“Landon,” she cried, seeing me appear behind the fiend. Izak turned, quickly masking a look of surprise at my return. She took advantage of the distraction, ducking past the demon and throwing herself into me, wrapping her arms around me and nuzzling my neck.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, untangling myself from her. “I slowed it down a bit, but we have to get going.”

  Izak motioned with his arm, ushering us into the final room before the rift. It was almost just as Josette had remembered it, with one major difference.

  Standing in the center of the room was a large wooden crucifix. From it hung an angel, an old, gray angel, wings spread and nailed to the ends of the cross, hands stretched above his head, body gaunt and unclothed. His head hung limply to his chest, but it rose as we approached.

  “Demons,” he said, in a quiet, hollow voice. “Have you come to die?”

  “You’re the only one who looks like they’re going to die,” Lylyx said.

  His laugh was a wheeze and a cough. “You truly think that, do you were?” he asked. “I don’t know how you got past it, but it will be along for you soon. Whatever you’re doing here, you should never have come.”

  “Get past what?” I asked.

  His eyes fell on mine, and narrowed. “A diuscrucis?” he said, alarmed. “So she wasn’t lying.”

  “Who?”

  The angel looked up at his bonds, then over to his wings. “Release me, diuscrucis, and I’ll tell you a tale. When it’s done, all that I ask is that you set my soul free from this prison.”

  “You want me to kill you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied. “But I beseech you to allow my soul to travel to whatever waits beyond.”

  I nodded, focusing on the nails that held the angel in place and pulling them from the cross. He would have tumbled to the ground, but Lylyx caught him and lowered him to the floor. The angel took a deep breath and fluttered his wings. Once he was off the cross, I could see the blade that had been affixed to the post, stabbing into his spine and preventing him from escaping his torture.

  “Do not underestimate the kindness you have done me,” the angel said to Lylyx. She looked surprised, and stepped back away from him.

  “Speak quickly seraph,” I said. “As you’ve said, the demon that hunts in these sewers won’t be trapped forever.”

  “Of course,” the angel replied. “I am Archangel Avriel.”

  My head nearly burst from the power of Josette’s voice in my soul. “Avriel the Just,” she said with a mixture of joy and sadness.

  “I was ordained by Michael himself shortly after the death of Jesus,” he said. “During my years among the living, I was a simple farmer, a layman, known among my peers for my honor and integrity. My sense of justice.” His voice strengthened as he spoke, and the years began to roll off, his body finally able to regenerate. Just how long had he been hanging on that cross?

  “I found even greater justice in death, volunteering into the Lord’s Holy War against the First Fallen’s mischief on mankind. As a shepherd of the Lord I was offered the chance to protect the meek, and in time rose to be the greatest seraphim walking the mortal plane. In those days, there were few diuscrucis, and those that walked the Earth were direct descendants, hated by both demon and angel, ostracized and killed when possible.”

  Avriel had finished healing, and now stood up straight and proud, his seven foot frame rippling with muscle and power. His gray wings had regenerated to a healthy silken white, with golden tips. He wrapped the wings around his front to cover his nakedness.

  “So it was that the balance was maintained only through the opposing efforts of both Heaven and Hell, and it was common for the archangels to walk the Earth in response to the growing demon threat. We were the most skilled fighters, the best engineers, the strongest in holy scripture. For many years, we kept them at bay, until we no longer could.

  “One day, a blight appeared on the mortal realm that threatened to destroy the balance, to end the reign of humanity and deny the Lord his rightful victory. It was a cold darkness that stretched across the land, bringing hopelessness and death to all that it touched. It was the First Fallen’s greatest creation, culled from the anguish of his many thousands of prisoners. Its name was Abaddon.”

  “Abaddon,” Josette cried out. The strength of her fear burst into my head, and I closed my eyes and clutched at my temples.

  “Abaddon is a myth,” I said, Josette’s thoughts reflected in my speech.

  Avriel approached me, spreading his wings and wrapping me in them. He lowered his face so it was only inches from my own. “You’ve taken an angel?” he asked, boring his eyes into mine.

  I felt Josette within me, being pulled to the surface by his gaze.

  “Not taken,” she said through my voice. “Offered.”

  His eyes softened. “Why?” he asked, his unspoken word resonating in my mind.

  “A new blight is threatening,” Josette said. “The demons move against the diuscrucis. We are not strong enough. If he is removed, we will lose.”

  Avriel nodded, and looked up at the entrance to the room. “It is almost through your barriers,” he said. “Abaddon is no myth. It is the deepest heart of Hell’s despair, and it once walked this Earth, destroying all that it touched. Angel, demon, human, animal, plant, it makes no difference. It exists to feed.

  “Thousands were killed in its blights, and countless more would have died had we not engineered the creature’s doom. A box of my own design, covered in seraphim runes and imbued by all of the disciples. I alone was charged with bringing the box to Abaddon. I alone was charged with approaching the demon, having developed the mental strength needed to combat its message of fear and death. I succeeded in my conquest, and caught the monster in the box, but not without cost. I too was trapped by my design, and spent countless hundreds of years in a war that could not end. We have destroyed one another more times than can be known, but the power of the box is such to repeat the cycle of time, and so we did.”

  I could feel the blackness begin to creep in. It was taking its time to reach us, unhurried in its confidence. Avriel sensed it too, and he stepped over to the doorway and scratched out holy scripture into the stone floor. As he completed the characters, it took on a soft golden glow.

  “That will give me time to finish my story,” he said, turning back to us and continuing. “I don’t know how long we were inside. I couldn’t know what happened to the box, for it would have fallen in the center of the demon’s desolation, left lying on the naked ground to be discovered by anyone, or anything. Time passed, impossible to track in the prison of my own making.

  “Then one day, it destroyed me. I would have expected to return to my place inside the box, waiting for the demon to find me again, but instead woke here, nailed to this cross, with Abaddon standing before me, no longer contained. For the first time ever, it spoke to me.

  “‘You are mine at last,’ it said. ‘You can never escape, and I will delight in the years of despair you will feel from my hand, in payment for the years of despair I have felt chained inside your device.’”

  The darkness couldn’t pierce the archangel’s scripture, but there was a shriek from the other side of the doorway, and when I looked up it was standing there, its vague, black, humanoid form shifting and moving while it tested Avriel’s defenses. It didn’t sound happy that he was off the cross.

  “The demon remains here to torture me,” Avriel said. “Each day it forces itself into my soul, and I suffer a fate I would wish on no one. We are bound by the power that returned us from my prison, the power of the Demon Queen. Once I am gone, it won’t be able to survive here, and it will retreat to Hell.”

  “The Demon Queen?” I asked. “She was here?”

  “I do not know,” Avriel replied. “Abaddon has told me she is the one who set us free, and nailed me to the crucifix.”

  There was a hissing sound, and when I looked back I could see that Abaddon was defeating the archangel’s runes, black tendrils smothering them and erasing them from the stone. I felt the cold despair returning, and I knew our time was up.

  “Destroy me now, diuscrucis,” Avriel said. “For all our sakes.”

  I looked at him, and then back at the demon. “If I kill you, Abaddon will be returned to Hell?”

  “Yes,” he said. He began to grow agitated.

  “If he’s returned to Hell, he can be brought back to the mortal realm, untethered by your bond,” I said. “Do you have any idea what that could mean?”

  The glow of the runes began to flicker, and more of the demon’s power began to ooze into the room. The hellfire sconces started going out, one by one. Avriel’s eyes grew wide, and he grabbed my shoulder.

  “Please,” he said. “You made a promise.”

  We were out of time. I took hold of Ulnyx’s power and used it to create a single sharp claw. All I needed to do was break the skin.

  “Hurry,” Avriel cried, spreading his wings wide and holding out his arms to give me a clear opening.

  I focused, pulling on the air, creating a massive gust that lifted the archangel. It threw him backward, returning him to his place of impalement on the cross. I located the nails lying on the ground and pulled them up, pinning his wings and hands anew, leaving him in tears.

  “You promised,” he cried, his voice soft, hoarse, and filled with despair.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I reached out and took Lylyx by the arm, pulling her with me towards the open mouth of the giant demon skull. Izak was already in the tunnel, running for the rift.

  Chapter 13

  “Light it up,” I said to Izak as soon as we reached the end of the short tunnel. I had half-expected that Charis would have destroyed the rift, and left us to be devoured by Abaddon. Then again, I had a sneaking suspicion that freeing the demon was precisely what the Demon Queen had hoped I would do.

  Izak knelt at the rift and began tracing over the existing runes, making a series of harsh guttural sounds in the back of his throat. Cries of extraordinary agony echoed through the tunnel; the demon extracting payment for Avriel’s defiance. I cringed with every terrible vocalization, trying to ignore the guilt I was feeling for leaving the archangel in such a state.

  The circular set of runes began to flame, and I felt a slight charge of ionized air fill the space. Izak stepped back from the transport rift and motioned me towards it.

  “Be ready,” I said. There was no telling what might greet us on the other side.

  Lylyx reached out and took hold of my arm. “These things always make me a little dizzy,” she said.

  I gave a slight nod, and stepped into the rift.

  I had only been through a rift one other time since I had visited the Demon Queen and retrieved the Grail. I was chasing a fiend through the streets of Manhattan when he ducked down an alley and into an old, abandoned bar. I followed him into the bathroom, and after shoving my way through the door had found myself in a different abandoned pub in Dublin, Ireland. In the end, I had caught and killed the fiend, and destroyed both ends of the rift. They didn’t make me dizzy, but I hated not knowing what I was walking into.

  I was expecting a well-laid trap, or at the very least a poorly laid trap. I thought maybe Charis would be there on the other side, as she had those years before, waiting to gloat and tell me again what a fool I was. I considered that Gervais would be there, his own power brought to bear, ready to strike me down before I could gather my wits.

  None of that happened. One foot left the rift while the other one entered, and on the other side there was nothing. No Charis, no Gervais, no Sarah, no minions or underlings. Nothing. I had made every effort not to be taken by surprise, and instead I was taken by surprise. I stood there in shock long enough for Izak to bump me on his way through.

  He stumbled to a stop, looking as confused as I imagined I did. Lylyx seemed out of sorts as well, but that may have been her reaction to the travel.

  “Not what I expected,” I said. We were in a simple twelve-foot square room with the rift in the center, an open doorway beyond. I focused on my Sight, reaching out for a sign of an ambush, or at least an indication that there was anyone home. Nothing but nothing. My heart sank. Where was Sarah?

  “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Lylyx asked, recovering from her disorientation. She dropped my arm and used it to point at Izak. “Are you sure you can trust this one?”

  The demon ruffled at her suggestion, rounding on her with flames in his eyes. I stepped between them.

  “I trust Izak more than I trust you,” I said. I turned to the fiend. “We’re in the right place, aren’t we?”

  Izak nodded, waving at the room and giving me the thumbs up. This was where he had planned for us to be.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll take a look around, and see if we can figure out what’s going on.” Mr. Ross had said Gervais returned to Paris. Sarah had to be here. “Keep your guard up, they may be able to hide themselves from Sight.”

  I started towards the door, but Izak put his hand on my shoulder. When I turned back, he pointed at his chest. The brand. He motioned at the floor, and then took a seat.

  “What are you doing?” Lylyx asked.

  “He has to stay here,” I said. “Gervais is his master. He’s been branded.”

  Lylyx’s face softened. “How?” she asked quietly.

  Izak glanced up at her, and then turned away, embarrassed.

  “Leave him be,” I told her. “It’s none of our business. Let’s go.”

  We headed out of the room, finding ourselves in a long, straight stone corridor that didn’t appear all that different from the sewer we had just escaped. There were a few doors spaced along either side of the hallway, but opening them showed the rooms to be no more than standard household storage – cleaning supplies, sacks of grain, tack for horses, and anything else a rich French noble might need to enjoy the comfort of his chateau.

  The end of the corridor brought us to a small, open room that split at a pair of narrow stairways headed in opposite directions.

  “Up or down?” Lylyx asked. I closed my eyes and focused my Sight, but still there was nothing.

  “Which way?” I asked, reaching out for Josette. I knew she could hear me, but her response couldn’t pierce the solitude. I wanted to search her memories, but the idea scared me. Here of all places, I had no idea what I would find, what I would experience, or what it would do to me.

  We had determined it was my power, my connection to Purgatory that was obscuring our ability to communicate. It was a river of energy that couldn’t be easily crossed. She had done it on occasion, with help or in moments of strong emotion, and I could always feel both her and Ulnyx’s pulse running just below the surface, fluctuating in and out of reach. It was clear that the key to letting her through was to stifle the connection, to put a finger in the dam, but I had no idea how, at least not consciously. All of my efforts up to now had been to learn to amplify the signal, not suppress it.

  I opened my eyes and considered the steps. The chateau was huge, at least forty rooms, and that was only the upper floors. I knew Gervais had also built a laboratory somewhere underground, as well as a prison. What else had he constructed beneath the surface that I didn’t know about, but maybe Josette did? I could have used her help.

  “Down,” I said at last. It was the lab that decided it for me. Just the tiniest sliver of a thought that Sarah could be down there was enough to turn me cold.

  We descended the stairs, following three narrow flights into the bowels of the chateau. Still, the estate seemed deserted.

  The steps finally fed out into a large, unlit corridor that I recognized immediately as the prison. Rows of cells lined the passage, and I stopped to take note of the runes that covered each individual bar. This wasn’t an ordinary dungeon. These were cells designed to hold demons.

  All except the last one. The last one had runes too, but they were different. The entire hollow was different. It was three times the size of the others, with a soft pillow-top mattress in the corner, along with a recliner, end table, lamp, and a shelf full of books. It was warmly decorated, and strangely homey. I lost myself at the sight of it.

  The demon looks in at me with inquisitive eyes. I’ve seen this one before, I know, trailing along behind Gervais, attending to his needs. I remember chasing him outside of Notre Dame, only to have him vanish around a corner like no more than a ghost.

  Izak. That’s what Gervais calls him, but when I hear my brother’s voice echo through the dungeon I see the demon bristle, and I know that isn’t his true name. Why does he call him that, I wonder? Does it have meaning, or is the moniker a flaunt? I can see the runes on the fiend’s arms, and I know he has power of his own.

  He’s standing there, looking at me, his hands wrapped around the bars that bind me to this place, preventing me from returning to Heaven. He’s been coming around more often lately, and staying longer to stare at me.

  “Good morning Izak,” I say. I began speaking to him a few weeks ago out of boredom and loneliness. He doesn’t bristle when I say the name anymore. When I say it, he almost looks pleased. “Have you come to check on Sarah?”

  He never speaks back, either with his eyes or his hands. I know he cannot use his voice, because he has no tongue. It was taken long enough ago that he doesn’t try.

  I put my hand to my stomach, feeling the small bump of it. So much fear at the truth of the pregnancy, but I am a servant of the Lord, and the Lord has seen fit to bless me with this child. She is innocent of the crimes of her father. She is innocent of her heritage. I know the others would disagree, but it is my right to believe in a just, kind, and merciful Lord. It is my right to believe He has a plan for Sarah, or she would not be developing in my womb, the first diuscrucis born in nearly two millennia.

  The demon is still standing there, staring at me. He looks sad.

  “Why don’t you come in?” I offer. “It’s early, and I’m sure your master is still in bed.”