chapter 23
An angel had no need for a car, but a Touched warrior monk did. They needed to eat after all, and somebody had to make runs for groceries. The car was a powder blue 1970 Chevy Suburban, a beast of a vehicle that had been well maintained by the monks, and came equipped with its own snowplow. Despite its age and lack of interior creature comforts, it was a more solid performer than the Rolls Royce had been in the crappy mountain weather we had driven into.
As Rebecca had predicted, losing their Commander had caused the Rift, wherever it had been, to close, and the demons that were summoned from Hell couldn’t survive long here, especially in the cold. We did come across a few of the scouts as we headed back down the Monastery's long driveway, but none of them looked like they had much more time to exist.
Rebecca and Josette were in the front of the car, with Rebecca behind the wheel. I was exhausted from the battle, and they had both insisted that I do my best to shut my eyes and recharge my batteries. I was so weak I hadn’t even had the energy to change the simple white robe into something a little less drafty, and my head was spinning soon after I laid it down on the long rear bench seat.
The vampire and the angel, Josette might have fallen but I still thought of her as an angel, were both silent, lost in their own thoughts as we drove. All three of us had gone through some major personal stuff in the last twenty-four hours, and we all needed a chance to do the mental computations. In an effort to create a calming environment, Rebecca had found a classical music eight track in the glove compartment. I fell asleep to either Bach or Mozart. I always got them confused.
I wasn’t surprised when I found myself back at my Source. As my mind had succumbed to the soothing sounds of the symphony I could feel my soul calling out to my consciousness, pulling it into this place. I was standing inside the Museum of Natural History, right in the spot where I had died. I don’t know how I knew it was the spot, because the whole area was under reconstruction, nearly ready for re-opening post –‘terrorist’ attack. Ancient Egyptian artifacts, sculpture and jewelry and dioramas with paper mache pyramids and little plastic Egyptians surrounded me. There was a shadowy figure standing in the corner.
“Ulnyx,” I said, beckoning the Great Were to step into the light. He did so without hesitation, his will broken by my own. “Do you know why I’m here, of all places?”
The demon’s hair was gone, replaced with a smooth bald scalp. He had traded in the rock star look for something more upscale, a tight black suit and a shiny blue tie.
“That’s where it started,” he said, motioning at the spot I was standing on.
“Where I died,” I said.
“Yes sir,” he replied. “Your power has grown, but you still aren’t ready yet.”
“Ready for what?”
He smiled. “You know what. You can’t win that fight, not yet. You haven’t let go.”
“Enough riddles Ulnyx. Let go of what?” I looked at him, and he dropped to his knees.
“I would tell you if I could,” he said. “It’s not something you can be told. You just have to do it.”
I walked over to him and knelt down so we would be at eye level. “Tell me,” I commanded, shouting right in his face. He didn’t react.
“I’m sorry sir.”
I got back to my feet and looked around the room. I was supposed to let go of something, but what? I had accepted who I was, and why I was. I was comfortable with my role in this fight. What else did I have to do, or prove, or think? I had died here, in this room. It had something to do with that.
Just beyond the spot where my body had landed was the main exhibit space, where the Chalice had been before the Demon Queen had claimed it. I half-expected to see the Grail sitting there in its tamper-proof, bulletproof case, mocking my ability to locate it. Instead, there was a large block draped by a blue velvet blanket. Was it part of the new exhibit? It looked out of place with the other Egyptian artifacts.
I walked over to the block and took hold of the drape, pulling it off so I could see what was underneath. I was surprised to see a block of marble with the Chalice engraved on the top, along with a short message and a list of names. I started reading them until I got to my own. I read it four or five times to be sure it said what I thought it did, then looked at Ulnyx, waiting on his knees.
“I already know that I died,” I said.
He shrugged. “Don’t look at me boss,” he said. “This is your Source.”
My Source, right. I looked at the memorial again. My soul was still trapped by my memories of mortality, of being human. My name on the stone was just a reminder that I had once been part of the world of man. The power I possessed was limited by what I had learned from that existence, but that part of my being had ended. From the beginning Dante had said that I would need to move beyond my past self in order to succeed in holding the tide of human desolation at bay. I had learned so much in the past few days, and now all of my experiences were coming to a head.
How could I just let go of being human? I reached out and ran my finger along the embossment of my name on the stone. Landon Hamilton didn’t exist anymore. He had been a mortal who had been killed by a demon. I held his memories, but I was something different, something more. I was Divine.
“Landon.” The voice was soft and warm. Josette.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, turning to look at her.
She was standing at the bottom of the steps up to the memorial, wearing the white coat and boots she seemed to favor. Her eyes were their more human brown, but she still bore an ethereal glow.
“You called for me, and I came,” she said.
It was the same thing Sarah had said when she had appeared here. Did that mean Josette was asleep too, resting in the front passenger seat of the Suburban?
“How did I call for you?” I asked. There was so much I still didn’t know.
“I felt you in my mind, and then there was a door. Your voice was carrying through it, whispering my name. I opened the door and stepped through, and you were here. What is this place?” She looked around the exhibit hall, her eyes wide with wonder. When she saw Ulnyx, she gasped. “This is your Source?” she asked.
I nodded. “Don’t be afraid of Ulnyx. He’s under my control.” I saw the Great Were bristle at the statement, but he could do no more.
Josette stepped up to me. “Do you know what this means?” she asked.
“The world is my Source,” I repeated. “I should be able to draw power from it when I’m awake, but so far I haven’t been able to. Josette, you were once alive. How did you learn to let go?”
She held up a hand. “Landon, you’ve misunderstood,” she said. “This is not your mortal world, your Earth.”
I looked around. It sure looked like the world I was familiar with. “What do you mean?”
“Do you remember what I told you of the realms, and how they are organized?”
I remembered. Heaven, Hell, and Earth were stacked on the same plane, separated by dimensions of... I don’t know what. Belinda Carlisle hadn’t been totally wrong, but it was actually Purgatory that was a place on Earth.
“Yes. What about it?”
As soon as I asked her, I knew. Her response verified it for me.
“I’ve fallen,” she said. “That’s why I could hear you calling me. That’s why I can reach you in this place. Most of us never reach our Source. For those of us who do, it is often a single room, for the powerful a garden perhaps. I have been to my Source once. It was my childhood bedroom, the place where I always felt the most at peace and the most safe. This world is your Source, as amazing as that is. Purgatory is your Source.”
In that moment I felt it, and I knew it. I don’t know if I would have had Josette not been there to open my eyes. Did Dante know? I suspected he did, but he would never have told me. I had been thinking of Purgatory as a location in the mortal realm, like a Fantasy Island hidden in the Pacific somewhere, or the lost city of Atlantis. I had never considered that it was another dimension so close to our own that it rested just out of reach, in close enough proximity that I could use its power to alter my familiar universe.
That was what I had to let go of. Not my prior mortality, but my understanding of where I was, where my Source originated, the power that I had at my command. I could change things as I saw fit here. I could make this world as I decided it to be. When I focused, I was reaching into my Source and changing this world. What happened in the mortal realm was in many ways a side effect, similar to the light of the sanctuaries’ beacon.
A thought, and I was standing right next to Josette, no bipedal motion required. I put my arm around her tiny waist and with another thought we were outside. One more thought and I launched us into the sky. This was my place, my rules. Here, I was as close to a god as I could ever hope to be.
The ground was a blur beneath us as we rocketed forward on wings of thought. Josette was an experienced aviator, but she was filled with a new sense of wonder in sharing the rush of flight with me. She giggled and hooted while I looped around the Museum a few times, enjoying the sensation of being airborne, then shot off into the sky like a cannon. I knew where I wanted and needed to go.
We never made it. We were headed in the right direction, a dark streak cutting through the night air, when Josette gasped and vanished from my arms. A split second later I felt a sharp pull within my chest, and the ground disappeared from beneath me. The hard metal roof of the Suburban greeted me instead. My body slammed up against it, then dropped back down to the seat.
“Dammit,” Rebecca cried, her arms fighting with the wheel of the truck to keep it on the road. I could feel the mass of steel slipping and sliding along the snow-covered surface.
“What’s happening?” I shouted, reaching out to wedge myself between the roof and the seat. I heard a sharp cry from outside the car, and then saw a gout of flame pour over the windshield.
“Fire demon,” Rebecca said, throwing me forward as she slammed on the brakes. I saw a tremendous torso flash by in front of us, then heard crashing in the trees. “I don’t think Reyzl was too happy with us ruining his conquest.” Rebecca slammed back down on the accelerator as heavily as she dared, sending the Suburban lurching forward again.
I couldn’t help but smile. “Good,” I said. “Josette, are you okay?”
She leaned over the seat to look at me. “For now,” she said. I saw she had a cut on her forehead that was threatening to run into her eye. She was too vulnerable like this.
“Did you have a nice dream?” Rebecca asked. I could see her look back at me in the rearview mirror. Was that jealousy? What had Josette been saying in her sleep?
“It was interesting,” I replied.
I grabbed onto the car again when a massive shoulder pummeled the side. Rebecca’s hands worked the wheel, and she somehow managed to keep us on the road. She wouldn’t be able to do this forever.
“I wouldn’t think a fire demon would do too well with snow,” I said.
“It wouldn’t, if the snow could touch it,” Rebecca said. “It evaporates before it has a chance.”
I looked out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the thing, but it was just too dark. There was another shrill cry, and I could feel the heat pummeling the roof of the Suburban. Josette cried out in response, ducking down into the passenger compartment as far as she could go.
Rebecca slammed on the brakes once more, throwing me against her seat as the car skidded forward. The demon was standing in front of us, illuminated in the headlights, a twenty-plus foot tall winged monster coated in red and blue flame. Its muscular frame looked like dull red steel, its head a red, chiseled humanoid face with a pair of curled horns. It was holding a huge jagged edged cleaver that was dripping heat onto the roadway, where it sizzled and dug into the cement. I may have been able to heal from burns, but I wasn’t invulnerable, and that thing didn’t need to be precise to cut us all into pieces.
The demon raised the blade as we approached, the car doing nothing but sliding along the icy roadway. Just when its arm reached its apex, the car hit the wet pavement melted by the demon’s fire and jerked to a stop. We were sitting ducks. I closed my eyes and focused my will, reaching for the power that I now knew was just a micron thin film of existence away.
It was as though I were diving into an ocean, feeling the ripples of energy spread around me, envelope me, and cleanse me as I submerged myself. I raised my hands and pulled the snow from the sides and rear of the car, gathering it up and hardening it to ice over the top us. The crack of the demon’s cleaver sinking into the ice shield echoed through the night like a massive thunderclap. I felt the pressure in my mind, but I pushed back, drawing the strength I needed from my Source. It was enough.
The fire demon roared out in anger, bringing its weapon down on the shield again and again. The defense was holding for now, but I couldn’t maintain it forever. When the monster raised its arm to strike, I threw the block of ice up at it on a tremendous gust of air. It managed to get through the flame and slam into the demon, causing it to cry out in unimaginable agony. It tumbled backwards to land with a terrible crash.
Massive amounts of steam poured off it, the flames of its body dimming and pulsing, fighting to stay lit. I took the opportunity to throw open the rear door of the truck, grab one of Rebecca’s swords, and jump out. Rebecca and Josette both reached back to try to stop me, but I evaded their efforts. The second I was clear, I pulled more of the snow and moisture to me, encasing the Suburban in ice. This was one fight they couldn’t help me win. I walked to the front of the car, lit from behind by the car’s headlights reflecting through the ice. I looked back and could see Rebecca and Josette both watching me with frightened concern.
I raised the blessed sword in front of me and focused my will on the air around me, pulling the heat out of it and making it colder and colder. My skin crawled with the tingling numbness of threatened hypothermia, my Divine nature keeping me in an uncomfortable but survivable homeostasis. The fire demon’s flames had sputtered back to life, and it pulled itself to its feet. I stood before it, a mouse against a lion, certain only that I wasn’t about to let it toast my friends.
It regarded me warily, yellow eyes peering down on me from above, not sure what to make of the puny thing that had knocked it on its ass. We stared each other down for a minute or more, and then it reared back and belched flame, leaning down and in at me as it did so.
I sucked the heat from the air around me, pushing it away and off to the landscape on either side of the road. The trees around us ignited, lighting up the scene as if we were battling in Hell itself. The blade followed the gout of flame; its size creating more of a scream than a whistle.
I brought up my own sword to block, holding tight on my Source and pulling in more and more power to steel my body against the blow. I caught the edge of the blade with my own, feeling the vibration through my limbs as I pushed back against the force.
My feet dug into the pavement, pulling up cement while I slid backwards. I pushed harder, feeling the heat of my muscles, the heat of the cleaver’s flames, then turned the weapon aside.
I leaped forward on impossibly strong legs, my body carried up, up, up, right into the face of the surprised demon. I focused once more, taking the cold of the frigid air around me and pumping it all into the sword. A nasty set of teeth bent and snapped at me as I rose towards them, but I planted my free hand on the demon’s small, wide nose, switched my grip on the blessed blade, and sank it deep into the monster’s forehead.
The length of the weapon steamed and hissed, the cold breaking through the barrier of heat, the icy metal a powerful poison. Veins of ice spread out from the insertion point, and the demon screamed in pain. I held on while it shook and thrashed, reaching up to try to pry the metal splinter loose.
It took almost three minutes for the demon to stop fighting to dislodge me, and I held tight to the sword the entire time. The ice ran down from its head to its neck, from its neck to its shoulders, out and down towards its feet. The flames that coated its body snuffed out, it dropped to a knee, and then fell forward to the ground. When it hit the earth it shattered, breaking into millions of pieces of frozen ash. Its head was the last to smash against the road, and it landed just feet from the front of the Suburban.
While the skull was being reduced to icy dust, I waved at Rebecca and Josette, a surfer making a clean break to the shore. Back on terra firma, I pulled the protective shell away from the car, and then let go of my hold on my Source. At once I was overcome with a wave of heat, nausea, pain, and light, and I don’t know what happened next, because I wasn’t awake to witness it.