Exalted

  Julia held the first gaze she found: Carlin's.

  “I have to,” she said desperately.

  Meredith, beside her, slowly said, “She really does.”

  Julia didn't wait to hear how it shook out. She walked over to Edan, feeling like she was going to puke. Her arm felt heavy as she reached for his. She turned him away from the others and looked into his eyes. His looked dark and miserable.

  “What are you doing here? I want to know what's really going on, Edan.”

  “I've come to take you to the pyramid.”

  She nodded. “Okay, but why?”

  “The Adversary wants it.”

  Julia’s voice sounded small as she asked, “Am I going to get hurt?”

  He shrugged, poker-faced. “I honestly don't know.”

  She made herself stare into his eyes. “You hurt me," she whispered. "You...whipped me. Because Methuselah made you?"

  Edan's eyes shut. He opened them, and he shook his head. “I didn’t have a choice, like I told you. The Adversary had given me over to Methuselah. It was punishment, for not bringing Cayne to him when Cayne reached Celestial maturity, back in Scotland.”

  “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.

  “This is for Julia, you sick bastard.”

  Beneath his hands, he could feel Methuselah's dry skin stretching, could feel his throat collapsing.

  Heat pulsed from Cayne's chest, spreading over all of him, engulfing both he and Methuselah in hellfire. Cayne released him, and the deity stumbled back, screaming.

  The scream lasted only a second before his body glowed blue and he struggled to his full height, one arm over his face like he was staring at the sun.

  “He gave you so much,” the Celestial gasped.

  “No,” Cayne said. “I took it.”

  Cayne blasted Methuselah, and then he kept his fist out, blasting the rest of the room, too.

  Methuselah curled down to his knees, murmuring something nonsensical, and Cayne felt the sweetness of revenge as Methuselah panted and wheezed.

  “I have been betrayed,” Methuselah croaked, gasping now, grasping at his throat.

  Cayne grabbed the Celestial by his brittle, rust-colored hair, pressing his hands against the once-beautiful face, now wrinkled and scared. He smashed his palm over Methuselah's dry mouth, enjoying the contact, enjoying the way his arms burned with simple, human-like strain.

  He flooded Methuselah with hellfire, focusing not on the primal rush of extinguishing a life, but instead on Julia, how much he loved her, how this was something that needed to be done

 
When he finished, he felt emptied. Satiated. There was nothing left but ash.

  He stood in the huge, dark, silent room, alone with the three empty thrones and his wild heartbeat. His body blazed with what at first he thought was hellfire. A second later, he realized it was simply heat. Emotion. Odd but...good. Maybe good.

  I did it. Samyaza was dead. Methuselah was dead. The Stained would bother them no more. And no Nephilim would dare. They were free.

  I did it, Julia.

  Suddenly the room shook, and Cayne braced himself. Is the whole place coming down?

  Light spilled down from the top of the pyramid, landing in a blinding square in the center of the room. Descending in the beam of light, with dark wings, was a being Cayne recognized as The Authority from the ski lift. The one who had first warned Cayne of his involvement in Methuselah’s plan.

  Cayne's knees shook, and because the Authority's presence filled the room. He wondered if this could be The Alpha. But the being came closer, and Cayne recognized the feel of him.

  Hell.

  He felt like Hell, and his great, dark wings were crimson.

  A heartbeat later, and there was no denying it: The Adversary. This was The Adversary, slinking forward, his hand held out.

  Cayne's head buzzed so loudly he could hardly hear, and his father's flawless face bent into a flawless, merciless smile.

  “Nicely done, son.” The Adversary looked down at the pile of ash that had been Methuselah. He chuckled, rubbing one boot in the mess.

  “Methuselah was always a fool. And you...” The Adversary shook his head and made a tsking sound. “So easy to manipulate.”

  Cayne shook his head, a large weight in his stomach. “You warned me on the ski lift…" Methuselah's gasps echoed in his head. I have been betrayed.

  The Adversary grinned. “You wouldn't have taken it seriously if the devil was the first to tell you you would kill your lover.”

  “No! I escaped Hell. This is—”

  “Part of my plan. You killed my Adversary. Oh, and guess who just arrived?”

  Cayne drew on every ounce of power he could find and sent it streaming toward his father. The Adversary laughed, and Cayne could feel the molten power flowing from his grasp, leaving him hollow, cold inside. The Adversary twisted the energy back on Cayne, causing it to burn inside him, a brutal heat that left him moaning on the ground.