Bound (The Divine, Book Four) (35 page)

"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.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Landon

The creatures moved in without fear, as though they knew I wasn't strong enough to repel them. I held the stone at chest height, muscles straining to maintain it. Finally, three of them came within reach, and with a howl I focused and brought the stone up, leaping and cracking it into a skull that was ten feet over my head, using my other hand to grab the beaten monster's shoulder and vault over it, while the other two tried to change direction. It brought me down closer to the others, but the maneuver confused them, and their size made for poor agility.
 

I swung the rock around, cracking it into a kneecap, ducking and rolling backwards away from a gigantic foot. The demons howled and screeched around me, shoving each other aside to make room. I brought the stone up over my head to block an attack, tensing my arms and feeling my feet sinking into the ground in an effort to deflect the force. I threw the rock upwards, smashing another skull, leaping up behind it and catching it on the way down.
 

If there hadn't been so many of them, it might have been impressive.

Instead, my strength was fading, and one more blow against my shield from a heavy claw left me on my back a dozen feet away. I dropped the now too-heavy stone and tried to scramble to my feet, feeling a level of exhaustion set in and starting to accept that I was going to lose.
 

The demons approached, their howling louder, their teeth chattering in anticipation.
 

Abaddon stepped in front of them.
 

His essence billowed out around him, casting forward like a net and wrapping around the creatures. Their glorious howls turned to hopeless moans, and their knees buckled beneath the power. I watched while he fed, the tendrils of his energy forcing their way into the monsters, finding their souls and drinking them dry. I could barely see him amidst the shadow of his power, but I was sure I heard him sigh.

Then it was over. The creatures were gone, their bodies gray and falling to ash. Abaddon turned to face me, his cloak shrinking out of my path.

"Hurry, child. We must hurry." He held out his hand to help me to my feet.

I grabbed it and let him pull me up. "I thought-"

"I betrayed you? In other circumstances, perhaps, but we had a promise in blood, and my word is the only precious thing that remains to me." His red eyes filled with dark flames. "He found a way to use your child against you and I both."

"The Beast?"

He shook his head. "No. Not the Beast. There is another entity here, one that I do not recognize, and did not see. She tried to warn you, to show you his true purpose."

"Malize?"
 

"I do not know that name."

My blood ran cold. Malize had come to collect Ross after the universe had been broken, and now Abaddon was suggesting he was somehow here, in the Box, and he had taken control of Clara. Was it Malize, or a shade of Malize? Or was it some nascent energy that had been embedded in the Templar script that powered it? Either way, I wasn't sure what to make of it. He had passed himself off as an archangel to Charis and me, but Clara's warning was suggesting something far more sinister. Was he a benevolent being in search of justice, or an agent of whatever had caused the destruction, seeking its final end? He had brought me this far, aided us in our fight against Ross. He had delivered Avriel to us, and provided the gun that was still resting in the small of my back. He was supposed to be an angel of God.
 

He had also sent the first round of monsters to attack us, and now he had taken Clara. Her power, our connection... had it ever truly been ours?

What the hell was he really?

"Diuscrucis, come."
 

I looked at Abaddon and felt my heart sinking. Charis was a Templar, a secret society of Divine that had been founded by the archangel. Did she know the truth of him?

"Diuscrucis." Abaddon's hand touched my face, and I felt the coldness of the despair. It was enough of a shock that it drew me out of my daze.

"Where is Clara?" I asked.

"She and the seraph have taken the path."

"Then we need to follow. Which way?"

Abaddon motioned off to a pile of rubble, and a ruined street beyond it. "There."

We both ran.

My power was gone, spent. My energy was almost the same. I staggered behind Abaddon, fighting to keep up with nothing more than sheer will. If I was going to do anything to help anyone, I needed to get out of this place, whatever this place was.
 

We reached the road beyond the rubble. Abaddon stopped.

"It has been altered."

"What do you mean altered? Isn't this your path, your route?"

"Yes. It was, until I brought you here." He kneeled down and put his fingers to the ground. "He is trying to keep you away."

I heard motion from our left. Another of the creatures moved out from behind the blown out wall of what used to be an apartment building. Three more followed behind it.

"I can't fight them," I said. "My power is gone."

He turned his head in their direction. His power snaked away from him, tendrils running along the ground. The creatures never saw it until it had pooled below their feet. "He would never expect me to help you, child. He has no concept of my promise, or my respect." The idea seemed to make him angry. The creatures bellowed and turned to dust under his strength.
 

"Great. Which way?"
 

He lifted his fingers to his lips, and pointed back the way we had come. "That way."

I followed behind him again, every step leaving me burning with pain. It felt like we ran forever, along burned and blasted roads.
 

Erus stepped out in front of us.

His face was burned, his right eye gone. His clothes were torn and singed. I don't know how he was still standing with so much damage. He saw us coming and began to scream.

"For all I have sacrificed. For all I have endured. This is how it ends."

Abaddon lashed out with his power, and threw him away from us. I gave him only a quick look as we passed him by; crying in the dirt, a pitiful, broken wreck.

"We are near," he said. He stopped again and put his fingers to the ground.

"What are you doing?"

"Tracing the power. I have taken this path. I have claimed it with all of the essence that remains to me in this place. It is but a single thread, but it is my domain. He cannot hide from me here, not completely."

He grabbed my arm and leaped. We launched high into the air, a hundred feet, two hundred, approaching a tall building that once had been coated in thousands of panes of glass, but now was just a metal framework. We came down on the roof, landing without a sound. He let me go.