Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) (12 page)

“Seriously?” I asked, motioning at the television. Their lips curled in response, and they began to rise. Lylyx stepped around me and stayed them with her hand before they could get themselves in trouble.

“What the hell is this?” asked the female on the rocking chair, a too-young girl with short black hair and a large skull tattoo on her neck.

“Relax,” Lylyth said. “The diuscrucis has Ulnyx’s soul. He knows our laws, and he’s challenged me.”

Seven mouths gaped open.
 

“He can’t do that,” one of the males on the floor said. He looked like a model, with a petite frame and high cheekbones.
 

“He can,” Lylyx countered. “He has Ulnyx’s soul - he’s already proven it to me. Our laws are clear. Follow me outside.”

I could tell they didn’t want to go. I could tell they would have preferred to try to rip my throat out. It didn’t matter. Lylyx turned and opened the front door, leading us outside onto an old porch in sore need of some paint. The small box truck pulled up a few seconds later, and the remaining two weres jumped out. Lylyx raised her hand to them also, and when they saw their pack mates, they fell in line.

“Where do you want to do this?” she asked me.

I scanned the area. There was a small pasture off to the right of the house. “In the pasture,” I said. “That way your pups can wait behind the fence.”
 

She nodded, and we walked over. Once we’d hopped the short chicken wire fence, she turned to her brethren. “You all stand witness to the diuscrucis...”

“Landon,” I interrupted.

“You all stand witness to Landon’s challenge for leadership of the Mekong pack. I have acknowledged him as the rightful bearer of Ulnyx, the former alpha of our pack, and have accepted his challenge.”

There were a few growls and grumbles, but no one said anything.
 

“Just come at me like you think you can win,” I said. “Don’t hold anything back.”

Lylyx smiled. “I hadn’t planned on it. I want to see what you’ve got.”

We separated by twenty feet, and Lylyx shifted, her body growing and elongating until she had the demonic form of the Great Were. I remembered Ulnyx’s battle against Tiberas, and how he had remained in human form to embarrass the old were. I renewed my connection to the demon, feeling his power running along with mine once more, and allowed my form to change.

The weres outside of the pasture howled in support of Lylyx as she made her first attack, charging in quickly, faking left, and kicking out at my left knee with her right foot. It might have been a good move twelve hours ago, but I was at the top of my game now. I stepped lightly aside and grabbed her leg in my massive claws, and then pushed forward, forcing her to either allow her leg to break or be knocked onto the ground. She tumbled backwards, and I came down on top of her.

“Not so bad, is it?” she asked in a throaty growl. I was suddenly aware of myself, and she used the distraction to rake her claws across my face, and then knee me in the groin and throw me aside.
 

I rolled to my feet, just in time to block two more quick strikes. “Clever,” I said, catching her wrist and pulling her into my foot. The reverse force sent her bouncing to the opposite side of the pasture. She shot back up and charged again.

She was all teeth and nails, scratching, clawing, and biting at me while I batted her strikes aside with efficient ease. She was skilled, I admit, but I had already been delayed long enough. I ducked under her next blow and rushed forward, grappling with her and taking her to the ground like a linebacker. It was ugly, but it did the job. Once her weight was below mine, it was only a matter of time before I had gotten hold of her arms and pinned her.

“Surrender,” I said.

“No,” she replied, wriggling and twisting, trying to break the hold.
 

I hadn’t expected that. I leaned in and took her neck in my razor jaws, biting down hard enough to draw blood. I could taste it on my lips, at once exciting and disgusting. She roared in pain, and ceased struggling.
 

“Fine,” she said. “I surrender.”

I jumped off of her and shifted, knitting my torn clothes back together. Once Lylyx had changed, I pulled her to her feet, noticing the mark and bruising where I had bit her.

Lylyx had been alpha of the Mekong pack, but she had nothing to transfer, because Ulnyx had already taken it. There was no mojo to make me commander-in-chief, no special powers to bestow. It was kind of anti-climatic. The only real difference was that when we retreated back over the fence, the other weres all followed behind us without a word.

“So, now what?” Lylyx asked, once we had returned to the master bedroom. I had left the pack downstairs, and instructed them to leave the television off.

“Change your clothes and meet me downstairs,” I said, grabbing her cell and updating my wardrobe to my standard blacks - leather jacket, polo, jeans, and boots. “I have to make a phone call. Do you have any transportation besides the truck?”

“There’s a bike stashed in the barn out back. Am I coming with you?”

Another bike? I wasn’t exited about the prospect. We hadn’t staged the show just to leave her there waiting for Cho to come put an end to her. That was part of the agreement I had made with Ulnyx.
 

“Yes. Bring the bike around with you,” I said, shutting the door to the bedroom, and heading downstairs.

I stopped at the bottom and whistled to get the attention of the weres, who were talking amongst themselves. They silenced in an instant, giving me their complete attention.

“I have a feeling you won’t be safe here,” I said. “Lylyx and I are headed back to Paris. I want you to find somewhere else to hang out for awhile.”

“How about Versailles?” the model joked. He started laughing, until I stared him down. Take any crap, and they would just keep giving it. I had learned a lot in the last five years.

“There’s a small bed and breakfast in Chantilly,” the girl with the tattoo said. “We can check in there.”

I looked at her and smiled. “Sounds good,” I said. Her face turned red in response. “You’re in charge. Take these other mongrels and lay low until you hear from Lylyx or me.”

The other weres all looked to her. I could feel their jealousy over my favor. Weres were weird. She got to her feet and started barking orders, getting them ready to go.

I pulled my cellphone from my pocket the moment I stepped out of the farmhouse, unlocking it and navigating into my list of missed calls. Obi had tried me three more times while I had been out mud wrestling. I hit the call button.

He picked up after three rings, sounding agitated. “Hey, man, I called you like five times already,” he said. “You should try picking up your phone sometime.”
 

My mind flipped through a few witty retorts, but I abandoned them for simplicity. “It’s not easy being me,” I said. “I assume you have something?”

He laughed. “Yeah, of course I have something. It’s a latitude, longitude, and date. The date is today. I put it into Google Maps, guess what I got?”

“Yankee Stadium?” I guessed. Not likely.

“Damn Yankees. I’m a Red Sox fan. Try Eiffel Tower. Aren’t you in Paris?”

Eiffel tower? Then it was no coincidence that I was here, now. Or that Lylyx had been sent to distract me, not stop me, and that she had said something about it not being time yet. I was supposed to take that data, supposed to look for the pattern. Whoever had planted it, they had a little too much faith in me. Or maybe they knew I would turn it over to Obi, and that he would be able to crack it?

“Hey, you there man?” Obi asked.

I swallowed my heart. “I’m here. This just got a lot more complicated. What time?”

“Nine o’clock, French. You need me to catch a flight out?”

After everything I had said in my anger, the minute he thought I needed him, he was ready to back me up. “No, thanks,” I said. “Listen, I’m sorry for the crap that I dumped on you. It’s been tough.”

There was a silent pause. I could hear him let out a deep breath. “Don’t sweat it, man,” he said at last. “I can’t pretend to know what it’s like, so I won’t. All I want is respect for my own decisions.”

I didn’t know what to say. I heard the rough tumble of a motorcycle coming to life out behind the house.
 

“My ride’s coming,” I said. “If you want to do me another favor, track down Thomas and see if he’d be willing to risk his heavenly eternity to help me out. Tell him it could be super important. All I need him to do is trace a pair of fangs onto the front of the chest in the corner. Once its open, take a look at my notes inside, and see what you can do with it. Start at JFK, that’s where I saw him last.”

I didn’t know how relevant the mystery I had been trying to unravel would be to my current predicament, but I was starting to feel like there were answers to something in there, and that I would need those answers sooner rather than later. Still, the contents of the chest were my most closely guarded physical secret, and it wasn’t easy to trust Obi to it. It was even harder to ask him to find Thomas. Trust sucked like that, I realized. No matter how many times it burned you, you couldn’t live without it, or you’d always be empty and alone.

“Can do,” Obi said. “Give ‘em hell.” He disconnected.

I couldn’t ignore how striking Lylyx was when she tore around the house on a fancy Italian pocket-rocket. She had covered her skull in a full black helmet with a wolf’s head airbrushed on it, the fangs bared around the front so it looked like it was eating her head, and traded her clothes for a white tee and leathers that accentuated everything feminine. She skidded to a stop next to me.

“I’m ready to roll boss,” she said, patting the seat behind her. “Hop on.”

I thought about driving the bike myself, but decided I would rather conserve my energy for whatever was going to happen once we got back into the city. I slipped over the saddle and wrapped my arms lightly around Lylyx’s stomach, and then clutched her tighter when she launched away from the farmhouse. We rocketed down a gravel driveway and out onto a narrow paved road that split a pair of fields. This really was the middle of nowhere. I was amazed my cell had worked here.

“Any specific place in Paris, or are we just going sightseeing?” Lylyx asked, shouting back at me over the noise of the wind.
 

“I need to pay a visit to Gervais,” I said. “He’s taken something that he shouldn’t have.”
 

I gripped her tight enough to cause her to squeal after she nearly wrecked at hearing the archfiend’s name.

“I’m beginning to question whether or not I should have just let you kill me,” she said, getting her nerves and the bike back under control.

I ignored the remark. “He has an entrance to his chateau tucked away in the Paris sewers. I’m not sure where just yet, but I’m working on it.”
 

I closed my eyes and floated through Josette’s memories, searching for the path to the demon’s hidden transport rift. She had never made it all the way into that part of the sewer because Gervais had rigged it with wards that angels couldn’t cross, but she could at least get me that far.

I could feel the warmth of Josette’s soul touching my own as I mingled with her, an unseen hand that guided me towards the information that I sought. She had been there every time I had delved into her experiences, I realized. I just hadn’t known how to recognize her. I focused, trying to reach out with my soul to touch her warmth, her hand. I felt myself drifting towards it, the warmth growing, until I passed through and discovered I had dove in too far. The darkness behind my closed eyes vanished, replaced with the eerie glow of the past.

“Where did he go?” Shiva asks, shifting his torch back and forth, trying to keep us bathed in at least a small amount of light.
 

We’re standing near the dead end of a narrow alley between two hôtels particuliers in the Marais district. I can hear the clomping of horse hooves and the creaking of wheels as a carriage trundles past behind us, likely bringing a wealthy merchant home for the evening. I turn my head left and right, then rotate it to look up. The walls of the hotels are smooth and clean, the windows still intact. He didn’t go that way.

“I don’t know,” I say, looking back down the alley towards the street. “Perhaps he snuck past in the shadows.” It wouldn’t be the first time he had evaded me in this way.

“This is getting to be a much larger problem than we thought,” Shiva says. “Your brother has been consolidating his power, and now he moves about almost freely in the night. Even you are unable to keep up with him.”

My capitaine was right. He most often was. Gervais had been active in the last few weeks, murdering other fiends in the area and taking their holdings for his own. It had fallen to us to put a stop to him before he achieved the levels of power he so clearly lusted for, power that would make him difficult to challenge directly.

I lower my head, feeling shameful for losing him. Gervais had always bested me, no matter the challenge. I kick a stone in frustration, sending it clattering along the cobblestone and into the darkness. I’m about to apologize to Shiva verbally when we hear a faint plunk rise from the black.
 

“I’ve been a fool,” Shiva says, running forward with the torch. He lowers it to the ground, revealing an open hole in the ground and a metal grate placed directly next to it. He moves to jump down, but I hesitate.

“What about nightstalkers?” I ask. “We should return with more of our fellows.”

Shiva shakes his head. “There is no time, Josette,” he says. “We may not have another chance to get this close to him while he is weakened.”

Indeed, we have chased him from the home of a nearby Turned noble who had betrayed him to a rival. We came upon them both in the middle of their battle, killing the other fiend before Gervais could take his soul.