Balance (The Divine, Book One) (35 page)

How
could I just let go of being human? I reached out and ran my finger along the
embossment of my name on the stone. Landon Hamilton didn’t exist anymore. He
had been a mortal who had been killed by a demon. I held his memories, but I
was something different, something more. I was
Divine
.

“Landon.”
The voice was soft and warm. Josette.

“What
are you doing here?” I asked, turning to look at her.

She
was standing at the bottom of the steps up to the memorial, wearing the white
coat and boots she seemed to favor. Her eyes were their more human brown, but
she still bore an ethereal glow.

“You
called for me, and I came,” she said.

It
was the same thing Sarah had said when she had appeared here. Did that mean
Josette was asleep too, resting in the front passenger seat of the Suburban?

“How
did I call for you?” I asked. There was so much I still didn’t know.

“I
felt you in my mind, and then there was a door. Your voice was carrying through
it, whispering my name. I opened the door and stepped through, and you were
here. What is this place?” She looked around the exhibit hall, her eyes wide
with wonder. When she saw Ulnyx, she gasped. “This is your Source?” she asked.

I
nodded. “Don’t be afraid of Ulnyx. He’s under my control.” I saw the Great Were
bristle at the statement, but he could do no more.

Josette
stepped up to me. “Do you know what this means?” she asked.

“The
world is my Source,” I repeated. “I should be able to draw power from it when
I’m awake, but so far I haven’t been able to. Josette, you were once alive. How
did you learn to let go?”

She
held up a hand. “Landon, you’ve misunderstood,” she said. “This is not your
mortal world, your Earth.”

I
looked around. It sure looked like the world I was familiar with. “What do you
mean?”

“Do
you remember what I told you of the realms, and how they are organized?”

I
remembered. Heaven, Hell, and Earth were stacked on the same plane, separated
by dimensions of... I don’t know what. Belinda Carlisle hadn’t been totally
wrong, but it was actually Purgatory that was a place on Earth.

“Yes.
What about it?”

As
soon as I asked her, I knew. Her response verified it for me.

“I’ve
fallen,” she said. “That’s why I could hear you calling me. That’s why I can
reach you in this place. Most of us never reach our Source. For those of us who
do, it is often a single room, for the powerful a garden perhaps. I have been
to my Source once. It was my childhood bedroom, the place where I always felt
the most at peace and the most safe. This world is your Source, as amazing as
that is. Purgatory is your Source.”

In
that moment I felt it, and I knew it. I don’t know if I would have had Josette
not been there to open my eyes. Did Dante know? I suspected he did, but he
would never have told me. I had been thinking of Purgatory as a location in the
mortal realm, like a Fantasy Island hidden in the Pacific somewhere, or the
lost city of Atlantis. I had never considered that it was another dimension so
close to our own that it rested just out of reach, in close enough proximity
that I could use its power to alter my familiar universe.

That
was what I had to let go of. Not my prior mortality, but my understanding of
where I was, where my Source originated, the power that I had at my command. I
could change things as I saw fit here. I could make this world as I decided it
to be. When I focused, I was reaching into my Source and changing this world.
What happened in the mortal realm was in many ways a side effect, similar to
the light of the sanctuaries’ beacon.

A
thought, and I was standing right next to Josette, no bipedal motion required.
I put my arm around her tiny waist and with another thought we were outside.
One more thought and I launched us into the sky. This was my place, my rules.
Here, I was as close to a god as I could ever hope to be.

 The
ground was a blur beneath us as we rocketed forward on wings of thought.
Josette was an experienced aviator, but she was filled with a new sense of
wonder in sharing the rush of flight with me. She giggled and hooted while I
looped around the Museum a few times, enjoying the sensation of being airborne,
then shot off into the sky like a cannon. I knew where I wanted and needed to
go.

We
never made it. We were headed in the right direction, a dark streak cutting
through the night air, when Josette gasped and vanished from my arms. A split
second later I felt a sharp pull within my chest, and the ground disappeared
from beneath me. The hard metal roof of the Suburban greeted me instead. My
body slammed up against it, then dropped back down to the seat.

“Dammit,”
Rebecca cried, her arms fighting with the wheel of the truck to keep it on the
road. I could feel the mass of steel slipping and sliding along the
snow-covered surface.

“What’s
happening?” I shouted, reaching out to wedge myself between the roof and the
seat. I heard a sharp cry from outside the car, and then saw
a
gout
of flame pour over the windshield.

“Fire
demon,” Rebecca said, throwing me forward as she slammed on the brakes. I saw a
tremendous torso flash by in front of us, then heard crashing in the trees. “I
don’t think Reyzl was too happy with us ruining his conquest.” Rebecca slammed
back down on the accelerator as heavily as she dared, sending the
Suburban
lurching forward again.

I
couldn’t help but smile. “Good,” I said. “Josette, are you okay?”

She
leaned over the seat to look at me. “For now,” she said. I saw she had a cut on
her forehead that was threatening to run into her eye. She was too vulnerable
like this.

“Did
you have a nice dream?” Rebecca asked. I could see her look back at me in the rearview
mirror. Was that jealousy? What had Josette been saying in her sleep?

“It
was interesting,” I replied.

I
grabbed onto the car again when a massive shoulder pummeled the side. Rebecca’s
hands worked the wheel, and she somehow managed to keep us on the road. She
wouldn’t be able to do this forever.

“I
wouldn’t think a fire demon would do too well with snow,” I said.

“It
wouldn’t, if the snow could touch it,” Rebecca said. “It evaporates before it
has a chance.”

I
looked out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the thing, but it was just
too dark. There was another shrill cry, and I could feel the heat pummeling the
roof of the Suburban. Josette cried out in response, ducking down into the
passenger compartment as far as she could go.

Rebecca
slammed on the brakes once more, throwing me against her seat as the car
skidded forward. The demon was standing in front of us, illuminated in the
headlights, a twenty-plus foot tall winged monster coated in red and blue
flame. Its muscular frame looked like dull red steel, its head a red, chiseled
humanoid face with a pair of curled horns. It was holding a huge jagged edged
cleaver that was dripping heat onto the roadway, where it sizzled and dug into
the cement. I may have been able to heal from burns, but I wasn’t invulnerable,
and that thing didn’t need to be precise to cut us all into pieces.

The
demon raised the blade as we approached, the car doing nothing but sliding
along the icy roadway. Just when its arm reached its apex, the car hit the wet
pavement melted by the demon’s fire and jerked to a stop. We were sitting
ducks. I closed my eyes and focused my will, reaching for the power that I now
knew was just a micron thin film of existence away.

It
was as though I were diving into an ocean, feeling the ripples of energy spread
around me, envelope me, and cleanse me as I submerged myself. I raised my hands
and pulled the snow from the sides and rear of the car, gathering it up and
hardening it to ice over the top us. The crack of the demon’s cleaver sinking
into the ice shield echoed through the night like a massive thunderclap. I felt
the pressure in my mind, but I pushed back, drawing the strength I needed from
my Source. It was enough.

The
fire demon roared out in anger, bringing its weapon down on the shield again
and again. The defense was holding for now, but I couldn’t maintain it forever.
When the monster raised its arm to strike, I threw the block of ice up at it on
a tremendous gust of air. It managed to get through the flame and slam into the
demon, causing it to cry out in unimaginable agony. It tumbled backwards to
land with a terrible crash.

Massive
amounts of steam poured off it, the flames of its body dimming and pulsing,
fighting to stay lit. I took the opportunity to throw open the rear door of the
truck, grab one of Rebecca’s swords, and jump out. Rebecca and Josette both
reached back to try to stop me, but I evaded their efforts. The second I was
clear, I pulled more of the snow and moisture to me, encasing the Suburban in
ice. This was one fight they couldn’t help me win. I walked to the front of the
car, lit from behind by the car’s headlights reflecting through the ice. I
looked back and could see Rebecca and Josette both watching me with frightened
concern.

I
raised the blessed sword in front of me and focused my will on the air around
me, pulling the heat out of it and making it colder and colder. My skin crawled
with the tingling numbness of threatened hypothermia, my Divine nature keeping
me in an uncomfortable but survivable homeostasis. The fire demon’s flames had
sputtered back to life, and it pulled itself to its feet. I stood before it, a
mouse against a lion, certain only that I wasn’t about to let it toast my
friends.

It
regarded me warily, yellow eyes peering down on me from above, not sure what to
make of the puny thing that had knocked it on its ass. We stared each other
down for a minute or more, and then it reared back and belched flame, leaning
down and in at me as it did so.

I
sucked the heat from the air around me, pushing it away and off to the
landscape on either side of the road. The trees around us ignited, lighting up
the scene as if we were battling in Hell itself. The blade followed the gout of
flame
;
its size creating more of a scream than a
whistle.

I
brought up my own sword to block, holding tight on my Source and pulling in
more and more power to steel my body against the blow. I caught the edge of the
blade with my own, feeling the vibration through my limbs as I pushed back
against the force.

My
feet dug into the pavement, pulling up cement while I slid backwards. I pushed
harder, feeling the heat of my muscles, the heat of the cleaver’s flames, then
turned the weapon aside.

I
leaped forward on impossibly strong legs, my body carried up, up, up, right into
the face of the surprised demon. I focused once more, taking the cold of the
frigid air around me and pumping it all into the sword. A nasty set of teeth
bent and snapped at me as I rose towards them, but I planted my free hand on
the demon’s small, wide nose, switched my grip on the blessed blade, and sank
it deep into the monster’s forehead.

The
length of the weapon steamed and hissed, the cold breaking through the barrier
of heat, the icy metal a powerful poison. Veins of ice spread out from the insertion
point, and the demon screamed in pain. I held on while it shook and thrashed,
reaching up to try to pry the metal splinter loose.

It
took almost three minutes for the demon to stop fighting to dislodge me, and I
held tight to the sword the entire time. The ice ran down from its head to its
neck, from its neck to its shoulders, out and down towards its feet. The flames
that coated its body snuffed out, it dropped to a knee, and then fell forward
to the ground. When it hit the earth it shattered, breaking into millions of
pieces of frozen ash. Its head was the last to smash against the road, and it
landed just feet from the front of the Suburban.

While
the skull was being reduced to icy dust, I waved at Rebecca and Josette, a
surfer making a clean break to the shore. Back on terra firma, I pulled the
protective shell away from the car, and then let go of my hold on my Source. At
once I was overcome with a wave of heat, nausea, pain, and light, and I don’t
know what happened next, because I wasn’t awake to witness it.

I
woke up in bed at the Waldorf, my naked body frigid to the touch, shivering
with chills, and sweating profusely despite being buried under a mound of
blankets. Josette was sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, keeping an
unblinking watch on me. She had traded in her angel robe for a pair of blue
jeans and a leather jacket, looking ever more the human than I could have
anticipated. Still, the look suited her.

“Hey,”
I said, my voice little more than a meek whisper. I tried to lift my head and
was rewarded with a massive throbbing.

Her
face lit up when she saw I was awake. “Fellow, you are revived,” she said.
“Thank the Lord.”

She
was forgetting herself, and she looked embarrassed for it. I was going to ask
her what time it was, what day it was, but somehow, I knew. I could feel a
trickle of energy flowing into me from Purgatory like a leaky faucet. The
innate connection between the two realms was undeniable. I guess it had to be
that way in order for Mr. Ross’ so-called ‘processing’ to run without a hitch.