Gervais paused and sat motionless on the end of the chain, deep in thought. “Why would she say that?” he asked in a whisper before continuing his tale.

  “‘Almost,’ Reyka had said to her. ‘You’re safe now.’ And then the bitch put her vampires on me.”

  “You got beat by vampires?” I asked, confused. In the earth-walking demonic food chain, Gervais was near the top, while vampires were close to the bottom.

  “Really stretching your head muscles on that one, aren’t you diuscrucis,” he spat. “She’s done something to them. They’re stronger and heal faster than any demon I’ve ever seen. They even healed from my fire.”

  I was ready to fire back on the first comment, but the second stopped me dead. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling I knew what she had done. The Grail, my blood, her blood. It made me sick to my stomach.

  “I couldn’t defeat them,” he said. “Not without risking Sarah and bringing the entire chateau down on us. They chained me up, and Reyka stuck the dagger in my heart. She didn’t want my allegiance. She wanted to give you a gift, an apology of sorts. She said to tell you that Sarah is safe in her care and that she’s waiting for you.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Las Lajas Cathedral,” he said. “South America.”

  He was lying. “Izak,” I said, turning to the fiend. “Your former master thinks he can lie to me.”

  Izak clenched his fist, and it lit up in flame.

  “Wait,” Gervais cried. “I swear that’s where she said she would be.” Truth. “I don’t believe her.” Truth.

  I paused Izak. “Why don’t you believe her?” I asked.

  “Do you know what would happen if she tried to hang out inside a church?” Gervais asked. “She’d be surrounded by angels within thirty seconds, and cathedrals have power of their own. She may be strong, but she isn’t that strong.”

  “Even with an army of super vampires?”

  Gervais fell silent. “Sarah,” he said finally.

  “What about her?” I asked.

  “Look at my eyes, diuscrucis,” he said.

  “Rebecca took them,” I replied. “You deserved it.”

  Gervais laughed. “Reyka didn’t take them. Sarah did.”

  I felt Josette’s fear creep up my soul, where it was added to my own. “Sarah did?” I asked.

  Not that it wasn’t understandable after what the demon had done to her, but it was still surprising. When I thought of her, I saw only the innocent, frightened girl who had slept by my side and named me protector.

  “If she had tortured anyone else the way she did her father, I would have been proud,” he said.

  I had another thought then. One that was more disconcerting than any other. Gervais had always wanted to raise Sarah to be evil, to tap into her power and use it for his own ends. Josette had believed that getting her away from the archfiend would be her salvation. What if Gervais’ influence was unnecessary? What if she was breaking bad on her own? Sarah had tried to Command me. She had sent Izak with me against his will. She had cut out the demon’s eyes, and had asked Rebecca if it was time, as though she were in on whatever was going on.

  “Why would Rebecca bring Sarah to Las Lajas?” I asked, gripped with a dread that I couldn’t shake.

  “If Sarah’s power is maturing, she’ll be able to Command the seraph. She can make them fall, and she can do it faster than you can balance it. She’ll need time though, time to learn to control them. Las Lajas is the sandbox. The Vatican will be the battlefield.”

  My fear evolved into anger. “Is this what you wanted?” I shouted, walking back over to the demon and planting the dagger deep into his flesh. He didn’t react to the wound. “Is this what you raped your sister for? Is this what you imprisoned her for?” I pulled the blade out and stabbed him again, and again. I could sense Josette in the back of my soul, but I still controlled her, and I pushed my power between us.

  It was surprising that Izak would be the one to stop my mutilation of the demon. He grabbed me from behind and ripped me away from Gervais, leaving him as a shredded mess, blood streaming to the floor. He immediately began to heal.

  “I want power,” Gervais said with unaffected calm. “Sarah was to help me control this world, not destroy it. Let Satan have Hell, let God have Heaven, let Dante have Purgatory. Earth could have been mine.”

  He actually sounded remorseful. It made me sick. Gervais had occupied so much of the pain and anger I had been carrying around for the last five years, his treatment of Josette blasting at me from her memories and my reaction to them. I don’t know how many times I had been doubled over by those memories, left leaning or crouching with tears running from my eyes, my heart racing, unable to control myself. He was the boogie man in my nightmares, and like any kid growing up and finding out there were no monsters under the bed, I was discovering that his power was an illusion fed by the very fears that had incapacitated me. Josette’s ties to him were too personal to see through the charade, but now that I was looking on him, hanging blind from the ceiling, I almost felt pity. Almost.

  “I’ve told you everything I know,” Gervais said. “Now set me free.”

  “Lylyx,” I said, turning back towards the door to the lab, “stay here with Izak. I have to go meet someone.” I glanced over at the fiend. “Izak, I’m done. Do whatever you want with him.”

  Izak smiled. He hadn’t pulled me away to stop me. He had pulled me away because he wanted to be the one to destroy the archfiend. I could feel Josette struggling within me, and I begged her for forgiveness. It was the second promise I had broken in less than an hour, but I decided that I could live with that.

  I found a Ferrari in the carriage house outside the chateau. I could hear Gervais’ screams as I drove away.

  Chapter 15

  There was a certain comfort to the sooth purr of the Ferrari’s engine that helped me keep my mind in some kind of coherent state while I made the much longer mortal trip back to Paris from Gervais’ chateau in Besancon, not far from the Swiss border. It was nearly six o’clock France time, and I could only hope that whatever was occurring at the Eiffel Tower today hadn’t happened yet. Since I was running under the assumption that the party was in my honor, I was pretty sure that it hadn’t.

  Of course, it didn’t offer me any more clarity. I had spent the last five years fighting every day to keep my emotions in check, to push them down into the recesses of my soul and try to lose them there. It had made my work maintaining the balance almost clinical, an exercise in efficiency. It had led me to scour the world for answers to Charis’ riddle, because the unfeeling soul meant an eternity worse than anything Hell could throw at me. In the end, it had cost me Sarah, because I had ignored the warning signs and plodded on my fixated course.

  Now? Now it was all coming back in a flood of anger that was threatening to complete my failure. I had lost Josette and Rebecca that day under the Statue of Liberty, but at least I thought I had won the war for balance. I was beginning to see that I hadn’t won anything. At best I had just delayed some schemes for a while, taking the Grail out of the game and causing the forces around me to move on to plan B. The trouble was, I couldn’t figure out the game, or even who the players were. Charis was out there, and she had freed the demon Abaddon in Gervais’ tunnels. Did the archfiend know about it? In my eagerness to reach Sarah, I hadn’t even thought to ask him. She had also sent a witch and Lylyx to slow me down, to keep me from getting to Gervais too soon. Why?

  What about Sarah? The fear of her maturation into a powerful diuscrucis who had chosen selfishness and power had been converted and joined with the rest of my anger. If she really had moved in that direction, it was because of what Gervais had dictated she would be. She had grown up in fear and hiding. Suppose she found she had the power to live a different way, to be in control of her own life? Could anyone blame her for using it? How much evil was ingrained by fate, how much by genetics, how much by fear and lack of independence? Her lineage made her the poster child for nature versus nurture, but even there I saw only balance.

  Where did Rebecca fit in? She had given Sarah up to Gervais, but then taken her in and left Gervais for me. The archfiend had said it was a gift to me, but why leave me a gift unless she wanted something? What could she possibly want, if she already had Sarah, and with it the means to bring down Heaven? Unless Gervais was wrong, and she had taken Sarah to prevent that very thing. But the demon had said Hell had changed her. I couldn’t imagine Hell changing anyone in a good way.

  Too many balls in the air, and none of them rotating in a predictable orbit. Trying to catch them all was out of the question, and the powerlessness of that truth fueled my anger even more. Obi had given me the only solid clue I had in anything. A message sent by anonymous, intended to be intercepted and lead me to the Eiffel Tower. I would follow it and let this part of the game play out, and then I would see the truth. Sarah had said it to me plainly the first time we had met - they can’t win if you don’t play. I wasn’t sure I had a choice. I jammed my foot down harder on the accelerator, an angry grimace playing across my face as the car burst forward with renewed force.

  It was just after eight when I eased the Ferrari into a spot on the street across from the Tower. The spot had been a little too small for the car, so I had focused, giving the fore and aft vehicles just enough shove to make room. I changed my appearance before getting out of the car; an older gentleman with salt and pepper hair and a neatly trimmed mustache in an expensive dark suit.

  I strolled across the street and along the concourse leading to the Tower, my hands in my pockets and my Sight stretched out into the night. I knew right away that I was in the right place, at the right enough time. There were a lot of Divine here, most of them at the ground level, spread out and stationary. Waiting. For me? Or something else?

  There was one up on the Tower, positioned at the second deck, their signature a hot beacon burning into my soul. I felt a familiarity to this one, something about them that I recognized some piece of, but couldn’t quite place. I had no doubts they were the one I was here to see. There was no motion from the other Divine, and I wasn’t hiding. Play the game, but be ready to change the rules.

  “Hello sir,” the young French girl at the Tower ticket booth said. She was slender, with long, dark hair, brown eyes, and porcelain skin. A math textbook rested open off to the side of her counter, next to a small computer terminal.

  I was pretty sure she was speaking French, but I had quickly learned that Divinity granted the gift of tongues. I heard everything in English, and spoke it that way, at least to my own ears.

  “Hello,” I replied. “I’m meeting someone up at…” I looked over to the board behind her, where the destinations and ticket prices were listed. “Jules Verne.”

  She smiled. “Of course, sir. Name?” She put her fingers to the keyboard to type in my response.

  Except, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure who I was actually going to be meeting up there. Was it Charis, familiar to my Sight but changed somehow? Was it Rebecca, her identity altered by her trip to Hell? I stood silent, trying to do all of the permutations, to guess the right password and gain access to the Tower’s second floor. Not that I needed the permission of the girl in the booth, but I preferred to go in quietly.

  “Sir?” she asked.

  There was only one name I could be sure of. “Hamilton,” I said.

  Her fingers danced along the keys. “Ah, yes sir. Party of two. I see your acquaintance has already arrived. An escort will arrive momentarily to take you up. Enjoy your dinner, sir.”

  I stepped off to the side and looked up at the Tower again. My ‘acquaintance’ hadn’t moved. A minute later a tall, handsome man in a tuxedo approached and led me over to the private elevator up to the restaurant.

  The Jules Verne was a posh, elegant eatery located on the second floor of the Tower, about four hundred feet above ground level. Of course, it had fantastic views of Paris, and the dark, classy ambiance mixed well with just enough chintz to call out the place as both a fine gourmet treat, and an obvious tourist destination. When the escort dropped me off with a second maitre-de in the restaurant proper, I could see that it was a full house. I imagined it always was.

  I didn’t need the waiter to guide me to my table, but I allowed him to. My Sight was red hot now, though I still couldn’t identify who the signature belonged to. Judging by the layout, the table was in the back corner by the window, my line of sight obscured by a support beam. When the waiter pulled me around the obstruction, I smirked.

  The man at the seat across from the empty one I took to be mine was a small, lean Asian, with a thick lawn of spiked black hair, a petite, well-defined face, and sharp gray eyes. He was dressed in an expensive suit, a gold Rolex dangling from a narrow wrist. He was playing the part of the businessman perfectly. He smiled and stood at the sight of me, his fangs sliding out to overlap his lower lip.

  “Mr. Hamilton,” he said, his voice too deep for his size, but smooth as the silk tie he was wearing.

  “Mr… Cho, is it?” I asked, going along with the formalities.

  He nodded. “At your service, my friend,” he replied. “Thank you for meeting me here. Please, have a seat.”

  I slid into the offered chair, and he returned to his own. “To be honest,” I said. “I was expecting someone else to be here.”

  He put up his hand. “Of course. There is much to speak about, my friend. First, a drink? I know it will do nothing for your senses, but some still find the act itself relaxing.”

  I thought about Sarah, and Rebecca. No more stalling. “Skip it,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of time to waste on you.”

  He laughed. “You have more time than you might think,” he replied. “But as you wish.”

  The archvampire put his hands out on the table and lowered his head, his eyes falling closed. I heard a soft hum escaping from his mouth, a hum that began to morph and change in pitch and timbre. An amalgam of coldness and heat pierced the air, and the smell of a familiar perfume mixed with iron and blood. I could sense the tempo of my heart rising, my body reacting to the change faster than my mind could process it. Cho’s eyes opened and his head snapped up, leaving me staring at crisp, blue orbs.

  “Rebecca.”

  The name fell from my mouth and floated between us. She took a deep breath to suck it in. In that moment everything I had wanted to say scattered with the inhale, and I was left in a new type of purgatory, firmly entrenched between desire and disgust. It didn’t matter that she was using Cho’s body. It was her.

  Her lips spread into a sensuous smile. “Landon,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

  She wasn’t lying.

  “Where is Sarah?” I asked. “Rebecca, if you hurt her…”

  The smile vanished. “Hurt her? Why would I hurt her? Be assured worm, I have no intention of harming your sister. She is with me, and she is safe.”

  There was nobody else who could make the nickname ‘worm’ sound like a good thing. “I just can’t believe it’s you, that you’re here. After all this time.”

  I felt a pinch in my soul, the tiniest little push against me. Ulnyx.

  “Did you like my gift?” she asked. “Josette’s brother all tied up? I would have added a bow, but I couldn’t find one large enough to wrap around his ego.”

  “It would have been a nice touch,” I replied. “Although I think Sarah appreciated it more than me. So did Izak.”

  There was the slightest twist in Rebecca’s expression at the mention of the demon. Another pinch from the Were, sharper this time.

  “Gervais’ puppet? He’s with you?” Her eyes danced around the restaurant.

  “No. He’s having his way with your gift,” I said. “Rebecca, I’m happy to see you, but I’m having a hard time trying to understand what the heck is going on.”

  In fact, it was more than that. A third hit from Ulnyx, and it was like he had cracked a window, an invisible barrier that was up between Rebecca and me. A new distortion spread from the crack, one that was closer to reality. I saw it, but I didn’t understand it. Not yet.

  “It is a wondrous time for us, Landon,” she said. “Not just for you and me, but for all Divine. A new age.”

  I raised my hand. I could see it through the crack. I could see the veins running along my wrist, the flesh laid over the muscle underneath. I saw past it to Rebecca. Not just Rebecca, but also Cho. There was something there. Something I was forgetting.

  “No. Start from the beginning. You bled me out and took a swig from the Grail. You left me paralyzed. Why?”

  Her head tilted a fraction. “I did what I had to do,” she said. “In that moment, it wasn’t about you, other than the blood you carry in your veins. You could have been anyone, and I would have done the same. When a Divine drinks the blood of a diuscrucis from the Holy Grail, they change. They become more powerful than they could have ever dreamed.”

  “Reyzl regenerated faster,” I said. “He didn’t seem like he gained any other power.” At least not compared to before he drank the blood.

  She laughed. “We didn’t let him live long enough for the blood to get through his entire system, to effect a total change. Anyway, Reyzl was a fool. His ambitions were small.”

  I felt Ulnyx again, and the single crack in the barrier lengthened and began to spider out. I saw Rebecca with my Sight now. I saw how she had changed. I saw the raw power that she possessed, even here, even now when the body and voice she was using were not her own. Through the distortion, I could suddenly see that all the time I had spent lamenting her betrayal had been wasted time. She couldn’t have betrayed me, because she had never been with me.

  “So you knew what the Grail would do for you the whole time?” I asked, growing angry. “That’s why you saved me from Reyzl at your party?”

  “Landon, wait,” she said. She hesitated, and then nodded. “It’s true. When I helped you escape I was taking a risk that you would be able to get your hands on the Grail, and I would be able to use it. Merov told me what it could do. He went on and on about it, about how he wished he could find a diuscrucis to bleed. Anyway, that was how it started, but that isn’t the whole story. I care for you. I really, really do.”