Balance (The Divine, Book One) (11 page)

“You
make it sound so simple,” I said through chattering teeth.

“Your
human mind believes you should be cold, and so you are,” she said. “Don’t
listen to it. That is lesson number one.”

Don’t
listen to it. Right. Don’t listen to it. I tried to distract myself from the
cold. I imagined being on a beach in Florida, feeling the warm sun on my face.
For a moment, I almost thought I might not feel cold. No, I did. It was
freezing.

“Can’t
do it,” I said.

The
sword vanished again, and Josette walked over to where I was standing. She took
my face in her hands and pulled me down so I was at eye level with her.

“You
are standing on a rooftop, with your face three inches from an angel,” she
said. “In the last six hours you killed a powerful demon, and swallowed its
soul. You also healed from wounds that would kill any mortal. Now, tell me why
you are cold.”

While
she spoke, her golden eyes sparkled as though they contained all of time and
space. She was using logic on me, and I was falling for it. I took a deep
breath and nodded. She broke her gaze and stepped back.

“Well?”
she asked.

I
bent down and put my hand on the icy cement. I could feel the sensation of the
freezing surface in my fingers, but it didn’t make me feel cold. Cold was a
mortal sensation, and I was no longer mortal.

“I’m
ready now,” I said, standing back up.

Josette
smiled and her sword reappeared in her hand.

"How
do you do that?" I asked her. It would make moving around a lot easier to
not have to manage the four-foot long blade.

"Sorry
Landon," she replied. "You have your own abilities, but that isn't
one of them."

"Why
not?" I asked.

She
rolled her eyes, making me feel dumb again.

"Excuse
me miss seven-hundred-year-old-seraph, “ I said, “but I've never been to the
School for the Divine."

She
giggled again and dismissed her weapon.

"Okay,
I guess I need to give you at least a tiny bit of background before I start
beating your brains in," she said, kneeling down and motioning for me to
join her. "Most people talk about Heaven and Hell as if one is up there in
the sky, and the other is somewhere near the core of the Earth."

She
scratched out a rough globe with a cloud above it for Heaven and a flame below
it for Hell. I tried to be nonchalant about the fact that she was using her
fingernail to make the scratches in the blacktop. She put her hands outside of
the pictogram and squished them inward, so that the three scratches all sat on
top of each other. How did she do that?

"In
reality, we're all on the same level, but we're not in the same… dimension, I
guess," she said.

She
was squinting as she tried to come up with a good description. It was adorable.

"It's
not really a dimension,” she continued. “It's more like a state of being. Our
souls can travel these states, but our shells can't. Of course, its not like we
can just go anywhere we want. There are rules, and that assures that Heaven is
never overrun with sinners or demons."

"And
that the moderates are given a chance to prove where they belong?" I
asked.

She
nodded. "That came much later, but yes. Purgatory is the buffer, the
demilitarized
zone if you will, but you must already know
about that. It's the reason you and I can never be friends."

I
don't know why, but when she said that, it hurt. More than it probably should
have, I hardly knew her after all.

"You
think the Rapture is a good thing?" I asked.

Josette
looked up at me, and her eyes flashed in anger, but she covered it up quickly.

"Let
us not get into that, Landon,” she replied. “We will never agree. That is the
nature of who we are, and it is best that we accept it and move on."

She
had a point.

"So,"
she continued, "if Heaven is right here, but in another state of
existence, than it is no large matter for a being such as myself who resides in
both states to move from one to the other, at least in part. In essence, I can
reach through from one dimension to another, where I know I left my
blade."

"Neat
trick," I said. "But why can't I do it?"

"Two
reasons. The first is that you aren’t powerful enough, not yet anyway. It took
me five hundred years to learn how to reach through the dimensions. The second
is because you don't exist outside of this state," she said.

“You're
saying that Purgatory is part of Earth?" I asked.

"Yes.
And no." She stood up and swept the scratches away with her boot.

"How
can that be?" I asked, rising to join her. "How could millions of souls
be living here, and nobody has ever seen them, heard them, or knows that they
exist?"

"We
are
Divine
, Landon. We decide what mankind knows about
us. We control them, in order to protect them."

Like
in the park. The area where we had fought the Great Were had been deserted even
though it was the middle of the day.

"Why
do the demons control them?" I asked. It couldn't be to protect.

"To
use," she said. "As you have already discovered, information is the
highest form of power and control. People are easily corrupted by promises of
knowledge that will give them an edge." The same way I had been. "Now
put up your sword."

She
spent the next hour instructing me on how to hold a sword without cutting
myself on it. She said I was a natural, but she said it sarcastically. By the
end of the hour I could almost hold the thing steady, but it felt heavy and
awkward in my hand, and I had no confidence at all in my ability to use it. We
took a break, and I grilled her a bit more.

“What
happens when a Divine dies?” I asked. We were sitting cross-legged in the
center of the rooftop facing one another, our blades resting across our legs.

She
shook her head. “Dying as a Divine is like dying as a mortal. Nobody knows for
sure what happens, only that we do not return to where we came from. As my Lord
has no knowledge of this end, I have always thought that we cease to be.”

"I’ve
been making the same assumption,” I said. “Demons can be killed by…" I
hung the end of the sentence, waiting for her to finish it.

"A
seraph's blade, as you have already learned. Many demons also have a weakness
to one of the four elements of life. Which one depends on the type of
demon.
Lesser demons like werewolves are susceptible to
earth. All Divines can be killed by decapitation. Including you."

Decapitation
was not a pretty thought, but I had assumed as much. Once the head and body
were separate, which one was going to grow back? I could picture myself like a
hydra, duplicating every time something lopped off my noggin.

“Silver,
wooden stakes?” I asked.

“It
can slow earth sensitives down, but won’t kill,” she replied. “You’ve seen too
many movies.”

"Part
of it is true,” I said in my defense. “What about holy water?"

"Ineffective
as a weapon,” she said, “but it can heal any demon inflicted wound. It helps us
to counter our greatest weakness."

"Which
is?" I asked.

She
started to speak, then thought about it. "Our greatest known weakness I
mean. We need blessed blades to kill a demon. All demons can harm us with
little more than a fingernail. As long as they break the skin, their touch is
poison."

"So
what about mine?" I asked.

"Yours?"
She was confused.

"My
touch," I said.

I had
posed the question innocently enough, but her face flushed again. She stammered
out her reply. "I uh... I really don't know. I haven't... I haven't been
in that situation before. With a diuscrucis."

"You
sure are demure for a seven hundred year old," I said, trying to keep the
conversation light. I found her reaction intriguing, but I wasn't about to
press her on it.

Josette
conjured her sword and pointed it at me. "Shut up and fight," she
said between laughs.

She
spent another hour teaching me basic technique, which meant how to swing the
blade without losing control of it, and how to get myself back into position to
either attack again or defend myself. The night was wearing on, and the weather
was getting colder, so I appreciated the fact that I was now immune to
temperature changes. The earlier rain returned as snow, falling in heavy flakes
that clung to everything they landed on, including us.

"Seven
hundred years would mean you lived in the middle ages," I said.

We
were taking another break, and I had decided I wanted to know more about my
teacher than I did about anything else. I was getting a little tired of demons
and fighting, and it was the closest I could get to so-called normalcy.

Josette
nodded. "I was born in Paris. My father was a wealthy merchant who had
close ties to the Catholic Church. I grew up in a privileged household, and
wanted for nothing. It was not always an easy life, for my parents were very
religious, and punished my brother and I severely for our sins. Still, it was a
good life, especially for those times. You may think I was perfect because I am
a seraph today, but I was not always the most well-behaved child."

"Good
enough for Heaven," I said. "Besides, what child can ever avoid
making a little mischief?"

"Yes,"
she agreed. "Good enough. My brother and I, we used to go down into the
city dressed in rags and act as beggars. We would take the money we collected
and spend it on sweets."

Her
eyes were alight with the pleasure of the memory, and I could feel the warmth
of her radiating and soaking into my skin. She was silent for a moment while
she reminisced, and then her mood changed.

"When
our parents found out, they took us out to the barn and tied us to a post, then
used a riding crop to give us ten lashes each,” she said. “Afterwards, they
made us work to earn back all of the money we had stolen from the real poor,
and go out to the city and distribute it to them."

I
couldn't believe it. "Are you kidding me? Your parents sound like
monsters."

She
shook her head. "Do not misunderstand me, Landon. My parents could be as
loving as they could be cruel, and the pain they inflicted served to teach us
to be humble and always remember that service to God means caring for the less
fortunate. I hated my parents for a time, because of what they had done, but
after I had passed to Heaven, I realized what they had taught me."

"I'm
sure there were less violent ways to teach a child a lesson like that," I
said. I was getting angry thinking about it. Not that there was anything to do.
I reminded myself that it had happened hundreds of years ago.

"You
are right about that,” she said. “My parents spent many years in Purgatory due
to their treatment of their children. In the end they proved that their souls
were essentially good, and they were misguided in their faith. They sought me
out as soon as they entered Heaven, and begged for my forgiveness."

That
cooled my anger a little bit at least. "What about your brother? It sounds
like you two were very close."

Her
eyes dimmed so completely it was as if they had gone black. So much emotion in
those eyes, it was an amazing thing to experience, though it seemed to amplify
her feelings to the point that I was experiencing them too. It felt as though a
ten thousand pound weight had been dropped on my chest as a mixture of sadness
and fury.

"He
did not respond as well to my parent's teachings," she said. "He
became violent, angry, and withdrawn. He left home when he was sixteen."

Tears
started rolling down her cheeks, and I could tell there was more she wanted to
say, but wasn't able to. The answer was written in her eyes, in plain sight to
me. He had killed her.

"Josette,
it's okay," I said, reaching out and putting my hand on her shoulder.
"You don't need to talk about it. I can see it in your eyes. I'm so
sorry."

Those
same eyes widened when I said that, and she turned her head away from me. She
hadn't known I could read her like that. Not knowing any better, I had just
assumed it was normal.

"Thank
you," she said. "No matter how many years have passed, the memory is
a torment on my soul."

I
didn't think, just acted. I reached out and put my arms around her, wrapping
her small body up into a hug. She stiffened at first, not expecting the
maneuver, then melted into my arms.

"Seven
hundred years, Landon," she said between open sobs. "Yet it still
feels as if it happened yesterday. I joined the Order of Seraph because I
didn't want such a fate to befall anyone else. I have saved hundreds of
innocents from the hands of evil men and demons alike. Men that you will help
one day."

She
just had to say it. Maybe it was just due to her emotional state, but I didn't
appreciate it. I pushed her out of the embrace, holding her at arms length.