Balance (The Divine, Book One) (39 page)

Obi
dropped to his knees in front of me, still looking up at me with proud
confidence. I reached out and put my hands on his forehead, then closed my
eyes. I could feel the soft heat of his flesh against my palms, and I held onto
that sensation as I reached down into my soul and took hold of the flow of my
Source. I pulled it up with care, not sure of how much I needed, and certain
that I didn’t want to harm Obi.

As I
gathered the power, I focused my will on the former Marine, telling his body to
be stronger, tougher, healthier, more powerful - superhuman. His forehead grew
hotter under my hands, and I could feel the sweat beading and running along the
outside of my fingers. I pushed more of the energy into him, each moment of
thought and will increasing his endurance. When his mouth opened and he began
to moan, I ebbed the flow and dropped my hands from his forehead. The second I
did, his body fell backwards onto the floor.

“Obi,”
I said, kneeling down over him. “Obi!” I was going to put my hand to his throat
to check his pulse, but I didn’t need to. I could sense him lying there below
me. I could feel the Divine energy that I had implanted in him, the same as I
could sense it in others. I knew he was alive, I just hoped he wouldn’t sleep
too long.

His
eyes flicked open, and he threw out a surprised fist. It connected squarely
with my gut, the blow cracking my ribs and lifting me four feet off the ground.
I landed back on my knees with grunt of pain.

“Ah
crap,” Obi said, realizing it was
me
. “I’m sorry,
man.”

“I
guess it worked,” I said. “How do you feel?”

“Ready
to go kill some demons,” he replied.

I
stood and held out my hand to him, but he used his new strength to push himself
up off the floor to a stand.

“Thanks
man, but I got it,” he said with a grin.

We
went back out into the living room. Josette and Rebecca were sitting on the
sofa, facing each other and talking as if they were old friends. When they
noticed we had returned, they both looked at us and giggled.

“What?”
I asked defensively. I had gotten the giggle treatment a lot in my youth, and I
knew from that experience it was never due to something flattering.

“It
is of no concern fellow,” Josette said. Her eyes examined Obi. “It is done,” she
stated.

“I’m
a new man,” Obi replied.

“You
Turned
him?” Rebecca asked, surprised.

“Enhanced,”
Obi corrected. “I’m not a demon.”

“Reyzl?”
I asked, with a little more force than I had intended.

“Let’s
go up to the roof,” Rebecca said.

“What
were you talking to Josette about?”

I had
been needling Rebecca for the contents of her conversation with the seraph the
entire way up to the roof. We had left Josette and Obi behind, and had taken
the emergency stairwell up, bypassing the door lock that was supposed to keep
guests away from the top of the building. She had been ignoring me until we
stepped out onto the blacktop.

It
was a dark, dreary, drizzly day, the kind that I had always hated when I had
been a kid. I was thankful for the weather now, because it meant Rebecca could
be out here without risking her health.

“Landon,”
she said, giving me that same look of inferiority that I was getting used to.
“You destroyed a fire demon single-handed, and you’re worried about girl-talk?”

“Girls
are a lot more intimidating than fire demons,” I replied, shrugging.

She
laughed, and then sighed. “If you must know, Josette thanked me for bringing
you to her, for helping save the sanctuary and her life. She said thank you in
the truck on the way back, but whatever you said to her while I was gone, she
was a lot more exuberant. Anyway, as we were talking about it I made a comment
about the way you lost all of your clothes in the flames, and she admitted with
much embarrassment that God gifted you with a fine physique. You should be
flattered to have an angel say that about you.”

My
face had turned beet red by then, and I couldn’t make eye contact with her. “I
didn’t think Josette thought about me that way.”

She
tilted her head to the side to listen, then led me away from the stairwell and
over towards the huge air-conditioning unit. “Don’t get too flattered,” she
said. “She doesn’t think about anyone that way. But she does believe in you,
which is much more important.”

“What
about you?”

When
we reached the back of the unit she stopped walking and kissed me on the cheek.
“I believe in you too. He’ll be here in a few seconds.”

I was
going to ask her who, but I felt the presence approaching for myself. It wasn’t
Reyzl, but it was familiar. A moment later, a small demon popped up over the
side of the roof. He grinned when he saw us.

“Ahh
yesss, the vampiresss and her toy.”

Rebecca
bared her fangs at the demon. ”Yuli, I suggest you show some respect, or my toy
will break you in half with a thought.”

Reyzl’s
messenger stopped laughing and looked at me with a frightened expression. “My
apologiesss Mastersss... whatss your namesss?”

“Landon,”
Rebecca said. “Diuscrucis Master Landon. If Reyzl doesn’t remember him, remind
him that it was Landon who killed his servants at the Catskill sanctuary.”

I
didn’t think the demon could look more afraid of me than he already had, but
somehow his posture took on an even deeper level of fear. He was shaking as he
spoke again. “You havess a message for Mastersss?”

“I
want to make a deal,” I said. “Tell him we know his plans, and we want a piece
of the action. We’ll retrieve the Chalice from the Demon Queen, and keep his
amulets in play so he can launch his attack against her. In exchange, he’ll
tell us how to reach her. He’ll also agree to allow us to keep the Chalice and
take it off the table.”

“If
he accepts he’s to meet us on Liberty Island in an hour,” Rebecca added.

I
wondered if we had overloaded Yuli’s tiny mind, as he hovered silent and
motionless for over a minute. I looked at Rebecca, wondering what was going on,
but she was reacting as if the activity were normal. Finally, he nodded.
“Yesss, yesss.
Masterssss acceptsss your dealsss.
He
will
meetsss you.”

“One
hour,” Rebecca repeated. We were going to have to move fast to get there in
such a short amount of time.

“One
hourssss,” Yuli said. He gave me one last frightened glance and darted away,
disappearing around the corner of the air conditioner.

“Can
all demons communicate telepathically?” I asked her, once I could no longer
sense Reyzl’s messenger.

“No,”
she replied. “Yuli is Reyzl’s familiar. They have a blood bond that allows them
to communicate without regard for distance, among other things. His messages
are the only ones Reyzl trusts completely, which is why I called for him.”

“Well
it looks like the deal is on,” I said. “An hour isn’t much time.”

“Then
we better get a move on, worm.”

“What
about the Touched coming up the stairs?” I asked.

There
were four of them total. I had noticed them approaching as the familiar had
left, but Rebecca must have caught their scent sooner. That was why she had
positioned us out of sight while we had taken care of our business with Reyzl.

She
looked at me with black eyes. “We could use a few more swords,” she suggested.

I
heard the door groan as it opened, and four pairs of boots stomped out onto the
rooftop. I could sense them standing there, uncertain.

“I
know I saw it stop up here,” I heard one of them say. “It looks like it’s
gone.”

“Let’s
look around, just to make sure,” another one said.

They
had come up here looking for Yuli. Now they were fanning out, going over to the
sides of the building and looking out and down to see if they could catch a
glimpse of where the demon was headed. One of the Touched was headed for our
not-so-hidden hiding spot.

“Landon?”
Rebecca asked.

I
didn’t want to kill them. I wish my reasons were more kind, but it was mostly
because I didn’t want to upset Josette, or risk doing any more damage to the
balance.

“Can
you disable them without hurting them?”

She
didn’t look pleased, but she nodded. Her clawed fingers retracted back into
normal hands, and she reached into a pocket and removed a pair of gloves. She
couldn’t cut them without the poison killing them. Then again, I was sure she
had done this plenty of times before. It wouldn’t be very helpful to kill your
prey before you could drain it of its blood.

Rebecca
padded over to the corner and waited for the Touched to approach. I could sense
them moving, and knew they were getting closer. I had just enough time to see
half a head of long brown hair move past the edge of the HVAC when Rebecca
reached out, grabbed the Touched, twisted her around and slipped a hand around
her neck and mouth. I looked her right in her frightened eyes while Rebecca
constricted her throat until she passed out.

“She
has a dagger,” Rebecca said, finding the small thin blade beneath a black down
jacket.

“If
it’ll hurt a demon, we’ll take it. Come on,” I said, picking up the unconscious
woman and taking us out from behind the air conditioner. When we got to the
center of the rooftop I called out to her friends. “Hey,” I shouted.

The
other Touched were still peeking over the edges of the building, searching for
Yuli, but they turned to me when I spoke. There were two men and another woman,
all wearing the same black down jacket. Seeing one of theirs in my arms, they
stayed motionless while waiting to see what I wanted.

“She’s
alive,” I told them. “You can all go home alive, and you can take her with you,
but I need your weapons.”

“What
does a demon need with a blessed dagger?” the woman asked. Her voice was a
mixture of fear and anger.

“Look
closer. I’m not a demon,” I said. “But I do need to go and kill one, and I’ll
need your knives to do it. Please don’t make me take them by force.”

The
woman stepped towards me. “If you hand me my sister, we’ll drop our weapons
here and leave.”

I
nodded, and started walking towards her with her sister cradled in my arms.
When I had reached her, I saw she had tears running down her face. I had been
so callous in my consideration of their mortal lives. What was I becoming? I
put the woman down and held her so her sister could support her. She used her
free hand to reach into her jacket and take out her blade, handing it to me hilt
first.

“If
you’re killing demons, I wish you good hunting,” she said to me. “Come on
fellows,” she shouted to the two men. I could hear their daggers clatter onto
the blacktop. A moment later the door groaned again, and they were gone.

“The
Order of the Blessed Virgin,” Rebecca said after they had left. “They take a
vow of celibacy when they’re
Touched
. They’re
servants, not warriors, which means the angels must be getting desperate to
send them out into the fray.”

“They
have to be getting reports of the other attacks. We need to get to the Statue.
Let’s grab the daggers and go.”

Getting
from the Waldorf to Battery Park before the last possible outgoing ferry made
its departure proved to be a challenge of its own, even without any hiccups.
After meeting back up with Josette and Obi, we decided on public transit,
hopping a couple of subways and walking a bit to get down to dock with only a
couple of minutes to spare. I had covered us all in a simple disguise as
Japanese tourists, and the rainy weather was helpful to hide the two swords as
umbrellas. We had also each claimed one of the Blessed Order’s daggers. There
had been a moment of tension when Rebecca and I had returned from the roof with
them, but Josette had been elated when I told her that nobody had been killed
in their acquisition.

It
was the middle of the afternoon when the ferry docked at the Island. I looked
up at the Statue, and couldn’t help but think about the night Mr. Ross had
dropped me off on the torch; cold, scared, and confused. It had only been a few
days ago, but I felt like it had been an eternity. I had learned so much,
experienced so much, changed so much in that short time.

I
looked at Rebecca, remembering our first encounter. The way she had pummeled
the closet I had been hiding in, toyed with me like a cat, and in the end let
me go. She had been frightening in her raw, violent power. That fear had turned
to admiration and affection. She wasn’t a mindless killing monster, but a
beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful creature with her own free will, her own
power to make her own decisions. She caught me looking at her and winked. It
was like she could read my mind.

The
rain had kept some of the visitors away, but the Island was still crowded with
people. We disembarked from the ferry and headed up towards the Statue itself.
I kept my senses focused on the area around us, staying alert to any Divine
that might show up. I wasn’t picking up anything.