Crossed (24 page)

“She—” Can’t. The word catches on my lips, and I can’t say it. I don’t know if Chi doesn’t recognize what zi-Ben’s hand on her arm meant during her confession, doesn’t understand that he compelled the truth from her, or if he simply refuses to believe it. In the end it doesn’t matter, I want Chi’s love for Jo to escape this hellhole even if she never does. “She always does,” I say instead.

“You have to be ready to help her. Be ready, Meda.” His grip on my hand would be brutal, were I anyone but me.

“Of course,” I agree easily. Then, “Go, Chi.”

He casts one more look at Jo’s turned back. He opens his mouth as if to say something else, then closes it. With a furious purpose he starts up the stairs. Armand had been waiting for him, and he gives me one last look before he turns to walk up the stairs with Chi.

“Armand’s right, you know,” Jo says in a deceptively flat voice as we watch the guys ascend to freedom. “You could make it.” She nods towards zi-Ben. “It’s a test. He wants to see if you’ll choose to abandon your best friend to rot in hell for all eternity and live the rest of your life with the guilt, or stay, and have your humanity stripped a day at a time, while I watch, knowing it’s all my fault.” She looks at me, her eyes dark and bitter.

“Jo, you’re talking to a girl who ate her own mom.” I toss a careless arm around her shoulder. “I’d get over it. Guilt doesn’t keep me here.” I look at her. “But you are my best friend, Jo, and that does. Besides, maybe it won’t be so bad. Less torture and imprisonment than we fear and more like a buddy-cop movie. Just two wicked friends having wacky adventures, ruining the world one vulnerable soul at a time. The
Turner and Hooch
of evil.”

“
Turner and Hooch
was about a cop and his dog.”

I pat her on the shoulder. “Precisely.”

She elbows me in the ribs. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t. You love me.” I give her the kind of one-armed hug around the neck that’s practically a headlock. “And I love you, too, pal.” She doesn’t deny it and doesn’t try to fight free of my undignified hold. Instead I feel a quiver go through her.

“Meda, I—’

“I know, Jo,” I cut her off, forestalling any more mushiness. Both because I hate it, and because this isn’t really the place. “Didn’t I just say so?”

I drop my arm from around her shoulders, and offer it to her to lean on it instead. “Let’s go get your soul back, eh?”

To my surprise, turning away from the stairs, from freedom, is easier than I expect. Facing zi-Ben is not, but then he is one scary-ass dude, and while Jo’s friendship can make freedom less appealing, it doesn’t manage to make slavery more so.

He’s backlit by the effervescent light of thousands of trapped souls, a black blight against a wall of brilliant white. I have a brief moment of vertigo, a roaring of panic in my ears and I grip Jo’s hand, where it wraps around my arm, tightly. I feel like I’m balanced on a precipice, as if the wrong move will send me tumbling down. But that makes no sense. I’m already down.

But, it’s not just me on the brink, it sit? It’s everything: the Crusaders, the world. We’re all going down.

Not that it matters, this realization. There’s no move for me to make. We’re surrounded. Even if I were overcome with altruism, I couldn’t smash through the number of protections they must have on the souls before I was destroyed.

Zi-Ben turns to the glowing wall now, his hands uplifted. He begins pulling the protections from the column, stripping them away like blankets, slipping them loose like the skins of blanched tomatoes. He casts them on the floor where they dash and wash over us, magnificent crashing waves of demonic power.

Suddenly the rushing waves of magic dwindle down to a slinky pool that drifts past our ankles. Zi-Ben hasn’t stopped. He still stands, arms uplifted, but strain is now evident in every line of his grotesque, beastly body. He shoves at the wall, heaves his magic at it, then he suddenly switches, jerking, pulling his magic away. A thick, interwoven web of royal blue magic shimmers in and out of existence at each attack. Zi-Ben is carving, digging a hole through its center, but it’s thick, so strong his progress infinitesimal. Our plan seems suddenly foolish, watching this demon, this ruler of hell, struggle through the spell. That we ever thought, even with my abilities, that I’d be able to undo this demonic spell is laughable. I feel like a failure. Worse, I feel
stupid
.

“Do you want to know the most ironic part?” Jo asks softly beside me.

“More ironic than you being responsible for the death of the Crusaders?” Embarrassment makes me mean.

“Yes,” she says, not the least bit insulted. “The ironic part is that I’m not the first Crusader to sell my soul. Did you know that?”

“Fascinating.”

She doesn’t take the hint. “God gave the demons life after life to save them, so it wouldn’t make sense for Him to allow the demons lock their souls up, would it? I mean, surely the all-seeing master of the universe would have foreseen that possibility.”

I don’t answer. I’m burnt out. Hollow. I’m not sure why, really. As I told Armand, it’s not over, for us anyway, and that’s all that’s really concerned me. But still I feel . . . sad. I’ve pressed the big red button and am just waiting for the world to end.
Still
, I squint, searching for the silver lining,
in a world of chaos I am better equipped for survival than most.

“No,” Jo answers her own question. “The demons couldn’t do it themselves. They needed someone else. But who? Who would help the demons?”

She waits for me to answer. When I don’t, she continues. “Someone who hated demons, someone who wanted them to suffer as he has suffered. Someone who lost his family, a wife, a couple of small kids. Someone who couldn’t stand the thought of the demons getting redemption. Someone who lived in blood, whose family died in it. And,” she waves a casual hand at the wall, “naturally it had to be someone with magic.” There’s something in her voice. Something that, despite its forced casualness, pulls my attention away from the destruction of the world. I turn to find her looking at me. She leans in, a feverish gleam in her eye. “Someone like me.”

Realization rises slowly. “A Crusader,” I breathe. “A Crusader cast the original spell.” My eyes dart back to the column of light that zi-Ben struggles against so fiercely. Of course. The demon magic merely protected the spell; it didn’t hold the souls.

“Oh, how he laughed when he told me.” Her words are no longer casual. Her hands clench and unclench, her eyes are unfocused as she remembers. “Why did the demons live forever?
We did it to ourselves. Our
God made it possible,
our
Crusader cast the spell. Oh, how he laughed. The greatest trick the devil ever played wasn’t his trick at all.” She turns, gleaming, wicked, winning eyes on me. “Let’s have the last laugh shall we?”

I don’t even look as I do it. I don’t have to. The spell is so simple, so easy I could do it in my sleep.

“Allabutesque es que talla
.”

TWENTY

All hell breaks loose. Literally.

The freed soul of every demon in hell pours from captivity with the rush of a shattered million-gallon fish tank. I’m knocked off my feet in the blast, flipping ass over teacup. Up, down, everything loses all meaning as I’m tossed in the brilliant white frenzy of thousands of souls. I can’t hear, I can’t see. I’m trapped in a silent white night.

The only concrete point in my universe is Jo’s hand in mine. My grip is so tight that I feel the pop of her fingers as they snap in mine, but still I don’t let go. We slam into something so solid it can only be a wall, and we’re pinned there as the souls rush around us. Finally, finally, they start to thin and we slide down the wall as the pressure releases. Patches of dark room become visible, but souls still flit and zoom around the room in a frenzy, clouding my view. I land head first and flip to my feet. I pull on Jo’s arm and toss her over my shoulder as she squawks in surprise. The silence of the soul-rush is replaced with shouts and screams and I can barely see through the sweeping masses of billowing white souls. But I don’t need to see everything, I don’t need to understand. My world has focused to a single point, a single goal.

The stairs.

I break into a run, my legs devouring the world in giant leaping steps. I launch myself over demons who haven’t managed to find their feet. I knock demons aside, I smash heads, I rip throats. I do whatever I have to get through the room. I reach the bottom of the stairs and race up them, taking them in bounds. Beneath me the screams and shouts only get louder, but I don’t slow, don’t stop, don’t
care
.

Suddenly a force slams into the back of me and I fall hard against the stairs, losing Jo who lands on her butt in front of me. I twist, looking for an attacker but there’s no one. I twist back to Jo, who looks vaguely startled, then looks up delighted, and touches a hand to her chest. “My soul…’

“God, even your soul is an asshole.” I toss her back on my shoulder. I only make it a few more steps before a giant boom sounds behind me and the stairwell shudders, sending me once more too my knees. I manage to keep a hold of Jo and stagger to my feet as she screeches the warning. “Zi-Ben—the stairs—
run!
”

I force my legs to move as if they were loaded with springs. Behind me another boom rocks the stairs, but I’m expecting it this time and barely slow. The opening is still too far away, at least two, maybe three stories between us and freedom. I push harder, I run harder, and blessedly there’s a break in the attack. I don’t turn to look; I don’t pause to ask why.

Jo answers anyway. “The demons—the ones who got their souls back,” Jo says, wonderingly, “they’re fighting him. They’re fighting! RUN!”

I take several more leaps, but zi-Ben must have pulled free, or a minion of his has. The stairs ahead, where they attach to the world above, explode in a blinding flurry of shrapnel that forces me to close my eyes. There’s a shudder, then a hesitation, then the sickening feeling of freefall.

I don’t hesitate. I launch Jo towards the gap in the ceiling like a shot put, take two more leaps on the collapsing stair and leap with everything I have. I fly through the air, soaring over chaos, then slam into the opening of the world. I grip the edge just barely. Grit rolls under my hands and I slide back towards the hole, only barely catching myself with the very edge of my fingertips. I dangle over disaster, the roar of battling demons below, but I am unafraid. I am filled with nothing but smug damn victory.

I am Meda fucking Melange. There is no way in hell I’m letting go.

Still I don’t mind when Jo, Chi and Armand reach over the edge and haul me up.

Hey, just because I don’t need help doesn’t mean I don’t mind a little from my friends every once in a while.

EPILOGUE

The world is saved.

For the moment anyway, and that’s good enough for me.

A huge chunk of demons were redeemed, though we have no idea how many. Instead of becoming human and just walking away, however, they did something we hadn’t anticipated: they fought. Most of the redeemed demons were trapped below. In a cruel twist, by becoming human, they could no longer use the magical passageways to escape. I suspect this is what actually prompted the fighting below. Chi, of course, is convinced it’s the product of newfound righteousness. Regardless, the result is the same: hell has erupted into civil war and the demons are too busy dealing with the rebellion to pay much attention above-ground.

Some demons who were redeemed while above ground rejoined the population but, for the most part, they’re smart enough not to call attention to themselves. Hell isn’t likely to be particularly forgiving of the defectors. As most of the redeemed demons’ contemporaries are long dead, it’s really more a matter of explaining their sudden existence and lack of paperwork to governmental bureaucrats—which probably was responsible for a rash of news stories about uncommonly-attractive amnesiac John and Jane Does. A few redeemed were probably able to return to their families, or at least Chi, the sentimental fool, likes to think so.

Armand, while his soul was released, still hasn’t actually managed to be redeemed. As Jo pointed out, every “good” thing he did he did for personal gain, either to get his soul back or to win me. He’s trying, of course, as he doesn’t want to burn in hell for all eternity, but doing the right thing out of fear of punishment is not the same as doing it out of goodness. I’m not worried, though—I can say from firsthand experience that if you hang around these knuckleheads long enough, goodness is bound to rub off on you, no matter how much you might resist.

The Crusaders are taking the reprieve from the demons to rebuild. Communities—well-fortified communities this time—are being built to replace all those we have lost. Chi, Jo, Armand and I are part of the crowd rebuilding the Mountain Park community (for the third time). It’s surreal to be surrounded once more by trailers in yet another secluded mountain valley. It’s like the last year didn’t happen, like we have rewound back to beginning of it all.

Even Jo has reverted to the Jo I first met and not in a good way. She’s withdrawn and snappish, though she tries to hide it. When pressed, she smiles too bright and talks too loud, trying to act as jubilant as the rest of the Crusaders—as Chi—but she was never particularly good at real happiness, let alone faking it.

Chi has the patience of a saint and responds to her negativity with obnoxiously overt positivity. He hugs her, spins her around, claps her on the back. “Jo, you saved the world!” “You did this, Jo!”

Jo responds by withdrawing further—and faking it harder.

As for me, I’ve been hoping she’d get over it, to no avail. Impatience wars with my desire to avoid an emotional confrontation.

It’s dusk and Jo, Chi and I are outside the half-built school. Everyone has to pitch in the building, and, with Crusader healing abilities, a faked injury can’t get you out of it. Of course, it could be worse—Armand’s stuck sequestered with Crusader Puchard who is recording everything he can tell him about hell for posterity.

Chi, work gloves on his hands, places his fists on his hips and lets out a sigh of satisfaction. He lifts up his hands toward the school. “The future!”

Jo says nothing, merely scoops up more wood scraps to toss into a fire that’s burning in a nearby garbage can. She’s been quiet all afternoon, stewing, and Chi has been uselessly trying to draw her out. He looks at her now. “And it’s all because of you and Meda, Jo.”

“I didn’t build the damn school, Chi.”

“You know what I mean.”

She stops, slamming down her pile of wood. “No, I don’t.”

Undaunted, Chi continues. “Can’t a guy be proud of his girlfriend?”

“No he can’t!” She screams it at him. “Stop, just stop it! I don’t want to hear any more how I’m a hero. I don’t want to hear it!” Her voice takes on a hysterical edge. She looks like she wants to say more, but slams her mouth shut and turns, dodging into the partially completed school.

“She didn’t mean it,” Chi says, but even his endless optimism is starting to wear thin. “We just have to give her some time to get over it is all.” It has become a litany.

The hell I will.

I find her on scaffolding on the back side of the school, looking into the woods. I pause, looking at her slumped posture, her damaged leg back in its brace sticking straight out between two of the bars. How can I convince her to confide in me? To tell me what is eating her alive?

“Jo, what the hell is your problem?” Eh, I don’t do warm and fuzzy. Besides, give me some credit—I wanted to say “fuck.”

She starts. When she sees that Chi isn’t with me she relaxes slightly. She faces back towards the forest and grips the railing of the scaffolding. She doesn’t say anything right away and I join her at the edge of the platform. When the pause draws on long enough that I think she’s not going to answer, she does.

“Chi thinks I lied.”

I raise my eyebrows in question.

“To zi-Ben,” she clarifies. “Chi thinks I somehow beat the demons” compulsion spell, that it was some clever ruse and not the truth.” Her mouth thins. ‘“You did it, Jo! You saved the world!’” Jo quotes him, her tone a bitter approximation of Chi’s effusive happiness. She leans forward on to the railing. I don’t interrupt. I wait, wanting to let the poison flow, hoping that when the putrid self-hate drains away, she might feel better.

“When we made our plans, I really thought I could release the souls. I told myself that I could let them go, if that’s what it took to get my own back.” She pauses then the words start again, with difficulty. “But then we were there in that ballroom, surrounded by them. They were
dancing
.” She shakes her head violently, but still won’t look at me. “I just couldn’t do it.” Her mouth settles into a grim line as she struggles to force herself to continue.

“I didn’t see it as a betrayal to the Crusaders. I honestly didn’t.” She’s not making excuses, not pleading with me to understand. Her tone is matter-of-fact, if harsh. “It’s the reason I
could
do it despite my oaths, don’t you see? I felt it was a betrayal to
forgive
the demons. All the Crusaders they’ve murdered. My parents—” She stops, her throat tightening too much to speak. She shakes her head. “Loopholes.” She uses the same sing-song tone she did when she was a demon, but her tone is biting.

She grips the railing, her knuckles turning white, and it’s a long moment before she speaks. When she does, the words pour from her. “The devil knew. He saw in my heart and he knew I hated too deeply to release the demons’ souls. That’s why he let me go, why he let me return to the Crusaders. He
knew
from its inception that I wouldn’t go through with freeing the souls. He knew I would try, he knew I would lead you into hell, but he knew I would never be able to make myself save the demons. He knew I would sell you to zi-Ben instead.” There’s no disguising the disgust in her voice. It seeps through her attempt to remain emotionless.

And there it is. As Armand had said, you can’t go back to not-knowing who you are.

“But you did go through with it.” I place my hand gently on hers, but she pulls it away.

“I almost ended the world.” Her voice thickens. “If it wasn’t for you . . .”

I grab her hand. “But you didn’t,” I say forcefully. “Jo, you can’t spend your life apologizing for the terrible things you
almost
did. If I did that, I’d never have time to do anything else.”

She forces a smile at my attempt to cheer her up, but I can tell I still haven’t gotten through to her. “Jo, the devil may have thought that you would never release the souls, but our guy,” I point a finger skyward, “always had faith in you.” Her expression doesn’t change but her hand twitches in mine. “Jo, you said yourself. This was my destiny. I’m a Beacon and I just did something that saved all of mankind. I was destined to set the souls free with my kickass magical abilities. It was part of His plan—
you
were part of His plan—all along.”

At my words her eyes get a suspicious sheen.

“That was always meant to happen. The devil played his cards, God played his, and it was all up to you, up to your free will to determine what would happen to all of mankind. Don’t you get it? It was all up to you and
you made the right choice
.”

Jo bursts into tears. Hell, I made it worse.

Then she looks up and I see in an instant that they are tears of joy. I press my advantage, widening the little crack of hope into a chasm. “It wasn’t supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be hard as hell. And you did it.
You did the right thing
.”

She opens her mouth as if to speak, but can’t, so she shakes her head. I pat her back awkwardly. I must have had some horrified expression on my face because when she sees it she sort of snort-chuckles (snortles?) through her tears. She sniffs and wipes her soggy eyes and nose on her sleeve.

“Thanks, Meda.” She nods at my patting hand. “You can stop that now.”

I pull my hand back with relief.

Jo takes a deep shuddering sigh. “You really think so?” she asks.

“Jo, do you know how many times
I’ve
almost betrayed the Crusaders? Seriously, I can’t fit the count on both hands. I almost killed you—twice, actually—and Chi a half dozen times.” I hold up the fingers. “I almost stole the Beacon Map—no,” I hold up my hand, forestalling her argument. I had never told her just how close I had come. “I did, Jo. I had every intention of taking it with me when I left with Armand. It was at the last second that I changed my mind. I changed it because you had faith in me.” I had heard her outside my room, telling me that she was sorry and that she trusted me. “Let’s see,” I tap my chin. “I almost joined Armand when we were in the Acheron, trapped by the Crusaders. We were in an underground room and I thought the Crusaders had betrayed me. Oh, I ate my mom. Does that count?” I don’t wait for an answer. “Then there was the time I—’

Jo holds up her hand to stop me and she’s actually laughing now. Real laughter.

“So if you can forgive me, you should be able to forgive yourself, don’t you think?” I get serious, and I study her intently. My voice comes out a bit more plaintive than I intended. “I mean, Jo, if you hate yourself this much for one slip up, what must you think about me?”

She hugs me. “You know what I think about you.”

She releases me and wipes away the residual tears on her cheek. “You’re wrong about one thing, though. It wasn’t your magical abilities that made you a Beacon. Any Crusader could have undone that spell; it wasn’t your magic, Meda, it was
you
. You could sympathize with the demons.
You
could forgive them.” She looks at me and her voice is small. “You could forgive
me
.”

“I
won’t
forgive you if you start crying again.”

That causes another snortle. When she stops, she takes another breath and she looks more relaxed than I’ve seen her in months. Maybe ever. “Who would have thought that
you
would become
my
conscience?”

I gasp in horror. “Don’t you dare get used to it! I’m the bad cop.” I point at her. “Staid, righteous good cop.” I point at myself. “Mischievous, fun-loving bad cop.”

She grins impishly—which really doesn’t bode well—and tosses an arm around my shoulder. It pulls her off balance a little and her leg brace clangs against the railing.

“Sure thing, Hooch.”

THE END