Chapter TEN
Landon
We were in a house. I couldn't say where, or even when, because the house had no windows, and none of the doors led anywhere but to another part of the house, or in some cases, to a part of the house we had already seen before but couldn't connect under any string of architectural logic.
There was nothing new about it. Nothing fresh. The house was a cliche, a tired idea it seemed that Ross had caught onto somewhere and fallen in love with. He used it in unoriginal ways, sending things out of the woodwork to try to attack us, while his laughter reverberated through the rafters.
Ross. I'd stopped calling him the Beast. I'd stopped thinking of him as the Beast. It made him sound more powerful than he deserved. True, he was still destroying us with near impunity, and sure it still hurt in every way imaginable, but from the hopelessness of it had sprung a new kind of strength that I hadn't even known existed.
"No attacks for a couple of minutes," Charis said.
We had settled into a pair of high-backed, winged chairs angled in front of a roaring fireplace. I stared into the fire, waiting for it to spring out at us, or for something to spring out from within it.
"Stay focused," I said.
It was the realization that had brought that hidden strength into play. Our fight wasn't against Ross. Our fight was against ourselves. Each time he killed us, we lost what had happened before, all the memory and none of the emotion. Each time we came back, we remembered a little bit more. Each time, he made sure to start the cycle again before we could put all the pieces together.
We had to stay focused to remember the parts that were important. We had to repeat them in our minds, over and over and over, until it was so committed that it became a part of the bare threads of who or what we were in this place. It had taken time to figure that much out, and in that time we had lost important information.
Other things, we brought back, some almost as soon as we re-spawned. It was funny to think of it that way, like we were trapped in a video game, but having passed through a door just to wind up on the opposite side of the same room, it felt like one.
"Our power is his power," I said. " We can use his power."
"Not against him," she replied. "It doesn't work."
"Not directly. What if there was another way?"
We were both silent for a minute, each of us repeating the mantra. 'What if there was another way? What if there was another way?'
"He created this place," Charis said. "What if we created something? Made our own monster?"
"It's still his power that is making it. He can unmake it."
She gave an exasperated sigh. "How does that not put us back to square one?"
I heard the creak of the door behind us swinging open, and got to my feet. "Where is our power, Charis? It can't all be his. It just can't. Sarah had to pour some of her energy into the Box. We're almost the same as she is. It has to be available to us."
I looked up at the creature that had stepped into the room. A young woman in a long white Victorian style dress. She looked back at me with cold black eyes.
"This is really unoriginal," I shouted. I knew Ross would hear me.
"You don't like the ruffles?" he asked, through the mouth of the woman. "I mean, I know you tend to go for the ones in the skintight denim, but look, she has black hair." She reached up and twirled a strand of it between her fingers.
"Just get on with it," Charis said, stepping up next to me.
"Now, what fun would that be?" She shook her head. "First, let's see what you can do with my little abomination here. She took me a long time to make, relatively speaking." The eyes flashed from black to white, and then she attacked.
She went right for Charis, moving so fast it was more like she flashed from one spot to another. Her hand snapped forward and caught her under the chin. The force broke her jaw and threw her back against the wall over the fireplace. She bounced off and landed face down.
I set myself while the abomination turned my direction. She had a twisted smile on her face, so similar to his.
"Come on," I said.
She hissed, one moment six feet away, the next right in my face. I tried to punch her, but she blinked to the side, and then raked my cheek with eight-inch claws. I could hear them sliding along the bone, and I felt the warmth of my blood spilling out of the wound.
Not that she could kill me. Maybe I should have let her finish the job so we could reset again, but there was something in me that told me it would be a mistake to give up. To ever give up. I stumbled from the blow, but I straightened up to face her.
"You can do better than that."
She smiled again, and her teeth grew out into fangs. Blink! She was back in my face, her teeth coming down on my neck.
It hurt. A lot. I cried out, planting my arms against her, trying to shove her away. I couldn't get any kind of grip on her through all of the fabric, which was fast becoming soaked in my blood.
"Hey Virginia," Charis said. I found her back on her feet, a steel poker in her hand.
The creature turned towards her at the same time the poker was angling in at her head. Blink! She was on the other side of the room, out of the path of the weapon. Blink! She grabbed Charis by the throat, and threw her across the room. Blink! The abomination followed, flashing from one spot to the other, bending down and raking her across the chest.
I focused, finding the Beast's power and pulling it in. The poker rose from the ground and shot towards the creature like a bullet.
Blink! She vanished before it hit her, appearing in front of me again, smashing me in the gut with sharp fingers. I felt them tear through my stomach and into my intestines, threatening to pull them out.
"Daddy!"
The door to the room swung open, and Clara stepped in.
She was wearing a blue and pink dress, her brown hair pulled back into pig tails, her face angry and afraid.
"Clara?" Charis said. Clara wasn't real. We didn't have a daughter.
"Let my daddy go," she said.
She was walking towards me, her eyes sparkling in a swirling mixture of light and fire. The abomination held my insides in her hand, but she turned her head towards the girl.
"What is this?" Ross asked. "I made you."
"Shhh!" Clara put her finger up to her lips. "It's a secret."
"What are you talking ab..."
Clara raised her hand, and the abomination vanished, Ross with it. I felt wetness at my stomach, the blood running freely now that the claw wasn't plugging the hole.
"Fix it," Clara said, looking at the wound.
"What?"
"Fix it."
She came to me and put her small hand in mine. I felt something then. Not the touch of a child, but the touch of something else. I focused, taking in the Beast's power, and mixing it with the thread of energy I felt running through her palm. The hole in my stomach vanished.
"Clara?" Charis was back on her feet, coming over to us. Her chest was just as torn as mine.
"Fix it," Clara said. She held out her other hand.
Charis took it, and her eyes changed the way I imagine mine had. A moment later her wounds were gone. She looked at me. "Landon?"
I smiled. "The connection," I said. "Our power is here."
In a child. A little girl. She was our daughter, but she wasn't our daughter. It was a complicated metaphor, courtesy of the Box. She had been there all along, through so many of the cycles of pain and torture Ross had forced us to endure. He had destroyed her so many times, dissipated the power before it could consolidate and before we could recognize it for what it was. He hadn't made her. He couldn't make anything.
"Come with me," she said. She started tugging both of us towards the door.
"Do you think it will be that easy?"
The abomination appeared in front of us, blocking the path. It had changed. The hair was gone. The dress was gone. It was a humanoid shape devoid of feature or detail. Claws, small eyes, sharp teeth, a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso. That was it.
"Go," Clara said, gesturing at it.
Ross laughed.
I yanked on our power, bringing it into me, and then let go of Clara's hand. I leaped forward at the creature, my own hand elongating into a set of claws. Blink! It tried to escape, but I reached out to it and held it with Divine power. I brought the claws up and around, severing its head.
"Easier then before," I said.
The room started shaking.
"This way," Clara cried.
She started tugging Charis towards a new door, one that hadn't existed a minute ago. Her little legs were too slow, so Charis scooped her up as we ran.
I looked back over my shoulder, at Ross making an appearance of his own. He had his watch in hand, and he'd lifted his sunglasses aside to look at it.
"Not bad, kid. You might make a sport of this yet."
He motioned with his hand and the doorway became a wall. Charis staggered to a stop.
Fifty weres burst through the double doors, charging into the room. They parted around Ross, and a stream of them headed for Charis.
"No," she said. She kicked one in the head, sending it backwards and knocking over two more. She spun and punched another with a free hand, then leapt over a fourth. One of the weres tried to intercept her in mid-air, and she let go of Clara just long enough to smash it aside before catching her again.
Ross watched, and then shrugged. "I guess I need a few more."
"You'll need an army," I said. I found the poker, still laying on the floor. I focused, superheating it, melting into hundreds of white-hot balls of iron. I swept them around the room, pelting the weres, burning through their hearts. I didn't know if they would heal or not. They didn't.
Ross looked around at the dead mess. "Fine. I'll do it myself."
He pulled a gun from a shoulder holster tucked under his suit jacket, and shot Clara in the head.
My heart jumped as her head slumped into Charis' shoulder. She wasn't our child. She wasn't a child at all, not in truth. It didn't make the act any less disgusting. "Clara!" I ran towards them, Ross forgotten.
"Too far," Charis whispered. She reached up and stroked the little girl's hair. "Landon, we have to remember."
I reached them in time to put my hand on top of hers, so that both of us were caressing her head. "You're right." I swallowed every emotion, and pushed a single thought towards my soul, one that I hoped would carry over to the next regeneration.
"Clara." I whispered.
The gun fired two more times.