Chapter THIRTY-FOUR
Landon
The black doorway stood in the center of a vast sea of ruin. It was attached to a slagged metal frame, a remnant of a structure whose shell and girders hinted at its past magnificence. Destruction surrounded us. Massive buildings, taller than anything I had ever seen, twisted and bent and broken. Roads that stretched on to the horizon cracked and torn apart.
Bodies laying everywhere.
It was a scene right out of any number of dystopian sci-fi flicks. It was the end of the world brought to life.
"How far do we have to go?" I asked.
Abaddon was standing in front of us, looking out over the wasteland.
"Abaddon?"
He turned around and looked at me, raising his eyebrows. He smiled and pointed out the way forward. That was all the help he was going to give.
"Where are we?" Avriel asked. I could see his body shivering at the sight of all the dead. They were almost everywhere; men, women, and children. They lay crushed under chunks of metal, run through by glass, or simply ripped apart, their bodies in pieces amongst the stone and steel.
"It looks like Mumbai," I said. "Or what it would have looked like if we hadn't stopped Ross."
Except the landscape didn't match the Indian city. It was somewhere else, or more likely it was nowhere; a representation of a city, not an actual city. It was Abaddon's creation; his road, his rules. I stopped gawking and hurried to keep up with him.
We picked our way through broken stone and mangled streets. We passed hundreds of corpses. The smell of spilled blood hung heavy in the air, mingling with burned flesh and offal. It was disturbing to look at, and I could feel my stomach churning with increasing urgency for every step we took.
Still, it hardly seemed dangerous.
There was nothing alive here. No people, no animals. Not even a single blade of grass. It was cement, and mortar, and iron.
The demon continued in front of us, marching through it all with his power flowing out around him, the lord in his finery. His head moved back and forth over the wreckage, as though he expected something to move out there.
Nothing did.
"I don't get it," I said to Clara. She continued to keep a grip on my hand, while Avriel stayed right behind making consistent turns and twists, keeping a vigilant eye on our surroundings. "Abaddon made it sound like we'd be lucky to make it through here in one piece."
"I don't know," she replied. "I have no sense of anything here. It's like we're in the Box, but not in the Box."
We kept walking. I don't know how much time passed, but it felt like hours. Regardless of how far we had gone the landscape never changed. More buildings, more bodies, and after a while we all became numb to it. I stopped smelling the death, and soon enough stopped noticing it at all.
Then, I heard crying.
It was the first sign that there was anything out here besides us. A soft, deep whimper that rose through the rubble and found its way to our ears. It was hard to pinpoint at first, and I motioned for Clara and Avriel to stop so their footsteps wouldn't cloud my hearing. Only Abaddon continued ahead, oblivious to my intent.
"Get him to stop," I said to the angel. The sobbing was louder now, somewhere off to the left, amidst what looked like a burned out department store.
Avriel's eyes landed on Abaddon. "I'll do my best, but I cannot make him do anything here."
His wings spread and he hopped forwards, a giant leap that brought him down before the demon. Abaddon tried to keep walking, but Avriel moved into his path. After a few repeated attempts to go around, he stopped and looked back at me. A smile creased the corner of his mouth.
"A trick?" Clara asked.
It made sense that it would be. We had no idea if the demon was playing it straight, or if this whole thing was a setup. He didn't need to go to such lengths. If he'd wanted to take me on, he could have done it the moment we'd entered this place. There was no reason for him to walk us for hours. It wasn't as though we would tire, starve, or die of thirst here. I could hear the crying, and I wanted, no, needed to find the source. I couldn't picture anyone or anything being left alone out here, even if they turned out to be a figment of my imagination or a random construct of Abaddon's will.
"This way," I said, following the sound off into the destruction with Clara trailing right behind me. I found the power I had conserved, making sure I could call on it if there was a need.
I picked my way over the frame of a door, reduced to nothing more than a hunk of slagged metal, and wound my way through some fallen stone. Chest high shelves were visible throughout the space, though most had been toppled, some had been trashed, and all were empty. A portion of the roof had collapsed near the back, and a beam of sunlight was angling in to land on the corpse of a woman. She looked peaceful there, wearing a long silver dress and bathed in light, wisps of long brown hair pushed over a long face.
What made me cautious was that I didn't see any wounds, or any blood. What had killed her?
I moved more slowly, crouching down so that I wouldn't be visible if there was anyone or anything else in here with us. Clara followed my lead, and together we wound our way through the aisles, the sound of sobbing growing louder as we moved further inside.
Then it stopped.
Of course it did. Whoever was there, they had heard us coming. I stopped moving, and listened.
Footsteps.
They were slow and careful, just like ours. One set, a single person walking perpendicular to our position. I stayed crouched and looked back at Clara. She raised her palms to the sky, suggesting we go up and over the obstacles. I nodded and gestured for her to wait.
I was careful in pulling on the power. I needed just enough to stay airborne for a few seconds, to find the target and come back down in front of them. I didn't want to waste energy I might need. I bent my legs slightly and focused, pushing off and bouncing towards the ceiling. I put my hand up to steady myself when I reached it, and scanned the space for the target.
A person, a man, it seemed. He was on his knees, leaning over the woman in the silver dress, his right arm out and touching her face. I pushed off from the ceiling and angled myself towards him, landing behind him with little more than a soft swish of air.
He turned his head.
I was looking at myself.
I stumbled backwards, confused. He stood up and watched me, hands at his sides and tears wetting his cheeks. I balanced myself, trying to swallow my surprise. He didn't just look like me. He was me. My eyes fell back to the dead woman on the floor. I didn't recognize her.
"Who are you?" he asked. "How did you survive?"
"I... I don't know what you're talking about?"
"The cataclysm. It isn't possible." He drew what looked like a cross over her forehead and stood up.
I glanced back, looking for Clara. She was still hiding amidst the shelves. "What happened here?"
His eyes narrowed. "Did the council send you?"
A gust of wind crossed between us, scattering some of the dust like ashes.
"Council? No. The demon, Abaddon, brought me here. I don't know where I am."
"Abaddon?" He was more confused. "I can tell you aren't lying, but how can that be? I have never heard of any Abaddon. Not on the council, not anywhere." He laughed. "And to bring you here? Here of all the places in the universe? I take it he is no friend of yours." He continued laughing, long after he stopped talking. There was something about the laugh, something very familiar.
"Where is here?" I asked again.
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "One world of many that are dying, thanks to the guile of Erastus and my own fool heart." He looked back at the woman. "Thirty thousand years. I should have known better. Love them, adore them, but never put them first."
I stared at the body, feeling my heart begin to race. Thirty thousand years? I looked at him again. I wasn't stupid, but I was still in the dark.
"What happened?"
He shook his head. "The whole story would take a lifetime. It is enough to say I made the wrong choice, and now the balance I have spent an eternity fighting to maintain has been broken. This world is burning because of my mistake, as are all of the inhabited worlds." The tears dropped from his eyes, falling to the ground at the feet of his love. "An eternity," he repeated. "For nothing."
Clara had told me that Ross was once like me, although I never expected that he would look like me. Somehow, Abaddon had arranged for me to see him at the moment of his failure. To what end? To make his point about the futility of fighting to keep the balance, and show me that no matter how many eons passed I was ultimately doomed to follow in Ross' footsteps? Maybe he wanted me to give up and let Ross loose, so his own end could come more swiftly than I could manage it. Maybe he simply delighted in watching my reaction. Or maybe...
"Clara," I shouted. "Clara."
She didn't respond to my calls.
I focused, gathering my power for another leap. Not for height, but to get out of this place and back to the demon. He had done a fine job distracting me, and I had fallen for his betrayal like a complete chump.
"Erus." A new voice, and then a new person appeared, materializing from nowhere halfway between Ross and me. I knew him in an instant.
"Malize?"
He didn't respond to me. His hand rose, and Ross was blasted back into the rubble. His face reddened, and he strained against invisible bonds.
"The council has found you guilty of treason," Malize said. "You're to be brought before them to face your punishment."
This wasn't right. Malize was an angel, a creation of God. I had to find Abaddon.
"I will not," Erus said. The wind gathered around us, throwing rubble everywhere. I focused, dropping to the ground and creating a vortex of my own, defending myself from the incoming storm. Malize pulled his cloak tight around himself, using it to deflect the stones. The action freed Erus from his tether. He saw me hunkered down below the onslaught, and the maelstrom paused. "Get out of here," he said. "Die a death that is more dignified than this."
A gust of wind caught me and pushed me back away, even as Malize let go of his cloak and drew a golden blade from his hip. Erus turned to him and snarled, changing into something wholly inhuman. He slammed into the angel, throwing him backwards with such force that they both crashed through the mangled shelving, through the stone and steel and out into the distance. I heard a crack echo, and felt the heat of flames.
I needed to find Clara. I ran back the way I had come, past where I had left her hunched and in hiding. I left the remains of the building, and looked out across the destruction to where I had last seen Abaddon and Avriel.
They were both gone.
Anger filled me, and I focused, steeling my muscles and launching forward. Even as I did, a dozen monsters appeared from within the broken frames of the buildings. They were duplicates of the creatures we had fought earlier. The demons Abaddon had sent for Avriel.
They tried to circle me, but I threw myself at the nearest one, pushing aside its grip with enhanced strength. I hit it hard in the jaw with a fist and sent it tumbling backwards into a wall. Twisting in the air, I landed facing the others. They were coming on strong, heavy legs shaking the ground below me. I could sense my own power diminishing, certain that I didn't have the reserves to take them on. I had known trusting in Abaddon was a risk, but I hadn't expected him to break a promise in blood.
I found a stone and picked it up, holding it in front of me like a shield. It was heavy in my grip, and I didn't dare waste the energy I had to make it easier to carry. Instead, I crouched and waited, ready to use my own power in bursts to swing the stone in an effort to break them. I wasn't about to give up, to let Abaddon win, or let Ross win, or abandon Clara and Charis. What he had tried to show me hadn't wounded my spirit, it had only made it stronger. If I was destined to fail, then one day I would fail. One day, I might regret my decision to love, my decision to connect, and my decision to hold onto the things that made me most human. One day, I might find myself faced with the death of everything I believed in, and everything I had hope for.
One day... but not today.