The same woman stepped forward. “I am. I speak for the Inquisitors. We will help you however we can.”

  “Can you get us some more angels?” I asked.

  She smiled. “We can try.”

  I held out my hand, motioning for Adam to give me the Deliverer. Joe was going to do his best to kill me for this, but Adam handed the sword to me, and I handed it to the woman.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Fredeline.” She gazed at the Deliverer, holding it with reverence.

  “Fredeline, it appears the Deliverer will tell you who is true, and who is a servant. Use it to root out the faithful, the ones that are willing to join you.”

  She brought the blade to her lips and kissed it. “I will,” she said. “Starting with my own.” She brought the sword to each of the remaining angels. Each of them put their lips to the sword, including Adam.

  “This is a temporary truce, diuscrucis,” she said. “Once the Beast is taken care of, it will be business as usual.”

  Somehow, I doubted anything would be usual once this was done, but I nodded.

  “Then we will take our leave of you,” Fredeline said. “Adam, stay with Landon. He needs someone to keep him out of trouble.”

  Adam bowed to her, and the angels left the temple.

  “Why didn’t they turn to ash?” I asked him, seeing that Avriel’s wings were still lying on the floor.

  “He rejected them,” Adam said. “The wings don’t make us what we are. Our faith does.”

  I knew there was a deeper meaning somewhere in there, but I wasn’t in the mood to look for it. The Beast had won this round, and negated every other victory we had scored along with it. It was a challenge to keep my head up and keep fighting, but I knew the stakes.

  “To the bat-cave, then,” I said, the humor feeling flat, and falling flat.

  We walked out of the temple, and Adam tucked his arms under my shoulders.

  I didn’t even notice the flight.

  Chapter 23

  “What are we going to do?” Sarah asked.

  We were all gathered in the nave of the church, after having forced a reluctant Father Tom to close it off to worshippers. I hated to ask him to do it, but the church was the only place we had that felt somewhat safe. Rebecca’s place under the Statue of Liberty may have been a viable alternative, but it was too hard to get into and out of. Still, he had submit without complaint, after I gave him the short version about what had happened to Avriel. He had been crushed to hear about the death of an archangel, and had retreated to his office and locked the door.

  “I feel like the 2006 Yankees,” Obi said. “Up three games to none, looking like a lock for the Series, and then pow! Sox kick our ass.”

  “Maybe we’re the Red Sox?” Adam suggested. “Down, but not out.”

  “We need to find someone who can understand Avriel’s work,” I said. “His design. Malize said there’s a lot of math involved, so maybe we just need Stephen Hawking or something.”

  Obi huffed. “Man, it takes him an hour to say one sentence. How long would it take him to tell us how to alter the Box?”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” I replied. “Come on guys, we’ve got negative time to find a solution.”

  “Landon, do you remember when we met at the tower in Thailand?” Charis asked. “I told you I might know someone who knew about the Box?”

  I did remember. I tried to think of who she was referring to, but she knew too many people to cherry pick one of them from her memories. “Yeah, but if your source is reliable, why didn’t you push him on us earlier?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t say he was reliable. I just said he might know about the Box. He’s more of a last resort.”

  “Which is where we’re at,” Obi said.

  “Sad, but true,” I agreed. “Who is he?”

  “He’s a demon. I think Dante knows him. His name is Alichino.”

  “It doesn’t ring a bell,” I said.

  “His name means harlequin. He used to serve in Hell, but he got kicked out and sent back to Earth for allowing someone to escape their torture.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much of a punishment,” Obi said.

  “For a demon who was created in Hell, and wants to stay in Hell, Earth is the worst punishment there is.”

  Obi huffed again.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, where do we find him, and why do you think he can help us with the Box?”

  “Brazil. I’m not sure he can help us with the Box, but I know he was obsessed with it. He always wanted to be the one to find it and free Abaddon. He was hoping that Lucifer would be so grateful, he would let him go back to Hell.”

  “Is he good at math?” I asked.

  Charis nodded. “He claims that he can prove the Euler-Mascheroni constant is irrational.”

  “Whatever that means,” Obi and I both said in unison.

  “We’ve got to go find this Alichino. Melody?”

  The angel had been quiet during the conversation. She had taken the news about Kassie in stride, but she looked pissed that she hadn’t guessed at her true allegiance. “Yes, Landon?”

  “Can you go find Fredeline, and stick with her? She’ll need someone to lead her to us when we’re ready for them to join the fun.”

  She got to her feet and nodded, walking over to Obi and kissing him on the cheek. “See you around, mate,” she said with a smile.

  “Don’t be long,” Obi replied.

  She winked at him, and headed out of the church.

  “O-“

  “Don’t even tell me I’m not coming,” Obi said.

  There was a rift in Brazil. “Fine, you’re in. Charis, you too. We need Vilya to get us there.”

  “I want to come,” Sarah said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wish you could, but you’re safer here. The Beast is stepping up his game, and we need to stay focused on the task, not on protecting you.”

  She frowned, but stayed quiet.

  “Besides,” Charis said. “We need to stay inconspicuous. We can’t do that trailing a big entourage.”

  “Which is why you want Thomas and I to stay here?” Adam asked.

  I nodded. “Hold down the fort. With any luck we won’t be gone more than an hour or two.”

  “The First asked me to keep an eye on you,” Adam reminded me.

  “If she stops by, tell her I’m in the bathroom. Izak, can you come unlock the door for us?”

  The demon stood up and followed us as we descended the stairs into the church basement. He knelt down in front of the rift and used his good hand to scratch out the runes to connect this one to the one in Brazil. He did it fast, almost impatiently, and started walking away as soon as it flared to life.

  “Thanks, Izak,” I said.

  He waved his hand at me and left.

  “He’s in a good mood,” Obi said.

  “You wouldn’t be too happy if you lost your hand,” I said.

  “True.”

  “Are you boys ready?” Charis asked.

  Obi shrugged and walked in. We followed behind him.

  “Where are we?” I asked. We had stepped out into a small room encased in stone, with a metal door at the north end. “No, wait. Let me guess.” I knew a little bit about Brazil. “Christ the Redeemer, in Rio?”

  “You’re getting good at this,” Charis said.

  “Whoa, hold on.” Obi pointed up at the ceiling. “There’s a demon rift under a huge statue of Jesus Christ?”

  “It’s under the chapel too,” Charis replied. “Look, I didn’t put it here. Alichino might have. He has an irreverent sense of humor.”

  “He’s a demon. Doesn’t that just come with the territory?” Obi asked.

  “You asked,” Charis said.

  “Touche,” Obi replied.

  “So, how to we find Alichino?”

  The door swung open. A small demon stood there. He was three feet tall, with a long snout and leather skin, the left half of which was black, the other half white. He was wearing a pair of tight lycra bicycle shorts and Pumas, and holding a thick book under a spindly arm.

  “You don’t find Alichino, diuscrucis. Alichino finds you.”

  I laughed. Could it actually be this easy? “You knew-“

  “No,” he said, before I could finish. “Well, yes. But, no. Dante looked me up and asked me if I could help you. Me and him go way back. You have the Box?”

  Charis took it from a purse at her hip. When the demon saw it, his eyes lit up.

  “Wow. You really do have it?” He scampered over, reaching for the artifact.

  Charis pulled it away. “Hold on. You don’t get to touch it until you agree to help us. In blood.”

  He snorted. “My word isn’t good enough for you? Even if Dante vouches for me?”

  “You have a reputation,” she said.

  His laugh sounded like a chainsaw. “Okay, fine.” He reached down and produced a small knife from his sneakers. “I promise to help you with whatever you need me to do with the Box. In exchange, you’ll get me back to Hell.” He cut his finger and held it up.

  Charis looked at me, and then took the knife. She cut her finger, and put it to his. “I promise we’ll do our best to get you back to Hell, in exchange for helping us with the Box.”

  I hadn’t made the agreement, so I didn’t feel the pressure of the binding, but I knew Charis would. Alichino laughed again and reached for the Box once more. Charis handed it to him.

  “Amazing,” he said, turning it over and over in his three-fingered hand. “Do you see these lines?” He traced some of the angel scripture in a fine pattern. “The calculations to reach this kind of simple complexity are beyond insane.”

  “So, you understand it?” I asked.

  He flicked his head towards me. “I’ve been studying everything I could about Avriel’s Box since the day that bastard Bonturo tricked me. I know you guys don’t like Abaddon much, but he could have sent me back just by touching me and willing it. Anyway, yeah I understand it. I learned to read the seraphim scripture so I could reverse engineer the calculus. The best mortal nerds would have an orgasm if they could read the source code.”

  “Wow, nice choice of words,” Obi said.

  Alichino laughed again. “Yeah, I knew Avriel got trapped in there, even if nobody else did. Well, until they let him out I guess.” He held up his book. “I can show you the math if you want.”

  “How about summarizing?” I said.

  He looked disappointed. “Fine. He missed an exponent in the containment algorithm.”

  “How about summarizing in English?” Obi asked.

  Alichino rolled his eyes. “Look, you want to keep something behind an electrified fence, you need to make sure you have enough juice to power the whole fence, right? You don’t cover the whole fence, it’s all useless. Are you following me?”

  “He didn’t have enough charge for the fence?” Obi said.

  “Exactly. He fed his power into the Box, but not enough. He had two choices then. One, give up and let Abaddon keep eating everything. Two, give it more power. The only way he could satisfy the equation was to feed himself to the Box with Abaddon. Bada-bing, bada-boom, he’s stuck inside.”

  “Fine,” I said. “We already know most of this. The question is, how do we feed it enough power to trap the Beast inside, and hold him?”

  The demon stopped laughing, and looked at me. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Look, there’s some fuzzy math to calculate the power of a demon, or an angel. Leave enough wiggle room over the top, and you’re good to go. There’s no way to quantitate the power of that thing.”

  “We have it on good authority that it can be done,” Charis said. “We can up the innate ‘charge’ by converting the seraphim scripture to the Templar language.”

  “Templar?” he asked.

  “The original writing of the first children of God,” she replied. “If the Divine symbols were solar panels, Templar script is the most efficient at conversion.”

  “Ooh,” Alichino said. “That sounds exciting.”

  “I’ll teach it to you. Then you need to figure out how to use it to maximize the charge.”

  The demon squealed with delight. “What are we waiting for?” he asked.

  As soon as we were back in the church basement, Charis shooed us away so she could share what she knew with the demon. It wasn’t that we couldn’t have stuck around if we wanted to; but who wanted to?

  I found Sarah in the vestibule, kneeling in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. She had her hands clasped in prayer, her head down. I stood behind her and waited. There was nothing else to do. I knew she would know I was there.

  After a few minutes, she lifted her head and stood up. “Hello, brother,” she said, turning to face me.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I said. “I was just checking in with you. Making sure you’re okay.”

  She smiled. “I’m good. Better than ever, believe it or not.”

  “Not afraid of the end of the world?” I was.

  “I have to make choices,” she said. “I can choose to believe that what I’ve seen is all that can be, or I can choose to believe we can change it.”

  “What do you see?”

  “It wouldn’t help you to know, any more than it helps me.”

  Fair enough. “Do you still kill me?”

  Just the slightest change in her face, and I knew that was still the future she saw. “Yes. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “I know you won’t,” I said. I wasn’t sure how much I believed it. If it came down to it, I would have to make sure she didn’t.

  “How is mother?” she asked.

  I smiled. “She’s fine,” I said, tapping on my head.

  “When this is over, do you think I’ll be able to spend more time with her?”

  “If I’m here, she’ll be here. You know how to get into my head, so I don’t see why not.”

  She returned my smile, and then walked over to be and gave me a hug. “I love you, brother.”

  I rubbed her back, my eyes fixed on the Mary statue behind her. “I love you, too.”

  “Landon!”

  I let Sarah go and turned my head. Thomas was running towards me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He stopped and motioned for us to follow. “You’ve got to see this.”

  We followed him out of the vestibule and around to the left, into the hallway that led to Father Tom’s office. The door was finally open again, and most of the crew had crowded around. I pushed my way in.

  “What’s the panic?” I asked.

  Father Tom was sitting in his chair, his face completely pale, a look of absolute fear written across it. There was a simple wooden box sitting on his desk now, an old AM radio.

  “We’re getting reports of a civil war breaking out in the Indian city of Mumbai,” the voice on the radio was saying. “People on the scene say it is complete chaos in the streets, with civilians attacking one another across the city. According to our sources, the rioters are even going into apartments and attacking people in their homes. The exact cause of the unrest is unknown, but it has been reported that it started at a downtown restaurant, when two of the patrons got into an argument, and quickly escalated from there.”

  I took a deep breath and looked around the room, at Father Tom, Sarah, Adam, Thomas, Izak, and Obi. “This is not good.” I felt a small twinge in my gut. The balance, beginning to slide. We were running out of time. Was the Beast going for the end zone, or trying to lure us out of hiding? “This is really not good.”

  “What should we do?” Thomas asked.

  I looked around the room at them. “We can’t do anything right now. We have to wait for Alichino.”

  “Landon, there are people dying out there,” Obi said.

  “I know,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do. The Beast is possessing them, making them attack one another. If we kill one, he’ll just take another, and another. Whether we take the lives or he does, the end result is the same.”

  “We have to stop him,” Adam said.

  “How?” I asked. “Right now, we can’t. Believe me, I know you want to do something. You aren’t the ones who can feel the balance starting to-”

  A pounding on the door of the church interrupted me. It wasn’t a knock. It sounded like somebody was trying to break it down.

  “Think they found us?” Obi asked.

  “How?”

  “They’ve been fighting out there for hours,” Thomas said. “They’ve stayed mindful of the balance. I think they’re done with that approach.”

  The pounding intensified.

  “Izak, go cover the front door. Adam, take the east entrance. Thomas and Obi, you’re on the west. I’m going to go check things out from the roof. We need to give Charis and Alichino time.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Sarah asked.

  “Stay here. Izak, if you can’t hold the front you need to get Sarah out through the rift.” I tried to think of where. “Take her to Brazil, and stay there.”

  Izak nodded, and started towards the front of the Church. Thomas, Adam, and Obi headed off to take up their own positions, while Father Tom bowed his head in prayer.

  I made my way down the hall. Opposite the stairs to the basement were the stairs to the belfry. I could hear Charis speaking to Alichino down the steps. She had to know the balance was shifting, but she was speaking with a sense of patience and calm. The demon was cooing at her explanations.

  “We’re screwed,” Ulnyx said as I scampered up the steps.

  “Whose side are you on?” I asked him.

  “It looks like the wrong side.”

  The belfry was a small room, with the bell a dozen feet up in a small tower. I focused and jumped, reaching the tower and anchoring myself with my feet against both sides. I peeked out, and then ducked back in just in time to keep my head from being cut off by an angel. I heard the sound of Obi’s Desert Eagle down below.

  The seraph crouched down to find me inside the tower, and I wrapped my hand around his throat. I shifted my other hand to a claw, drove it through his chest, and then tossed him away. Before I could begin looking for the next target, I felt the heat of flames headed towards me. I let myself drop, falling to the floor and dropping to my stomach as a gout of hellfire roared through the tower. It exploded in a mess of mortar and dust. I rolled out of the way just in time to keep the white-hot and melting bell from landing on me.