Exalted (16 page)

“What about later? Why'd you bust me out of the pyramid and
take me to Hell?" She crossed her arms. "Please don't say it was a
good deed."

“The Big Guy commanded it.”

“Methuselah?”

A smirk flashed across Edan’s face. “Nothing big about that
dick. I meant The Adversary.”

Julia’s heart pounded. “He told you to take me to Hell.
Why?”

When Edan simply blinked at her, she felt sick. “What’s
going on? Is this all part of the plan? It is, isn't it?”

Edan shrugged. “He doesn’t tell me his plan. Just what to
do.”

Julia gritted her teeth, ignoring the headache that flared
up every time she got emotional and Methuselah's power roiled inside her. Was
she really about to walk right into the thing she’d been so desperate to
escape?

Yes. For Cayne. She would do anything for Cayne, and if it
meant playing right into the enemy's hand... She'd take her chances. Edan was right.
Methuselah was a little, pathetic being. She was stronger.

Julia took a deep breath, and she pictured Cayne face,
smiling. Before she could chicken out, she said, “I’m ready.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “There's no way I would just sit back and let
Cayne do this by himself. I want to leave the others here, though.”

“I don’t think so!” Meredith cried. Julia turned; her
friends were right behind her.

“We’re going with you,” Carlin said vehemently. She glared
at Edan with the ugliest look Julia had ever seen on her face.

Julia glanced at Drew, who gave her a thumbs up, and then
at Nathan. “You’re not going to turn on me, are you?”

He winced, but Julia didn’t care. “No.” He took a deep
breath. “I was wrong. I know that now.”

She arched a brow—she'd yet to hear him say the words.
"What about Cayne? Are you going to go after him again? Try to hurt him or
sabotage him?”

"No," he said, looking down at his feet, then up
into her eyes. "I understand that you..."

"I love him."

Nathan pressed his lips together, but he nodded.

Julia turned to Edan, suddenly unable to get back to the
hated pyramid fast enough. "We’re ready.”

He walked them behind a partial wall and said, “Everybody
hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya.'”

As soon as Drew and Carlin's hands were in hers, Julia felt
the floor spin out from under her, and they were off.

Chapter Twenty
-Three

He bit back his anger as he followed Edan down the foul,
cramped hallway. The air, musty and sour, hurt his lungs, and the walls leaned
in on him, threatening to trap him with each step. His unease was easy to
ignore when he remembered that Julia
had
been trapped here.

The power of Hell mimicked his fury, burning inside him,
making his skin glow faintly. He would use it to destroy Methuselah.

He did not think The Adversary could stop him. If he could
cut the link he'd made for Cayne, he would have already. Still, Cayne wouldn't
take any risks. He needed to eliminate Methuselah fast.

"How much farther?" he asked Edan.

The Demon made a tsking noise and said,
"Patience."

"I don't have time for patience!" Cayne growled.

"Then it’s a good thing we're here."

The hall had ended at a stone door. It was larger than any
of the others he'd seen, but in no other way remarkable. Edan pushed it open
and waved into an even smaller hall that went up at a steep angle. “Two hundred
yards up. You’ll find a door at the end. He’s there.” One eyebrow arched, an
expression that somehow managed to say nothing—just like the Demon's flat tone
when he said, “Laters.”

Cayne stepped in front of him. “Hurt Julia again, I’ll rip
your fucking head off.”

Edan bowed. “Go get ‘im, Tiger.”

Cayne turned away without a word, ducking into the tiny
hall. He had to tuck his chin and hunch his shoulders to avoid scraping the top
of his head on the upward slanting ceiling. The air was cleaner here, almost
fresh compared to the stale filth he had been breathing before. The walls were
stone, illuminated by torches that burned blue. They threw light over etchings
in the stone, pictures of beings Cayne took to be Celestials. They seemed to
move as the flames danced, flapping wings, shooting arrows, soaring over
painted skies.

He sensed Methuselah before he saw the door. The heat in
him responded to the Celestial's energy, the same low-level buzz that filled
the halls—but there was something else here, too. Something he'd never felt in
Hell: a sort of zealousness one might feel at political or religious events,
but stronger. A wild, blind want that made desire into destiny. Methuselah’s
machinations felt like a physical thing beside him.

Time to burn it down.

He stretched out his hands, and fire burst forth like a
cannon from Hell. The door was solid and sturdy, Celestially made, but the
power inside Cayne turned it into ash. The stone crumpled like paper and flaked
away, revealing what for a moment looked like foggy midnight sky. Cayne
blinked, and the thick fog, which glowed with a subtle light, parted just
enough so he could see gleaming stripes that he soon realized were strands of
water crisscrossing a vast, stone floor.

He held out his right hand, pouring hellfire into the space
directly in front of him, clearing enough mist so he could see that the ceiling
was pointed—the tip of the pyramid, thirty feet or more above him—and the
center of the room was indented so the water from the many streams flowed into
a shimmering pool. To reach it, Cayne could follow the stone path in front of
him to a staircase, cut into the floor. A little more hellfire, a little less
fog, and he could see that three tall-backed stone chairs sat in the middle of
the pond. Three thrones.

The one in the middle was largest, and it was empty. The
left and right held ancient-looking men. Methuselah's sons, Cayne assumed—the
other two of the fabled Three. Lacking the pure Celestial blood necessary to
appear young like their father, they stared blankly out, not even seeming to
register his presence, and Cayne had a panicked thought that Methuselah had
left.

Then the air around his head began to buzz, so much that
his eyes watered and his vision blurred, and Cayne knew even in the dim glow of
the fog that Methuselah was near.

Drawing on traditions buried deep within his memory, he
drew a cross over his chest and sent his strongest desire for peace and safety
out to Julia. Then he stepped forward, the door's ashy remains swirling around
his feet.

At that moment, the room went utterly dark, and a deafening
crack split through his head. Pain streaked down his spine, and Cayne saw an
explosion of stars. His knees tried to fold, but he grabbed The Adversary's power,
burning away the pain. He stood straighter, panting as he stretched his arms
out, hands splayed wide.

“HELLO, HELL SPAWN.”
The voice inside his head was
deep and infinite. It shook him, stole his equilibrium, and again Cayne
clutched the devil’s power.
"YOU ARE
EARLY."

"There's been
a change of plans," Cayne snarled.

"Is that so?"
The voice, inside his head again, sounded amused.
"So your
father sent you so I could play with you first?"

"I'm going to
kill you!"

Rich laughter echoed through the room, and the fog grew
even thicker
. It pressed on him like
something solid, filling his nose and mouth so his breaths were shallow and
tight.
Another blow landed between his shoulder blades. Another to his
face, singeing the stubble on his cheeks. Methuselah’s fire, he realized. Why
couldn’t he see it before it struck him?

"Tell me the truth,"
Methuselah taunted.
"If
the son of the devil can."

Cayne ignited himself with hellfire, and the fog around him
burned away.

But Methuselah remained hidden.
"He's let you play
with it, has he?"
Completely focused, Cayne was able to see the blue
fire a second before it hit him in the arm.
“I made the same mistake."
Cayne was floored by a second stream of blue fire. It knocked him off
his feet, bursting through his shield of hellfire and knocking the air out of
his lungs. "But my little girl is on her way back to me now. Courtesy of
our friend Edan."

No!
The hellfire
encircling Cayne returned in an inferno. An instant later, he was hit with more
blue fire, but this time he rocked into a sitting position and pushed back with
his own fire. The colliding flames exploded in a flash of white light that rose
up to the ceiling, thinning the mist. For just a few seconds, Cayne was able to
see Methuselah, standing not ten feet from him, a beautiful, terrible being
with a cruelly flawless face.

Now crouching, Cayne pushed a stream of hellfire toward
him, but the fog returned to obscure the monster. Cayne watched his fire burst
against a wall, and then the mist was whole again.

He spun in the direction he thought Methuselah had traveled
and cast another stream of fire. It also burst uselessly against a wall, and
then Cayne was hit again, a powerful shock that went straight into his bones.
He ignited even more hellfire and pushed it in the direction the blue fire had
come from, but Methuselah had already moved. Another blow came from Cayne's
right, so powerful he fell to the floor. Methuselah sent blast after blast at
him, ripping his jeans, blistering his back.

Cayne had to call on more of The Adversary’s power to pull
him to his feet each time, and he wondered what would happen if he ran out.
I'll die. But at least I won't be used to
hurt her.

Still, he didn't think Methuselah would let that happen.
Clearly he wasn't trying to kill Cayne. He was keeping him busy. Waiting for
Julia's arrival—or The Adversary's. Maybe both.

I have to end this!

Another blast from Methuselah sizzled along the floor and
burst up through Cayne's legs, tossing him into the air. He landed hard on his
back, smacking his head against the
 
floor. The fog became solid again, flattening his screaming body.

“Is this farce
over?"
Methuselah jeered.

Cayne plunged into Hell's power, grabbing more of it than
he could hold. His body ballooned, stretching like something out of a nightmare,
and with a pained cry he pushed every drop out, filling the room with a roaring
inferno.

The hiss of steam was all that remained of Methuselah's
foggy camouflage, and Cayne could finally see the room clearly. It was large
and square and scorched. Pieces of the pointed ceiling had crumpled, falling in
a mess of flakes that rained on everything, making dimples in the pool that
surrounded the seats of stone. The ancient looking brothers, with their long,
white beards and their robes, were hunched over their laps, and Cayne could
hear their rasping, too-dry breaths.

They were dying.

Methuselah, a few feet to Cayne's left, wasn’t smiling
anymore. He had surrounded himself in blue fire that flickered in time with his
sons' strained breaths. He raised his hands, massaging his temples, and Cayne
could feel an echo of his power. Some sort of signal?

His own body ached, but he was stunned to find more. More
power, easily within reach. He called it, and it answered, blooming around him
in a sea of flames. Cayne's heart quickened, and he smiled.

Time to kill a god.

He heard shouts from behind him, followed by footfall. A
ball of blue fire burst against his side. Another exploded on his leg. He
turned to face the dozen or so Stained who'd run into the room. He recognized
some of them from Europe. The Indian boy was Adam, he thought. That one…the
French boy who had grabbed onto Julia’s feet over the lake in St. Moritz. And
the girl—Dizzy. She was frowning in concentration, and Cayne felt a tingling in
the back of his head.

Smirking, he turned toward Methuselah, who was staring at
him from his flickering blue shell. “You must be desperate.”

"They aren't here to fight," was the gravelly
reply, and the girl cried, “I’m coming, Daddy!”

Cayne whipped around to see her charging straight for him.
He pushed the girl with flick of his wrist, sending her careening toward the
burned out pond, then turned his hellfire onto the French boy.

The boy fell to the floor screaming, and then his body
erupted in blue fire. And instant later, he disappeared with a poof. Surprised,
Cayne turned to Methuselah. Dizzy was on her feet, running toward him, and
Cayne watched as the Celestial caught her by the throat. Dizzy stared with wide
eyes as the blue flame around Methuselah expanded to engulf her, too. Then,
like the French boy, she was a pile of ash, and the blue flame around
Methuselah glowed brighter.

The other Stained tried to run, but Methuselah flicked his
hand, and all were caught in blue flame. Then they, too, were gone.

Methuselah aimed a stream of blue fire at Cayne, hitting
him in the chest. It drove the air out of his lungs, and his senses whirled as
his body flew through the dry air, landing hard in the center of the room.
Methuselah blasted him again as he passed Cayne's sprawled form, on his way to
stand by his sons.

Through the slits of his puffy eyes, Cayne watched
Methuselah draw energy from his own sons; a moment later, they, too, were ash.
Methuselah spoke in an ancient, powerful language, and Cayne watched his blue-fire
halo grow larger and larger, until it reached the top of the pyramid.

He blasted Cayne's prone form again, but Cayne had been
gathering his own energy. As Methuselah's blue fire flew at him, he shot
hellfire from his shaking palm, and when the two fires met there was an
explosion of white light.

This time, Cayne was the first to recover from the
backlash, and his stream of fire engulfed Methuselah’s arm. The Celestial fired
back, but Cayne blocked the ball of blue fire. He sent more hellfire at Methuselah,
then lunged, fire leaping from his fingers as he wrapped his hands around
Methuselah's neck. The Celestial's eyes were wide with shock, and Cayne
squeezed.