Crossed (7 page)

“Jo.” At the sound of her name she drags her eyes from the gruesome procession. Even her hatred of Armand can’t protect her from grimacing at his animalistic screams. I open my mouth to tell her to follow him, but just then Graff sticks his head back through the open doorway.

“You!” he shouts, jabbing his finger at me. “Get over here. You’re coming with us.”

“What?” I’m too shocked to move. Graff
wants
to include me? I swear to God, it’s like he can hear my thoughts and moves to thwart me, no matter what.

His mouth is set grimly. “He can’t lie to you. You’ll be there every time damn time we question him.”

I hear Armand’s jeering voice in my head.

Because it’s what
I
want.

That clever son of a bitch.

Maybe I can tolerate his screams after all. 

Graff knows better than to touch me, but he hurries me through the hallways of the school by the threat of his presence. He walks behind me, and the force field that keeps us separated, the one that, I suspect, if invaded by either one of us would result in his death, pushes me along the hallway. I don’t need to be told where to go. Armand’s screams make it pretty obvious.

When we reach the wing of dorms that has been converted into the Crusader hospital, we find Armand in the very first room. Two Crusaders I don’t recognize have joined the seven of us who came from the ceremony. One, a middle-aged woman with dreadlocks, is bent over Armand, trying to take his vitals while another confers rapidly with Puchard and Henries, who has also joined us.

The Sarge leans over Armand’s bed opposite of the attending doctor, and we join her. “Tell her what you know,” Graff demands. He looks to where I hang back, and his hand shoots out as if he would drag me into Armand’s line of sight. A warning look from me stops him and, at my own pace, I take a sliding step forward until my face is over Armand’s. “Tell her what you know,” Graff repeats, but I’m not sure Armand heard. His eyes, wild in his pain, look like those of an animal. His jaw is clenched and he breathes so heavily that foam is forced from the corners of his mouth. His chest moves in giant heaves, and the brilliant, moving web of gold slides across his skin in burning waves.

I’m too numb to speak, but I’m not sure what I would have said. Our relationship doesn’t run to comfort, but even I can’t bring myself to add to his obvious torment. So I stay mute, watching his already-battered face distort with pain.

Graff has no such compunction and shakes him. “Tell her what you know!”

“Sergeant Graff!” the dreadlocked woman shouts. Graff returns her reproachful glare with a steely-eyed one.

Armand lets out a giant gasp and looked like he wants to speak, but whatever word he was about to say turns into a guttural growl that bursts into a shriek as another golden wave ripples over his body.

And so it goes. For hours.

For hours I stand there, face to face with him, and watch him writhe and listen to him scream. I watch Graff demand answers Armand can’t possibly voice; I watch the mystified doctors attempt medical cures on a magical malady to no avail. Puchard and Henries have long ago left to consult the grimoires in a place where Armand’s howls won’t interrupt their concentration.

We are in a room filled with nothing but Armand’s endless pain and the anticipation of his surely eminent demise. Eventually, Graff lets me slump in a corner as Armand isn’t answering anything anyway, and I sit with my eyes closed and my hands pressed over my ears.

A rough hand hauling me to my feet jolts me from my miserable false-solitude. I realize it’s the Sarge just in time not to kill her.

Armand’s dead
, the first thought that enters my mind. But then he lets out another agonized scream and I flinch, then see that the wild look in the Sarge’s eyes is one of elation.

She hauls me in front of Armand. He’s still screaming and straining, but when the pain releases him, he falls back on to the bed and his eyes meet mine and this time I see recognition in them.

“Tell her,” the Sarge demands.

He opens his mouth, but we have to wait until the pain releases him before he can force the stuttering words from between his clenched teeth. “Zi-Ben has the souls—” a pause while he pants, “—imprisoned.” A pain takes him and I look to the Sarge in explanation, but she is looking at Graff. They look eupohoric, united in their optimism. Whatever Armand is telling me, he already told them, and they know what it means. I mean, I know that the souls of the damned go to hell, so I’m not sure why this is news.

Armand’s hands, which were fisted in the sheets, relax and he takes a gasp of air before continuing. “The souls of the
demons
,” Armand grunts, but he’s not looking at me. His forehead is furrowed in intense concentration as he forces the words from his lips. “It’s why demons . . . can’t . . . be . . . redeemed anymore.” Gasp, pant. “He’s got them trapped in a magical cage.”

I shake my head, still confused, but excited at the mood shift I sense in the Sarge and Graff. Whatever Armand’s telling me is huge.

He takes another breath. “If they are released . . . hundreds . . . maybe thousands . . . of demons might be redeemed.”

“Redeemed?”

A pain takes Armand, and he can’t answer so the Sarge does. Her excitement is such that even she can’t hide it. “Thousands of demons would just disappear from the war. Become human. We might have a chance—’

I can barely make sense of this news. It swirls in my head, raising me to giddy heights. I feel dizzy with it.

Armand’s strained voice brings me back. “Zi-Ben’s too powerful. His magic is too strong for any demon to break. Or any Crusader.” His eyes latch on to mine.

Any Crusader but one.

Me.

Naturally.

SIX

A few hours later, I stumble into our common room. Jo stands when I enter, dumping a book off her lap. I know without looking that it’s a grimoire she was studying and not something she was reading for fun, by simple fact that she never does anything for fun.

Chi, who has apparently made it his mission to absorb as much modern technology as he possibly can before we’re dragged back down to our usual standards, is in the corner pecking at a sophisticated stereo like a trained bird hoping for a treat to pop out. He turns at the sound of Jo’s book hitting the floor.

“Did he speak?” Jo.

“Did he survive?” Chi, of course.

“Yes,” I answer them both at once. “He was still . . . but he managed to get the words out.”

“Convenient,” Jo says with a matter-of-fact nod. “He was basically pre-tortured.”

“They kept at it until he couldn’t speak anymore.” I shake the memory away. “We learned what his plan is.”

“What he
said
his plan is,” Jo amends, thoughtful.

“He can’t lie to me. And, need I remind you, that this was your idea?”

“There are loopholes in any blood oath.” She paces, chewing her lip. Her fingers flick and dance, never holding still. “He could tell only a partial truth. Or, if two oaths conflict, he can pick one over the other . . . And who cares who’s plan it is? Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be cautious.”

I decide to let that go. “I don’t think he was in a condition to lie.”

She stops pacing. “He’s always in a condition to lie. It’s just his condition.”

“You weren’t there. He . . . It was . . .” I shudder. “He burned for hours. Hours and hours. The screams . . .” I can’t finish and shake my head instead.

She shrugs, agreeing to disagree.

“In any case, it makes sense what he wants, Jo. He wants us to get his soul back.”

She looks at me sharply.

My voice picks up speed, excitement edging out exhaustion. “He said that demons used to be able to change their minds—that there was an out. It wasn’t easy—it’s not a fickle thing—but a demon
could
be redeemed. Except all that stopped a couple of hundred years ago. Zi-Ben, the leader below, managed to trap the souls in Hell somehow in a magical barrier. Armand doesn’t know the numbers, but over two hundred years, he thinks there may be hundreds, maybe even thousands, of demons who would be redeemed.”

“What happens if they’re redeemed?” Chi asks.

“They become human.
Regular
humans, walk right out of hell in whatever body they’re in.”

“Redeemed?”
Jo cuts in, her tone sharp. “They get to just . . . be human again? Forgiven as if they hadn’t . . .” She looks like she might be sick. I hadn't really thought about it—distracted as I was by the possibility of living to a ripe old age—but obviously Jo was going to have a problem with the demons being forgiven.

“Jo, don’t you get it? If we released the souls,
thousands
, a huge chunk of their army would just . . . disappear. Become human. Remove themselves from the equation. We could even the odds.”

“Why don’t the demons just do it themselves?” Her tone is still caustic. She’s like a child who’s opened an Easter egg and, instead of the expected candy, found a celery stalk.

“They can’t. They tried, in the beginning, but they couldn’t.”

“So they need—” she swallows, unable to say the words “our help” when talking about the demons.

I rescue her, finishing her sentence instead with Armand’s remembered words, “An army of righteous, self-sacrificing idiots.”

That cracks her bitterness with a tinge of humor. “Not exactly the words I would use.”

“And they need someone strong enough to break zi-Ben’s spell.” I say it off-hand, as if it’s not a big deal that I’ll have to personally, literally, go to hell and free the trapped souls. I’m not sure why it comes out that way. It’s not like pretending that it’s not scary-as-crap makes it that way, or that not stating the obvious will hide it from Jo.

And it doesn’t. She understands what I’m saying instantly. “Oh.”

Chi, taking in our solemn expressions, joins us at the natural conclusion a leisurely minute later. “Oh.”

There’s a beat of silence as we swallow the reality of what it will mean.

“It’s worth it,” Chi finally says. “It’ll be worth it to save to the world.”

“Of course,” Jo agrees. She tries to keep her tone noncommittally flat, but she can’t hide its bitter acid. “Let’s risk Meda’s life to save the demons.”

“To save the world,” Chi amends gently.

The world be-damned. I won’t pretend that my reasons are altruistic. If the demons win and plunge the world into mayhem, well, it’s no skin off my nose. In a world full of violent chaos, I am better equipped to survive than most. But the demons winning means the Crusaders have lost, and that means Chi and Jo have lost. It’s not like the demons are capable of honoring a white flag of surrender, even if Jo and Chi could be convinced to wave it. They’ll fight to the bitter end.

And that I can’t allow.

I shrug. “It’s not like we have a whole lot to lose.” I force myself to look on the bright side, which isn’t too hard. The thing’s damn near incandescent. “Think, a huge chunk of the demon army just gone. In one swoop we destroy more than we could in a hundred battles.”

Jo blinks, and I see it settle on her, the possibility of half the demons erased. The balance restored in the eleventh hour.

“So what do we do next?” Chi asks and I can hear the same electric excitement in his voice that I feel.

“We haven’t actually figured that out,” I say and Chi and Jo deflate slightly, but only slightly—any hope is better than the none we had before. I quickly lay out what we learned from Armand.

The souls are, naturally, trapped in hell. Not the Acheron, but
the
hell—the kind you need a demon escort to get into. And not just to get into, but to navigate. Hell isn’t just a place like, say, New Jersey (for one, Armand says it’s nicer), with magic locks—it
is
magic, meant for magical beings.

Armand’s no longer a demon, so he can’t get us in, and it’s not likely we’ll find a demon to volunteer, so we’ve temporarily hit a dead end. Even if we forced a demon to let us in, once inside there’d be no way to control him while we’re there, surrounded by thousands of his allies.

Still, despite all this, it seems like a manageable problem compared to our previous ones—such as a hundred-to-one demon-to-Crusader ratio. “Armand blacked out before we work it out.”

“Will he be all right?” Chi again.

“They think so.” My tone is matter-of-fact. I don’t picture Armand as I left him. Whiter than the sheets he laid upon, his breathing so shallow that, if it wasn’t for the seizures that gripped him even unconscious, I would have thought he was dead. “They were trying to revive him when I left.”

Chi exhales. “Glad to hear it.” He turns back to the stereo.

Jo glares at his back.
“Glad?”

“Yeah.” He pokes the stereo a couple more times. “I always kinda liked Armand.”

“Chi,” I say, looking at him as strangely. “He almost killed you.”

“So?” he shrugs. “So did you.”

I don't know why—whether it was the deadpan way he said it, or that it’s true, or just because it’s been a horrific week and now there’s a tiny little speck of potential light at the end of the tunnel—but a laugh bubbles in my throat. Before it can slip out, Jo snorts, and our eyes meet, the laugh burst from my throat and then one from hers. We laugh until tears run down our faces, until Chi can’t resist and starts laughing too.

Chi jabs another button on the black box and music blares from the speakers, some kind or rock-symphony combo. Chi’s eyes widen and he raises his arms. “Behold,” he says in a booming voice. “I have made music.”

That sets us off again, and Chi cranks the volume until it’s deafeningly loud. He starts jamming on an air guitar and singing though he obviously has no idea what the words are. Still laughing, I hop up on the couch and drum with enthusiasm. Jo must be drunk with excitement because when Chi holds out his hands to dance, she lets him pull her into a spin that contains a frenetic energy that has nothing to do with the beat of the music and everything to do with too much strain, too much fear, and too much hopelessness crushing people who are too young to bear it stoically. The world is coming down around our ears and we find humor in the fact that I once (okay, three times) tried to kill one of my best friends.

That and the sudden existence of a tiny, glimmering slip of hope. The kind of hope that can save the world.

A movement by the door catches my eye and I halt. Jo follows my gaze and freezes. Chi whips around just as Jo jabs the off button on the stereo. The room plunges into silence.

Armand, weak, stands between a Reaver, Rachael and a burly guy whose name I don’t know, but who I recognize thanks to his facial hair which, even for a Crusader, is excessive. Armand’s arms are chained in front of him, despite the fact that he is barely able to stand. His escorts are serving more as supports than jailors. He looks fragile, weak, like the remains of a house after a fire—gutted, burnt out, a few charred beams poking up from the wreckage.

His eyes glitter in a pale, sweating face. He takes in our positions, our glee, and he seeks me out. In his state he can’t, or doesn’t bother to, conceal his greed. “Don’t stop on my account,” he drawls, his voice hoarse.

From all the screaming, I realize.

“Puchard thinks he’ll heal better in here. Near you,” Rachael says, and they take small steps toward the room next to mine, the one with the steel, bolt-covered door. Turns out it was for the other Halfling in our midst.

I feel him through the walls. I don’t know if it’s my imagination or part of the Crusader spell, but, regardless, it makes it hard to sleep.

His occasional pain-filled groans aren’t helping. They’re low, bitten-back, but as attuned as I am to him, unmistakable.

Well, since we’re both awake . . . I push myself out of bed and pad to his room, quiet, so as not to wake Jo or Chi. I slip the bolts and step into the room just as he’s wracked with another spasm. He arches, clenching his jaw. He’s soaked with sweat, his shirt and hair plastered against his skin. His breathing, when he finally can breathe, is shallow and fast.

“Come to gloat?” he grits out from a clenched jaw. His accent is thick with pain and exhaustion.

“Is that any way to greet your wife?”

He smiles faintly. “Forgive me. Pain makes me mean.”

“It’s one of your finer qualities.”

His maybe-laugh is cut off by another burst of pain, and I wait until he again lies panting before speaking. “Are you dying?”

“You wish.”

“Sometimes.”

His eyes gleam. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in days.”

“Savor it. It’ll be the last,” I say, then study his twisted form as another pain grips him. “Maybe for more reasons than one,” I add.

“I’m not dying,” he grunts through his teeth. He pauses, catching his breath, then grins a slightly mad grin. “This isn’t the pain of death. This is the pain of parts long dead coming back to life. The ties, the
chains
, the demons had on me are breaking—no, ripping away.” His grin turns to gritted teeth as another wave rocks him. “God-damn.” Pant. “Bloody.” Pant. “Pins-and-needles.” Pant. “—of the entire God-damned.” The pain releases him. He sighs the last word. “Body.”

“Oh. Lovely.”

“
Not
the word I’d use.”

“Will you be more . . . human, now that it’s gone?”

“No.” He jerks again, rocking in the bed slightly with the strain. When the pain leaves him he has to catch his breath before continuing. “I told you, meeting him doesn’t
change
who you are; it just
reveals
who you are.”

He said once that in selling your soul, you give up the pretenses that protect you from your own inner monster; you lose your ability to justify your evils in the face of every horrible thing you’ve ever done, every dark thought you’ve ever had. Demons don’t lose their humanity; they’re freed from it.

“I can’t un-know what I truly am,” he finishes grimly.

“So, if not human, what will you be when this,” I wave at his evident torture, “is all over?”

He sighs, his eyes closing. “I’ll be alive again, just as they said. A Halfling, and a Crusader.”

“And your magic?” I wait, studying him carefully for a lie.

“I don’t know any more than they do.” He grins, though it’s twisted in his pain. “But becoming one of the most powerful creatures on earth? Yeah, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” The smile fades, and he watches me carefully. “You understand that if I am, it doesn’t have to be you who travels to hell to free the souls.”

“So you weren’t planning to sacrifice me to save your soul?”

“You’re determined to sacrifice yourself,” he says harshly. “By your blind commitment to the Crusaders.” He closes his eyes and falls back, as if his brief spurt of fury drained what little energy he had. “This is the only way to save you. To save us both.”