Betrayal (The Divine, Book Two) (14 page)

“We can’t outrun them,” I said. “With any luck, they’ll go right by.” Izak didn’t look convinced, and Lylyx looked nervous.
 
“Just be ready.”

They came on in a pounding flood, two dozen at least, all herded and stampeding in front of some unseen menace. I tried to See it, tried to smell it, but there was nothing. The only sign that the nightstalkers weren’t all hallucinating was that same thick feeling of darkness that had made me desire some light. It was evil and empty, and growing heavier by the second.

“What the hell is it?” I whispered to Izak.

His eyes were aflame, and filled with concern. He pointed to his dancing fire, and then clenched his fist and crushed it out of existence. He pointed at his eyes, and did the same. Then he really unnerved me, when he pointed at the pit of his stomach, the general area where I felt my soul rested, and crushed it too.

We waited for the nightstalkers to arrive. We waited for them to make their rush past. We waited for the sounds of screaming, or pain, or fear, or something. We waited to put our eyes on whatever this creature was that was chasing them.

I kept my Sight focused; the demons should have been here by now, but instead they had stopped running, and they turned and moved in total confusion. One by one, their Divine souls began to vanish.

“They can’t see,” I said to Izak.

He nodded.

I understood why he had run. I understood we were still too exposed. I understood that whatever this thing was, it didn’t matter how strong we were. If we couldn’t see it, couldn’t See it, couldn’t smell it, couldn’t touch it, we were dead.

I Saw the last nightstalker vanish, leaving my Sight as blind and useless as my eyes suddenly felt. The darkness was increasing, the hopelessness and despair ratcheting up in intensity. It was coming.

I looked down the tunnel, losing it in the dark distance. I turned back the other way, and saw no escape.

“We have to get to the rift ahead of it,” I said. There was no other way.

We started running. I took the lead, letting Josette’s memories guide me, following the twisted path through the sewers that she had taken in pursuit of her brother hundreds of years before. The darkness responded to us, the pressure of it nearly overwhelming as it reached out, an invisible but absolute thing.
 

Still we raced on. I could focus and make myself faster, could add a new dimension of quickness, but it was a feat neither Izak nor Lylyx could match. Maybe I could get away, but I wasn’t about to leave either one of them behind. The entity that was chasing us was still gaining, and we were still too far away. We weren’t going to get to the rift ahead of it.

I stopped running again, hopping up and turning over to walk back along the ceiling. “Keep running,” I said. “I’ll catch up.”

Izak didn’t slow. Lylyx tried, but the demon took hold of her again and forced her to keep moving. With my momentum lost, gravity pulled me back down off the top of the sewer, and I rotated to land on my feet. I focused on the water below me, pushing it back, bunching it up, raising it higher and higher.

Pitch-black tendrils began snaking overhead, and the feeling of death and loss was unlike anything I had ever experienced. My whole body went cold, and I could feel Josette and Ulnyx both withdraw from my consciousness, the power of the oncoming demon forcing them back. Still I pushed the water, leaving the area around me dry while I created a wall of liquid.

I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t know if it would slow our assailant in the slightest. The pressure was becoming overwhelming, and I dropped to a knee while my body shook from the intensity. It couldn’t have been too far away from me now, and I looked forward, expecting to see its physical shape materialize through the water at any moment.
 

I didn’t have to wait long. The darkness was everywhere now, and my eyes were barely good enough to see. It had no real shape, though the form was vaguely humanoid. It had no mass, but instead was like a thick vapor of nothingness. It pushed its way into the wall of water without hesitation, and it was clear that it could move through the liquid without effect. My entire body was rocking uncontrollably, my soul crying out in fear. It was all I could do to stay present, and to find my focus. It was coming, and I wasn’t sure I could stop it.

I cried out as I forced my will on the wall of water, demanding it to harden, for the molecules to pull together in crystalline form, for it to turn into ice. I felt the tug in my mind that told me the universe was bending to my demand, and I watched the water freeze.

A high-pitched shriek echoed through the sewer, and my body immediately stopped shaking, the darkness pulling back and grey clarity returning to my world. I saw the black form in the ice, the edges feathering and coalescing, reaching out and snaking through the barrier. I had succeeded in slowing it, nothing more.

I took off down the tunnel at a dead run, finding a new strength in the escape from the cold grasp of the monster. My feet pounded the stone in a quick cadence, and I focused on the water beneath them when I passed, lifting it and pushing it, piling it up to create a series of walls behind me. It was enough to stop the creature for a few seconds each, but right now every second counted.
 

I found them waiting outside the room of skulls and bones. Izak was standing in the corridor with his back to me, preventing Lylyx from getting past him to attempt a rescue. I was impressed by the were’s loyalty, even though I knew it was more for Ulnyx than it was for me. I had no doubt she was still harboring the hope that she could extract his soul from mine.

“Landon,” she cried, seeing me appear behind the fiend. Izak turned, quickly masking a look of surprise at my return. She took advantage of the distraction, ducking past the demon and throwing herself into me, wrapping her arms around me and nuzzling my neck.
 

“Okay, okay,” I said, untangling myself from her. “I slowed it down a bit, but we have to get going.”

Izak motioned with his arm, ushering us into the final room before the rift. It was almost just as Josette had remembered it, with one major difference.
 

Standing in the center of the room was a large wooden crucifix. From it hung an angel, an old, grey angel, wings spread and nailed to the ends of the cross, hands stretched above his head, body gaunt and unclothed. His head hung limply to his chest, but it rose as we approached.

“Demons,” he said, in a quiet, hollow voice. “Have you come to die?”

“You’re the only one who looks like they’re going to die,” Lylyx said.

His laugh was a wheeze and a cough. “You truly think that, do you were?” he asked. “I don’t know how you got past it, but it will be along for you soon. Whatever you’re doing here, you should never have come.”

“Get past what?” I asked.
 

His eyes fell on mine, and narrowed. “A diuscrucis?” he said, alarmed. “So she wasn’t lying.”

“Who?”

The angel looked up at his bonds, then over to his wings. “Release me, diuscrucis, and I’ll tell you a tale. When it’s done, all that I ask is that you set my soul free from this prison.”

“You want me to kill you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “But I beseech you to allow my soul to travel to whatever waits beyond.”

I nodded, focusing on the nails that held the angel in place and pulling them from the cross. He would have tumbled to the ground, but Lylyx caught him and lowered him to the floor. The angel took a deep breath and fluttered his wings. Once he was off the cross, I could see the blade that had been affixed to the post, stabbing into his spine and preventing him from escaping his torture.

“Do not underestimate the kindness you have done me,” the angel said to Lylyx. She looked surprised, and stepped back away from him.

“Speak quickly seraph,” I said. “As you’ve said, the demon that hunts in these sewers won’t be trapped forever.”

“Of course,” the angel replied. “I am archangel Avriel.”

My head nearly burst from the power of Josette’s voice in my soul. “
Avriel the Just
,” she said with a mixture of joy and sadness.

“I was ordained by Michael himself shortly after the death of Jesus,” he said. “During my years among the living, I was a simple farmer, a layman, known among my peers for my honor and integrity. My sense of justice.” His voice strengthened as he spoke, and the years began to roll off, his body finally able to regenerate. Just how long had he been hanging on that cross?

“I found even greater justice in death, volunteering into the Lord’s Holy War against the First Fallen’s mischief on mankind. As a shepherd of the Lord I was offered the chance to protect the meek, and in time rose to be the greatest seraphim walking the mortal plane. In those days, there were few diuscrucis, and those that walked the Earth were direct descendants, hated by both demon and angel, ostracized and killed when possible.”

Avriel had finished healing, and now stood up straight and proud, his seven foot frame rippling with muscle and power. His grey wings had regenerated to a healthy silken white, with golden tips. He wrapped the wings around his front to cover his nakedness.

“So it was that the balance was maintained only through the opposing efforts of both Heaven and Hell, and it was common for the archangels to walk the Earth in response to the growing demon threat. We were the most skilled fighters, the best engineers, the strongest in holy scripture. For many years, we kept them at bay, until we no longer could.
 

“One day, a blight appeared on the mortal realm that threatened to destroy the balance, to end the reign of humanity and deny the Lord his rightful victory. It was a cold darkness that stretched across the land, bringing hopelessness and death to all that it touched. It was the First Fallen’s greatest creation, culled from the anguish of his many thousands of prisoners. Its name was Abaddon.”

“
Abaddon
,” Josette cried out. The strength of her fear burst into my head, and I closed my eyes and clutched at my temples.
 

“Abaddon is a myth,” I said, Josette’s thoughts reflected in my speech.
 

Avriel approached me, spreading his wings and wrapping me in them. He lowered his face so it was only inches from my own. “You’ve taken an angel?” he asked, boring his eyes into mine.
 

I felt Josette within me, being pulled to the surface by his gaze.

“Not taken,” she said through my voice. “Offered.”

His eyes softened. “
Why?
” he asked, his unspoken word resonating in my mind.

“A new blight is threatening,” Josette said. “The demons move against the diuscrucis. We are not strong enough. If he is removed, we will lose.”

Avriel nodded, and looked up at the entrance to the room. “It is almost through your barriers,” he said. “Abaddon is no myth. It is the deepest heart of Hell’s despair, and it once walked this Earth, destroying all that it touched. Angel, demon, human, animal, plant, it makes no difference. It exists to feed.

“Thousands were killed in its blights, and countless more would have died had we not engineered the creature’s doom. A box of my own design, covered in seraphim runes and imbued by all of the disciples. I alone was charged with bringing the box to Abaddon. I alone was charged with approaching the demon, having developed the mental strength needed to combat its message of fear and death. I succeeded in my conquest, and caught the monster in the box, but not without cost. I too was trapped by my design, and spent countless hundreds of years in a war that could not end. We have destroyed one another more times than can be known, but the power of the box is such to repeat the cycle of time, and so we did.”

I could feel the blackness begin to creep in. It was taking its time to reach us, unhurried in its confidence. Avriel sensed it too, and he stepped over to the doorway and scratched out holy scripture into the stone floor. As he completed the characters, it took on a soft golden glow.

“That will give me time to finish my story,” he said, turning back to us and continuing. “I don’t know how long we were inside. I couldn’t know what happened to the box, for it would have fallen in the center of the demon’s desolation, left lying on the naked ground to be discovered by anyone, or anything. Time passed, impossible to track in the prison of my own making.

“Then one day, it destroyed me. I would have expected to return to my place inside the box, waiting for the demon to find me again, but instead woke here, nailed to this cross, with Abaddon standing before me, no longer contained. For the first time ever, it spoke to me.

“‘
You are mine at last
,’ it said. ‘
You can never escape, and I will delight in the years of despair you will feel from my hand, in payment for the years of despair I have felt chained inside your device
.’”

The darkness couldn’t pierce the archangel’s scripture, but there was a shriek from the other side of the doorway, and when I looked up it was standing there, its vague, black, humanoid form shifting and moving while it tested Avriel’s defenses. It didn’t sound happy that he was off the cross.

“The demon remains here to torture me,” Avriel said. “Each day it forces itself into my soul, and I suffer a fate I would wish on no one. We are bound by the power that returned us from my prison, the power of the Demon Queen. Once I am gone, it won’t be able to survive here, and it will retreat to Hell.”

“The Demon Queen?” I asked. “She was here?”
 

“I do not know,” Avriel replied. “Abaddon has told me she is the one who set us free, and nailed me to the crucifix.”

There was a hissing sound, and when I looked back I could see that Abaddon was defeating the archangel’s runes, black tendrils smothering them and erasing them from the stone. I felt the cold despair returning, and I knew our time was up.

“Destroy me now, diuscrucis,” Avriel said. “For all our sakes.”

I looked at him, and then back at the demon. “If I kill you, Abaddon will be returned to Hell?”