Balance (The Divine, Book One) (3 page)

"Okay,
so everything is in balance, and God and Beelzebub are duking it out to see who
can take home the whole pie. So then, here you are trying to get in the middle
of it and prevent a clear winner?"

He
seemed uncomfortable having me so close. He backed up a few steps. "Yes.
Exactly."

Something
was out of whack with the story. “But if the Universe forces all things into
balance, then shouldn’t it be able to take care of their attempts to tip the
scales on its own?”

Dante
smiled wearily. “The Universe works on its own time, not ours. A victory by
either side will throw the balance, and the Universe will put it back in place.
When? How? That is not for us to know, and it will matter to us little, for we
will all be gone.”

It
was time for the million-dollar question. "How many people know about
this?"

He
knew the question was coming. He didn't want to answer it. He knew I wasn't
going to like the answer.

He
did another one of those big sighs before he replied. "Other than the
angels and demons?” he asked. I nodded. “Counting you and I... four."

Mr.
Ross had said I was special. What made me so special that I got to know this
anyway? "Why so few?"

"Please,
Landon, let us sit again." He waved me back over to the chair and returned
to the desk. I was hesitant to follow him, but I needed answers. It was like an
itch that started at my feet, ran up my legs, and disappeared deep into my
soul. Once I had plopped down into the chair, he picked up a remote control and
faced it towards the window in front of me. It became a gigantic screen.
Depicted on it was Dante, looking much the same as he did today. The video
relayed the scene to me exactly as he described it.

"For
me, it was an accident. I was never supposed to stay in this place. The
caretaker at the time had tired of the fighting, and wanted to get out. He
could never leave Purgatory of course, but he could escape his memories of all
that had occurred. As I traveled through this realm, he reached out and touched
my arm, and by doing so passed all of his knowledge on to me. Once I knew the
truth, I could not abandon the mortal world to the end I knew would otherwise
come."

The
scene in the video changed. It showed Mr. Ross lying naked on a beach. The same
beach I had arrived on.

"Mr.
Ross is the next," he said. "He told me he was a tax collector for
King Henry the Second. In those days new souls had to find their own way off
the beach, but he came straight to my front door so to speak. He knew who I
was, I don't really know how. He started asking me questions about Heaven, and
about Hell. Nobody else had ever asked me these questions. Everyone else lands
on the beach, suffers their Regrets, and moves on to spend their eternity much
the same as they lived their lives. I was so grateful for someone to share this
burden with, I told him everything I knew. Ever the Collector, he felt there
was more information out there, something more that I didn't know."

Now
the scene shifted to Mr. Ross torturing a tan, golden haired man. It was
disturbing, and I couldn’t bear to watch it. "He knew how to get
information. As a Collector, he could collect anything. He found out that we
did not have to be bystanders in this war, that there were others that could
accept the truth. That there were others who could possibly even prevent total
annihilation." He paused and took a sip of water for a cup that had just
appeared on the desk.

“Thirsty?”
he asked. I shook my head, so he continued.

"We
waited over a hundred years for the first to arrive,” he said. “Mr. Ross
collected every single soul in order to be sure not to miss her. When she came,
we knew her right away because she wasn't naked."

Not
naked, of course. "What?"

Dante
let himself grin this time. "Almost everyone who dies comes to the
afterlife unclothed. I did, Mr. Ross did. She didn't. Neither did you." He
paused dramatically, or maybe so I would make the connection. Special. Me.
Right. "What it meant was that she was Aware. Not on a conscious level at
first, but Aware just the same. She could exert her will upon Purgatory itself,
and it bent in response. She didn't want to be nude, and so she wasn't."

I
looked down at the clothes I was wearing. "Mr. Ross said I had made
this," I told him, waving my hand at the room.

"That
is somewhat true,” he said. “But not completely. Everyone who dies experiences
Purgatory in a different way. It has no specific shape or form, but rather is
consumed by each individual according to what they believe it will be. For me,
this place is typical to 14th Century Italy. The others here are peasants,
merchants, and farmers. In my mind you would normally be a knight, however your
will has changed this place to something you are more familiar with. While you
are here I am a CEO, sitting in the penthouse of a modern skyscraper. You have
made this my reality. If you went outside the people around you would find
themselves in this city you have created, and many would suffer some level of
disorientation before they would be able to adjust to the change."

I
looked out at the city again with new eyes. This was all a figment of my
imagination? "How far does it reach?"

He
shook his head. "There is really no way to know. It could be all of
Purgatory has changed because you are here. Most of the inhabitants here will
not remember the change once you have gone."

I
wanted to test this. I wanted to have some proof that what I was hearing was
true, to see what Dante saw. I wanted to be in his world. I tried to picture a
medieval castle, a throne, and a large timber table. Nothing happened.

"You
don't have control of it," Dante said, as if he had been reading my mind. "Not
yet. Your mind created this because it was familiar. It will hold onto it
tightly until you can convince it that it doesn't have to."

"I
feel like Neo," I said.

"Hardly,"
Dante replied.

Something
was nagging at me. Something he had said before I tried to turn this place into
Camelot. "Once I've gone? Isn't Purgatory, you know… forever?"

"No,"
Dante said. "Purgatory is never forever, unless you choose it to be. It is
where the souls who have not chosen a side or who have not earned a place in either
Heaven or Hell are sent until such a time as they do. Time is not observed the
same way here, so such endeavors can take many hundreds, if not thousands of
Earth years. And yes, you will leave this place if you choose to accept who and
what you are."

There
it was again. "Who and what am I?"

"You
are a diuscrucis, a crossbreed of angel and demon. Not directly of course, but
somewhere in your lineage, buried deep within your roots. The blood of the
creatures of dark and the creatures of light flows through your veins.
Moreover, the balance of this mixture is precise, or you would not be here now.
Almost all diuscrucis are inherently good or inherently evil, depending on
which side is more dominant. But you... You are a perfect balance of every
variable in the equation. The odds are so infinitesimally small, that it has
happened twice in a millennia is beyond words."

I was
expecting something grandiose, after all Dante had said there was only one
other like me that he had ever met. This went beyond grandiose though. This
went deep into impossible. You would think a guy would know if his grandma were
Satan's handmaiden. If my day had gone any differently, I would never have
believed it. I did though. There was something telling me that I should.

Dante
had read my expression, and he watched me curiously as I worked through
acceptance of my family tree. "You would know if I was
lying
Landon," he said. "That is one of the traits you inherited from your
good side. It is what allows me to tell you all of this, and know that you will
accept it and believe it."

I did
know he was telling me the truth. "If that side helps me to recognize
lies, does the other make me better at telling them?"

It
was part of the balance. That deviousness had led me to hacking, to stealing,
and ultimately to my arrest. The thought bothered me.

"Wait
a second,” I said. “You speak of balance, good, and evil as if we have no
choice in the matter. Are you saying that every decision I make is
predetermined in order to keep me right in the center?"

When
I asked the question, Dante flinched as though he had been struck. His wide
eyes narrowed and dimmed, and he took on a look of sadness. "Everyone has
the freedom to choose their own path. Charis did."

"Charis?"
She was the other one like me. I knew it by his reaction. "What happened
to her?"

He
paused before he answered. "She made a choice. She isn't with us
anymore."

I
could tell by the way he said it that it was all he wanted to say. There was no
reason to push him. I had gotten what I wanted.

"Then
I guess the burning question is, what exactly am I doing here?" I asked.

Dante's
demeanor changed again, turning him back into the energetic and lighthearted
man that had greeted me.

"You
are in a unique position, but as I have said it is your choice. The battle
between good and evil rages on; the angels want the perfection that God had
envisioned, and the demons aim to mangle the world to satiate their desire for
chaos and destruction. Mankind has been caught in the middle, and they have no
one to fight on their side. No one to assure that the balance is maintained so
that they may continue to have control of their own future."

"So
you think that I can help humanity deal with this somehow?" I was doubtful.
Maybe I could spot a lie and dress myself in cool clothes, but I had a feeling
that wouldn't help much against Satan or Saint Michael.

"I
know you can, Signore," he said. "You are stronger than you know.
Shedding your mortal skin has opened your being up to all of the power that it
is due a diuscrucis." He leaned up over the desk and looked me right in
the eyes, a look that delved deep into me. "ALL of the power." He
seemed very satisfied.

I
would do this. I had to do this. The need was an unbreakable iron grip on my
soul. It was what I had been born to do, had died to do. It was frightening,
exciting, and impossible to resist. It wasn’t about the power that Dante
believed I had. It was about nature. My nature. How many people ever get to
find out where they stand, and connect with it so completely? According to
Dante even God Himself was being driven by His basest nature. I had asked about
choice, discovered I had none, and realized that it was okay, because I didn’t
care.

"So
what happens next?" I asked.

Dante
smiled. "When someone who leans to good leaves Purgatory, they go to
Heaven. Someone leaning evil goes to Hell. Someone who doesn't lean at all,
they go…"

He
didn't finish. He didn't have a chance to. The solid glass window I had been
enjoying looking out of earlier exploded inward, showering us both in glass. I
backed away and raised my arms to cover my head. Dante didn't move at all, he
just turned his head to watch the interlopers make their entrance. The glass
seemed to bounce off of him. It took me a moment to realize it hadn't hurt me
either.

The
interlopers looked like angels, but I knew on my new instinct that they
weren’t. Maybe once upon a time before the greedy promises and lies had changed
their hearts, but not now. They may have been brothers, both with long silver
and white hair, ebony skin and sharp red eyes. They were wearing matching
leather dusters with black leather vests over purple shirts and dark wash
jeans. Each was holding what looked to me like a samurai sword. They glared at
Dante with disgust, and looked at me as if I were nothing more than an ant to
be stepped on.

"You
have no rights here," Dante said to them. He shifted over to put himself
between them and me. "If any harm comes to me you will be in breach of the
Treaty."

The
two dark angels stepped forward as one. "We have no intention of harming
you Alighieri," the one on the left said. "We only want him."

I
felt my heart jump into my throat. What was this frail old man going to do to
keep those swords from taking my head? This was turning really bad, really
fast.

Dante
turned his back on them and leaned in close to me. "I don't know how they
found about you already," he said. "Take this." He handed me
a... cellphone? "Mr. Ross will get you out of here."

"Wait...
what am I supposed to do?"

Dante
whispered something and put his hand to my forehead. The entire room started
spinning. One of the dark angels pushed Dante out of the way. The other raised
his sword and smiled, taking pleasure in his killing strike. I closed my eyes
so I didn't have to watch myself die for the second time in one day. I wondered
how that was even
possible,
sure I was about to find
out.

I
felt a pair of arms wrap around me. I smelled something burning. The blow never
came. I opened my eyes. I was standing on the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

I
stood there for a few minutes, trying to make sense of everything that had
happened within what had felt like only a couple of hours. Somehow, I had been
brought back to life. I worried first that I was one of the undead, a zombie or
something, but I could feel the pulse beneath my fingers, and I was cold in the
night air. I was still wearing the same clothes, which I was grateful for,
because it was REALLY cold. Hadn't I died in the summer? How much time had
passed? What was I supposed to do? Where should I start?