Chapter THIRTY-SIX
Rebecca
Adam and I were waiting on the runway when Brian's jet arrived. It touched down without fanfare and taxied over to a spot on the tarmac not far from where we stood. We walked towards it, arriving at the base of the ladder at the same time Max's face appeared in the doorway.
"Ah, there you are, peppermint patty. I take it you retrieved the blade?"
Adam turned his hand, and the Destroyer appeared in it.
Max clapped his hands together. "I knew I could count on the two of you." He started climbing down the stairs, with Ulnyx, Obi, Sarah, Izak, and Brian behind him. "We have much to do, and not a lot of time."
"The van should be here soon," Brian said, looking down at his phone.
"Well done, my good man." Max reached us and put his arms around me. "So, how is Master Lu? I see your burns have been healed."
I wasn't sure how much I should tell him. The angel's warning was still fresh in my mind. His heart might be in the right place, but I had been on the deceitful side before. If he was as good at it as he claimed, we'd never see it coming. "Old," I replied. "His stand-in, Sister Xiang, gave us the sword. She also healed the burns."
He pulled back and looked at me, testing me for my honesty. "Interesting."
"Is Izak safe to be this close to Gervais?" I asked, looking at the demon past Max's shoulder. The fiend was sticking close to Sarah, his demeanor suggesting the loss of half his arm was nothing more than an inconvenience.
"Yes, yes. I carved a ward over the brand. They're easy enough to deal with if you can get close enough to the branded, and if you know what you're doing."
"So, what's the plan, man?" Obi asked.
"Good question. Sarah, the Box, if you please. Adam, I'm afraid we'll need the Deliverer and the Destroyer now."
Both weapons reappeared in his hands. "Now? We still only have five."
"I'm afraid so. All of the swords need to make it to the Beast's prison. Any one of us can carry them, but they all need to make it. Do you understand?"
Adam nodded slowly and held them out. Ulnyx stepped forward. He was holding a long duffel.
"Just toss them in here," he said, unzipping it.
I watched him surrender the weapons. Max was taking away our best protection. I looked at him for a reaction, but there was none.
Sarah had pulled the Box from a canvas bag, and now she handed it to the reaper. "Now what?" she asked.
"We just brought Avriel's Box to Paris," Max said. "By my calculations, we have between three and ten minutes before all hell breaks loose."
We all stared at the reaper.
"That's why we're here, isn't it. In any case, it will spare you the anxiety of anticipation. Don't think, just act."
"We're still forty miles from Gervais' chateau, Max," I said. "What the hell are you thinking?" I looked out over the horizon, and felt a chill. Ulnyx was looking that way too, and he started to shift.
"You thought we were going to do this at Gervais' house? Now that would be suicide. Trust me, pudding, and retrieve that dark sword of yours."
The problem was, I didn't trust him. He always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone, and Lu's warning had only cemented it.
"Ulnyx, you'll need your hands free. Rebecca can take the blades."
"Just what I wanted to hear," the Were said. He had finished shifting, and used his claws to slip the bag off his massive frame.
He heaved the duffel at me like it was made of paper. I let it clatter onto the ground, and then scooped it up by the handle and slung it across my back. I shook a couple of times to make sure it was somewhat secure, and then grabbed the black stone and summoned the spatha. It was weird to be holding such a relatively simple blade when I had an arsenal hanging over my ass.
"What am I supposed to do?" Brian asked. His face had turned white and he was shaking.
"Just stay behind me," Sarah said. She held her hands at her sides, her expression fierce. There was no fear there, only a smoldering anger that surfaced whenever her father was involved.
He didn't keep us waiting long.
He came from the air, falling from the sky in a streak of darkness, hitting the ground with a loud smack, and rising to his feet unharmed. A wave of demons landed behind him; fallen angels and winged devils carrying vampires, weres, and fiends. There were at least a hundred of them, a number that would have been challenging but doable for the force we'd assembled.
Except, these weren't typical demons.
None of them were alive.
They were damaged in different ways. Some had nasty gashes across the face, others scars along their leathery skin. All of them had a dullness in their eyes, and they moved with such uniform precision that it was obvious their ultimate freedom had been taken from them. They were zombies, much like what the Beast had launched at Landon in Mumbai, only augmented by their Divine size and strength.
"You see, the power of the swords won't help us here," Max whispered to me.
"This is crazy," I said.
"Trust me," he repeated.
The fate of the world may have been resting in the palm of his hand, and the self-proclaimed God of Lies was asking for trust. I tried to stay calm, but I was starting to feel like I imagined Brian did.
"Do you like them?" Gervais asked. He didn't look much different now than he had before, beyond the flatness of eyes that bore no reflection, no pupils, no living energy. His curly mop of black hair twisted down over them, and his simple beige cotton tunic and pants made him look like he should be vacationing in the Caribbean. "The perfect demons. Completely under my control." He glanced over at Izak, whose own eyes were alight in fury. "Free again, I see. Enjoy it for the few remaining minutes it will last. It is good to see you again, daughter." He leered at Sarah, and then turned to Max. "I'll take that."
Max looked back at me, pausing for only the barest instant.
He tossed the Box to Gervais.
"Max?" I meant for it to come out as a shout, in anger and pain at the betrayal. It left my mouth as little more than a whisper.
"My apologies, pumpkin pie," he said. Then he punched me in the mouth.
The blow caught me off-guard, and sent me reeling. I could feel the weight of the duffel slipped from me as I stumbled, grabbed by the reaper in one quick motion. There were shouts of confused anger behind me, and all hell did break loose.
An angry snarl sounded behind me and Ulnyx leaped forward at Gervais, his huge claws spread wide to scissor his head from his body. It was a rash move, an emotional outburst, and a stupid thing to do. Gervais didn't flinch, didn't move. He just put his hands up and caught the Were's wrists on their way in, a black energy pouring from him. The oil-like power coated Ulnyx, and when it vanished there was nothing but ash. It floated into the archfiend, catching in his hair but leaving him otherwise unharmed.
Gervais looked back at Sarah and smirked. Max had shifted into his reaper from, and he lifted the archfiend away even as a gout of hellfire fell where he had been standing.
"Trust me, my ass," I shouted after him. It was all I had time to do, because his undead demons rushed in at us.
Adam found his way to the front of the horde, a new blade in his hand. It was a standard-issue seraphim sword, but blessed or cursed, it didn't matter. The only thing that would stop them was the cruel cutting edge. We put ours to good use, digging in and getting washed over by the wave, flailing claws and teeth against metal. I heard Sarah try to Command the ones that moved past me, but I doubted it would have much of an effect.
Blasts of heat sent tingles up my spine as Izak joined the fight, his hellfire seeming to be our best weapon against them. I twisted and swung, decapitating a vampire and finding myself facing him. I could see him standing his ground ahead of half a dozen burning effigies, alight in the deadly flames that could reduce Brian and Sarah to ash in seconds. Even on fire, as long as they could move they would keep coming, and Izak lashed out with his good arm to keep them back, only to find more coming his way. They knew who the real threat was, and they focused on it with all of their intensity.
I cursed Max again and jerked away from the tip of a sword, grabbing the wrist that held it and lopping it off with a backhanded cut. There was no cry of pain. In fact, the attacking demons made no sound at all. It was the quietest battle I'd ever heard.
Sarah screamed, and I saw one of the fiends had gotten his hands on her. Izak was too far away. We were all too far away. He brought his other hand up to her throat, wrapping it there and holding tight. For an instant, there was fear, and then it was gone. Something inside her broke. I could almost feel it, even in the middle of the scrum. Her lips curled into a snarl, and she brought her own hands up. The tips had extended into claws of her own, and she succeeded where Ulnyx had failed, bringing them together through the demon's neck and severing his head. The hands didn't let go.
I heard Obi then, his voice loud and angry. He didn't have the Eagle, but he did have a long dagger that he was using with reckless efficiency, tearing through flesh and clearing a path to Sarah. He got to her and grabbed the headless form, forcing it to release her and then throwing it to the ground, where a line of hellfire burned it.
"This is bad," Adam said, coming to stand next to me. He had a deep gash on his free arm, the bone protruding through it. "Their touch isn't killing me at least, but it isn't healing either."
"We're dead either way."
"You're not."
In the moment, I had forgotten about that. The demons could kill Elyse, but they couldn't actually hurt me. I could get away. I could find a new host and chase after Max and Gervais. I could try to stop them, and if I failed I could find another host and try to stop them again, until there were no more people left in France, or until they succeeded in taking the power of the Box for themselves.
I shook my head. "I can't stop them alone."
"We can't stop them at all."
"Just keep swinging that sword of yours, Adam. Maybe we'll get a miracle. Let's fall back to the others."
We started retreating as we fought back-to-back, trying to get closer to where Izak, Obi, and Sarah were standing their ground in front of the jet, with Brian hunched down behind them. We had put at least two dozen of the demons out of the fight, but it was hardly enough to slow them down. Even worse, Izak had been forced to stop washing them in flames, since it had only made them more effective weapons.
"Welcome to the cool kids club," Obi said as we joined them. He was drenched in sweat but otherwise unharmed. "It just so happens we have a few new openings."
A patched and mottled were snapped its jaws at my face, and I leaned back while Obi stabbed it in the neck and used the dagger as a handle, flexing his arms and throwing it to the side. It knocked over a vampire and they both stumbled, but only for a second.
"The plane," Brian said in a weak voice. "We need to get in the plane."
"The plane will help you, signore, but not if you go in it," Dante said. He appeared out of nowhere right next to Brian. He grabbed the fake angel and vanished.
"Dante?" Obi asked. He reappeared, wrapped his arms around Sarah, and disappeared again.
"Grab onto one another," Dante said when he popped into existence the next time. He put his hand on Izak's shoulder and faded away.
"I don't know what the hell is happening, but getting out of the middle of this crap is fine with me," Obi said. He backed up so that he was pressed up against Adam and I. Together, the three of us pushed back against the horde, their numbers working against them while they all tried to grab us at once. When Dante appeared again, he was so close I had to banish the spatha to keep myself from stabbing him.
"Time to go," he said, pointing to the distance. A lone figure was standing there, bathed in hellfire. Vilya.
He grabbed my wrist and I felt like I was falling through a black hole. Then I was back in the real, standing outside a hanger well away from the demons. Obi and Adam were still pressed against me. I regained my senses just in time to feel the rumble and see the earth split below the plane. A geyser of molten earth and flame burst up into the jet. I could feel the heat of it from across the distance, even more so when it exploded, catching all of the demons in a massive burst made more powerful by the Demon Queen's power.
Not all of them were incinerated, but the ones that weren't found themselves on fire, turning in circles in an effort to find us, their eyes burned away in the heat. Vilya walked right into them, sword in hand, decapitating them and knocking them away. Once there weren't any left standing, she started coming in our direction.
"I don't understand," I said. "She's a servant of the Beast."
"Not quite, Signora Solen," Dante said. He looked on me with an odd mix of respect and disdain. "Consider your source."
"Max?" Obi asked. "I'm going to rip that guy's head off."
Dante smiled. "Don't be so quick to judge. He is a liar, it is true, but he plays that card quite well."
"What are you talking about?" Sarah asked, her voice hoarse, her face a dark mask of conflict. She flexed her hands, which had reverted back to normal, and leaned on Izak like she was about to collapse. "They killed Ulnyx."
"I'm sorry about the Were. It was an unfortunate miscalculation," Dante said. "We should have accounted for his temper."
"Miscalculation?" I asked. What would Landon think about that?
"We need to move," Vilya said, having run the rest of the distance to reach us. "The rift is inside." She moved through us to a hanger door that I hadn't had a chance to notice yet, shoving it open and waving us in.
"It was all a trick," Dante said. "To separate Gervais from his army. Max planned the whole thing, and only Vilya and I knew about it. Now we need to get to the chateau before the archfiend has a chance to begin his work."
"A trick?" I said. "A freaking trick!" Master Lu must have been in on it too, or at least known about it. He had planted the seeds of doubt in my mind and made my reaction to the betrayal all the more believable.
I followed the others inside, to where Vilya was finishing opening a hell rift.
"What the heck is that?" Brian asked, shying away from it.
"It's okay," Adam said. He was holding his broken arm across his chest, and using his other hand to put pressure on the still bleeding wound. "Just wait here. It's clear you aren't cut out for this."
"No," Dante said. "He needs to come." He put his hands on Brian's shoulders. "It is no accident that you are here, signore. Please, help us to save this realm from destruction." Brian still looked frightened, but he nodded. Dante smiled. "Grazie."
The rift lit up, and Vilya stepped through. Izak, Sarah, and Obi followed.
"It's like Star Trek," I said. "There's nothing to worry about."
He reached out for my hand, and I took it. Rifts weren't that much like Star Trek - a first-timer was guaranteed to come out the other end disoriented. I only hoped he wouldn't faint.
I led him through, and we came out the other side in the sewers below Paris, in the room where I had left Avriel to be tortured by Abaddon. Izak was waiting there alone, and he waved for us to follow.
"Are you okay?" I asked Brian. He leaned over and vomited in response.
"Keep moving," Dante said, appearing away from the rift. "I shall meet you inside the chateau." He vanished.
I pulled Brian along while we ran after Izak, making our way through a tunnel covered in burn marks, soot, and ash. I could see there had been runes lining the walls once, but they had been mangled and broken by whatever heat had made its way along the length.
We caught up to them at another rift, which Vilya had just finished activating. "This leads to the chateau," she said. "I think we've killed most of Gervais' creatures, but I wouldn't put it past him to have left a few behind. I'll go first. Izak, protect our rear."
He nodded and turned his attention to Sarah, who was hanging even more heavily from his arm.
"Leave her here," I said. "She can't help like that."
"No," Vilya replied. "She has to come, I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I'm okay." Sarah looked up at me, her eyes heavy and filled with tears. Her free hand was balled into a tight fist. "I have to do this."
Vilya vanished into the rift. Brian groaned as we approached it, but didn't slow.
"I'll never go to another trekkie convention," he said.
We stepped through.