“Stay focused,” I said.

  It was the realization that had brought that hidden strength into play. Our fight wasn’t against Ross. Our fight was against ourselves. Each time he killed us, we lost what had happened before, all the memory and none of the emotion. Each time we came back, we remembered a little bit more. Each time, he made sure to start the cycle again before we could put all the pieces together.

  We had to stay focused to remember the parts that were important. We had to repeat them in our minds, over and over and over, until it was so committed that it became a part of the bare threads of who or what we were in this place. It had taken time to figure that much out, and in that time we had lost important information.

  Other things, we brought back, some almost as soon as we re-spawned. It was funny to think of it that way, like we were trapped in a video game, but having passed through a door just to wind up on the opposite side of the same room, it felt like one.

  “Our power is his power,” I said. “ We can use his power.”

  “Not against him,” she replied. “It doesn’t work.”

  “Not directly. What if there was another way?”

  We were both silent for a minute, each of us repeating the mantra. ‘What if there was another way? What if there was another way?’

  “He created this place,” Charis said. “What if we created something? Made our own monster?”

  “It’s still his power that is making it. He can unmake it.”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “How does that not put us back to square one?”

  I heard the creak of the door behind us swinging open, and got to my feet. “Where is our power, Charis? It can’t all be his. It just can’t. Sarah had to pour some of her energy into the Box. We’re almost the same as she is. It has to be available to us.”

  I looked up at the creature that had stepped into the room. A young woman in a long white Victorian style dress. She looked back at me with cold black eyes.

  “This is really unoriginal,” I shouted. I knew Ross would hear me.

  “You don’t like the ruffles?” he asked, through the mouth of the woman. “I mean, I know you tend to go for the ones in the skintight denim, but look, she has black hair.” She reached up and twirled a strand of it between her fingers.

  “Just get on with it,” Charis said, stepping up next to me.

  “Now, what fun would that be?” She shook her head. “First, let’s see what you can do with my little abomination here. She took me a long time to make, relatively speaking.” The eyes flashed from black to white, and then she attacked.

  She went right for Charis, moving so fast it was more like she flashed from one spot to another. Her hand snapped forward and caught her under the chin. The force broke her jaw and threw her back against the wall over the fireplace. She bounced off and landed face down.

  I set myself while the abomination turned my direction. She had a twisted smile on her face, so similar to his.

  “Come on,” I said.

  She hissed, one moment six feet away, the next right in my face. I tried to punch her, but she blinked to the side, and then raked my cheek with eight-inch claws. I could hear them sliding along the bone, and I felt the warmth of my blood spilling out of the wound.

  Not that she could kill me. Maybe I should have let her finish the job so we could reset again, but there was something in me that told me it would be a mistake to give up. To ever give up. I stumbled from the blow, but I straightened up to face her.

  “You can do better than that.”

  She smiled again, and her teeth grew out into fangs. Blink! She was back in my face, her teeth coming down on my neck.

  It hurt. A lot. I cried out, planting my arms against her, trying to shove her away. I couldn’t get any kind of grip on her through all of the fabric, which was fast becoming soaked in my blood.

  “Hey Virginia,” Charis said. I found her back on her feet, a steel poker in her hand.

  The creature turned towards her at the same time the poker was angling in at her head. Blink! She was on the other side of the room, out of the path of the weapon. Blink! She grabbed Charis by the throat, and threw her across the room. Blink! The abomination followed, flashing from one spot to the other, bending down and raking her across the chest.

  I focused, finding the Beast’s power and pulling it in. The poker rose from the ground and shot towards the creature like a bullet.

  Blink! She vanished before it hit her, appearing in front of me again, smashing me in the gut with sharp fingers. I felt them tear through my stomach and into my intestines, threatening to pull them out.

  “Daddy!”

  The door to the room swung open, and Clara stepped in.

  She was wearing a blue and pink dress, her brown hair pulled back into pig tails, her face angry and afraid.

  “Clara?” Charis said. Clara wasn’t real. We didn’t have a daughter.

  “Let my daddy go,” she said.

  She was walking towards me, her eyes sparkling in a swirling mixture of light and fire. The abomination held my insides in her hand, but she turned her head towards the girl.

  “What is this?” Ross asked. “I made you.”

  “Shhh!” Clara put her finger up to her lips. “It’s a secret.”

  “What are you talking ab…“

  Clara raised her hand, and the abomination vanished, Ross with it. I felt wetness at my stomach, the blood running freely now that the claw wasn’t plugging the hole.

  “Fix it,” Clara said, looking at the wound.

  “What?”

  “Fix it.”

  She came to me and put her small hand in mine. I felt something then. Not the touch of a child, but the touch of something else. I focused, taking in the Beast’s power, and mixing it with the thread of energy I felt running through her palm. The hole in my stomach vanished.

  “Clara?” Charis was back on her feet, coming over to us. Her chest was just as torn as mine.

  “Fix it,” Clara said. She held out her other hand.

  Charis took it, and her eyes changed the way I imagine mine had. A moment later her wounds were gone. She looked at me. “Landon?”

  I smiled. “The connection,” I said. “Our power is here.”

  In a child. A little girl. She was our daughter, but she wasn’t our daughter. It was a complicated metaphor, courtesy of the Box. She had been there all along, through so many of the cycles of pain and torture Ross had forced us to endure. He had destroyed her so many times, dissipated the power before it could consolidate and before we could recognize it for what it was. He hadn’t made her. He couldn’t make anything.

  “Come with me,” she said. She started tugging both of us towards the door.

  “Do you think it will be that easy?”

  The abomination appeared in front of us, blocking the path. It had changed. The hair was gone. The dress was gone. It was a humanoid shape devoid of feature or detail. Claws, small eyes, sharp teeth, a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso. That was it.

  “Go,” Clara said, gesturing at it.

  Ross laughed.

  I yanked on our power, bringing it into me, and then let go of Clara’s hand. I leaped forward at the creature, my own hand elongating into a set of claws. Blink! It tried to escape, but I reached out to it and held it with Divine power. I brought the claws up and around, severing its head.

  “Easier then before,” I said.

  The room started shaking.

  “This way,” Clara cried.

  She started tugging Charis towards a new door, one that hadn’t existed a minute ago. Her little legs were too slow, so Charis scooped her up as we ran.

  I looked back over my shoulder, at Ross making an appearance of his own. He had his watch in hand, and he’d lifted his sunglasses aside to look at it.

  “Not bad, kid. You might make a sport of this yet.”

  He motioned with his hand and the doorway became a wall. Charis staggered to a stop.

  Fifty weres burst through the double doors, charging into the room. They parted around Ross, and a stream of them headed for Charis.

  “No,” she said. She kicked one in the head, sending it backwards and knocking over two more. She spun and punched another with a free hand, then leapt over a fourth. One of the weres tried to intercept her in mid-air, and she let go of Clara just long enough to smash it aside before catching her again.

  Ross watched, and then shrugged. “I guess I need a few more.”

  “You’ll need an army,” I said. I found the poker, still laying on the floor. I focused, superheating it, melting into hundreds of white-hot balls of iron. I swept them around the room, pelting the weres, burning through their hearts. I didn’t know if they would heal or not. They didn’t.

  Ross looked around at the dead mess. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

  He pulled a gun from a shoulder holster tucked under his suit jacket, and shot Clara in the head.

  My heart jumped as her head slumped into Charis’ shoulder. She wasn’t our child. She wasn’t a child at all, not in truth. It didn’t make the act any less disgusting. “Clara!” I ran towards them, Ross forgotten.

  “Too far,” Charis whispered. She reached up and stroked the little girl’s hair. “Landon, we have to remember.”

  I reached them in time to put my hand on top of hers, so that both of us were caressing her head. “You’re right.” I swallowed every emotion, and pushed a single thought towards my soul, one that I hoped would carry over to the next regeneration.

  “Clara.” I whispered.

  The gun fired two more times.

  Chapter 11

  I had no concept of time in my ghostly form. I had no concept of much of anything. The only thought that kept repeating was to find out where the Box was, where Landon was, so that I could set him free. The only emotion I felt was eagerness.

  Sarah showed up with Ulnyx at some point. She went to get him a beer while he spread his massive bulk out on the sofa.

  “He never got back to you?” the Were asked.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I tried calling, e-mail, text message. I even posted to that damn internet channel he likes so much.” She came back in and handed him the bottle.

  Ulnyx huffed. “I never thought Obi would take himself out of the game while Landon was still twisting in the wind. Hell, I’m still in.” He used his teeth to break off the end of the longneck, and swallowed the drink in a few large gulps.

  “You aren’t the one who…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  Ulnyx did. “Lost their girlfriend? He needs to man up and grow a pair. We’ve all lost something or someone. We’d have lost even more if Landon hadn’t sacrificed himself.”

  “You can shift into a monster. Obi has what? The smallest slice of power making him a little tougher? He’s more human than human, but he’s still human. Help me roll this back.”

  I watched Ulnyx get up and lift the coffee table, pulling it off the rug. Then he helped Sarah roll it up to the couch, just enough to reveal a small metal handle attached to a block of stone, covered with a thousand sigils and marks. Sarah grabbed the handle and lifted the stone away from the floor. All of the sides were enclosed except one. That was why I couldn’t find it, and why no angel or demon would have found it either. It wasn’t just hidden from sight, but also from Sight.

  Avriel’s Box. It was a mottled black, with blue lines of energy coursing along the Templar script on the outside, pulsing and pounding in a strange rhythm. Landon was in there. So was the Beast. I had let Avriel and Abaddon out of the Box. I knew what had occurred in there. If I had a form, I would have shuddered.

  “It keeps me awake at night sometimes,” Sarah said. “I can’t stop thinking about the fact that Landon and Charis are in there with him. I wonder what he’s doing to them. How it feels.”

  She’d seemed so strong when she talked to me on the beach, but now I could hear the cracks when she started talking. Underneath that exterior was a soul struggling to stay sane in a time that was beyond crazy.

  “How do you know they aren’t kicking his ass?” Ulnyx asked. “Why does it have to be the Beast that’s winning?”

  “Sometimes, they may be.” She kicked the rug, rolling it back out, and then sat down on the couch. Ulnyx regained his position there. “The Box is a universe inside of itself. It has its own rules, and its own laws, but there is one that must be maintained. It was Avriel’s mistake, and Alichino’s mistake. They thought it was just about the power, the energy. I only realized while I lay there staring at the ceiling. They had missed the most important piece.”

  I felt the answer, as much as I heard it.

  Balance.

  “Even the Box demands balance. Avriel balanced Abaddon. Landon and Charis balance the Beast.”

  “What does it mean if they’re balanced in there?” the Were asked.

  “It means that they can never lose,” a new voice said. Dante. “It means they can never win either.”

  He appeared between them on the couch. He was wearing a simple navy blue suit with a red tie, his hair slicked back. He looked old, but energized.

  “That isn’t completely true,” Sarah said.

  Dante shrugged. “We’ve discussed this, dear. I even went to Alichino with the idea, and he ran some computer models. The odds are astronomical.”

  “What are you talking about, old man?” Ulnyx asked.

  “Don’t get your fur all bunched, signore. I assume since you were inside Landon for a time you have a solid understanding of the balance?”

  A short growl served as the Were’s response.

  “Yes, well, just as the balance can be tipped here, it can be tipped there. The trouble is, it is much easier to do here, and the effects are much easier to understand. If you think of it in terms of a mathematical equation, the-“

  “Forget it,” Ulnyx said. “Get to the point.”

  “There’s a one in a million probability that Landon and Charis can sufficiently overpower the Beast to break the balance. After which, there is a one in a million probability that doing so won’t destroy this realm, and perhaps all of them.”

  “You can’t know that,” Sarah said.

  Dante glared at her. “No, and neither can you. Nobody knows what would happen if the balance was lost inside the Box.”

  “The Beast could bust it too,” Ulnyx said.

  “Yes, which is why I asked you two to meet me here.” He paused and looked around the room. “Where is Obi-wan?”

  Sarah sighed. “He wouldn’t come.”

  Dante didn’t look happy. He stared at the ground and rubbed his chin with a frail hand. “There is strength in numbers, but if we must, we must.”

  “Must what?”

  “As you are aware, I can’t stay here for long, which means my usefulness is limited. We need to get the Box to Switzerland, to the CERN laboratory. Alichino will meet us there, and together we will destroy it.”

  What? Every particle of my being cried out, my whole existence feeling the threat of his words. How could he?

  “Dante, no,” Sarah said. “You’re going to kill Landon.”

  The Outcast didn’t seem fazed by the idea. Had my form been capable, I would have killed him.

  “I’m sorry, signora. Was that not what Landon asked of us before we lost him?”

  “Sarah told me to come here to help you get Landon out,” Ulnyx said. “Not to finish burying him.”

  “He deserves for us to try,” Sarah said.

  “At what cost?” Dante replied, his voice rising. “We already know that your father is plotting to use the Box to gain the Beast’s power for himself. Do we wait for Gervais to send Izak to come and take it from us? Or do we wait for Lucifer or the seraph to throw an army at us so that they can take control? There are only three of us, and I cannot even stay here long to help you. How do you propose we keep the Box away from everyone who knows anything about the Divine indefinitely? It’s going to be risky enough trying to get it to Switzerland. I have given you two months to find an answer, and you have none.”

  None? How could there be no hope? I didn’t believe it. Where was Elyse? She needed to make a try for the Box, before he could convince Sarah to help him.

  “I’ve lost everything else,” Sarah said, her meek reply little more than a whisper.

  Dante’s face softened. “I know, signora, but I promised Landon I would find a way to destroy the Box for all time. The longer we leave it in this world, the more the risk it poses to all of everything. I’m sorry, but Landon would want the Box out of reach of everyone who would want to use it for their own aims. We must destroy it.”

  I could feel the pain of the words, even in my ghostly state. There was little chance that Elyse could get the Box away from Sarah, Ulnyx, and Dante. She couldn’t even stand up to Sarah without being under my control. Landon was as good as dead unless I did something, but I was powerless. I had so little self, so little substance, but I had enough to pray. Please, help him.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Expecting someone?” Dante asked.

  Ulnyx raised his nose. “Whoever it is, they smell like sweat and seawater.”

  Sarah turned to the door. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of this.”

  That was when I knew it was Elyse. It took every bit of effort I could manage, but I propelled myself towards the door. If Sarah tried to Command her again, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Sarah put the Box down on the coffee table and headed in the same direction. She walked right through me, leaving me with a strange feeling of lightness that I hadn’t expected. I fought to keep myself from becoming disoriented. Landon needed me to reach Elyse. We needed to take the Box before they could destroy it.

  She reached the door and put her hand on the knob. I was a few feet behind, struggling to keep up. As soon as she started turning, the door slammed open, the force of it smashing into her arm and sending her flailing backwards. Elyse stood there, knife in hand. Her head was bare, and the Eye glowed at my presence.