The Mephisto Covenant (22 page)

“Sure, Dad. We wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Sasha, would we?”

ten

when jax got home from practice, he went to his room
to do homework, and found Phoenix playing Demon Slayer. “Didja get the memo that you have this game in your room, too?”

“I’ve been waiting on you, bro. I have news.”

“Coincidentally, I also have news.” Tossing his jacket to the bed, he went to sit opposite his brother, watching the screen while Phoenix incinerated the demons. “It’s pretty sick that we have this game. Kind of latently suicidal, isn’t it?”

“We’re not demons.” “Semantics. So what’s your news?” “Zee’s been over at Bruno’
s every day after he leaves for
work, and today he found a list of the Skia who’re going to be at the meeting. It’s teachers and administrators from schools all over the country. Fifty-five of them, attending under the guise of a conference on how to stop underage drinking.”

“And in the night-owl session, Mr. Bruno will teach them how to recruit teenagers.”

“Right. We’ve got a whole crew of Luminas researching every name on the list, to get what M needs for doppelgangers.” “He’s going to have to make it a rush order, because I’m pretty sure the meeting is next week.” He told him what Bruno said about being out. “Makes sens
e they’d do it during Christmas
week, when most schools have a break.” Phoenix wiped out a whole ba
nd of demons. “Right. It’s just
gravy that it’s Christmas. Eryx does love irony.” He progressed to the next circle of Hell. “So how did it go today?”

Jax leaned back and told him, but wasn’t halfway done before his cell rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, surprised to see Sasha’s name on the screen. He answered and knew right away something was terribly wrong.

She was crying. Hard. “Can you come over?”

“I’ll be right there.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket, went through his bathroom to his closet, grabbed his trench coat, then came back to tell Phoenix he was leaving.

“What’s up?” “She’s crying and asked me to come over.” “I told you girls cry a lot.” “I’ll be back later.” He popped out of his room and into hers, cloaked in case anyone else was there. She sat at the end of her bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. Sitting next to her, he pulled her close. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

With her face buried in his shoulder, she told him around her sobs, something about her birth certificate, and being adopted, and her mom finding her in the same abandoned house where she found the painting.

It was hard to get the whole story, but he finally did, and understood why she was so upset. She felt betrayed because she’d been lied to.

“I was two years old, Jax. Why was I there, in a falling-down house, alone? Who did that to me? Why would my real mother leave me there?”

He suspected she was left there, with the painting, by som
eone who wasn’t human. Maybe an
angel. Maybe Lucifer, who asked God to send an Anabo to b
ring hope back to the Mephisto.
Maybe God himself.

He supposed it didn’t matter. Listening to her cry, feeling her shake with emotion, he was torn, wondering what to say, what she could handle.

“Jax, I want to see the painting.”

He’d seen that coming, but he wasn’t ready. He wanted to show her the reproduced painting that Andres was still working on. “Maybe now’s not a good time, Sasha. Let’s wait until you’re—”

“No!” She jerked away from him and got to her feet, rounding on him. “I want to see it, right now! You said I could. You said you wouldn’t take it away from me.”

“You won’t like it, Sasha. You’ll be even more upset.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible. I want to know why I was there, who left me, and what it means. I’m not anyone’s child, not a citizen of this country. I don’t actually exist. No way can I go to school, and college is a joke. I’m going to be a homeless person, without an identity.”

He stood and reached to cup her face between his palms, pushing the tears from her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. “I’ll get the Luminas to work up some papers tonight, and you’ll have them by in the morning before school. They’ll make sure the papers are on file, wherever we tell them, so if anyone checks, you’ll be as legal, and real, as anyone else.”

“What about the painting?”

He sighed and dropped his hands. “I really wish you wouldn’t look at it yet. Don’t you have enough on your plate without that?”

She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “All you’ve done is make me even more determined to see it.”

“All right, fine, but don’t ask me questions because I don’t have any answers. Deal?”

She moved close and slid her arms beneath his trench coat, around his back. “Deal.”

Ten seconds later, they were in the document lab, where Andres was hard at work on the fake, the room infused with the scent of paint and linseed oil. He looked up when they appeared and smiled at Sasha. “Ah, the Anabo. Hello, Sasha. I’m Andres.” She nodded at him and said
, “Hi, Andres. Is that my mom’s
painting?” He pointed to the one on the le
ft. “Yes, this one. I am repro
ducing it, as you see,” he pointed to the canvas on the right, “with a few changes.”

Jax watched her look at the canvas, saw her eyes widen, knew her heart was racing because he could see the tiny pulse in her temple. She must be freaking out. She was going to go off about destiny, or how this made a joke of free will, or something. He watched and waited.

She said breathlessly, “Ohmigod, this is an Andolini!” She looked toward Andres. “It is, isn’t it?”

The painter nodded sagely. “I was captivated the moment I saw it. Very rare, of course, and in excellent condition.”

“My mother told me it was flaking.”

“Not the original. Someone altered it with shoddy paint. See? Your face was painted over, and here—”

“What did you say? My face?” “Yes, see? It’s you in the painting. And Jax.” She leaned in and looked closely—so still, Jax was certai
n she
was holding her breath. Andres continued on as i
f he were a museum docent. “The
river was redone, to hide these tiny numbers. That was the flaking paint. The original paint i
s pristine. This must have been
kept in perfect storage for many years to be so clean and undamaged. I’m appalled someone would alter it, but I suppose your mother felt it necessary, so no one would realize this is you, and she saw this as a perfect way to hide the account number.”

“The code to the lockbox in Geneva?”

“Right, and this is why Eryx wants the painting. If he could get his hands on the contents of the box, he’d have dozens of leads to people he might blackmail into pledging.”

“Are you putting a wrong account number on the fake?”

“No, they’re the same. We sent a Lumina to Geneva yesterday to remove the contents from the lockbox so Eryx can’t get them, even if he has the account number.”

“What was in the box?”

“Just what you told Jax that your mother said. Private letters, taped conversations, and compromising photos of lots of people we see in the news, although some of them are retired now, or dead. If Eryx had access to it . . .”

“What will you do with all of it?” “Destroy it.” “If you’re leaving the real
account number, why make a fake
painting?” Andres looked at him. “Does she know?” “Know what?” Sasha looked even more freaked out. “I guess that answers the question,” Andres said dryly. “Sasha and I are going to my
room.” He hauled her close and
popped them upstairs. Phoenix was still playing Demon Slayer, now in the seventh circle of Hell. “So what was she crying about?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” Jerking around, Phoenix saw her and jumped to his feet. “Phoenix,” Jax said, watchi
ng her step back from him until
she bumped against his desk, “why don’t you tell Sasha why we need a fake painting to give Eryx? Tell her about the Mephisto Covenant.”

“Why don’t you tell me yourself?” Sasha asked.

“Phoenix tells it better.” He walked to the window and stared out at the mountains. “He’s also way less invested, so he can bear watching your facial expressions.”

“You didn’t really just say that.” “Wait until you hear what he has to say.” Dead silence. After a while, he looked over
his shoulder and saw Sasha turn
on Phoenix, who was watching her with a funny look on his face. “Will you say something already? You’re freaking me out, staring at me like that.”

Phoenix stroked his goatee and said, “The Mephisto Covenant is a deal Mephistopheles made with God when we became immortal. He didn’t think we could do what Lucifer wanted us to do if we had no incentive, so he asked God to give us a loophole, some way to earn Heaven. God said if we could love selflessly, we’d be at peace, and we’d have the same chance of Heaven as any other human. M ag
reed, but it wasn’t until later
that he realized his sons are unlovable. We tried to find girls to love, but it was hard to do when they ran away screaming.”

“Hyperbole?”

“No, they really did run away screaming. M was bummed, but he said we had another alternative. An Anabo girl wouldn’t run away. She’d give us a shot. The problem was, and still is, there aren’t enough Anabo. We found one, over a hundred years ago, and now you. In a thousand years, we’ve found exactly two.”

“The Mephisto Covenant,” she said softly. “If Jax loves me, if it’s real and selfless, he’ll be redeemed?”

“He’ll be like everyone else on earth and have the same opportunity to reach Heaven.”

“But he’s immortal. He’ll live forever.”

“Forever is relative. The end of the world will come, someday, and when it does, all of us will be in Hell, unless we’re redeemed and have lived a life worthy of Heaven.”

Silence fell again, until she said, “That’s heavy.”

“It’s heavier when you consider none of us have a clue how to love someone. We don’t know anything about females other than the obvious, and the odds of convincing a girl to stay here with us and join the fight against Eryx are even slimmer than finding an Anabo in the first place.”

“So if I stayed, I’d be just like you and Jax and the other brothers?”

“Not just like us, no. You’d go with us on takedowns, and you’d be Mephisto, but you’d still be Anabo, which means you’d never lose Heaven. You’d also have children, someday, and they’d be born like you, a mix of Mephisto and Anabo. They’d grow up and join the fight.”

Again she was quiet. Jax watched the sky finally open up and snow, the flakes falling large and thick, laying a fresh layer on the old, draping everything in pristine white. He wondered if he’d throw up. He felt sick enough. Why wasn’t she saying anything?

“Only two?” she asked. “Only two.” “And the other was Jane. She was yours.” It took a moment for Phoenix to respond. “Yes. You have

no idea how great a threat Eryx is to you, Sasha. That’s why we need a fake painting to give him. He wants the numbers and won’t rest unless he gets them. We decided to give them to him, but we couldn’t give him the real painting because, with God’s hand touching Jax, and Lucifer touching you, the picture depicts the Mephisto Covenant. E
ryx doesn’t know that we can be
redeemed by an Anabo. As it stands, he’s satisfied with trying to take those who we find, to prevent them from bearing our children. If he knew we could be redeemed, he’d have Skia and lost souls across the globe actively searching for Anabo and killing them on sight.”

“But there are only two. You said so.” “Only two that we know of. There could be more.” “Why aren’t you hunting for others?” “We don’t have the manpo
wer that Eryx has. There’re six
of us and one hundred twenty-two Luminas, and all our time is taken up hunting Skia and lost souls. Eryx has thousands who follow him that we haven’t discovered yet. We’re limited to accidentally stumbling across an Anabo, like Jax did when he popped into that warehouse in San Francisco.”

“Doesn’t it frustrate you, knowing there may be more, but not knowing where, or who?”

“Frustration doesn’t begin to cover it, but M says we need to be patient, that we’re going to be here forever, and we’ll eventually all have a mate, but we’re not made for patience. We’re sons of Hell.”

“What does that mean, really? Jax tells me all the time that he’s got a dark side, but I never see it. I don’t understand.”

“You wouldn’t because you’re Anabo.” “I still want to know.” Jax could hear Phoenix begin to pace. “The dark side is just what it sounds like. It’s despair, and

the rage that goes with it. There’s an unfairness to our existence, justice that’s never served. We didn’t ask to be born this way, without any hope of Heaven or knowledge of God. We know about him, of course, but we were born without his even being aware. He can’t hear us, can’t help us, offers no solace. All humans, whether they realize it or not, are connected to God, and that makes all the difference.”

He paced some more, and Jax waited for the worst part. “The rage sometimes takes over, and bad things happen. We’ve killed men who weren’t lost souls. We’re punished for it, but we still do it. We fight a lot, with each other and with complete strangers and with men who piss us off. We have anonymous sex because we’re eternally eighteen-year-old guys, but mostly because it’s the only way we can ever feel close to a female.”