Chapter THIRTY-FIVE
Rebecca
We landed on the outskirts of Shanghai less than a minute later, in a small, empty field of grass. The flight had been both terrifying and exhilarating, putting an extreme amount of pressure on Elyse's mortal body, while also providing a sense of freedom that was undeniable.
"Where to?" Adam asked, releasing me from his grip.
I pulled the address from my pocket. "I don't suppose you have GPS?"
Adam smiled. "Not quite, but I do have perception of where the other seraph are. I think it's safe to assume this Master Lu would be one of the strongest signatures."
"Makes sense, but then why would Max have even bothered giving me an address? He'd planned on having me take the Adam express."
"Good point." The seraph reached out and took the paper from me. "Xincunxiang." He shook his head. "I can sense something there, but its weak. Weaker than any angel I've ever met. Weaker than most Touched."
"Sounds like the perfect disguise."
He nodded and held out his hand. I took it, and he pulled me back into his embrace. "We aren't far. This one will be quick."
It didn't seem as much like flying as it did teleporting. One second we were in the field, the next we were standing at a set of large timber gates. They had carvings of dragons on the face, and had been lacquered over in blue about a hundred years ago, leaving them faded and chipped today. A small canvas banner hung from the sides of the gate.
"The House of Life," Adam said.
"Why did you land on the outside?" I asked.
"Max said they wouldn't take kindly to aggression, and I'm not sure the monks inside know that their master is a seraph. I'm not even sure he knows he's a seraph."
"How is that possible anyway... a buddhist angel?"
"Buddha wasn't a god, and didn't call himself one. You can believe in the one true God, and still seek to be enlightened."
A small bundle materialized in his hands, and he shed the toga for a more modern t-shirt and jeans combo. I tried not to stare while he was stripped down, but the seraph's sex appeal was undeniable. He seemed oblivious, and as soon as he was dressed he stepped up to the doors and pulled a handle attached to the left dragon's nose, bouncing it off the door a few times with a solid thump. I hadn't even realized it was a knocker.
We didn't wait long for the doors to swing open. A small boy in gray robes smiled at us and waved us in. Adam bowed to him, so I followed suit, and then we entered the complex.
It was a simple place, a large green yard in the fore, with gardens sectioned off further back. To the right was a long, low house where I could see other monks entering and departing, and to the left was an open pagoda structure under which others sat prostrate and still on woven mats. I could see that the compound stretched further out behind the buildings, but the layout was obscured from view.
"Welcome. Namaste," the boy said. He was speaking Chinese, but I found I could understand him. Normally I was only able to handle whatever languages my host knew. It had to be Adam's doing. "Did you come to enroll?"
"Enroll?" I asked.
"To join the House of Life," he said. His voice was soft and peaceful.
"Perhaps," Adam said. "We'd like to speak to Master Lu. It's very important."
The boy smiled wider and bowed his head. "My apologies, traveler, but Master Lu is in a deep meditative state. It would be very unwise to wake him."
"I understand," Adam replied. "Perhaps there is another we can speak to? Someone must be in charge of the House while Master Lu is meditating?"
The boy bowed and waved his hand again. "Yes. Please, follow me." He started walking towards the building to the right, talking as he did. "Back there are the gardens, where we grow all of the vegetables, and you can see our outer sanctum." He pointed at the building as we circled around it. "This is the longhouse, where we sleep. There are ninety-three brothers and sisters in the House right now, but I'm the youngest. I was born here."
He led us past the longhouse, and now we could see another grass field, with a much larger structure behind it. It was simple despite its size, made of wood and needing a paint job as badly as the gates had.
"The inner sanctum, and administration," he said. "We work with local farmers, mending clothes and the like in trade for rice and occasional transportation to the village. It is a simple life, but such simplicity breeds self-mastery and understanding."
A group of three monks exited the building and walked past us as we entered, two women and a man, all with gray robes and shaved heads. They gave short nods in our direction. Even their steps seemed peaceful to me.
"Everyone here is Touched," Adam whispered beside me. "He's blessed them all. That must be why his power is so diminished."
"How are we going to get them to let us see Lu?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"Sister Xiang is overseeing the Master's affairs while he is occupied," the boy said. He stopped and removed his shoes, and then pointed at our feet. "It is a sign of respect to leave your feet bare, but then comes the true test. Only those with pure hearts may enter."
Adam slipped off his sandals, and I reached down and pulled off the hard-soled slippers Elyse had been wearing. Our guide waved us on, and we passed under the entrance to the building - an archway with seraphim scripture carved into the wooden frame. I felt a bit of pressure as we passed beneath. A pure heart had nothing to do with it. The building was warded against demons.
The inside of the structure was as worn and simple as the outside. Wooden beams crisscrossed one another on the ceiling, holding up wooden planks that composed the upper levels. The walls were made of rice paper, grimy with their years, but still covered in beautiful depictions of mountains, flowers, and oceans. Simple sliding doors separated one room from another, and the sounds of talking, cooking, and praying could be heard echoing along the corridors.
"This is the door to the inner sanctum," the boy said, tapping on a slightly more ornate, hinged wooden door. It bore the same dragon on its face as the gates. He pulled it open just a crack so we could see inside. "There is Master Lu."
I could feel my jaw go slack when I saw him. A diminutive man with long white hair occupied the center of the room. He was tied at the wrists and hung from an ornate crossbeam that bore a vague resemblance to a cross. The beam and Master Lu rested in the center of a small pyre which engulfed him to the knees, though he appeared unharmed. He wore nothing but a loincloth, and his head lolled to the right.
"Is he-"
"Dead?" the boy asked. "No. He is in a deep meditative state. He does this to show us what we can accomplish by unlocking the true power of our souls. The flames cannot harm him." He pulled the door closed. "If you decide to stay, maybe one day you'll be able to sleep in the flames. I hope to try it for the first time next year. If I do, I will be the youngest ever." He looked down at the floor. "Master Lu would tell me not to be so proud. That is why he is the Master, and I am just a student." He looked at us and smiled. "Come, Sister Xiang is right over here."
He led us across from the inner sanctum, to an open room with a small flat table in the center. A woman knelt there, scribbling on top of a stack of papers.
"Sister Xiang, we have visitors," he said.
The woman looked up. She was a tiny thing, even smaller than Elyse, with a round face and brown splotches along her otherwise fair skin. Her robe was brown instead of gray, and it blended with her tone so that it looked more like a part of her body instead of cloth. She rose and bowed to us. There was a soft shimmer around her, like the air couldn't quite stay still in her presence. It followed her motion as her head dipped and rose again, leaving me staring.
"Welcome. I am honored to meet you both. My name is Xiang. I am the keeper of the House of Life while Master Lu is sleeping in the flames."
Our eyes met, and I felt a strange chill run through me. I looked over at Adam to see if he had noticed something strange about Sister Xiang, but I expected he couldn't.
She was a spirit.
"The honor is ours," I said, fighting to stifle my surprise and returning the bow. "My name is Elyse, and this is my brother, Adam."
Adam bowed his head. "We've come to speak with Master Lu about a matter of some urgency," he said.
Xiang smiled. "I have learned over the years that impatience is a cancer on our souls. Geishan, would you honor us by fetching some tea?"
The boy bowed and ran from the doorway.
As soon as he was gone, I pulled the black stone from my pocket and summoned the spatha. Adam's gaze flipped towards me in shock, but Xiang's only reaction was to let the smile fade from her lips.
"Re... I mean, Elyse, what are you doing?" Adam asked.
"Who are you really?" I said. I had no way to know that she wasn't the spirit of Sister Xiang, surviving in the small woman's body, but I doubted it. If you could take any mortal host you wanted, why would you choose someone with obvious abnormalities?
Adam put his attention back on Xiang, sizing her up. He surprised me by trusting enough to follow my lead.
"Another poltergeist?" she said. "I had thought there was a chance someone would come around asking for the crumpled old chicken, but I hadn't anticipated one of my kind." She reached under her robes, extracting a pair of sai. She planted them into the table in front of her. It was beneath her standing reach, but I was sure she wouldn't have done it if she didn't know she could grab them.
"Adam, you need to try to wake Lu," I said. "I'll take care of this one."
I felt his hesitation for only a breath, and then he backed out of the room.
Xiang laughed. "Don't you think I've tried to wake him?" she asked. "I've been trying for almost two weeks. I even stabbed the little bastard in the heart, but I couldn't get any cursed weapons in here to really give him grief."
"Adam has something you don't," I said.
"What's that?"
"He's family." I lunged as if to attack. She didn't move.
"I'm four thousand years old, Elyse. I'm not going to fall for cheap tricks."
"It was worth a shot." I took a step backward and moved into a guard posture. "Whose side are you on, anyway?"
"I'm, shall we say, a free spirit," she replied. "For now, my lot is cast with the Parisian archfiend."
Hadn't she said she arrived two weeks ago? Max had made it sound like Gervais had only learned about the swords when Joe had tried to use one on the Box, but that had only been this morning. Something was off somewhere, and the one thing I knew for sure about Max was that he was an accomplished liar. The question was, why?
She must have seen the confusion in my face, because she dove forward, grabbing the sai in mid-roll and coming up in a billow of her robes. I barely managed to move my face in time to keep the thrown blade from skewering my eye. Even so, it grazed the side of my temple and left a sharp sting in its wake.
The other sai was still in her hand, and she stayed low and went for my calf. I danced back away, avoiding the stroke, but she spun neatly on her toes and swept her leg through my path. I let the collision knock me over, falling to my back.
She didn't press the attack. It was a more subtle trick, but she knew it all the same, settling herself on her feet in front of me and drawing another sai from her robes.
"How many of those things do you have?" I asked as I got back up. I used the back of the towel on my arm to wipe the blood away from my face.
"Enough," she said. "Your form is clumsy."
"What did he promise you? Money? Power?"
"I could take those things for myself, as you well know. This world is a playground for us, an endless stage of existence. We can be any mortal we want, we can do anything we want. Even the other Divine hardly know we exist at all."
"Then why?" It was a strange time to be having the conversation, but I really wanted to know. Was there something to my situation that I had missed?
"He won't let you in, Elyse."
"Who?"
Her eyes flicked upwards. "You know who. I was a mortal once, and later a fiend. I was stabbed in the heart with a sword, a special sword that brought me into this life and gave me a new purpose. It was a gift that I believed had saved me. Redemption." She spat the word as though it was a curse. "For nearly a thousand years I moved from mortal to mortal, seeking to make amends for the evils I had done. I became a midwife, and saved hundreds of mothers and children from certain death. I became a scientist, and worked to cure disease. I even became a missionary, spreading His word across the world, in hopes of earning His forgiveness."
A sad smile spread across her face, and she shook her head. "One day, I went to a sanctuary in Turkey. I approached the angels there and told them my story. They brought me inside, and bade me to step into the light of Heaven." Tears began to roll from her eyes, two tiny slivers of moisture that dripped and vanished into the robes.
"What happened?" I asked. I could feel my heart was racing.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"They told me that if I was truly redeemed, He would have lifted me up into His arms. They said my penitence was not complete."
The words made me cold. A thousand years of good, and she had been denied? What did that mean for me, the vampire who had freed the Beast?
"So you decided to be evil again?"
"Don't be foolish. I decided that I was done existing to the whims of hidden masters. I'm not good or evil. I'm only what they've made me, and what I've chosen to be. Today I serve Gervais, because he's promised me retribution. To help bring the end of God? That leaves a thrill in my soul." She lifted a hand and wiped away the tears with the back of her index finger, her face turning to stone. "You'd be wise to save yourself the heartache, and follow my lead instead."
Her words made sense. I knew they did. How could He truly forgive me for loosing the Beast on the world? There was no level of sorry that could cover it, and no amount of piety to bring back the lives of the thousands who had already died because of my actions. I lowered the spatha, aiming the point at the ground and keeping my eyes on Xiang. She was still, waiting for me to see her reason.
What was I? A vampire? A demon? An angel-in-waiting? My mind raced and whirled. At the center of the storm there was one word that stayed focused, a small bubble of energy that held the secret of my own truth. Sarah had understood, because she had needed the same kind of clarity. Maybe Xiang understood too, but she had chosen a different path. God's greatest gift was also His greatest weakness. I was free.
"That isn't who I choose to be," I said, raising the blade again. "Maybe He'll never call me into His warmth, but I have no right to demand that He does. Neither do you."
She shrugged. "Have it your way. You still can't defeat me, and Adam will never be able to wake Master Lu." She lunged forward again, faster than I could follow, leading with her left arm and using it to hook my own blade and pull it out of the way so the second sai could get through. It jabbed into my abdomen, digging through muscle before being stopped by bone.
"You must have been in a hurry to find a mortal body," I said through the pain. I reached down and grabbed her arm before she could bring it back, squeezing her wrist to make her drop the blade stuck in my side, and then twisting until it broke. I still didn't let go, instead pulling her towards me and slamming my forehead into her nose. Elyse was a warrior. Sister Xiang was a capsule. The spirit's mind may have been willing, but its host wasn't able.
I could have killed her then, by stabbing her through the heart a second time. I didn't need to. The body fell limp in front of me, the shimmer in the air fading. My true enemy had fled.
I lowered the woman gently, wincing at the pain from the sai in my gut. I held my breath while I removed it and tossed it onto the floor. I needed to go find Adam.
I stumbled out of the room, almost knocking into Geishon on the way by. He looked at me with fear in his eyes, and then turned his head towards Sister Xiang.
"She's alive," I said. "We were attacked." I showed him my own wound. "She needs help."
"Give me your hand," he said.
"What?" I didn't have time for this. I could see the door into the inner sanctum was hanging slightly open, but it seemed still inside.
"Give me your hand." He reached out and took it. I watched as his eyes began to glow in a faint white light, and I felt a warmth flow through my body. The pain in my stomach began to fade, as did the stinging of my arm.
"What did you do?" I asked as he let go of me. The wounds were healed.
"Master Lu says we must always give succor to those of pure heart. Your wounds were made with evil intent, and so they have been healed. That is the power of the House of Life." He smiled mischievously. "Well, one of them."
"Sister Xiang," I said. "It wasn't her fault. She was possessed. She needs healing."
"Don't be afraid, Elyse. The pure of heart will always be healed. Where is your brother?"
"Inside. I'm sorry, but he needed to wake Master Lu."
"He did wake Master Lu," a soft, old voice said. The ancient seraph ambled through the door, with Adam right behind him.
"Master Lu, my apologies," Geishon said. "I told them not to wake you."
"Be at peace, my son. You have done well. You have all done well." He took my hand and patted it. "Let go of the fear in your heart and follow the path you know is right."
My heart started pounding again, and in that moment I felt enough joy to bring tears to my eyes.
"I've got something for you," Adam said, bringing the Destroyer from behind his back. "It turns out Master Lu is not as confused as Max would have us believe."
"Be wary of that one," Lu said. "I don't know what game he is playing, and it may be that he has the best of intentions. A creature like Samael cannot help themselves but to lie and cheat, even when the truth would be the straightest path."
Enough lies had been revealed in the last five minutes that I didn't need the angel to tell me that. Max was up to something, and the shaky trust I'd been reserving for him was eroding fast.
"Do you know Max, Master Lu?" I asked.
"Samael gave me the sword for safe keeping many years ago. I was never sure of his purpose, and that is why I devoted myself to meditative practice. I needed to know that when he came seeking the blade again I could give it to him with a clear conscience. And so you have come, and so I have released it from my protection. The meditation allows me to see the world as it is, my child, not how each of us would like it to be, or believe it to be." He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it. "Go now, and be at peace. Even if you lose, you will still win."
I didn't completely understand, but I didn't need to. I felt a strange peace settle over me. "We will. Thank you, Master Lu."
Adam and I headed for the door, while Lu knelt down and whispered to Geishon. I looked back and saw the boy scamper into the room with Sister Xiang. Lu saw me look, and he bowed his head to me.
"You didn't kill the spirit?" Adam asked.
"I don't know how to kill a spirit," I replied. "She ran away, and there aren't any clean mortals she can take for a dozen miles at least. How did you wake him?"
He laughed. "I didn't. He opened his eyes as soon as I approached him and asked me to take him down. The weakness... it's a gimmick. I don't completely understand his purpose here, but it isn't my place to question the Lord's will."
We passed beneath the scripted doorway and out onto the lawn. "Let's get ourselves to Paris," I said. "I'll wait while you change." I set my eyes on him and smiled.
"I don't need to use the wings to fly," he replied, reaching out and gathering me in his arms. "It's one of the perks of being an Inquisitor. They can really get in the way when you're trying to be discreet."
"Adam?"
He had looked up towards the sky, about to take off. Now he stopped. "What is it?"
"The Inquisitors were formed to find the swords. Well, we've found them. What are you going to do after this?"
His breath tickled my ear when he spoke. "Assuming there is an 'after this'? Our main purpose was to track down the swords, but our secondary mission is to find whatever lost relics and artifacts we can. I suppose we'll put a greater focus on that."
"So you're counter to the Nicht Creidim?"
"In a way. We've clashed with them a number of times over the centuries, but the Nicht Creidim are the enemy of all the Divine. Present company excluded, I guess."
"This is a temporary truce," I said. "It will end when Landon is free and the Beast is destroyed once and for all." I had no idea what Elyse planned to do after that. Her father was dead, and her home was ash.
He chuckled. "I'd be interested to see how your host is received by her people, after she gave aid to the Divine."
"The Beast is everyone's problem, as are the changelings. Can they be that steadfast in their rules that they won't be able to see how she's helping them?"
Adam lost his humored edge. "Trust me, Rebecca. I know from experience how blind we can be in service to our beliefs."
Before I could say anything else, we were launching into the sky.