Balance (The Divine, Book One) (22 page)

The
other people around us had ignored the exchange, and they hurried to move out
of the way of the little girl leading us towards the center of the encampment.
There was an old man resting there, in front of a larger nylon tent. He looked
more like your stereotypical vagrant, with a long white beard and layers of
jackets and sweaters covering a rail thin body. He looked up at us when we
passed, but said nothing.

The
inside of the tent was sparsely decorated, a thin air mattress in the corner, a
small shelf with a few random books on it, and a stack of boxed and canned food
and drink. The center of the tent had a bunch of old blankets and rugs piled on
top of it, creating a somewhat comfortable cushioning to sit on. Sarah beckoned
us to do so, taking position right in front of us, close enough to touch.

“Welcome
to my home,” she said. “Please find peace and shelter here.”

“Thank
you,” I said. The whole thing seemed surreal, and in my exhausted state I
wasn’t positive it was happening. “Who are you?”

“I am
Sarah,” the girl replied, laughing. “The question you should be asking is, why
are you. Why are you, Landon?”

I was
taken off guard by the question, and the fact that Sarah knew my name. How did
she know? How could she see me? Why am I? It was something I hadn’t ever thought
about. Even after dying and being returned to this world, I had never
considered why I existed, why I had come back. I had agreed to it because I
felt I had to, but why? It was so easy to ask, so hard to answer. “I don’t
know,” I admitted. “Why are you?”

She
smiled. “Few of us know why,” she said. “Yet without knowing why we are, how
can we ever know who we are? That is the secret to control, to power. The
demons use it. The angels use it. They don’t want you to think about it. You
don’t need to know to be Awake. You just need to question. Everyone here
questions.”

The
homeless people outside. All of them could see what we were. “Is that why they
turn away?”

“There
are three, brother, always three. One, those who do not know they are being
controlled, who live their happy oblivious lives
.
Two, those who know and accept control in exchange for something
else.
Three, those who know and reject control, who always ask why and
become outcasts to society. See them, for they are the true casualties. They
are caught in the war, and cannot fight. They see the war, and cannot end it.
They lose their families, their jobs, their homes, because they question why.
The Sleeping call them crazy, because they do not accept.”

“I
don’t want to control them,” I said. “I want to help them.”

Sarah
nodded. “Yes. I know that you believe it brother, but you are young.”

“Why
do you call me brother?”

“That
is part of who you are,” she replied, “but just a part. You will need to learn
why before you can be whole.”

“You
are a half breed,” Rebecca said, her voice and expression filled with
excitement. “A first generation offspring of an angel and a demon, a true
living diuscrucis. Such a thing was thought to have ended thousands of years
ago.” She turned to face me. “A direct offspring of such a union has command of
much of the power you do,” she explained. “But in order for a demon and an
angel to pair, they must bind their child to this world such that the soul is
conceived inside a mortal shell. Thus bound, she is limited by the fragility of
mortality.”

“What
about when she dies?” I asked.

“I
will have the same fate as all mortals,” Sarah said. “I will be judged by my
actions as all others are.”

“If
she is to return to this world in any form, her power will fully develop. That
is the reason that such unions are forbidden.”

“It
is doubtful that I will ever be allowed to return,” Sarah said.

The
flap of the tent drew back and the old man stepped inside. He looked at us,
then at Sarah. She patted the floor next to her, and he went to sit by her
side.

“I
should never have been,” she said. “But there is no greater temptation to true
evil than the forbidden. My father is a demon of great strength. He captured my
mother, locked her up as his prisoner, drugged her and took her purity.”

She
spoke of such horror without emotion; her eyeless face a mask. “He impregnated
her because he wanted to see a half breed for himself. When I was born, he
murdered her in the delivery bed, and took my eyes so that I might never know
who
he was. For six months he had me raised as his own, to
see if a diuscrucis could be made pure evil. He didn’t know I could see him,
could feel his heart that he had worked so hard to cloak in darkness. He would
have destroyed me if he had discovered that I could see the Divine without my
eyes, and know them even without knowing their exact form.

She
motioned to the old man sitting next to her. “Izak was my mother’s jailer, and
he spent much time with her. He secretly fell in love with her, and then with
me. He discovered first that I could See, and so he stole me from under my
father’s nose and has hidden me ever since. He is the one who has taught me of
our kind.”

“And
your father?” I asked. I could make a guess
who
would
do such a thing.

“I do
not know,” she replied. “It is not the demon Reyzl as you think, brother. Izak
will not tell me his name, but he assures me that is not so.”

It
was a little creepy how she knew what I was thinking. I turned to Izak. “Why
won’t you tell her?” I asked. “You claim to love her.”

Izak
looked at me and said nothing. I was beginning to get angry when Sarah raised
her hand between Izak and I.

“Hold
your anger. Izak seeks to protect me from him. Even thinking his name could
reveal me, and I am not yet ready to confront him.”

“How
did you wind up down here?” Rebecca asked. Sarah’s story had brought tears to
her eyes, which she now wiped away with the back of her hand.

“After
Izak took me away from my father, we travelled for many months. He taught me of
the world, of its beauty, and of how to see it without my eyes. I was in wonder
of it all, and still am. In time we came to this place, hidden from the rest of
the world, so that he could teach me of my power. Nobody lived here then, it
was just Izak and I. I found that I could See not just the Divine, but also the
Awake. Those who could see me, I could See back. I felt their anger, their
pain, and their hopelessness. We began to bring them here, to give them a
community.”

“Aren’t
you afraid your father will find you?” I asked.

She
shook her head. “None of these people will betray me. I can not give them their
former lives back, but I have helped them make new ones down here, with others
who understand.”

She
turned her head towards me, and this time I could feel her entering my
thoughts. I was still tired, still weak. I pushed her out with as little force
as I could manage, for fear I would not be able to stay conscious with any
greater effort. She did not resist, instead she giggled out loud.

“I am
glad to have found you, brother,” she said. “Rest now demons. Find peace and
shelter here.”

I had
so many questions, so much more I wanted to know. I didn’t get to ask them,
because she had both Calmed and
Commanded
me. I knew
now how to recognize each, and I panicked at the thought of what she would do
once I was out. I fought against her power, but I was too tired, too weak.

“Do
not fear,” she said to me, right before the world went dark.

I was
only out for a few seconds. When I woke, I was sitting on my bed at the
Belmont, naked and coated in
a sheen
of sweat. Ulnyx
was sitting across from me, behind a piano, his fingers tickling the ivories.
When he saw me, he started laughing.

“Be
quiet, Ulnyx,” a familiar voice said.

The
demon quieted and placed his hands in his lap. I looked over to the door. Sarah
was standing there, looking the same as she had before she put me to sleep,
except... different. It was her eyes. They were whole in this place,
an incredible
reddish gold that shimmered and danced like
Josette’s.

“I’m
sorry, brother,” she said to me. “You were weak, and you will need to be strong
to carry on with your purpose.”

“How
can you be here?” I asked her, clothing myself in a simple black t-shirt and sweats
before she could see me.

“You
invited me,” she replied.

“How?”

Sarah
giggled again. “You called to me, and I came. There is so much you still have
so little control over. Like him.” She jerked her head towards Ulnyx. “You have
trapped his soul, yet he refuses to do your bidding when it does not suit him.”

“I
can’t make him,” I said.

“No?
Ulnyx, stand up,” she Commanded. He kicked out the piano bench and stood. “This
is your Source brother. If you cannot rule here, you will continue to fail.”

Continue
to fail? I looked at the
Were
. His expression was
contained, a mixture of surprise and anger. The way he had jumped at her
Command. This was my dream, my world, and yet she had more power in it then I
did. The thought drove me to anger.

“How
do I learn control, when there is no one to teach me?” I asked, my voice almost
a snarl.

“You
do not need to learn, all you must do is
ask
why. Why
are you?” She hadn’t reacted at all to my outburst. She remained calm,
unaffected.

“I
don’t know,” I said. Why were any of us? According to Dante, we were just
pieces in a puzzle that did not fit, figures in a game with no end.

“The
game cannot continue if you do not play.” Sarah hopped over to me and looked up
into my eyes. “Why are you?” she asked again.

I
looked from Ulnyx, to her, and back. Continue to fail... His static posture was
a representation of every failure I had experienced since Mr. Ross had left me
on Lady Liberty. Yeah, I was still alive, but I had remained that way because
of dumb luck. Every scrape I had been in had resulted in somebody intervening
to save my sorry ass. Even now Sarah was here, showing me how powerless I truly
was. Ulnyx had been right. I was pathetic.

“I
don’t know,” I growled, the feeling of hopelessness spreading from the inside
out.

“This
world is your Source, brother,” Sarah said, maintaining her perfect calm. “Its
oceans are boundless, its mountains endless. Would you be a flea, or a titan?
Why are you?”

“I
don’t know. How did you find me?” I was losing control of myself. Every word
she spoke increased my anger, my frustration, and my despair.

“I
didn’t find you,” she said. “You found me.”

It
was yet another statement that made no sense. I hadn’t been looking for her.
How could I have been looking for her? “I wasn’t looking for you,” I yelled.

“And
yet you found me. Why were you looking?” she asked, calm, emotionless, serene.
I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I
wasn’t,” I shouted, willing her out of my mind. She cried out in pain and was
gone. The anger did not subside as easily. I could feel it permeating the
entire world around me, staining everything with its pallid darkness. I turned
to Ulnyx.

“You!
Where the hell were you when I needed you?”

The
Great Were looked at me, but didn’t make a sound. I walked over to him and
lifted him into the air by the throat. He didn’t react.

“Why
am I?” I asked, shaking him. “Why am I?”

His
lips split in a mocking grin. Even in my fury, I could not make him obey.

I
held him aloft, my fingers sinking deeper and deeper into his throat.
Everything around me was black, the room quivering and oozing as I stained my
Source with my anger, my evil intent. It was more than just Ulnyx. I wanted to
destroy, to ruin, to end. Why had I been chosen to be reborn, when all I could
accomplish was failure?

The
Belmont crumbled away, and I found myself standing in a wasteland, a world
desiccated by my will. The realization was a ten-ton anvil, stealing all of the
anger from my soul and slamming me over the head into an instant state of calm.
I dropped the
Were
and took a step back. All at once,
the world reversed itself, snapping back to its original state.

Why
was I? It was such a simple question with such an elusive, simple answer. The
question was a trick,
a misdirection
, and a lie. It
didn’t matter why I was. Asking the question was more important than answering
it, the point was that I made the effort to know and understand. To recognize
who I was, and what I could become.

Sarah
had brought me to anger to show me. No, I had brought Sarah here to show
myself. I was of good, and of evil, and my power was a strange concoction of
both. How could I hope to truly control any of it if I refused to accept equal
parts? Everything rotated in balance, and I was no exception.

 As
I resolved the truth within myself, I could feel the power wash over me, a wave
of energy that soaked into me like water, like blood. It came from nowhere, and
everywhere. It had not been created, but released. It was my Source, it ran
from my soul, and for better or worse, it was answering my call.