Execution (The Divine Book 6) (11 page)

Of course, Lucifer's son was handsome. Lucifer was supposed to be doubly so. Alyx seemed oblivious to it, and her expression didn't change when his gaze fell on her.

"My apologies again, Alyx. I needed to make a statement to your companion."

Alyx didn't respond.

"I know you wouldn't have come all the way to Hell without reason," he said, putting his attention back on me. "And since you decided to grace the Desolation with your treasure, I assume that reason has something to do with me."

He had the look of a man who knew.
 

"Go on," I said.

"There's only one reason I can think that you might have gone through the trouble to come to Hell and seek me out, despite the fact that you must have been warned that your power is a pittance compared to mine. Here, at least." He smiled again. "Abaddon's soul has been ripped from his realm and returned to yours while I have captured the so-called Fist of God, an interesting mashup of mortal technology and Divine energy that may be the only thing that can contain Abaddon indefinitely."

I tried not to look surprised. "What do you mean, indefinitely?"

"Of course, you didn't know, did you?" he asked, pleased with himself. "The prison the demons have constructed to keep him will not keep him forever. He is more powerful than they realize. He is almost more powerful than me."

That was bad news, and Cain was giving it freely. I didn't like anything about that.

"But the Fist of God definitely can?" I asked.

"It can now. We took the damaged shell and managed to get it reconditioned, and then we added our special sauce to the mix. Demonic runes, allowing it to be controlled by the mind. All you need is a pendant like this one."
 

He reached under his shirt and produced a metal disc with runes scratched all over it. I think it had been taken from the FOG.

"You made it work?" I asked, almost impressed.

He shook his head. "Not quite yet. I was waiting for the right soul to put in it. I had been hoping maybe for an archangel." His smile changed, and I realized I was right to be worried about how much he was divulging. "I think your arrival has been most timely, don't you?"

"You can't put me in the Fist of God," I said, fighting to keep my exterior appearance calm.

"No? Why not?"

"My power isn't Divine. It came from the Beast."

"His smile lessened, and he rubbed at his chin. "Hmm, interesting. That would make for quite an experiment."

"I won't let you hurt him," Alyx said, pouncing toward Cain, her hands shifting to claws.

He didn't even flinch. Without moving a single muscle, she was thrown back against the seat of the carriage and held.

"Feisty. I like that."

I stared at Cain. Dante had warned me, and I had rushed ahead with the plan anyway. At least now I knew the mortal world was screwed if I didn't make it back with the FOG. Abaddon would escape, and his power would pull the life out of everything he crossed until there was nothing left.
 

How the heck was I going to get the armor away from Cain when Cain was completely owning me? I couldn't fight him. I couldn't hurt him. We were stuck. Totally stuck.
 

Damn.

"So now what?" I asked.

"I'm taking you back to the palace," Cain replied. "You'll be chained up while I discuss the potential of using you in the armor with my team. If they don't think it's possible as you claimed, I may simply mount you as a trophy. Or I might gift you to my father."

"I don't suppose we can bargain for the Fist instead?"

"Out of the question," he replied. He looked at Alyx again. "As for you, I think you're rather exotic, and I admire your spirit. You'll be brought to my harem and prepared as one of my concubines. I should like a taste of you."

"Forget it," I said before I realized how stupid it sounded.

"I don't think you're in a position to argue," Cain said, patronizing me.
 

Alyx was trying to move, and to shift. Her muscles were bulging from her arms, and her face was wrinkled from the effort. She paused for a moment, her eyes sadder than anything I had ever seen. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to be made prisoner to a demon again after finally managing to get free.

"Next time, you should be a little more prepared before you plan to visit the son of Lucifer," Cain said, still patronizing.
 

I glared at him in angry silence for the rest of the trip. I wasn't going to let Alyx be a prisoner again. I was going to find my way out of this, and I was going to destroy Cain.

Somehow.

Cain's palace was pretty much what I expected. Think Taj Mahal, with a bit more gaudiness, iron spikes, and ugly statues. It was a massive place, and probably the only location in Hell that had a pool. Or was it a moat? As the carriage rode over the bridge crossing it, and I looked down, it was hard to tell.
 

It separated the palace from the rest of the desolation. It also had some succubi and incubi in it, splashing, swimming, and being frisky with one another. It was like crossing over to the Playboy Mansion; orgy included.

"I can let you go for a swim before I string you up if you like?" Cain said.

"No thanks," I replied.

It had taken twenty minutes or so to arrive from the time Cain had pinned Alyx to her seat. She had alternated between complete calm and total struggle a few times, fighting hard to break free of the demon's hold. It was no use, even with all her power and her recent feeding. Cain was just that strong. The more interesting part was that we had gone back in the direction Alyx and I had come. Either Cain had hidden the palace from us, or it had moved.

In other words, we would never have found it until Cain wanted us to. Whether I had concocted a good plan beforehand or not, that was the bottom line.

It made me feel a little better about being caught. Not much, but a little. If I hadn't been so preoccupied with Alyx, I would have seen him coming. Maybe. At the same time, now I knew that this mess could be the only way to have even a slim chance at grabbing the FOG.
 

The carriage crossed the pool and entered a large courtyard. A pair of demons met us there, opening the door for Cain and dropping to their knees so he could climb down their backs. They did the same for Alyx before leaving me to my own devices.

Cain didn't try to keep me from running. He knew I wouldn't leave Alyx behind, and he was still manipulating her like a marionette. She walked stiffly beside him as he strolled across the open area to a marble archway, through the archway and into a large foyer. I followed him, unsure what else to do.

Then Cain clapped his hands. Immediately, a dozen female souls in gossamer fabrics filed out and to him, surrounding him and looking at him with adoring eyes. They were all wearing a gold bracelet with demonic runes etched around them. Cain took an extra from the hands of one of the women and slipped it onto Alyx's wrist. Then he whispered something; it flamed on for a few seconds, and he visibly relaxed, no longer having to hold her with his will.

She fell into line with the others.

"I thought you liked her feisty," I said, doing my best to stay calm about the whole thing. It wouldn't help either of us to be stupid.

"I will release her when needed. Right now, I want her docile so that I can show you around."

"Show me around?"

"Yes. I want you to see the work I've been doing."

"Why bother?"

"Because I'm surrounded by peons, diuscrucis. Pathetic demons who don't know what true power is. You do. I can talk to you on an almost even level."

"Your power is much stronger than mine."

"Only here. If we were in your realm, it would be different."

He was humble enough to admit it. That wasn't a common quality in a demon.
 

Or maybe he was just placating me.

He led me out of the foyer through a series of corridors that I tried to memorize as we passed. I had no way of knowing if the demon would change the layout behind us. I figured if he could move the entire palace, he could shift a few walls. He spoke casually while we walked as if we were old friends.

"I visited the mortal realm once. Did you know that, diuscrucis?"

"You can call me Landon. No, I wasn't aware."

"It was before your time, of course. Though I believe the other one may have been getting started then. What was that one's name again?"

"Charis," I said, wondering if he was trying to get under my skin.

"Right. Yes. That was it. British. I've always loved the British. So proper. So much class. Stiff upper lip, and all that rot." He feigned a proper British accent. "They crumble to nothing when their souls find their way down here. The Germans, though." He laughed but didn't finish the sentence. "Where is she these days?"

He was trying to get under my skin. There was no other reason for him to be mentioning Charis. I should have guessed Lucifer's son couldn't be anything but a bastard, in every sense of the word.
 

"She's one with the universe," I said. "Her soul is free from all of this crap. Forever."

He seemed confused by the statement. "Free?" I had totally thrown him off his game, and I hadn't even done it on purpose. "Forever? How?"

"I had the power of the Beast inside me. You know the Beast was almost a God in his own right?"

"Can you still do it?"

I didn't think so. But to be honest, I didn't know. Demons had the ability to try to transfer their souls into another host before they went back down to Hell. Did I have the ability to set those souls loose into the aether? I couldn't rule it out completely.

"Maybe, but I doubt it," I said.

He looked at me for a few seconds, and we continued the rest of the walk in silence until we finally reached his laboratory.

"There it is," he said, pushing aside a curtain of spiked beads and leading me into the room.
 

The Fist of God was hanging above an altar in the center, its shape much less clean than it had been before I crushed it. It had small dents and ripples throughout, and the demonic runes had been etched on the outside, not the inside like the scripture. It was a trap within a trap.

The rest of the room was filled out with some fiends and devils of all sizes, sitting at computers and typing out algorithms and code, and 3D modeling runes. It was as high-tech an operation as I had ever seen, and it felt surreal to be witnessing it in Hell.
 

Then again, everything about my life was surreal.

"What do you think?" Cain asked, steering me over to it.

"I don't recognize any of the runes."

"That's because they're new. All of them. It had never occurred to us that we could generate unique capabilities by altering the age old glyphs. Not until we saw how the seraphim had done it."

"It never occurred to you? In thousands of years?"

"Such thinking isn't limited to humankind, Landon. We kept it the way it was because that was the way it had always been."

It reminded me of a Youtube video I had seen once about an experiment with monkeys, bananas at the top of a ladder, and electric shocks. The point was to prove how easy it was to create that kind of thinking.

"Master," one of the fiends said, approaching us. He was slender and a little bent, with a ring of wispy white hair circling his scalp. He looked like a scientist.

"Ah, Wilson. Just the fiend I wanted to see." Cain put his arm over the older demon's shoulder. "I want you to meet my friend, Landon. He is the diuscrucis."

Wilson looked me over like I was a lab rat. "Interesting," was all he said.

"I want to put him in the armor, to trap his soul and his power and see what happens. Can it be done?"

It bothered me that he said it with me there.
 

Wilson stared at me again. "I don't know, Master. We will need to measure his energy and see if we can calculate the wavelengths."

"Wavelengths?" I asked.

"Yes," Cain said. "All power in existence is measurable if you have the right tools. Wavelengths are as good a word to describe it as any other. The ingenuity of humanity has helped provide us with those tools." He paused before he sighed. "Sometimes I wish we could stop the fighting for a while and let your kind be. I am always curious to see what new things you would devise to kill one another with, and the tools you would create to devise them."

"Me, too," I said.

"Can you measure it?" Cain asked.

"We'll need some time to create a new idolastat," Wilson replied.

"How long?"

"Three days."

"Very well."
 

Wilson bowed below Cain's arm and wandered off, barking orders to a few of the smaller devils in the lab. Cain shifted his arm to my shoulders.

"Just think about it, Landon. You will be part of the greatest change ever made in Hell. If we can perfect the armor, we will be able to claim the other planes once and for all."

"Lucky me."

 
He laughed. It was a smooth, charismatic laugh. Part of me felt like he honestly believed he was doing me a favor.