Balance (The Divine, Book One) (14 page)

"What
if I don't remain in control?" I asked.

"You
have more power than you realize,” he replied. “I think it will be very
difficult for you to lose control so completely that the demon can subsume
you."

Maybe
not completely, but what horrible things would I do while I was under the
influence? I wasn't so sure Dante was right about that one, his scruples seemed
to be a little shaky when pitted against getting what he wanted. I decided that
I would do my best to avoid absorbing any more souls, and to fight against the
temptation to let the beast loose. I needed Josette to come back and teach me
how to keep to that decision.

Josette.
Dante said she had
Calmed
me in the apartment, before
he had gotten all ape-crap angry on me. I knew she hadn't. I could clearly
remember when she had, so I would have remembered if it had happened again. We
had fought the vampires, and then come back to the apartment. She told me to
get some rest, kissed my hand, and that was it. I had fallen asleep immedia… Oh,
crap.

"She
put me to sleep," I said to Dante.

"She
Calmed
you," Dante replied. "Putting you out
is a more advanced form, but it is the same thing. A powerful seraph would be
able to Calm you, and then press you for information while you slept."

She
had played me like a game of Pac-man. She had made me think she was helping me,
when in fact she just wanted information, but about what?

"What
kind of information would she think I would have?" I asked Dante.

I
felt my insides being ripped out, the anger and hurt of her betrayal sending
chills through my body. I was too inexperienced, too naive. I had trusted her
way too easily. I could feel my pulse quickening, the heat rising to my face.

"You
are familiar with the Chalice, the Grail?" Dante asked. His words snapped
my ricocheting mind back into focus.

"The
one from the Last Supper?” I asked. “The one I was guarding?"

He
nodded. "The same. It is the reason I came to see you today, the reason I
am so thankful that you were delivered to me when you were. The demons have
captured it, and plan to use it to complete their victory. You have to stop
them."

Stop
them. Yeah, right. Me. I couldn't even take out a messenger demon without help.

"Captured
it?” I asked. “It wasn't exactly under guard. I mean, the demon who took it
just waltzed right in to the Museum and plucked it right out of a bulletproof,
tamper-proof case like it was made of fog."

"No,
Signore,” Dante said. “That was your experience, but not even close to the
whole story. So that you will understand, let me first tell you the history of
the Chalice. Do you recall what I told you about Jesus?"

I
nodded. It hadn’t been that long ago, though at times it felt like ages.

"Then
the important part that you understand is that he was real,” he said, “and he
was the embodiment of God on Earth. From the moment he was born he knew when
and how he would die, for it had been arranged by God in the hopes that his
martyrdom would push the human race to a higher level of goodness. In some
respects his plan was successful, for many mortals have done endless good deeds
in His name. In other respects, it was a dismal failure. Corrupt kings under
demonic influence used the name of God and the birthplace of His Son as an
excuse for war and violence.

The
final night of his life, Jesus took the Chalice and filled it with his blood,
granting it to his disciples to imbue them with the diluted power of God. It
was in this way that the first of the warrior angels were ordained, though they
did not gain most of their power until after their death. The Chalice, having
held the blood of God, also developed power of its own. For humans, it could
grant eternal youth and rejuvenation."

"What
about for the angels? Or the demons?" I asked. The story of the Holy Grail
was nothing new to anybody. The fact that there was truth to the tale was the
incredible part.

"Nobody
knows how it affects the angels,” Dante replied. “After the Last Supper, the
Chalice was passed to a mortal warrior, a non-disciple who was loyal to Jesus.
He was charged with protecting the secret of the Grail, and ensuring its safety
for all eternity. Because of Judas, the secret did not stay that way among the
demons for very long. The warrior spent many years in hiding, organizing a
secret army known as the Knights Templar in order to help him guard it. The
Templar Knights were granted a drink from the Chalice, and were armed by the
angels with blessed weapons to assist in the battle against the demon hordes.
For hundreds of years the Templars kept the Chalice safe.

The
Industrial Revolution has not been kind to the Templars, or Heaven in general.
With the growth of science and reasoned thinking came the dilution of the
faithful, with more and more turning away from religion in return for logic.
The Templars have become unable to maintain their number, and so their power
has continued to diminish.

It
was decided that the Chalice would be gifted to the Vatican and revealed to
mankind so that it could be preserved in the open and guarded more easily. Once
something has been brought to the human consciousness it becomes impossible to
take away. The Grail became a part of the mortal world, and as such mortals as
well as angels kept watch over it and protected it. The value of using the
Chalice was minor compared to the harm that would befall Heaven should it be
lost to the demons."

"It
has been lost to the demons," I reminded him.

"Yes,
Signore, it has,” he said. “The Templars underestimated the power of the Demon
Queen. In your mortal mind you may have thought the Chalice was unguarded. In
fact three angels and a dozen Templars were in or around the Museum on the day
you were killed, including the warrior who was given the Grail by Christ
himself over two thousand years before. The most powerful mortals the world has
ever known did battle with the Demon Queen in the basement of the museum. All
were defeated."

I
felt my breath get choked off, my terrified heart unwilling to draw in more
oxygen. I thought back to my final living memory, to the woman who had taken the
Chalice, and my life.

"The
woman who stole the Chalice. She was the Demon Queen?” I asked. “As in, the
wife of the Devil?"

"No,”
he said. “When I use the word Queen, I use it in a more hierarchical term of
power. She is not wed to the Devil. Rather, she is the most powerful female
demon waging war in the mortal realm."

"And
you want me to stop her?" If I had been able to breathe, I probably would
have laughed at the absurdity of the thought.

"You
do not need to confront her head on to stop her,” Dante said. “What you must do
is recover the Chalice, and make sure it becomes lost for all time. Mr. Ross
has told me that the demons are using it to create these."

Dante
reached into the inner pocket of his blazer and produced a simple iron necklace
with a liquid filled container hanging from it. The container looked like
glass, or crystal. The fluid was a blackish, reddish color. It undulated and
flowed inside its cage as if it had a life of its own. It looked familiar.

"They
spill their blood into the Chalice and mix it with the blood of a mortal,” he
explained, “then trap it in a crystal which has been cursed by a powerful
demon. Any demon who wears one becomes almost invincible."

I
reached into my pocket and pulled out the necklace I had captured from the Great
Were. Dante looked at it with surprise.

"It
doesn't work if it isn't touching them," I told him.

"Where
did you get that?" he asked.

"The
Great Were had one,” I said. “He let the seraph run him through so he could
show her how it worked. I pulled it off his neck before I killed him."

 Dante's
face lit up with another of his familiar smiles. "Excellente! You have
already discovered a weakness."

I
wasn't as enthused. "It isn't much of a weakness. It was closer to dumb
luck, really."

Dante
was unswayed. "Maybe not a huge weakness, but any advantage will make this
an easier task. Already demons are becoming bolder, attacking angels with a
comfort level never before seen, and taking mortals for sacrifice in increasing
numbers. If we do not stop them, Armageddon will happen sooner than we could
ever want."

I
wasn't feeling very confident about this, but what choice did I have? For
better or worse I had agreed to be mankind's Champion. Going down fighting had
to be better than toiling away in Purgatory for the rest of eternity.

"I
could use some help," I said.

Dante
held his hands in front of him. "My apologies, but I have none to offer
beyond Mr. Ross' extraordinary ability to gather information. I had thought to
teach you basic skills before sending you from Purgatory, but you have learned
so much more in a single night than I could have believed. Survival will
educate you far better and more quickly than I ever could."

I was
being thrown to the werewolves. I don't know if Dante thought I stood a chance,
but he seemed convinced that I did.

"So
what do I do next?" I asked.

Dante
rose from the couch and stood right in front of me, his face looking up at
mine. His expression was grave.

"Survive,
Signore. Survive and fight. Find out where these necklaces are being created.
Find out where the Chalice is being kept. Retrieve it, and hide it from the
demons, from the angels, from the humans. Let none know where it resides.
Destroy these amulets and the demons that wear them. Above all, survive. I will
be in touch when I have more information for you. Good luck Landon."

Without
waiting for my reply, without giving me a chance to question him, to ask him
about Charis, he vanished and I was alone. Maybe eternity in Purgatory wouldn't
have been so bad after all.

After
Dante left, I made my way back down to the Deli, only to find my sandwich had
already been trashed. Slightly annoyed, I bought another one and savored every
bite. As I ate, I considered everything that Dante had said, and tried to
decide what I should do next. I felt pressured to do as Dante had asked, but at
the same time I knew that in my current state I was no match for anything much
stronger than a Girl Scout. I had only defeated the vampires with a lot of
help, and I wasn't feeling too good about letting the
Were
's
soul take over again.

Despite
Dante’s opinion, nothing I had experienced the prior night had suggested that I
would be able to regain control once I had passed it over. Add to that the fact
that Josette had suckered me, and I was left feeling alone and powerless in the
middle of a race to save mankind from being literally devoured by monsters. I
had thought dying was the hard part. There was something funny in there
somewhere, I was sure.

I
took the amulet out of my pocket and took a closer look at it. To think that
there was some vestige of the embodiment of God trapped in that crystal. It was
heady stuff and it kept me captivated for a while, watching the smoky liquid
ebb and flow inside its prison.

Power.
That was the lock and key to all of this. Without power, I couldn't hope to
carry through with my assignment. Dante was so certain I had power. He had said
that Josette couldn't hope to defeat me in a flat out fight. Now that was
comedy. The Demon Queen seemed to have the most power. Thinking about her
ripping through the angels and the Templars to get to the Chalice made me
shiver with trepidation. If I was going to survive, I would have to figure out what
my power was, how much of it I had, and how best to utilize it. Did David go
through this same mental exercise before he had to go out to face Goliath?

I
left the deli and headed back to the Belmont. I stopped at my room to grab the
seraphim sword and demonic dagger, and carried them to the roof. Once there, I
dropped into the pose Josette had taught me hours earlier. I ran through the
limited exercises she had shown me with abandon, trying to free myself from the
bonds of humanity that I knew I was clinging onto. In the last twenty four
hours I had seen and done things that I knew were impossible as part of a
normal human existence, but normalcy had been left far behind, and now I was
part of something that rose above mortality, that lorded over it in a sickly
sweet dance with one too many partners. I was the odd man out, and I would have
to earn my place in line.

When
I slipped on an icy patch and landed on my ass, I gave up on the swordplay.
Maybe this was how the angels handled conflict, but it just wasn't working for
me. I was born in an age of weapons of mass destruction, missile toting drones,
and frickin' laser beams. I needed my own approach.

Embarrassed
and angry for having fallen, I cast my gaze to a large piece of the building's
frieze that had crumbled at some point over the last century. I thought first
about the rain making exercise, and then changed my focus from condensing water
vapor, to expanding the air trapped inside the cement. I felt the now familiar
tug in my mind, and watched the chunk of wall burst outward as no more than
powder. Now that's what I was talking about!