay on the road,” she said.
“Then let’s hope they can hold out,” I said.
Twenty minutes had passed by the time we reached a small, unpaved roadway marked by a small wooden sign that read ‘St. Francis Monastery’. I had kept my eyes on the beacon the entire time, and now I could see it down the road.
“That’s the place,” I said. “Turn here.”
Rebecca complied, putting us on a straight track towards the fight. There was still at least two or three miles left to travel through the snow covered woods, and the weather was getting worse. The snow was falling in such volume that we couldn’t see the road five feet in front of us. I focused on the light ahead and reached out with my senses, only to be crushed from the weight of so many demons concentrated in such a small area. We weren’t far away, but we would have to go in blind in every sense of the word.
“We’re close,” I told Rebecca, my head still pounding from the effort. There was a thump and a cry as we slammed into something dark that had been standing in the road.
“Scratch that, we’re here,” I said. A moment later, another thump, this one on the roof.
“I think we’ve been spotted,” she said. A batlike head peered down at me from the passenger side window. A clawed fist tried to punch through the glass, but the armor was too tough for it. I heard another thump, then another, as more demons spotted the car and leaped onto it.
“How do they know we’re not on their side?” I asked, trying to keep my voice somewhat calm.
“I don’t think they care,” Rebecca replied. “Now what?”
“Just keep driving,” I said. “We need to get to wherever the angels are.”
The demons on the car were pounding on the roof, on the windows. Another one landed on the hood, looking in at us and hissing. It reminded me of Reyzl’s messenger, but bigger.
“Scouts,” Rebecca said. “Their job would have been to gather info on the location, then back up when the stronger demons arrived. If Reyzl isn’t here, one of his lackeys will be. He’ll be Commanding them, and holding open the Rift.”
“Rift? Is that what it sounds like?”
“Yes. It’s a passageway to and from Hell. Get off!” She cursed as two more demons slammed into the side of the car, almost sending us into spin. “There are hundreds of types of demons. Most are big, ugly, mean, and dumb, like the grunts at the Belmont. The higher order demons create them to fight, but they can’t organize without being Commanded, and they don’t have the power to travel a Rift on their own. You’ll find some strays once in awhile, but for the most part they remain in Hell.”
It was a weird time to be having this conversation, but she wouldn’t have been telling me this stuff if it weren’t important. The outer shell of the car was a cacophony of hammer blows as the smaller demons tried to break through. I could see the beacon clearly now, a laser thread of light that reached up into eternity. We were almost there.
“So what about the weres, and the nosferatu, or Reyzl for that matter?” I asked her. “You reproduce like mortals, have families, loyalties, the whole deal.”
Rebecca’s face was a mask of concentration, fighting to keep the car under control. I was impressed with her ability to multi-task.
“God created man,” she said. “When he gave Hell to the Devil, the Devil wanted to one up him, and to thwart his designs. He started creating his own vision of mankind, one that was not so... constrained. His early efforts were fruitless, after all he’s not God, but in time he found limited success. The problem was that his creations still required God’s original touch of life, and so the demons such as nosferatu required human blood to survive. Our story has grown and evolved much the same as man. We have lived secretly in parallel and worked to claim for our own whatever God and man has built. No demon can stay here indefinitely without feeding on a human, or feeding on a demon that has fed on a human. We all need God’s seed to survive.”
“Or some badass technology,” I said. “Synthetic blood to replace the touch of God?”
“Stem cells,” she said. “Even the synthetic uses human blood, we just manufacture it ourselves. One day maybe we’ll be able to make it fast enough we won’t need any synthetic materials, but that day is a long way off.”
We were within a mile of our destination, and the number of demons assaulting the car was reaching ridiculousness. How Rebecca was managing to keep the vehicle under control with so many of the things pounding against it was a feat beyond understanding. Finally, she skidded the car to a stop.
“We’re close enough,” she growled. The angel light was burning up the sky now, and I could tell that it was originating from the center of a large stone building. Even with the illumination from the light visibility still sucked, the snowfall creating a whiteout across the entire area.
Rebecca reached behind the seat and grabbed the swords. She handed me mine with a smile, and then her eyes clouded over and the smile grew longer and more frightening. The car began to rock. The demons covering it were able to get a better purchase now that it wasn’t moving. She reached for the door handle.
“Hold on,” I said. “How much do you like this car?”
“I can get another,” she replied.
“Just what I wanted to hear,” I told her. “The air’s going to get a little weird in here."
I looked down at my feet and focused my will, pulling cold air in through the ventilation system, packing it into the cabin and compressing it. I could feel the pressure building as I did so, pushing in on us and making it hard to breathe. The demons continued to rock the car, and a claw managed to sneak in through the seam of the driver’s side door.
My head was a melon ready to explode from the intense pressure. Rebecca was moaning, unable to handle the discomfort any longer. The inhale complete, I pushed out the exhale, forcing the air to expand around us.
The air exited at supersonic speed, ripping apart the Rolls Royce and sending its pieces exploding outward. The demons that had been assaulting the car were shredded by the power of the blast, their bodies pulled apart by the decompressing air and fragments of steel. In the distance, I could hear more cries of pain as the bullets found other soft flesh to dig into. The frame of the car was all that remained, with us sitting in the center.
If Rebecca was impressed, she didn’t show it. She was all business. “The Commander will be near the center of the assault, ringed with the strongest of the demons,” she said. “Unless he brought a second, killing him will cause the less intelligent to lose cohesiveness and start fighting with one another.”
“Got it. Are you ready?” I asked.
She responded with a wink, and then disappeared into the snow. I didn’t waste any time following after her.
“This way,” she said, leading me at a slight angle away from the light. “I can smell them. The main force is already inside.”
We ran about a thousand feet, passing pieces of the Rolls and disintegrating parts of demons. The snow was well packed here, trampled by hundreds of claws. I could hear the sound of steel, the roar of monsters. A fourteen foot mass of muscle appeared out of nowhere, throwing a huge ham fist right at me. I dove to the side and rolled to my feet just in time to see Rebecca leap upwards and decapitate it with one smooth stroke. The somewhat humanoid head landed at my feet, its patchy black hair matted with blood.
“Trolls,” she said, kicking the head away. “They’re too big to go inside.”
“I’m glad you aren’t,” I told her. We went another hundred feet or so before we came across the first dead angel.
He had long blonde hair, delicate features, and a smooth, boyish face. He was lying in blood soaked snow, one wing torn from his body, his skin marbleized by the black demon poison that had felled him. He wore a pair of white linen pants, his chest and feet bare. He had died recently enough that he hadn’t yet turned to dust, and his blood steamed against the cold snow. I stood there smoldering until Rebecca pulled me away.
“Come on, Landon,” she said. “There are still some that we can save.”
And plenty of demons left to kill. As if on cue, another troll charged in through the veil of snow. Before Rebecca could react, I leapt forward at the creature, digging my sword deep into its chest and using it as a springboard to bounce away. It all happened too fast for the demon to follow, and it stopped and grabbed at its wound with a look of confusion before toppling to the ground.
“Lead on,” I said.
Our pace slowed as we moved in closer to the Monastery, the entire grounds heavy with demons. ‘Fodder’, Rebecca had called them. They were weak demons whose role was to harass and distract the defenders while trying to overwhelm them with their numbers and get in a lucky hit that would break the skin and allow entry to their poison. They were simple humanoid creatures, five feet tall, skeletal frames with clawed hands and feet, and skin that lay taut against sinewy muscle and bone. It was like they had taken a human being, flayed it, and shrink-wrapped it with a new skin.
There were hundreds of them still wandering about outside in search of more enemies to attack. They hooted when they saw us coming, bringing even more of their brethren to the scene. They dropped like flies. Even with my non-existent skill at swordplay they were too slow to be a threat to us.
“Landon, behind you,” Rebecca shouted. I didn’t turn to look, but instead bent my knees and launched myself into the air, shooting up and over the troll’s fist as it smashed into the ground where I had been standing. It was becoming a favorite tactic of mine since I had tried it with the gargoyles. It allowed me to both evade attack and also get a better perspective on the attacker and my surroundings.
The troll looked at me as I reached the apex of my ascent, pulling back his fist and throwing it upwards. He was faster than the others had been, and I scrambled to get my sword up in time to block the incoming ball of demonic muscle. He didn’t hit me dead on, but even so the impact sent me flying.
I crashed on the ground twenty feet away, just in time to see Rebecca decapitate the troll while it was trying to gauge my descent. I jumped to my feet to sidestep a clumsy lunge by a fodder demon and plant my sword in its back, then drop under another blow and bring the blade back around and through the head of the second demon. I had dispatched six more by the time Rebecca got over to me.
“How much further?” I asked her. I could hear more demons heading our way, the shaking ground a cue that it wasn’t just more fodder. “We’re losing too much time out here.”
Rebecca didn’t seem to mind all the fighting. In fact she looked radiant in her adrenaline stoked attack mode. The melting snow had caused her hair to stick to her face in an alluring way, and her well-worn henley was clinging to the outline of her form.
“Agreed,” she said. “We need to get inside.”
We hurried the rest of the way to the Monastery, slowing only when the chasing demons caught up to us. The trolls were the most difficult, their size allowing them to outrun the fodder, but we were fortunate that there was no strategy to their attack, and no cooperation. For all of their brute power, we were just flat out superior.
The Monastery entrance was a plain human-sized wooden door affixed to the center of a long, high stone wall that comprised the south side of the building. According to Rebecca’s inherited memory, it had been constructed in the nineteen fifties to resemble a fourteenth century monastic retreat, complete with a total absence of windows and no electricity, and therefore lots and lots of candles. The idea was that this type of environment would keep the monks focused on God and prayer because there was nothing else to look at or do. What she hadn’t known was why the angels were using it, since they tended to prefer wide, open spaces to small, dark containment; the precise environment that most demons preferred.
The door had already been torn apart, and it lay on the ground ten feet away. Scattered around the entrance were the remains of a bloody and violent battle, with a large number of half-decayed fodder and trolls littering the area along with at least three or four angels. Since the Divine lost their physical manifestations so soon after being destroyed, I was judging the outcome based on how many blessed swords I found discarded.
“The monks were Touched warriors,” Rebecca reminded me when I commented on my system.
“Their bodies would still be here,” I countered. I knew she was trying to help alleviate my concern for Josette, and I appreciated it, but I was going to worry until we found her.
“Not if the demons took them off to consume them,” Rebecca said. I hadn’t thought about that outcome, and it did give me a little bit of macabre peace. “We’ll be safe from the outer demons once we’re inside. They would have entered already if they hadn’t been Commanded not to.”
We came across some of the monks on the other side of the door, in a small foyer that had contained some kind of mechanism with seraph-scripted spikes. The spikes were covered in blood, but the apparatus that had held them was smashed to pieces, leaving them scattered among the casualties - three Touched monks who had been assigned to work the trap, and a number of decayed fodder corpses. A heavy stone door had lain on the other side of the room, but the intruders had managed to obliterate it. Beyond the door, the hallway split in three directions.
“Which way?” I asked Rebecca.
The inside of the building was almost silent. The scrape of claws and the occasional echoed howl were the only indication that there was anything in here at all. There was no sound of battle, no hint of angels fighting demons, and that was bad. Were we too late? Had the battle already been lost?
“They split off,” she replied. “They’re here to kill everything they find.”
Which way then? I hated to split up, but we didn’t have a choice. “Okay, take the left, I’ll go straight, and let’s hope the right corridor is a dud.”
“Landon,” Rebecca said, reaching out and grabbing my arm. “We can’t. Even with the transfer, I’m not powerful enough to take on a major demon on my own. I’m not sure you are either.”
She had a point. I had seen her do so much damage with so little effort I had forgotten that there were demons out there that could eat us for breakfast. “You’re right. We’ll go to the left.”
The corridor was dark, lit by candles that sat in plain iron sconces along the walls. There was a small door every ten feet or so which led into simple eight foot by eight foot rooms that reminded me of prison cells, outfitted with just a small bed and a toilet. The doors had been torn off every single one of the rooms we passed. Some were empty, but the others... the others were a gruesome scene of blood splattered walls, decaying demons, and half-eaten corpses. When we came upon demons that were still feeding, we destroyed them and moved on.
We continued down the hallway. A rhythmic thumping sound began reverberating through the walls. It was a steady pounding, every four or five seconds, a huge THUMP that shook mortar from the stone construction. There was no other sound now, wherever the demons were they no longer seemed to be on the move. We hadn’t seen evidence of angels in any of the rooms, which was a good thing. We didn’t know where they were though, and that was a bad thing.
“They must have locked themselves in the chapel,” Rebecca said after considering the banging. “We may be out of time.” I started running, and she followed.
My pace was reckless, but in the moment I didn’t care. The balance of power was already in Hell’s favor, and every angel that died gave them a stronger foothold. I hadn’t helped the cause any earlier, and that drove me even harder to want to ensure that no more seraphs were destroyed. We happened along a few demon stragglers as we ran, and I tore through them without slowing, Rebecca staying close behind.
The split corridors seemed to reconnect at the back end of the Monastery, then turn inward to the central part of the building. Following the layout brought us to one more heavy doorframe that had lost its thick wooden door, and beyond it a dining hall. It was here that the demons remained, pounding at a gigantic, ornately decorated door that was covered top to bottom in seraphim writing.
“Now what?” I whispered to Rebecca.
We had taken position outside the dining room, peeking in from the doorway. There were at least a hundred demons gathered inside - a whole bunch of fodder, a handful of weres, a couple of dog-like creatures I hadn’t seen before, four female demons that Rebecca whispered were harpies, and the main power players, seven fallen angels.
The angels were the ones pounding the door, standing in a circle with their arms held up and wings spread, a blue flame dancing in the center of a pentagram they had scratched into the stone floor. The flame would grow and congeal, and a ball of energy would launch out and slam against the barrier, rocking it back and forth. A return flash of lightning-like defensive energy would lash into the angels, burning and tearing at their bodies, which would heal before the next attack and counterattack. Each of them was wearing an amulet around their neck, negating the effectiveness of the angels’ last line of defense.
“Do you see the angel closest to the door, the one with the short black hair?” Rebecca asked.
I looked to the figure she had described. Like the others, he was shirtless, wearing only a pair of cloth pants cinched by a simple rope belt. His entire upper body was covered in ragged tattooed sigils, and his wings had been dyed black with red at the tips that made them look like they were dripping blood.
“That’s Lazar,” she said. “He’ll be Commanding the fodder and the hounds. If we can take him out we may be able to cause enough confusion to disable the other angels before they can recover.”
“That’s the plan?” I asked. “Why don’t I just tap dance in there naked? That would be an easier distraction.”
Rebecca bared her fangs in a twisted smile. “And a much more attractive one,” she replied. “But I think the only demon that would be distracted is me.”
I was able to be embarrassed despite our predicament. I could feel my face turn red. The hallway shook as another blast of energy slammed into the doorway. I looked over at it and noticed there was a small crack beginning to form in the upper left corner. We were running out of time.
I looked back at Rebecca, who was waiting for me to tell her what to do. Her face was fearsome beauty, framed to perfection by the flickering candles behind her. The flickering candles.
“Do fallen angels hate fire as much as heavenly ones?” I asked.
“Hell isn’t all fire and brimstone,” she said. “Of course they do.”
It was the most ambitious demand I had ever made, and Dante’s words were in my mind as I focused. “Bending the universe too much can have catastrophic consequences,” he had written. I didn’t know if I had the power to do this, but I was out of time and feeling desperate. I put my arm around Rebecca and whispered into her ear. “Hold on tight, and don’t move.”
The sound was something like a jet-propelled freight train; an oncoming wave of destruction and power that shook the Monastery with such force that I feared it might collapse. It started with a low rumble at the entrance to the structure, but built momentum in no time as I pulled and pulled on the air and the heat, bringing them to me in a gigantic combustible package.
The demons heard it coming too, but they didn’t understand they were under attack, and couldn’t understand how. They raised their heads to listen but stayed gathered in the dining hall while the fallen angels continued their assault.
They screamed in surprise when the flood of pure flame exploded into the room, filling it in moments with searing heat. The summoned demons were immune, but the weres were vaporized in an instant, and the angels cried out in pain and dropped their own attack while their flesh burned and healed and burned again.
I held Rebecca close to me in a bubble of air that I was holding the flood of flame away from. “Wait here,” I told her. “You’ll die if you go out there.”
She hadn’t realized what I planned to do, and her eyes shifted back to blue and begged me not to do it. “Landon, you can’t survive. You won’t heal fast enough,” she said.
“Maybe, maybe not. If I do nothing I’m guaranteed to fail.” I kissed her on the cheek, let go, and stepped out into the fire.
The pain was intense. My skin started burning and my clothes combusted away to dust in an instant. I pushed my body to heal faster, creating a constant battle of burn and cleanse on my own flesh. My eyes were burning blind, so I had to rely on my senses to see where my enemies were.
I would hit Lazar first, and then the other angels. My hand had melted to the handle of my sword, making it an almost cyborg-like extension. I broke into a run, dashing through the flames, my mind a volatile mixture of pain, calm, chaos, desperation, love, and anger.
I demanded my eyes to heal as I approached the angels, opening them just in time to see Lazar standing in front of me, his body flaming like a Burning Man, fear registering on his face to see me coming at him. He had no time to move before his head was severed clean from his body, the amulet slipping off his neck when the carcass tumbled to the ground. I was standing right in front of the angels’ door now, and I spun around, took a deep breath, and dropped the firestorm, the recession sucking all of the oxygen from the room.
My face was a twisted wreck of pain and glory. I shattered Boot’s sword into six deadly shards and sent them darting forward through the six angels’ crystal amulets, through the six angels’ necks. The blood of the Grail lost, their demon-turned bodies couldn’t recover from the damage of the blades.
I slumped to the ground, the world around me turning fuzzy. I struggled to stay awake, noticing a female shape moving towards me, vaguely understanding that it wasn’t Rebecca, and that I should defend myself. How could I defend myself? I had destroyed my sword. I had liked that sword too.
A clawed hand raked across my cheek, sending me flopping to the floor. The harpy jumped on me, her white fangs a stark contrast against ebony skin. She had a knife in her other hand. I should get her off me. I should do something.
There was an angry hiss, and then her head rolled forward and landed behind me, her body kicked away before it could cover me in blood. Rebecca stood above me, her expression worried despite her empty black eyes. I heard a growl, and then she fell backwards, a huge mass of muscle pouncing on her.
Focus. How could I focus? Everything was moving like mud. Like lightning. My eyes wouldn’t stay straight. My head hurt. Rebecca needed me. I struggled to push myself to a sitting position. Rebecca was wrestling with the hellhound, its jaws snapping at her face, her arms at full extension to hold it back. More demons were coming, more of the harpies, and another hound. I knew there was another hound.
The angels’ massive door began to open, sending a spreading ray of light into the room. I was still lying right in front of it, and it was so bright on the other side. In the doorway was a silhouette. An angel. Its eyes met mine. I knew this one. Josette.
She launched from the doorway like a rocket, her sword coming down on the hound lunging towards me. I hadn’t seen it, would never have been able to stop it. Another angel came out of the door, then another. They assaulted the remaining demons. Josette was at my side.
“Fellow, I did not expect to see you again, much less find you here,” she said.
She was an ethereal sight in a simple long white gown and sandals. She knelt and put her hand on my forehead. The world began to clarify. The other angels were dispatching the second hound, and now they were attacking Rebecca?
“No,” I cried, reaching out for anything I could and sending it banging into the angels. It distracted them enough to allow her to duck around them and run towards us.
“Don’t hurt her,” I said to Josette. I didn’t know if she could or not, but she had six hundred or so years on the vampire, so I assumed she could.
“This one is yours?” she asked, confused. She floated to her feet and held her hand up to the angels. “Stand down,” she said to them.
Rebecca reached my feet and turned. She hadn’t been running from them, but running to reach me, to protect me from them. She hissed when they approached.
“Stand down,” Josette repeated, placing herself between the angels and Rebecca. The angels pulled up. One was older, his hair long and grey, his bare chest lined with scars. The other was younger, with a fresh face and delicate features. He reminded me of the angel I had found dead in the snow.
“Josette,” the older one said. “We’ve discussed this.”
Josette was agitated. “We have done no such thing,” she said. “This man has come here to help us, and you would destroy him and his companion?”
The seraph glowered. “He is no man, Josette. He is a diuscrucis. You know the laws. You have agreed to abide by them.”
They were talking to each other like Rebecca and I weren’t even there. As if they could just decide to kill us and make it so. As if we couldn't resist. I tried to stand, my legs shaky. Rebecca caught me before I could fall.
“Look at him,” Josette said. “Man, diuscrucis, whatever he is, he just about killed himself to save us. I did not agree to return such benevolence with violence, regardless of our laws. The law is short-sighted and flawed if that is how it is intended to be interpreted.”
The comment infuriated the angel. “How dare you,” he cried, the power of his voice shaking the Monastery further, and causing Josette to shy away. “Do you still not understand?” he continued, his voice back to a normal volume. “After all of the time we have spent over the last three days speaking of such things? The life a diuscrucis saves today is the life it barters for power tomorrow. That is their history, that is their truth.”
I didn’t appreciate being called ‘it’, and I didn’t appreciate being judged on someone else’s merits.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to get into the conversation. The younger angel looked at me, but the elder was preoccupied with browbeating Josette.
“How do you know they are the same?” Josette asked. “What if you are wrong? Moses, the demons almost broke into our sanctuary! You know what that means. The sanctuary is more important than my life or yours. Landon is a savior.”
It must have been a bad choice of words, because the older angel, Moses, looked ready to tear Josette apart with his bare hands. He raised his sword in front of his face. It was different than the others, older, larger, and simpler. It looked more like a medieval broadsword, and it had few runes along its surface.
“Josette, don’t make me do this,” he said, his voice heavy with regret. “You have been granted clemency for your years of loyal and honorable service to our Lord. Please do not turn your back on His forgiveness, on His love. No matter what this diuscrucis does today, if we allow him to survive he will be our destruction, as his predecessor almost was. Please.”
His eyes pleaded with her to join them on their side. Josette looked at me, hanging from Rebecca’s arm. I was only conscious because she had shared her energy with me.
“Josette, it’s okay,” I told her. “Just let the vampire go,” I said to Moses. “She is little threat to you.”
He looked at me, his face empty of emotion. “No demon will leave this Monastery,” he said.
In that moment I realized why Heaven was having such a hard time. It was so ordered, so unbending. It couldn’t adjust. Good was white, and evil was black, end of discussion. Now Josette was caught in the middle because she dared to see gray.
“I’m sorry,” Josette said, still looking at me. Tears poured from her eyes. She stepped away from us, and towards Moses.
“The Lord will forgive me, for he knows my true heart,” she said to Moses. She pulled her sword from the ether and held it out before her. “I do not wish to fight you Moses, but I will not allow you to slaughter those who have done you no harm, and in fact have saved your life. The only perfect being is God, and He did not write this law. We did. I challenge its validity according to the rights bestowed upon me by my consecration.”
Moses took a deep breath and sighed. “Your rights were lost when you Confessed. You know that. You cannot make a formal challenge for seven years. Please do not do this.”
Josette cast one last glance back at us. “You have given me no choices,” she said to Moses, her voice filled with sadness. “I will not let you kill them.”
“Then that is your choice,” he replied.
He wielded the broadsword as if it were a toothpick, holding the massive blade one handed, cutting and slashing with speed, grace, and precision. Josette danced around the older angel, her body a blur as she twirled and twisted away from the sword. She didn’t make any effort to fight back, at least not yet, her size giving her a distinct advantage on the defense.
The younger angel approached us. He handed me a simple white linen robe, which reminded me of my nakedness.
“Thank you,” I said, sliding it on over my head. I was sure Rebecca had noticed me. What did she think about what she had seen? Why did it matter so much?
“My brother,” the angel said. “He was outside.”
I knew the angel had looked familiar. I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I believe you,” he replied. He paused to think. “You will help us?”
I nodded. “I’ll help you until the balance is restored. After that, I make no promises.”
“Then let us hope Josette wins,” he said. “For I am willing to take my chances.”
The battle was still raging, Josette and Moses continuing their angry dance. Josette had joined the fight in full, adding her weapon to the mix. Their swords were silver rays of light, whistling through the air, crashing into one another, throwing up a shower of sparks. It was impossible to say who was the better fighter, impossible to guess what the outcome would be. The rage shared between them was obvious, their mutual dislike apparent. In a way, it was good to know that even the warriors of God were not immune to such emotions. As Josette had said, they were not perfect.
For every bit of strength the older angel possessed, Josette made up for in agility. The huge broadsword came in at her from every conceivable angle and speed, followed by a foot, a fist, or a knee, and she would dip and dodge and parry without breaking stride, without making a mistake. Moses pressed the attack hard to keep her on the defensive, like he knew that once she had a moment to breathe, she would overtake him.
Just when it seemed as though the fight would continue forever, that is exactly what happened, and a moment later it was over. Moses reached out a little too far, a little too high, and left himself a little too off-balance. Josette pounced on the opening like a cat, springing forward and planting her sword in his stomach and pushing him over with the weight she bore down on it. He hit the earth hard, Josette straddling him like a surfboard, holding the blade in position to prevent him from continuing the fight.
“Yield,” she demanded.
Moses coughed and glared up at her. “You are making a mistake Josette,” he said. “I will not yield.”
She twisted the sword, leading the older angel to wince in pain. “You have lost. Yield, and we will leave this place. The sanctuary will remain safe.”
“I will not yield,” Moses yelled.
He grabbed Josette’s sword by the blade and threw it out of his body, sending the slight angel tumbling backwards. His hands trailing blood, he pounced on her, wrapping his arms around her neck. Josette struggled under his weight, her arms flailing. She sought to gain leverage to get him off, finding it difficult on the blood-slicked floor. Sickened, I pushed against Rebecca, trying to find the strength to come to her aid.
“This is their fight,” Rebecca said, holding me in place. “You cannot intervene.” I stopped squirming.
“I’m sorry Josette,” Moses whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear. Her laboring had ceased, and I wasn’t even sure she was still alive. That was when I noticed the knife.
It was a demon’s blade, obsidian and serrated. It was lying just on the outside of the pentagram that had been scratched into the floor, near a pile of decayed ash that had once been a fallen angel. Josette’s hand was inching towards it, trying to get a hold on it without drawing Moses’ attention. It seemed surreal that it would come down to this, a scene that had been played out in movies that was happening now for real. I focused on the blade, and with the little energy I had left I pushed it, an inch or less. It was enough.
Josette’s fingers wrapped around the handle, and she jerked the blade up and into the back of Moses’ shoulder, burying it deep in his flesh. He cried out in shock and pain, giving her the chance she needed to get her arms under his chest and shove him away. He landed on his feet, pure animosity pouring from him. Josette staggered to a stand.
“How could you?” Moses cried, his bare chest already beginning to show signs of the poison. He turned to the younger angel. “Thomas, holy water.”
Thomas raced back through the doorway into the room Josette had referred to as the sanctuary. Josette walked over to the stricken seraph.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her eyes were wet with tears.
“You should be,” Moses said. He spat blood at her feet. “Your soul is tainted Josette. Since you met this crossbred demon-spawn you have lost your way. Do you think he is the solution to our problems? Do you think he deserves to live while I die?”
His anger turned Josette’s sorrow into an equal rage. Her voice boomed in the gigantic room. “No one deserves to die for no reason other than being.” She pointed at Rebecca. “Not even a demon.”
Thomas returned from the sanctuary, racing by us to deliver the holy water to Moses. The older angel’s’ poison was spreading, but he remained strong enough to continue his vitriol.
“You are filth Josette, a sorry excuse for a servant of the Lord. You turn your back on Him because you don’t trust in His plan. You should be grateful to Him, for showing mercy on you after what you did with your own brother.”
It was as though in that moment all of time and space came to a screeching halt. Thomas hit the skids, stopping a good ten feet away from Moses and Josette, his eyes like saucers in response to the elder seraph’s words. Josette’s face drained of all color, and a frightening darkness flashed in her eyes. I remembered what Josette had told me about her brother. I could piece together what she hadn’t. The vampires had thought she was a virgin, and in a sense she was, but for their intents they were wrong.
Josette wrenched the demonic blade from Moses’ back and without hesitation reinserted it into his heart. She pulled it back out, and stabbed him again, and again, and again, the fury of her hurt, guilt, and shame overcoming all other rational thought, overwhelming her spirit of goodness. She sobbed as she punctured him, over and over, brought to a stop only when Thomas grabbed her from behind and held her to him with her back pressed up against his chest. Moses coughed up some blood, his face cracking with poisoned veins, and passed without another word.
“Josette,” Thomas whispered, trying to calm her. “Josette, please it’s me, Thomas.” She flailed and fought, trying to break away, to continue her assault on the now empty form. “Josette.”
I looked at Rebecca and motioned with my head. “We have to help her,” I said.
Rebecca helped me walk over to Josette. Her face was feral, her growls incomprehensible. I reached out and put my hand under her chin, making sure her eyes were in line with mine.
“Josette,” I said, my voice as soft and warm as I could make it. “It’s Landon. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
I sank my gaze into her eyes, searching for her in them. She was seeing right through me, blinded by her pain. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. In response, a whine poured from her lips, a flat, straight, painful, powerful sound that felt as though it had her whole existence wrapped up in it. It continued for uncounted minutes, her sorrow heartbreaking. When it tailed off she collapsed into me, and I lowered her to the floor.
“What have I done?” she said. “Oh Landon, what have I done?”
I lowered myself next to her and put my arms around her. “You saved my life,” I told her. “Mine and Rebecca’s.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “For that I am glad, but the cost was so high.”
“Moses?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, pulling back away from me. She looked up at me, and I understood.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. It wasn’t the pair of light, golden, heavenly eyes I had been so mesmerized by looking back at me. They were different now, changed, a simple brown that could have passed as human.