“Thomas,” I said.

  “Yes, Landon?”

  “We’re in pretty deep on this one. Rebecca is back from Hell. I think she plans on waking the Beast.”

  There was a long, tense pause. “Are you sure?” he asked, sounding as meek as I felt.

  “Not completely, but it’s a pretty safe assumption. I met with her over dinner, and she tried to recruit me to their new world order. She was talking about replacing God.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Thomas said. “I have to tell the others, and send a message to the archangels.”

  “Thomas, wait,” I said. “You can’t tell anyone else. I don’t know who we can trust. To be honest, I’m taking a risk trusting you.”

  Another pause. “I understand. You can trust me, Landon. There’s a reason the Lord brought us together. There’s a reason Josette sacrificed herself to you. I will follow you in this.”

  There was no lie, no deception. “I know,” I said. “Tell Obi that he needs to find Rebecca, but he has to do it without ruffling any feathers. I know she’s been using cell phones to communicate, so tell him to start there. Stay with him, and do what you can to keep him safe. Do you trust Melody?”

  “Of course,” Thomas said, almost automatically. “Well… no, I can’t say I do, not with what you’ve just said. But I also can’t just walk away.”

  “You’ve got to keep an eye on her,” I said. “And make sure she doesn’t hear anything that could give us up to Rebecca.”

  “I will,” Thomas said.

  “Thank you, Thomas,” I replied. “Can you put Obi back on?”

  “Yes…”

  My ears rang with the sound of gunfire through the receiver, the unmistakeable whoomph of the Desert Eagle unleashing silver fury. “We’ve got to get out of here,” came the shout through the line.

  “Thomas,” I shouted, as loud as my tired lungs will allow. No response.

  “They’re on the roof,” Melody screamed.

  “Thomas,” I repeated. “If you can hear me, find Izak. He’ll be somewhere outside the city.”

  “Come on,” Thomas yelled. “Obi, light it up and let’s go.”

  I heard the clatter of the phone falling to the floor. I heard growling and more gunfire, and the crackle of flames. The texts. They had burned the texts. Without the strings, we wouldn’t be able to follow the mark. We wouldn’t be able to stop them from setting the Beast free.

  Footsteps echoed in the receiver, along with muffled voices. I heard the floor creak, and the sound of someone lifting the phone.

  “Landon, is that you?” Cho asked. “You’re missing all of the fun.”

  I fought to get up, to move my body from my position in the bed. My limbs felt like lead, and my head began to spin.

  “Landon, are you there?” he laughed.

  “Laugh while you can,” I said, my menacing threat falling flat in a hoarse, croaky voice.

  “Oh, I plan to,” he replied. “All the way to the end of your world, and the dawn of ours.”

  The phone clicked. I tried to throw it across the room, but even that ended in failure. I fought to get up again, my body resisting every effort, my power useless in my current state. I couldn’t even scream in anguish and rage. I started reaching for the bell, but halfway there I realized it was hopeless. There was only one way to get back in the game, and that was to rest. My mind was racing a mile a minute, but as soon as I let my head go back to the pillow my physical fatigue overwhelmed me. I fell asleep instantly. A dreamless, empty sleep.

  Chapter 20

  Charis was there when I opened my eyes, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching my every movement. I must have been thrashing in my sleep, because I found myself face down, my body splayed out across the expanse of the mattress, the blankets thrown haphazardly around me. I knew by the draft that certain parts of me were bare, but I found that modesty didn’t seem that important in front of her.

  I closed my eyes again and reached for my power, finding comfort in the feeling of energy flowing into me with renewed vigor. I had been asleep for nearly twelve hours. It was way too long.

  “How long have you been sitting there?” I asked, rolling over and sitting up. She had changed into a pair of yoga pants and a pink sports tank, her raven hair tied back in a single long ponytail.

  “A few hours,” she replied, reaching behind her back and tossing me my clothes. “Did you make your calls?”

  The question made me remember. I could only hope that Thomas had heard the last thing I had said. I grabbed the clothes and jumped off the bed, out from under the wards for the first time.

  “She can See me now?” I asked while I pulled on my pants and shirt. Charis was still watching me, her expression flat, but her eyes dancing along my outline.

  “Yes,” she said. “If she is looking for you.”

  I nodded. “I figured as much. Tell me about the Beast.”

  I could tell she was surprised. “You didn’t know about that when I left,” she said.

  “Phone call,” I said. “Look, Charis, I’d love to keep playing this game we’ve got going, because you’re so darn intriguing and super sexy, but my friends are out there, and they’ve got a big red ‘X’ painted on them. You have to get me up to speed in a hurry, because if you don’t they’re going to die, and I have a bad feeling that will only be the start.”

  She smiled. “That’s the spirit. Much better than the first time you woke up.”

  I recoiled. I had come out of it a little battered the last time. I don’t know if it was the renewed memory of what it was like to be human, or a general feeling of pissed off that was fueling me, but I had reached my limit of self-doubt and guilt. Charis had been right when she said I had done my best with Sarah. If she was going to be a brat about it, I was going to put her back in her place. Dante had put me in charge of protecting mankind from the bickering of the Divine. As far as I was concerned that extended to any Beast that could destroy, well, everything.

  “I’m committed,” I said. “I assume you already were, or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Follow me,” she said, slipping off the bed and walking towards the door. I trailed behind her. “Like I told you earlier, it took me a long time to catch on to the secret war… the real secret war. I spent years following Dante, listening to his advice, going along with his instructions. I didn’t question it, because I loved what I was. I loved the power that came with it.”

  We exited out of the room into a small antechamber with an elevator. She pressed her palm against a flat part of the wall and the invisible doors slid open. We stepped inside, the doors closed, and the elevator began to plummet.

  “I was a spy during my mortal life,” she continued. “I worked in espionage for King George during the American Revolutionary War. My role was to get in with the American Generals and convince them to share their secrets with me. I used everything at my disposal; sex, violence, blackmail. I suppose that was what made me so balanced. I did a lot of questionable things, but my motives were always pure, my goals always honest. I was loyal to a fault.”

  “No offense,” I said, “but the British lost.”

  She cast me a glare that was both amused and offended. “One can only do so much,” she replied.

  The elevator finally slowed to a stop, and the doors slid open. We were underground, in a long passageway that led out into the distance, too far to see what waited at the end. The corridor seemed as though it had been created by compressing the dirt outward in a way no machine could manage.

  “You did this?” I asked.

  “It took me a few weeks, but yes,” she replied. “It’s nothing you can’t do. As I was saying, one day I was hunting an archdevil, one of the First’s many offspring. He had decided to make a run on this world. I thought I had him in my sights, but he was a tricky one, with thousands of years of experience. I found myself trapped, my neck nearly severed. It would have only taken one little cut to end me.”

  “How did you get out?” I asked.

  “The archdevil was strong, but he had been reckless. He had attracted the attention of the Templars. That they showed up when they did was pure luck, nothing more. That they surprised him enough to keep him from making the final cut was just as lucky. Sometimes, Landon, luck is the only thing that saves us. A millimeter here, a millisecond there. Yet, I’m still not sure that luck is random, or if it’s engineered by something bigger.”

  “You’re talking about God?”

  “I was never a religious girl, even after going to Purgatory. I’m still not in favor of God’s overall design, especially when it comes to the balance. I was going to die, and the Templars saved me. At the last possible moment they saved me. He saved me. Not God, the Templar, Joseph. I’d always used emotions to my benefit, a tool to meet my aims. It was the first time I truly fell in love.“

  I could hear the sadness in her voice. “I’m sorry,” I said. I really was.

  She stopped walking and looked at me. “I don’t know why I told you that part. I feel like I can tell you anything.”

  At least it wasn’t just me. “We’re cut from the same cloth, aren’t we?” I asked.

  She tilted her head. “I’m not so sure,” she replied. “Maybe more of a mirror, like we’re reaching the exact same point from two completely opposite sides and reflecting one another.”

  “Balance?”

  “Yes.”

  Our eyes caught for just a second, but so much passed between them in that short period of time. I felt a comfort I hadn’t known before, as though a missing piece of me had been put into place.

  “So, the Templars weren’t created to protect the Grail,” I said, getting us moving forward again.

  “They were, in part,” she said. “After Joseph saved me, he taught me about their history. He showed me his world, and I learned more about humanity, even my own humanity, than I had known even when I had been alive. I left my dreams of power behind, and took the oath of the Templars in secret.”

  “Why in secret?”

  “When Dante found out how I felt about Joseph, he had one of his little hissy fits. He tried to convince me that the Templars were servants of God, and needed to be held to the balance just like the angels. He warned me that if I kept up with Joseph it could only end in tragedy. They are servants of God, but it ends there. Unfortunately, he wasn’t completely wrong.”

  She grew distant then, and I could feel the coldness run through me. We stopped walking and stood silently together while she made peace with the memory. I didn’t say anything until we starting walking again, but I knew what she was getting at. Everything was making so much more sense with every word she said.

  “The Beast,” I said.

  “Yes. The Templars were founded by the son of God and tasked with preventing the Beast from ever being given a new foothold in this world. In a sense, while you and I were charged with being the bodyguards of humanity, the Templars are the guards of everything.”

  “It sounds like a tough job,” I said.

  She laughed. “I know you’re making light of it, but it’s harder than you think, especially since nobody is supposed to know their true purpose. They have to fight demons as though they are no more than servants of the seraphim, while being careful not to throw their weight too hard and make waves with the likes of you and me.”

  “Okay, so I assume that the Templars have been following this ‘Secret Society of the Beast’ for thousands of years, and that’s how you knew about all of the texts you had me going around and collecting?” She nodded. “You made sure to arrange our meeting five years ago so you could drop your hint about it, and start prepping me, because you knew you would need me one day?” Another nod. “And you didn’t clue me in before now because you wanted to be sure I would side with the Templars when the time came?” She nodded a third time. “And Dante can’t know any of this, because frankly, we can’t trust anybody right now?”

  “One hundred percent,” she said. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from you when I found out you had been chosen, but I have to say, I’m glad I blew you up.”

  As stupid as it seemed, I was too. “About that,” I said. “According to Dante, you killed a lot of Templars that day.”

  She sighed, her posture turning heavy, her eyes dropping to the ground. “We decided to put the Grail out into the public so that I could take it as the Demon Queen. The goal was to get it into possession of someone that both sides feared more than the Templars, without giving away my true identity. I was going to hold the Grail until a new diuscrucis entered the world, and I was expecting to do it for a long, long time. It was a surprise to me that you came along as soon as you did, but I felt it the moment you were brought into this world. I contacted Reyzl and started making the amulets, creating a situation that I knew Dante would throw you into. The rest was just a little bit of luck and a lot of hope.”

  When she looked up, her expression was fierce, proud, and infinitely sad. “My involvement with the Templars is secret, and had to remain secret. I couldn’t have convinced anyone otherwise without their sacrifice. The Templars have pledged their lives to this, Landon. They know what failure means.”

  “I’m not judging you,” I said, reaching out and putting my hand on her shoulder. “We do what we think is right, don’t we?”

  She surprised me, turning into my reach and wrapping her arms around me. She buried her head in my neck, and I could feel the wetness of her silent tears against it as I finished the embrace. Holding her while she cried, I could only hope that hadn’t been the day Joseph had died.

  I gave her a few minutes to mourn, and I hated to force her back to the present, but time wasn’t on our side. “Come on, Charis,” I said. “We have work to do.”

  She pulled away and looked up at me, her red eyes flaring. “She likes you too,” she said, her entire demeanor changing. “Let’s go.”

  We reached the end of the corridor. I found myself standing in front of a small wooden door that looked completely out of place down here. It was old, it had to be, the wood stained and faded, pieces of it chipped and cracked. It reminded me of the giant door at the Catskill Sanctuary, only at a much smaller scale. It too was covered in runes, similar to those of the seraphim, but with a flourish and tightness that made it illegible to me.

  “Templar script,” she explained. “It’s very similar in style because its origin is closely related. The power is what really differentiates.” She flicked her eyes at the door, and it swung open without a sound.

  She motioned me in, and I moved ahead, stepping through the doorway. I found myself in a place that betrayed all sense of time and space. A cave, with uneven surfaces, stalagmites dripping from the ceiling, and veins of crystals catching the small amount of light and reflecting it in iridescent shimmers. It was beautiful to behold, but what made the space truly amazing was the Templar script. It covered every available centimeter of the ceiling, walls, and floor, tightly wound in a pattern of order and chaos that defied all understanding. It ran everywhere I put my eyes, and I beheld it in wonder as one of the most complete and amazing works of art I had ever seen.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Charis pulled the door closed behind us. As soon as she did, the network of runes began to glow softly, the light reflecting from the crystals, the resulting vision taking the room from unbelievable, to mind-blowing. When I turned around, the door was gone.

  “Somewhere else,” she said. “A place outside of all things. A place beyond. Science might call it a pocket universe, or maybe a fractal dimension. Neither of those things is accurate, but they’ll suffice.”

  “How?”

  “This is the true inheritance of the Templars,” she said. “And of the faith. This is the cave where Jesus Christ was buried, and rose from the dead.”

  I looked around, my upbringing creating more than a little shock, awe, reverence, and guilt. I didn’t feel like I belonged here.

  “Shouldn’t this be near Jerusalem?” I asked.

  “It was, once,” she replied. “I moved it. It left me in a coma for a week, but we felt it had been compromised.”

  I kept turning, in circle after circle, trying to soak it all in. “Tell me more,” I said.

  “Catholic teachings say that Christ was buried and rose on the third day, which is true enough. To any observer on the outside, only three days passed. But Jesus was the son of God, he couldn’t take the mortal path to Heaven. He also had some of the power of God, and bringing him here brought him closer to his Father. It was in this very spot where he learned to harness that power, to use it to return to his birthright. How long it took - weeks, months, years, millennia - is irrelevant. Time is irrelevant here. A hard concept to grasp, but one that we can use to our advantage.”

  I put my fingers on the wall, feeling the power thrumming along the surface in smooth vibrations, like a well-tuned engine. “The runes. Who created them?”

  “The second. An archangel named Malize.”

  “I thought that was Michael.”

  “Most do. Malize is the forgotten, and he prefers it that way.”

  “That’s where you got the blood from?” I asked. “For the Grail?”

  She nodded. “Yes. This is his home.”

  “He isn’t here,” I said.

  She smiled. “Remember, there is no time here, not the way you’re familiar with it. He has been here since the day he finished the final rune and connected this realm to ours. For us it has been many thousands of years. For him, either millions or the blink of an eye. He will experience it as he chooses.”

  “Will we see him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He will decide. We don’t have much time, not out there, but there are things you need to know, things we need to accomplish.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I told you I would help you communicate with your angel. That is part of it. There is more, but it would be impossible to explain.” She looked away, before she brought my eyes to hers. “I know I’m asking a lot, but I need you to put your complete trust in me.”