Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) (20 page)

“Rolix, stay behind me,” I say, pushing him away from Tobias and turning to face the man. I don’t say anything. Instead, I shift, feeling the strength pour into my body, my face elongating into a muzzle filled with sharp fangs, my body sprouting fur, my hands and feet growing a complete set of claws. I growl softly.

Tobias smiles and reaches under his velvet cloak, dropping it to the ground. A single strap rests across his chest, and he reaches behind for a short handled, double-bladed axe that had been strapped to his back. When he brings it forward, I see the eye tattooed to his wrist.

“Templar,” I hiss, crouching down, preparing for the fight. “Have sense and flee. I am no petty were, but Ulnyx, alpha of the Mekong Delta.”

“You’re all the same to me,” he says, charging.

He comes at me, and his strength is overwhelming. I slip away from his blade, twisting past the forehand and the backhand, which lead me right into his fist. The force of it sends me sprawling backwards, and I kick up dirt and stone scrambling to maintain my feet. Tobias wastes no time, his massive frame propelling him towards me, his axe coming down from above. I slip aside, digging into the dirt with my feet and kicking dirt up into his face. He groans and stumbles, but rolls away before my claws can find his flesh.

“You’re quick for your size,” I say, returning to a fighting posture while he rises to his feet. The first effort is a draw.

“You’re ugly, even for your kind,” he replies, spitting onto the ground between us.
 

I snarl and charge, leaping towards him, twisting to avoid his axe and catching his wrist on my forearm. The force shatters my bones, but it shatters his as well, and the axe falls from his hand. I try to scratch his face, but his arms are too long, and his other hand grabs my face and pushes me to the ground. I manage to roll over, but as soon as I do a monstrous boot presses me to the dirt.

“Stay still,” he says, pressing down harder when I struggle. “I’ll make it swift.”
 

He bends over, reaching for the axe. When he does, Rolix leaps from the shadows, landing on the Templar’s back, raking him with his claws. He lets out a short grunt, and then throws himself backwards against the wall of the smithy, sandwiching Rolix between his muscle and the stone. A low cry is all I hear, and when Tobias steps forward again I see Rolix tumble to the ground, broken.

“No,” I roar, moving to regain my feet. The pup will heal, but only if he has time. As for the Templar, his face is pale, the demon poison beginning to spread through his veins.

That doesn’t stop him from putting his boot on my neck and forcing me back down. That doesn’t stop him from picking up his axe and turning to Rolix.
 

“You care for this one?” he asks, right before he plants the blade in Rolix’s chest.
 

The blessed runes flare, and his chest begins to smoke, small whimpers the only indication that he feels the pain of his demise.

My hands scramble against the foot on my neck, but a layer of chain hides beneath the cloth and I can’t break through. The pain is clear on Tobias’ face when he looks at me, his face twisted in anger.
 

“Next time,” he says, removing his foot from my neck, his axe from Rolix, and running out of the alley. I assume he seeks holy water, and I hope he dies before he finds some.
 

The van was still moving when the memory faded, but I was slumped over, my forehead pressed against the dashboard. Zeek was on the phone, talking to somebody. Whoever ‘m’lady’ was, I supposed.
 

“Hey, he’s awake. I’ll see you soon. Of course, m’lady.” He disconnected and tossed his own cell onto the dash. “Sorry, Landon,” he said. “I didn’t know that would happen.”

I lifted my head and leaned back. “Me neither,” I replied. I studied him for a minute, remembering the anger that guided the axe into the young were. “Why did you do it?” I ask. Ulnyx’s pain, his shame in failing to protect the boy was still resonating through my emotion.
 

“My wife was named Katherine,” he said, sadness filtering into his voice. “She was the sun that I revolved around, a perfect beauty, and a friend without equal.” He paused, remembering her. “She was killed by a demon the year before. Even though I destroyed the creature, I carried the pain and anger of her loss with me still. When I saw the were, when I saw his arrogance, I wanted to kill him. Then, when I saw how he cared for the boy, I wanted him to suffer, the way I was suffering. It never should have happened. For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

He was being honest, but it wasn’t worth anything to me. Ulnyx was silent, so I could only guess he didn’t care either. “I thought the Templars were supposed to be looking out for Heaven’s best interests? Never mind the reasons, why would you be sorry to have killed a demon?”

His eyes found the road again. “I’ll let m’lady explain,” he said. “The short version is because the story goes a lot deeper than you know right now. You haven’t been around that long, not for a Divine. This is pretty new to you. There’s an awful lot of others who find it all a part of ancient history.”

I put my eyes on the road, trying to decide if I should push the conversation or not. A lot of questions were circling in the maelstrom of my mind. The one that wasn’t present was the identity of ‘m’lady’. If I pieced everything together, it all started to make a very convoluted sort of sense.

“There’s a mattress in the back of the van, if you want to catch a few,” Zeek said, motioning towards the rear. “But you probably don’t sleep.”

I slipped out of the seat and crept to the back.
 

“No, but I’m working on my zen,” I replied.
 

The back of the van was barren save for the small mattress and a couple of boxes of junk food. If Zeek was a Templar, that meant he had drank from the Grail and gained an immortal life span as one of his new talents. Even so, he was still mortal, and still needed to eat. I guess it didn’t matter what.

I dropped over onto the mattress and closed my eyes, not trying to fall asleep, but trying to shake the last vestiges of Ulnyx’s memory from my soul. I was surprised by the level of emotion the Were had exhibited towards the boy; while his primary concern was the embarrassment of losing his charge and failing to kill Zeek, that he felt anything at all towards Rolix showed me that even with access to his past I had misjudged him as nothing but a monster. That didn’t make him a good guy by any stretch, but it did show a semblance of humanity that I hadn’t believed he possessed.

The key to being in tune with Josette and Ulnyx was letting myself relax and somehow easing off on my nascent defenses, so I laid there completely still and focused on my breathing, trying to let go of the state of alarm I had been in since Mr. Ross had dropped me on the Statue of Liberty. Five years, and I was only beginning to see the true depth of what I had become, and more importantly what I was losing. No wonder I suddenly felt so overmatched again.

I’m not sure how much time passed. It couldn’t have been too long, because we weren’t that far from the airfield. I lay on the mattress for some time before a single thought, a single word passed up and resonated in my soul as no more than a whisper.
 

“
Landon
,” Josette said.

I didn’t open my eyes, but tried to stay calm and centered. I could sense a single fine thread snaking behind the blackness behind my eyes. I reached out for it, taking a gentle hold on the end.
 

“
Josette
,” I said. My voice echoed in the dark hollow, but the thread vibrated in response.

“
I hear you
,” she replied. “
It is faint, but I hear you.
”

“
Sarah
,” I said. My hold was tenuous, and it seemed too much effort would blow it away like smoke.

“
She is diuscrucis. She can be saved.
” Her confidence was unwavering. It gave me comfort.

“
She may need to die
,” a new voice interrupted.
 

Another thread, dark and hard to see. I didn’t need to see it to know Ulnyx. I reached out again, splitting my attention, careful not to lose my grip on Josette. Before I could take hold of it, it latched onto me. Not an attack, but an effort to stay connected.

“
She might
,” I admitted. I could feel Josette’s sorrow wash through me.

“
You are not wrong, demon
,” Josette said. “
But not without trying to save her. You have seen her goodness and charity. Such things cannot be lost so easily. Just ask Izak.
”

“
Izak is unique
,” Ulnyx said. “
He was never meant to be one of us. Don’t expect such softness from any other demons. You’ve seen it yourself with your vampire honey.
”

I wanted to be angry at the comment, but there was nothing. No emotion could travel through this connection. Only whispers. “
Who is he?
” I asked. “
I saw him visit you in your cell. I saw how you cared for him.
”

The threads didn’t move.
 

“Josette? Ulnyx?”

There was no reply. I felt a lightness reaching across my flesh, and I opened my eyes. Zeek was standing in the rear of the van, the back doors thrown open. A light breeze was filtering in, and I could see the small aircraft waiting behind him, propellers already spinning. He had a pastry in his mouth, crumbs in his beard, and donuts in each of his hands.
 

“Time to fly,” he mumbled through bits of danish.

I spent the first ninety minutes of the two hour flight trying to recapture my calm and get back the threads of Josette and Ulnyx’s souls. Between the shaking of the twin-prop while it winged its way past the Alps, and the crunching of candy bars and crackling of cellophane bags, it was an impossible task. I opened my eyes and cast a murderous glance over at the giant Templar, who I could swear was forcing the plane to fly slightly banked to the left. He was too busy consuming sugar to notice, so I looked forward to our pilot, a Spanish mortal named Javier. According to Zeek, the flight had been contracted by m’lady, and so the man had no idea what it was he was carrying.
 

“Have you been flying long?” I asked him. He had given each of us headphones so we could speak over the din of the engines, but Zeek had been cut out because the cans didn’t fit over his skull.

“Affirmative,” he replied, holding out a bony arm and flashing me the ‘okay’. He was an almost comical inverse of the Templar, short enough to need a booster on his seat and thin enough to see the skeleton beneath his skin. “Thirty five years. I got my start in the Spanish Air Force, it was the easiest way to pay for flight training.” He laughed hoarsely. “After that, I spent a few years doing cargo hauls, and then a few more as an instructor. The last five have been as an indie. I bought Bella here twenty years ago at an auction. Now I’m living my dream.”

I couldn’t see his smile, but I could feel it. It dug into me more deeply than I had expected. A man living his dream.
This
is what I was fighting for. I’d been avoiding the finite life for so long, I’d forgotten what it was.

“You resurrected her yourself?” I asked.
 

“Sure thing,” he replied. “Took me almost twenty years of parts auctions, graveyards, and some of the oddest jobs you can think of, but I put her together piece by piece with these hands.” He lifted them from the yoke to show them off. The calluses and wear on his fingernails made it clear how much time he had given to the task.

“She’s a marvel,” I said.

I leaned back in my seat and looked out the window to the right. There was some scattered cloud cover we were skirting on top of, and beyond that some of the taller peaks poked through like icebergs on a white sea. The moon was resting high in the sky, a thin sliver that didn’t provide much light, not that I needed it. I was about to lean forward again to ask Javier about the mountains when my stomach lurched forward and I got super dizzy. The balance. Something had just happened to give it a bad push to the dark side. Remembering what Gervais had said he thought Rebecca and Sarah planned to do, it was an effort to keep breathing. Was she really going through with it? It seemed impossible.

A sudden explosion of heat in my Sight brought me out of my stupor. I lunged forward and grabbed the yoke from Javier, pulling it back and twisting it, praying that the pilot’s loving workmanship would be enough to spare the craft. A gout of flame sped past the window, close enough for the heat to leech through.
 

“What the hell was that?” Javier cried, pushing my hands away from the steering. His expression was tight, and I could smell his fear.
 

“Landon?” Zeek was shoved back in his seat, a soda spilled on his lap.
 

I could See the fire demon out beyond, circling around for another pass. It was worse than that - three angels were angling on a direct path for the plane. Not fallen angels, but straight from Heaven angels, working in concert with the demon. It was Rebecca’s promise, already being fulfilled.

“Sword?” I asked the Templar. He pointed at the back of the plane, where a small lockbox was resting.
 

I focused, pulling it to me and snapping the locks. “Javier, dive now,” I said, flipping open the lid and pulling out the blessed axe. The same one that had killed Rolix. I could feel Unlyx’s desire to plant it in the Templar’s chest. It was a good thing he wasn’t in control.

“I can’t go too far my friend, or we’ll crash into the mountains,” he said, calm and cool in the face of something he couldn’t possibly understand. He was a former military man, his training had taken over.

The plane dipped forward, forcing Zeek to put his feet up to keep him from slamming into the the pilot’s seat. The maneuver threw the angels off, and they hung stationary for a few seconds before they followed the fire demon downward behind us.