Bound (The Divine, Book Four) (10 page)

It was the second roar that scared me. The one that I heard when I neared the front of the house. Three mangled bodies had already slid down the side of the sand dune where I had perched earlier, their throats ripped away. Ulnyx had been making short work of them to that point.
 

The dagger, I knew. Elyse called it Wolfsbane, and she had wanted to bring it with us, but it had already been out. Now I knew why. I took a deep breath and rushed towards the source of the Were's complaint, daring the bullets to find me and praying that they didn't. I could hear them whistling past my ears, still targeting the house even though I was coming towards them. Were they so preoccupied with their target that they hadn't noticed me?

I didn't see the butt of the assault rifle until it had slammed into the side of my head, sending me sprawling and threatening to rip me from Elyse. It was a blow that would have knocked anyone else unconscious, and I was sure that had been the plan. From my position on the ground, I could see the Were on his knees in human form, blood running from a dozen wounds. He glared at me, his face twisted in anger.

The gunfire started again, aimed at the house. I realized they were happy to kill Sarah, but just as happy to keep her pinned down, their attack loud enough to prevent her voice from reaching them. A pair of black boots stopped just in front of my head.

"Elyse. Joe told me if I wanted the Box, all I had to do was follow you. You've always been the best retriever." I recognized the voice through her. Cousin Ken. He bent down and pulled the Box from my outstretched hand. "Thanks for retrieving it for me."

I lifted my head so I could see him. Long, thick black hair, a handsome face, big muscles. An amazing martial artist, and a talented musician. That was what Elyse's memories told me. I smiled. "Did you think it would be that easy?"

He laughed. "The Were is contained, the bitch is pinned down, and you've got a concussion. I think everything has gone perfectly."

Not everything. I released Elyse and shoved myself forward. We were so close, the trip only took a few seconds, seconds that he wasted waiting on my reply.

I took him then, screaming inwardly at the pain of his memories. His childhood, the abuse he had suffered under his father and had to endure because of their family's code. The anger and pain he teased out in motion and song and violence. His secret lust for Joe's favorite daughter.
 

It flowed through me, and then he was mine.

Elyse laid there, groggy, her own consciousness not as able to deal with the blow she had taken. She stared up at me. "Rebecca?"

I nodded and put the Box back on the ground. I had the assault rifle in my other hand, and I brought it up to my shoulder. Divine didn't have much need for firearms, but that didn't mean I'd never trained to use them.

Three shots, and each of the Nicht Creidim closest to Ulnyx fell to the sand. I dropped the gun and walked over to the Were. My motions were shaky while I fought to get the balance of the new body right, but I made it across the sand and pulled the Wolfsbane from his stomach. He cursed at the pain, and then it all began to heal. I was sure he didn't know why they hadn't just killed him, but I did. There was a market for pieces of Lucifer's dark creations, and the Nicht Creidim had no problem cutting those pieces out. After all, they would grow back anyway.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked. "Or maybe, what the hell are you?"

"There are six more of them, Were. Do you want to help Sarah, or do you want to chat about my lineage?"

He got to his feet, shifting once more.

"Maybe I should just rip your head off."

I held up the knife. "They only have one of these. I can use it on you, or you can go take care of the rest of the assault team."

He laughed. "Whoever you are, I like your style. I'll be back for you in a minute." He bounded off towards the other side of the house.

I didn't plan on being there when he came back. I returned to Elyse, who had only managed to get into a sitting position. "We need to get out of here."
 

There was a set of keys in my pocket, and I knew from Ken's memories which dune he had left the car behind.
 

She nodded, but she was groggy and slow. I swapped the Wolfsbane for the hidden jacket knife, using the plain steel to stab myself in the heart before I abandoned my host and retook Elyse.
 

I could feel the throbbing in my head, but I ignored it and got to my feet. I took the Box and the keys from Ken while he knelt on the ground dying.

"I told you it wouldn't be that easy."

He looked up at me with tears in his eyes, and I stumbled forward in a moment of panic and remorse. It wasn't that I had killed him, but I had done so with no emotion, and no hesitation. It was an action I was sure He wouldn't have approved of.

"I'm sorry," I said. Then I started running over the sand towards the waiting vehicle. A few seconds later I heard the gunfire stop, as Ulnyx caught up to the last of them. He would be back for me, but he wouldn't know which way I went. I crested a larger dune and slid down the side, right to the door of a Nissan Leaf. It seemed like a ridiculous car to launch an assault in, but the electric engine kept it stealthy. I opened the door, jumped in, and started it up.
 

I could see the Were bounding towards me in the rearview as I drove away. He gained at first, but I pegged the pedal to the floor and watched him fade.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Landon

"Well, I guess we've come full circle," I said. We were standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Manhattan spread out below us, glass windows and steel reflecting the sunlight from above.
 

"Maybe he ran out of fresh ideas?" Charis asked.
 

How many times had we died now? How many times had we watched Clara be killed? Since we had uncovered her secret, she had returned over and over again, bringing our power with her, and trying to help us escape from Ross.

"I don't see Clara," I said, spinning around. The deck was empty except for us.

"We're getting better at this, Landon, but this can't be all there is. We're still losing."

"I know." I leaned in and kissed her forehead. "We're getting stronger. Did you see his face the last time, when Clara bit him? He didn't expect us to get this far."

"We have eternity."

"Not if I can help it."
 

I'd been committing a lot of those thoughts to memory, too. In the beginning, it had seemed the only hope for us lay in Sarah and Dante to find a way to destroy the Box, and us with it. But without any way to understand the passage of time out of this place, I was more resigned than ever to be locked in this eternal spawn, die, repeat. It helped that we were slowly getting stronger, and living longer between resets, but the emotional scars remained. The torment, the anguish. It didn't fade. It never faded.

Still, there had been signs that we might not need outside help to overcome him. The fact that we were remembering more and more, and faster. The fact that Clara was getting stronger with each regeneration. Charis' realization that the Box would never have held him long without us. The balance, she said, and I knew it was true. I wasted a whole cycle of this charade railing about how Malize screwed us, because he knew what would have to be done and didn't say so. Complaining about it was a waste now, but if I ever got some more face time with him, I would be sure to speak with my fist.

"The balance can be tipped," I said. "The same as it can in the real world. We can overcome it, and destroy Ross here."

"Except we don't know what the consequences will be, or if they can reach beyond this prison."

"As in destroy the whole world?"

"Yes. Or worse."

Like, destroy everything. That was the fear, but there was a wrench in that consideration. "Do you think he's going to hesitate to tip things his way if he has the chance? That's what he wants after all. The results will be the same."

Charis smiled. "Better us than him, right?"

I returned her grin. "As far as I'm concerned it is. Maybe if we break him, break this place, we can get out?"

The elevator announced its arrival, and we turned to see who would be joining us. The doors slid aside. Clara.

"It took you long enough," I said to her.

She rolled her eyes at me and stepped out onto the floor. Before, she was a child of four or five. Now she was at least nine.

"That's your fault, daddy," she replied.
 

"Where is he?"

She looked back toward the elevator, and then ran to the windows. "Not in here. Not out there. I've hidden us from his eyes."

"You can do that?" Charis asked.

She giggled. "No, of course not. You can."

That was a new development. It wasn't like Clara was a conscious thing for us. She was our connection, which was only getting stronger the longer we were trapped in here. My opinion was that she grew at the same rate as our trust, understanding, and love. That she seemed to be able to sense Ross... I wasn't sure what that meant yet.
 

"Don't be so surprised," Clara said. "These are the things that he knows nothing about. Things he doesn't understand." She was part of me, of course she knew my mind. "He's stronger than you. His power is ninety percent of what's in here. Still, what you share is lost to him. Even one percent of that can hold its own against one hundred percent destruction."

Lost to him? Was she suggesting...

"No time, daddy," Clara said. She took my hand, and then Charis'. "Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Charis asked.
 

"Away. We're hiding right now, but we can't stay. He'll find us if we stand still."

"I don't want to run from him," I said.

She sighed like I was the dumbest person in the world. "We aren't running from him, daddy. We're leading him."

Leading him? "Where?"

"Circles," she replied.

Charis laughed. "The longer we survive, the stronger we get. We just need to evade him until we're too powerful for him to stop."

"You get a cookie," Clara said.

"Okay, so how do we keep moving? Where do we go?"

Clara smiled, the way only a precocious nine year old could. "Memories, mommy."

"What memories?"

"Yours."

The elevator doors dinged, and Clara twisted her head to look at them. "He's fast." She grabbed our hands, and pulled us towards the glass windows.

I pulled back. "Clara? There's nowhere to go."

The doors opened. I was expecting Ross. I got Abaddon.

"Diuscrucis," he said in his cold voice. Black tendrils of despair crept out away from him, slipping along the floor and ceiling towards us.

I felt the fear. I could tell Charis did too. "This can't be real," I said. Abaddon had fled to Hell.

I couldn't see his body through the cloak of black power. The center of him was a swirling mass of impenetrable emptiness.
 

"This can't be real," I repeated.
 

Clara pinched my hand, and I looked down at her. "Time to go," she said. She turned back to the window, and the glass shattered outward, letting in the heavy gusts of air that owned these heights. "What are you afraid of?" she asked me. "You've done this before."

Abaddon was coming closer, moving out of the elevator towards us. His darkness spread, wrapping around the rest of the windows and threatening to choke us off. "He isn't real," I said again. Maybe it was time to go, but I wasn't going to run away until I proved myself right.
 

I found Ross' power so much more easily now. I pulled it into me, and then squeezed Clara's hand and took only a single thread of energy from her. I wrapped it around the energy, and threw it forward at Abaddon, pushing with my will for the glamour to be lifted.
 

The entire facade fell away, leaving Ross standing right in front of the elevator in his pinstriped suit and sunglasses, an old-fashioned Tommy gun pressed against his hip.

"The game's starting to get interesting," he said.
 

We couldn't survive getting shot here. It was a good thing Charis had already made the decision to jump for me. I felt Clara's hand give a hard tug, and I gripped it tighter in response. I could almost see the bullets go flying overhead as I tumbled backwards out of the window.

If we couldn't survive getting shot, how were we going to survive a thousand foot fall? I kept my grip on Clara's hand and tried not to scream. The sky rushed away from me, and a few seconds later I saw Ross stick his head out of the broken window.
 

"Oyster, sir?"

What? I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to get my brain back up to speed. The tower was gone, the sky was gone, Ross was gone. I was on my feet... somewhere. A tuxedoed server was holding a silver tray of oysters a little too close to my face.
 

"Uh... no, thank you," I said, taking a step back The waiter was expressionless as he moved on. "Where the hell am I?" I whispered.

"Maine," Charis said, appearing behind me. "Seventeen-seventy-five. Nice tux, by the way."

She looked strangely gorgeous in a period proper gold hued dress with a modest hoop and lots of embroidery. Her hair was pinned up on her head, and she had an ease about the whole thing that made me a little uncomfortable. I looked down at myself, noting the black wool tuxedo coat and pants. It made me even more uncomfortable.

"General Montgomery?" I asked. I had all of her memories. I had a guess where we were.

"Yes."

Charis would spend the night in the arms of one of Montgomery's top officers. Two days later, the good General would lead a militia north into Canada to try to take Quebec. He would fail, in no small part to her sending advance warning to the Canadian and British troops stationed there.

"You were wearing a red dress," I said. I looked out past her, to where uniformed officers of the American militia were kibitzing with their patrons. We were in a small mansion belonging to a local businessman. It had a nice big downstairs for entertaining, and six bedrooms upstairs, which according to my memories were also being used for entertaining. Red dress Charis was likely in one of those rooms, without her red dress.