Crossed (22 page)

Blinding terror. But he hides it. He must.

Then it’s gone, the darkness of that one reforming into an explosion of light, like a match bursting into flame. I close my eyes against the sudden, brilliant sun. When I open them, blinking, I find green clearing surrounded by trees. Birds chirp and I can hear the faint drone of distant cars. My parents stand together at its center, and at her side are a couple packs—a backpack and a duffle bag.

“Why are you crying?” he asks.

“I’m not,” she denies instantly.

He swipes his finger across her cheek, catching a tear. He rubs it between his fingers, as if it is some curious thing. He quirks a brow at her.

She swallows and blinks, the sun bright after her months below. She looks around as if she still can’t believe she is free, as if it’s some demon trick, a mirage that will disappear in a moment of inattention. “I’m just . . .” Words seem to fail her.

“Just what?”

She looks up at him, blinking hard to clear her too-shiny eyes. She searches his face, to find what, he hasn’t a clue. “I’m just . . .” but again she can’t find the words. Then, suddenly, as if she can’t stop herself, she grabs him by the lapels, pulling his head down to hers and kisses him. It’s violent, as are all things between them, always edged with the sharp sting of rage, of hate. He doesn’t mind. To the contrary, he understands. There’s a part of her that would always hate parts of him. But it doesn’t matter. Not enough, anyway. Because there are other parts, other parts of him that call to her.

And he can make up for those holes in her affection. Because nothing in him hated anything in her. They might be enemies, but it wasn’t his war.

But this kiss feels different from the others they shared. It’s still violent, but it isn’t angry. It’s hungry. Desperate. He almost breaks the kiss to bellow in triumphant victory.

When her lips leave his, she doesn’t release him. She presses her forehead against his chest and their soft breaths are loud in the bright quiet of the countryside.

“Grateful,” she says, but he hasn’t a clue what she’s talking about. She must see it in his face. “I’m just . . . grateful.”

He grins and he sees something flicker in her expression, a slight flinch as if his smile, too, is too bright for her dim-accustomed eyes. “I think I like grateful,” he says. She tries to glare in response but misses.

He leans in and kisses her again. “Wait for me,” he whispers against her mouth, his fingers tangle in her curls. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He steals one more kiss. Her lips cling to his and he tastes the saltiness of her tears. “Wait for me.”

She doesn’t answer; she can’t seem to speak with the lump in her throat. She nods, her face still pressed against his.

He can’t understand. He’s never felt less like crying in his life—or afterlife. He wants to howl his glee, laugh his delight. But this is just one more of her little mysteries, one more puzzle to unravel over the coming years. He contains himself to one more grin before turning on his heel. He has to get back, to cover their tracks. If they so much as suspected . . . He turns his thoughts from fear to planning. If he is clever, if everything goes perfectly . . . He casts one more look at her, standing, so small and forlorn-looking in the sunny clearing. She reaches out a shaking hand, cupped as if trying to fill it with sunlight, with freedom. Then she opens her hand, splaying her fingers. He can’t see the crooked joints from here but he knows they’re there. Then she presses her hand against her abdomen and takes a big breath, whether because she’s overcome with joy or panic, he can’t tell.

“Wait for me!” he shouts, and she looks up sharply, dropping her hand. It’s not what he wants to say; it in no way encapsulates the emotions of the moment, but it’s all his tongue can find. Had he known they would be the last words they’d ever share, he might have tried harder.

But then, had he known what was coming, the message would have been entirely different.

When the scene dissolves, nothing replaces it. I am left in darkness.

Her last words were lies. She was not grateful.

She did not wait.

He is a fool.

“Meda.”

My name, spoken in shock, rips me from the thrashing pool of his memories. I blink; my hand is wrapped around his forearm with crushing force. I release his arm so suddenly he collapses, cradling it to his chest. The image is so reminiscent of a few moments ago, when my mother . . .

No,
years
ago, not moments. Almost twenty years. This is not that man, I tell myself. It’s not a man at all, but a monster. Whatever humanity was once there had long since been drained from the frail figure before me. Or maybe not drained, but twisted, warped into something bitter and hateful.

This monster who has tried to condemn my soul to hell, who has tried to kill me and my friends. I should crush his skull between my hands and toss him into the Pit myself.

But I can’t. I don’t move. He cowers before me, waiting. Beneath his swollen nose his face is a mask of defiance. He knows what’s coming; he’s ready for it.

And yet I don’t move. I stand, staring at my hands, and in them, I see hers, except without her crooked knuckles. Crooked knuckles that were never broken again.

I see the hand she placed on her belly.
Joy or panic
, he couldn’t tell her emotion at the time, but I can. It was both.

I see the tears she cried when she said goodbye. I see the remorse, years later, when she warned me of the hurt that can be caused by a lover’s betrayal. I don’t know how deep her feelings for him went, how much was real and how much a ploy. I highly doubt she truly ever understood herself. Some things are so mired in grey they become indistinguishable from their surroundings, buried in a blinding fog. Unknowable.

If she hadn’t been pregnant, would she have stayed with him?

But what about Luke? Faithful Luke, who spent a lifetime waiting for a girl who would never come home. The saddest part is that it’s moot. All of it, utterly pointless. She was so loved and she spent her life completely alone.

But she wasn’t alone, was she? She had me. She loved me and I loved her. And I know that she would want.

She would want mercy for zi-Hilo.

If I kill him now, if I strip him of his false life, he descends into the Pit to be tortured for all eternity. If—no,
when
—we free the souls he will have a chance for redemption, just like Jo. Like Armand. I doubt he will be redeemed; he’s too twisted, too bitter. If there had been a spark of humanity in him at my conception, it has long since blown out.

My mother was the breath that first turned that spark into a flame, then she was the gust that extinguished it.

So I don’t know that he will ever redeem his soul and, frankly, I don’t care. But it suddenly feels too . . . final, for me to be the one to decide. His memories have made it impossible for me to see him as a cardboard cut-out of evil. The zi-Hilo I’ve known is only one small sliver of who he is, a single ring in the tree of his life. If redemption was possible when my mother was with him, would his soul have been saved?

The answer makes me uncomfortable.

It makes me think of the dozen times in my own life when, if it had ended, I would have not fared too well in the cosmic court of justice. Despite the common saying, people can change, for good or evil. I’ve done it. Zi-Hilo has done it. If I kill him now, there’s no hope for him.

And while I don’t care, while a bloodthirsty part of me screams for his eternal misery, that’s not what my mother would want. Not for him.

Dum spiro spero
, the Crusader’s motto drifts unexpectedly across my mind.
In life, hope
.

“Kill me already,” he snarls, sensing my hesitation. He lunges at me and I swat him away like a fly.

“No.” I’m not sure who’s more shocked. “It’s not what she would want.”

His shock is quickly replaced by fury. “She’ll get no comfort from me!” He screams and flies at me again, cursing and screaming. I catch him and he flails, fighting me like a wild animal. He gets a grip on my arm and his demon’s claws are still sharp enough to draw blood as he rakes them across my skin. He howls in triumph until he catches my eye and finds nothing there but pity. This incenses him still more, but he’s too weak to do anything about it. I grab him again, pinioning his arms hard against his body so he can’t scratch me again.

Deep philosophical realizations aside, leaving him alive does present a practical problem—what the hell do I do with him?

I grab the chain between his manacles and twist it around, shortening his range of motion while he struggles futilely. I gag him with a bit of my shirt, cursing Jo’s decision to make my outfit so skimpy, then tuck him under my arm like the world’s most ridiculous football and set off to find a likely closet. Stashing him and hoping he remains unfound until we finish our mission is the best I can come up with. Fortunately hell is the kind of place where toting around a bound, struggling victim is not an uncommon sight. I add an
or-you’ll-be-next
to my
don’t-bother-me
face just to be safe.

Eventually I come across a small door beneath a staircase with a thick black key jutting promisingly from the lock. I jerk it open to reveal a tiny cupboard. There’s another captive already bound up in there, a blonde female demon who starts flailing and
mmppphh, mmmmmphhh-ing
from beneath her own gag when she sees us, but beggars can’t be choosers. I toss Dad in, dusting my palms.

I go to close the door, then pause. Instead of leaving, I reach down and tug his gag from his mouth. He glares at me then turns his head pointedly away.

“What was her name?” I ask, not quite sure why I care. He stills but doesn’t answer. “Your daughter, I mean.” Still nothing. “My . . . sister.”

I wait, but his only response is a sullen silence. I gag him again and leave, locking the door behind me.

I fight the urge to hurry back to the ballroom and instead redouble my efforts to find the captive souls—my ill-advised plan to keep Dad alive has made speed even more imperative. As I search through more and more hallways, finding more rooms, then more hallways with more rooms, the futility of what we’re attempting starts to settle in. I jerk open one small, plain door, only a few feet tall, that looks like it would lead into eaves or storage. I almost scream when it opens instead into a hallway long enough to fit in at Versailles. But I keep going, keep jerking open handles, because what else do you do when your best friend is faced with an eternity in the Pit? A lack of options can be a fierce motivator.

Finally I work my way back towards the ballroom hoping someone else had more luck. The party has become more raucous in my absence. The laughter is louder and harsher; the movements of the dancers are more frenetic. The bands from different eras seem to be battling for supremacy, and the jangle of clashing music is even louder than before. I stand on my toes, peering through the crowd and find Jo almost instantly, her distinctive curly, wild-woman hair sticking out above the crowd.

I see it and I know.

I know even before every door in the room simultaneously slams shut, the music ending in the same reverberating
BOOM
of the closing doors, leaving us in sudden, deafening silence.

I know it before I see that zi-Ben himself is at Jo’s side.

I know it before everyone in the room steps back to clear a path between me and the dais, revealing Chi’s struggling form pinned the ground and Armand seated calmly on the steps next to him. He, of course, recognizes the futility of struggling.

As do I, for that matter, and stand still when two demons step forward to take my arms.

I know all of this simply by seeing Jo’s wild curls because it means she is no longer in disguise.

“Soooo . . .” I say, forcing a courageous bluster. “Not going well, eh?”

NINETEEN

The room is silent. The demons all hold unnaturally still, wax figures as creepy as any ever found in Madame Tussaud’s.

Zi-Ben cocks his head, his solid black eyes unblinking. He flicks his tongue, snake-like, and inhales as he pulls it back into his mouth. As before, my soul leans towards him, sucked into him, pulled by the black hole left by his absent humanity. Even the Hunger squeals and cowers, digging in its claws into my mind like a cat being forced into a bathtub. Zi-Ben is the bogeyman under every bed, the monster in every closet, the villain at the end of every video game.

“You are afraid.” Each word falls slow and heavy, like the pound of a sludge hammer. He sucks in another gasp of air, his fanged mouth gaping in relish. “You are afraid,” he says again, and this time the meaning of the words makes it through the screaming red panic that consumes me.

He is also, apparently, Captain Fucking Obvious.

He laughs sharply, and the force of it almost knocks me to my knees. Jo, closer than I, does collapse—or would have, if zi-Ben didn’t have a large claw wrapped around her upper arm. At her sudden fall, he doesn’t so much as sway, her weight as meaningless to him as a butterfly’s.

When the demon returned Jo to her original form, he didn’t bother to change her outfit, and she still wears the high-waisted shorty-shorts revealing her twisted, crippled leg to all. She looks like the girl I’ve always known. Armand, too, is how I’m accustomed to see him.

These are the faces zi-Ben wants me to see twisted in agony, not those of strangers.

“Yeeeeessss,” zi-Ben’s long, hissing exhale causes a shudder down my spine.

I take refuge in my usual standby when faced with petrifying terror—utterly baseless bravado. “How did you know?” I ask, aiming for more sass than I feel. Any would be good.

Zi-Ben grins, a twisted, gap-mouthed monstrosity that is more about revealing his pointed teeth than giving the impression of any happiness. He grips Jo’s arm and shoves her forward. Off-balance, she again almost falls, but his grip keeps her upright. She doesn’t say anything and he shakes her again like a dog with a toy.  He obviously wants something from her, but she keeps her mouth grimly closed. Then suddenly her back arches and she shudders. A scream is forced through her clenched jaw. I pull uselessly against my captors grip, but it’s pointless.

“I’ll tell her,” Jo finally cries out, her voice cracking, and I realize he’s compelling the truth from her. “I’ll tell her,” she snarls again and her voice contains all the fearless contempt I was aiming for. She jerks her arm, but he doesn’t release it. She looks at me. “I told him.”

“
What?
” I look at Armand for explanation or maybe confirmation. He looks back, shrugging helplessly, and I shake my head as if I don’t believe it. I look at Chi, then. I can’t see his face but his struggles have stilled. That he’s no longer fighting scares me more than anything he could have said.

“Surprised?” Jo’s appallingly blasé response.

“You think?”

Her lips thin and her chin jerks up. “Think of what we came here to do, Meda. Just think of it. Think of what it would mean if we succeed.” She sounds calm and rational, but there’s a creeping edge of hysteria. “Yes, we decrease the demons army, but we are also giving the demons the chance to get out of hell. To maybe go to heaven. They get to walk out of this.” She waves at the hell around us. “Their false life suddenly real. They get a do-over.”

And it becomes utterly, perfectly clear.

“Me,” Jo barks a violent laugh. “
Me
. I, Joanna Beauregard, came to let demons into heaven.” Her laughter ends abruptly. “And for what?” she demands. “What do I get out of it?”

“Your soul,” I point out, but that only brings back that ugly laugh.

“There are other ways—easier ways—to get my soul back. Turning in one Meda Melange for example.” Her mouth kicks up in a smile that is almost apologetic. “I get my soul back and the rest of these bastards rot in hell for all eternity. Win-win.”

“But Chi . . . Armand . . .”

“Don’t worry, I’ve learned a bit about negotiating.” She smiles in true amusement. “You could say I learned at the knee of a master.
The
Master.” She laughs as if what she said is somehow clever. “And the longer you’ve managed to stay free, the higher your worth has soared.”

“But what about the Crusaders? They have a better chance of winning if the souls are free. You know that.”

“But winning what?” She asks with bitter acrimony. “
His
war?” She jabs a finger skyward.

“I don’t understand.” My eyes flick to zi-Ben’s hold on her arm.
There are no secrets in hell.
A demon can’t lie,
Jo
can’t lie, while he’s touching her . I know that, but I can’t seem to believe that this is the truth either.

She regards me, her expression as sly as a cat’s. “Would you say I’m a smart girl, Meda?”

“The smartest.”

“A ‘know-it-all,’ I think you’ve called me.”

“Of the first order,” I confirm.

“And yet there are some questions that I never figured out the answer to.” She taps her chin as if considering them now. “Why is the fight so unequal? Why, if we are God’s chosen warriors, are we so left in the cold? Why do the demons get to be reborn over and over again while we’re left to rot? I’m a smart girl, ‘a know-it-all,’” Jo and her damned air-quotes, “so why couldn’t I figure it out?” She answers her own question. “Blind faith. I closed my eyes to the truth.”

She looks at me, her eyes left in shadows by the light streaming down from the opening in the dome overhead. “Because I didn’t want to know. Because I already knew but didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to believe.” She shakes her head and looks off, her tone taking on an eerie, flat fatalism. When she turns back her eyes are aflame, a neophyte at the altar. “I’ve heard it now, Meda, and it changes everything.”

My voice, when I find it, is a whisper. “What are you talking about?”

My question brings her sharply back to focus. “When you sell your soul, Meda, you get something. You can’t just give your soul—it’s a contract, not a gift.”

I shake my head, still not getting it.

She explains. “I traded mine for answers.”

Jo sold her soul for answers. Not a bomb, not a demon-targeting flame-thrower to bake the shit out of these assholes. An answer. How bloody Jo of her.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. I asked for a whole slew of things first. But he’s not vending machine, he’s a negotiator. He can see what you really want.” She snorts. “And just how cheaply he can get you. He looks into your heart. And do you know what mine screamed?
Why?
Why do they get to live and live and live, while my friends, my family, rot? Why is it so damn unfair? And do you know what he said, Meda?”

It’s rhetorical, I know, but I shake my head anyway. More out of wondering disbelief than in giving her an answer she doesn’t need. Again my eyes go to zi-Ben’s hold on her arm, to the distant look in his eyes as he watches her memories. What he sees makes him smile.

“Do you remember, the story I told you, about the Templar’s motto? ‘
Dum spiro spero
.’ She booms the phrase in a faux-noble voice. ‘In life, hope.’ Do you remember how I told you that the Crusaders, their numbers decimated from battle, found it carved on the wall of a temple the demons captured? How it was a sign for us in our darkest moment, a message directly from God telling us there was hope? Telling us to never give up?

“It was a message from God, Meda.” She laughs, the sound so bitter, so hysterical that it makes me flinch. “But it wasn’t for us. It was for
them
. It was
for the demons
. They slaughtered dozens of Beacons, dozens of Crusaders, dozens of His army, and he sends
them
the message. He tells
them
there is hope.”

I shake my head again, dumb with shock. Zi-Ben’s smile splits into a grin, and his chest moves rapidly, panting in excitement at the memory.

“Do you know what they did to me?” Jo screams. “It took five minutes for the devil to know me like I was the back of his hand.
Five minutes
.” The force of her scream bends her at the waist. Tears stand in her eyes and her clenched fists tremble. “I was gone for days.”

I start to cry. My tears are sadness; hers are rage.

“And I did it for Him and
He
loves
them
. He betrayed us! Do you know why they get to come back from the dead to slaughter more and more of us? I thought it was some demon’s trick. That maybe we could fix that, too, or
instead
if our first mission failed.” Now she’s laughing at herself, at her naivety. “But
He
did it. Because He loves them. He loves the demons. He still loves them! After they sold their souls, after they’ve tortured the Templars and Beacons, and countless random innocents, He still loves them! He wants to give them time to change their minds before they’re committed to hell. He wants to give those murdering bastards the ability to be redeemed. They slaughtered my family, bathed in the blood of my friends, and He still loves them.” She looks at me and I see in her expression so much pain, so much bitterness, so much rage that I would have stepped back, had the demons not been holding me in place. The darkness that has taken over her personality since she became a demon becomes suddenly clear. After everything she has sacrificed to His cause she can’t understand how He can forgive her enemies.

But I do.

I do and it hits me with the force of a train.

Once I would have agreed with Jo. Maybe as recently as an hour ago. But I can’t now. Now I have seen too much good in my enemies, too much evil in my allies.

I’ve seen too much evil in my friends, even.

I have seen hell and it’s laughable, like the worst sort of hubris, that I ever felt competent to decide who should be bound there.

I couldn’t condemn my father; I certainly can’t condemn Armand. How could I? I would have been no better—probably a great deal worse—if I’d been raised in hell, the tortured plaything of deprived demons. The destruction I would have wreaked….the destruction my darker side still craves….

It’s this, my own depravity, that makes me unable to condemn others for theirs, that makes me want to believe that no matter what mistakes I make, that there is forgiveness. There is hope.

I want to believe there’s a chance,
Armand had said.
Even for me.

That’s what rebirth gives the demons: hope. Hope can be a powerful thing. A spark of light in the dark, a star in a black night. An impetus to change, a motivation to transform. Something to lose, something to attain.

Just as the Crusaders are plagued with hate, demons are afflicted with hope. The equal opposite nature of the cosmic game board means no one is above reproach, and no one is below it.

“Us,” I say.

This isn’t what Jo is expecting. “What?”

“Us, Jo. You said He still loves
them
, but it should be
us
. You’re one of them now, and he loves you still.” I watch it sort of sink in, her eyes flicker back and forth as she takes it in, as she figures its ramifications. Undeserved love is the single strongest weapon for softening someone’s hard heart. It’s the reason I tried to be good for my mom, even long after she died. It’s the reason I married Armand, for Jo. Because she loved me. The reason I’m here, literally in hell, for her. When someone loves you unconditionally and eternally, no matter what you do . . .

Well, let’s just say, it makes it hard to be an ass.

“It’s not a betrayal, Jo,” I say gently. “It’s an insurrection.” I see my words hit her like bullets and her strength pours out of the holes. She sinks to her knees and zi-Ben lets her go, perhaps content enough with the horrible truths already wrung from her. I take a step forward, but the demons holding me tighten their grip.

The curtain of her hair hides her face, and she doesn’t speak for a long moment. Her shoulders shake and she takes a shuddering inhale. “I watched them rip out my mother’s throat. Think, Meda. Think about that. They laughed while they did it and I loved her and she bled out and I said good bye and maybe she heard, but maybe she didn’t because she was too busy choking on her own blood.” It’s just hysterical babbling rage by the end. “I hate them, I hate them.” She stops to take a gasping breath. “
I. Hate.
” She looks up and her fury sets her eyes aflame, at odds with the tears flowing down her cheeks. “And I sold my soul to give
them
hope.” The words are ugly, her voice raw with the emotion behind them, and yet there’s a hint of pleading under it all. Pleading for me to understand. To forgive.

And I do, of course I do. I can understand her darker impulses as fully and as deeply as if they are my own. I could no more condemn her than I could condemn myself.

She wipes her face with her back of her hand and sniffs, taking control of her emotions. “But I don’t have to help them.” Steel re-enters her voice. “It’s not too late. Instead, you will join us, Meda. I get my soul back, Armand’s, too, because I know how you are. The guys go free, and you and I play for the bad guys. Those were my terms.” She looks at me and there’s a challenge in her expression, a false bravado, as she waits for me to answer.