cave. Lucien still sat watching.
“Aanu’s sitting next watch,” Lucien said as Julian took a seat.
“You’re not due back for ages.”
Julian shrugged. “I know.” He looked at Lilith. She lay still and
pale, her platinum hair spread over the pillow. The cuffs and straps
held her securely to the bed. Julian couldn’t help wondering if it was
really necessary to confine her so securely, but he supposed they had
to take every precaution, even if it seemed like overkill. Though he had
a feeling that, when Ialdaboth finally showed himself, the straps and
chains would be not an overreaction but, rather, inconsequential.
“Where’s Aanu now?” he said after a moment.
“With William, I suppose.” Lucien, too, studied Lilith’s inert form.
“It’s not fair for him to have to face this,” Julian said, the words
bursting from his mouth; they’d been hammering in his head for the
past three hours. “It just isn’t fair, dammit. Not so soon after waking
up.”
“Not fair for me, either,” Lucien added flatly. “I just found Vivian.”
He had thought of that, too. After centuries of separation had
interrupted the beginnings of a love affair between Lucien and Vivian,
they’d found each other again only a few months ago.
“I know,” said Julian.
“We don’t know for sure that’s how it’ll go, though.” Lucien tore
his gaze away from Lilith and looked at him. “You might be misreading
it. I mean, I think you have the basics right, as far as channeling the
power, concentrating it, using it as a weapon. But there’s nothing there,
not in any of those passages, to state exactly what happens to me or
Aanu—or even to you.”
“True.” And maybe he could hold on to that, Julian supposed,
make it into a lifeline. If he could hope that he didn’t have to actually
. . . Shit, he couldn’t even think the words.
He’d better hope he could do the deed, though, or they were all
dead.
“It’s all right, you know.” Lucien’s voice was soft, sincere. “Twelve
thousand years. It’s enough.”
“But Vivian—”
“I know. That’s the only thing.”
They were silent for a time. Outside, darkness had begun to fall.
Julian could still sense it, even though it no longer forced him to sleep.
“But what about—” Julian began, then stopped.
Because Lilith had opened her eyes and her mouth, and into the
silence he had left behind, she said in a voice that sounded not at all like
her own, “He’s coming.”
Then she writhed, convulsed on the bed, her body twisting in
spasms. Julian shot to his feet, headed for the door. “I’ll get Jarod.”
By the time Julian returned with Jarod, Lilith had stopped convulsing,
but she lay stiff on the bed, open eyes staring blankly at the
ceiling.
“What happened?” Jarod asked Lucien.
“The seizures stopped. She didn’t say anything else.”
Jarod bent over Lilith’s rigid body, examining her. Julian couldn’t
believe his calm. He was the consummate professional, even though
the patient was his lover. But then he straightened, took off his glasses,
and wiped them on his sweater with hands that were less than steady.
“She seems to be coming out of it.” Jarod’s voice was even. “I
don’t want to touch her, though, until she seems to be more lucid.”
Lilith’s stiffened posture had softened a little already, and, suddenly,
she went limp, falling back onto the bed. Startled, Julian watched
her closely. She rolled her head to one side, grinning at the doctor, her
fangs protruding sharp and white. Whatever personality lay in those
eyes, it wasn’t Lilith. Not totally, not yet.
“Maybe a few more minutes,” said Jarod, with only the faintest
shiver in his voice. He turned to Julian, visibly gathering himself. “You
found the answers? You know what to do when he comes?”
“Yes.” He looked at Lucien. He felt as if he should say more . . .
but what more was there? Goodbye?
“We can do this,” said Lucien. “We can kill Ialdaboth.”
Jarod gave a terse nod. “And I’m sure there’s a little more to it
had closed her eyes again, and when she spoke, the voice was her
own.
“Jarod.”
He went to her, sat on the bed. His hands, still trembling, traced
over hers, tangling in her fingers. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Julian exchanged a glance with Lucien, and, as one, they left the
room.
Julian returned to Lorelei, afraid down to his bones that it would
be the last time he ever saw her. So, of course, the first thing she did
was force him to face that very fear.
“How do you think this will go?” she said. “When he comes . . .
when they call you . . . will you come back to me?”
“I will.” He said it firmly.
“If you can.” Her voice shook, broke a little.
He looked deep into the wide blue of her eyes, acknowledging the
truth with his silence. After a moment he pulled him to her, held her, let
his hands memorize all the shapes of her.
“You should go back,” she told him after a time.
“Yes.” He pulled her closer, nestling her into him. Her lips moved
softly against his face as she tasted his skin. Then, gently, she pushed
him away.
“Go. I’ll be here when it’s over.”
He looked at her a moment longer, taking her in. Then, with a
strangled sound he couldn’t contain, he dragged her to him and kissed
her—hard, frantic. But when he let her go, he didn’t linger for one last
kiss or caress. Instead, he left her, and he went to stand guard with
Lucien and Aanu.
He was thinking of Lorelei-—was there really anything else to
think about?—when it finally happened. They were all there by then—
Lucien and Jarod sitting near him, and Aanu sitting on the floor against
the far wall with William beside him. Julian had told Jarod and William
to leave, but they both refused.
One instant, it was silent, even calm, all of them lost and quiet in
their own thoughts. Then, on the bed where she had slept for nearly
three hours unmoving, curled onto her left side, Lilith suddenly rolled
onto her back. Her mouth opened first, then her eyes, blank and staring.
Julian rose slowly from his chair. The air in the room tingled with
power, dark and noxious. He knew that power, had felt it in his dreams,
sticky and clinging, black and full of vile, unnamable things that crawled
and chewed. He felt his own power rise to meet it, but he reined it in.
It wasn’t time. Not quite.
And so Ialdaboth came, spilling out of Lilith, out of her mouth and
eyes, black and broken, in bits like insects that swarmed through the air
together in a mass. The bits built one upon the other, stacking and
meshing, until a figure began to form.
Out of the corner of his eye, Julian saw Lucien move toward his
right side, until they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Aanu j
oined them, clearly
reluctant, glancing at William. Finally, he squared his shoulders, then
came to stand at his left side.
They were ready. Or so Julian hoped. He flexed his fingers, trying
to understand the nuances of the power he felt swarming and eddying
around him.
Six feet in front of them, the black power coalesced. Ialdaboth
had found his purchase on reality and was bringing all his parts together.
Julian had never imagined such magic, though he’d felt hints of it in his
dreams. So this was what one could learn, he thought, if one was willing
to feed on death. Not an un-useful skill, but not one he envied. He had
his own power, and he felt it shiver along his skin, growing, readying
itself, so dense it felt like a second skin. Before this was over, when
he’d done what he had to do, it would be even stronger. Strong enough
to counter the black, shattered, insectile power uniting before him.
The weaving together of pieces picked up speed, until, at last,
Ialdaboth’s form appeared whole. They were of a height, the three
half-brothers, with similarly craggy features and blue eyes. Julian looked
from one to the other, seeing the similarities, the differences. Lucien’s
and Aanu’s calm, placid faces seemed bland and useless next to the
ferocity of Ialdaboth. But Julian knew what lay behind their outward
tranquility, and he readied himself for it.
Ialdaboth flung out his arms, flexing his newly re-formed body.
“Three against one,” he said, his voice airy at first, then gaining strength
as his throat knitted fully. “You don’t believe in fair odds, do you?”
“Right now we pretty much believe in just kicking your ass,” Julian
said. He reached toward Lucien, toward Aanu, clasping their hands.
And as he did, for the first time, he believed this could work. This could
be the end of it, once and for all.
Except, perhaps, not for all.
But if he thought now about the likely cost of victory, he wouldn’t
be able to function. And Ialdaboth would win.
Not an option.
He tightened his grip on the large, warm hands he held in his own
and felt the power move toward him. Down through the First Demons’
bodies, surging from their hearts, down their arms and out of their
hands—and into him.
His vision blurred as it hit him. Gold from Lucien, silver from
Aanu, the power came from the depths of them, the power that allowed
them to feed from the life force of a human being. Soul-power, the
source of it the primal energy of their own lives.
He focused. Leveled his vision and his attention on Ialdaboth, at
the same time he let his own power uncoil inside him and draw in the
power Aanu and Lucien were feeding him. It was instinctive, all coming
together without his conscious control, the three power masses joining,
coiling into a single entity inside him. It was huge. It was alive, swirling
and pulsing in his chest.
It was too much.
He couldn’t hold it, certainly couldn’t control it. But neither could
he stop it. It worked itself deep into the middle of his body, beating
there. It wanted to burst out of him, but it wasn’t time. Not yet. It
coiled inside, waiting.
He drew himself straight, barely aware of his surroundings, a
dimness in his vision making it hard to tell where he was. Or who he
was. There was no “self.” No “Julian.” There was only power. Ready.
Light and heat and purity.
Ialdaboth struck. His power flew out of his eyes and his mouth in
a black column, viscous and thick, spinning away from Ialdaboth. Julian
watched it come, slamming straight toward him like a battering ram. It
hit him hard in the chest. The impact jolted him, making his body shudder
in uncontrollable spasms. But it didn’t break him.
Ialdaboth was giving his all. Vaguely, Julian realized the power
inside him, the life force that had come from Lucien and Aanu, seemed
to know instinctively what Ialdaboth could and would do, seemed able
to judge their brother’s power on a deeper level than he could have
judged it. Ialdaboth’s life force, the miasma of evil he had allowed his
soul to become, all of it flowed out of him in a last-ditch effort to
conquer. But as it struck him, Julian felt the mass of power inside him
rise, so huge, so primal, so bright and intense he could barely contain it,
much less control it.
Repelled.
And then absorbed.
Ialdaboth’s eyes widened in surprise as his black column began to
disappear into his enemy’s body.
Julian shuddered, his body wracked with something so far beyond
pain that his nerves could only interpret it as ecstasy. This would be his
death. It had to be.
But he wasn’t dying. And all of the evil First Demon’s twisted
power was inside of him, there with his own power, born of his
reconstituted blood; and Lucien’s, born of twelve thousand years of life
and all he had learned in that time; and Aanu’s, born as was Lucien’s
but given four thousand years to sleep. And as Ialdaboth’s power, black
and sickened, touched the purity of the others, it cleared, joined with
them. And was healed. Thus transformed and melded, the power soared
inside him until it filled him so completely, he had no knowledge or
awareness of anything else.
He hung on with everything he had, clinging to his last shred of
self-awareness. Only in that did he have any control over the raw
force that he had become.
Suddenly, he felt Aanu, then Lucien, drop to their knees on either
side of him, as the greedy demands of his own power wrung them dry.
Aanu’s hand slid from his, then Lucien’s. They both gasped as they hit
the floor.
He had killed them. He’d known it would happen, as had they.
They had given him everything they had, because they knew he would
have to use it; and he had taken it, because he had known there was no
other way. He had simply bled them to death. And now . . . now he
would do the same to himself.
He raised his hands, turned his palms toward Ialdaboth.
“You made a very big mistake,” he said. His voice echoed in his
own head, the words seeming to come from everywhere at once. “If
you had read the Book, instead of destroying it, you would have seen
this coming.”
He curled his fingers and turned his palms toward the ceiling, and
the last smoky black tendrils of Ialdaboth’s soul came to him as if
summoned, snagged on his fingers, roped up his arms, moved downward
to join the already incomprehensible force boiling in his chest.
He harvested, gathered, and spun as Ialdaboth writhed, helpless.
And the part that was still him thought, This isn’t possible. One creature
couldn’t hold and control this much energy. But the part that was no
longer him knew differently, knew that whatever he had become, he
could do this. It terrified him, but at the same time he exulted in it. The
power moving inside him brought ecstasy more intense than anything
he had ever experienced.
&nbs
p; Suddenly Ialdaboth jerked backward as the last wispy thread tore
loose and snapped across the room to its new owner. He was empty
and broken, powerless. He caught himself, straightened, and stared at
his nemesis through blank eyes. For the first time in his twelve thousand
years, the first-born of the First Demons was only a man.
“You’re aware this is over now,” Julian said, and this time his
voice felt more like his own. “You may speak if you like. I’ll give you
the time.” He pressed his hands to his chest, waiting
Ialdaboth’s face went lax, and there was fear in his eyes. “You
want me to beg for forgiveness? Or for my life?”
“I don’t care what you do,” Julian said. “I just thought it would be
the right thing to do, to give you time to speak.”
Ialdaboth spat. “Fuck you.”
“All right, then,” said Julian, and lifted his hands away from his
chest, and let the power go.
It burst out of him, a huge, violent wall of shining, brilliant light.
Now I’m dead, he thought. A body can’t explode and still live.
But he could hear his heart beating, and the hand that grabbed the
chair behind him for support was his own. And it was through his own
eyes that he watched the monstrous, dazzling mountain of energy he’d
unleashed slam into Ialdaboth. It crashed into his face and chest, covering
him in a shimmer of gold-white light. It encased him, head to foot, and
he convulsed helplessly within it. His skin turned gold, then shattered,
until his skeleton hung suspended in the aura of light. Finally that
shuddered, as well, broke into a man-shaped form of glittering dust,
and the luminous mountain of power contracted, gathering the shimmery
remains into itself.
Then it turned. Julian stood rooted as it rushed toward him. He
heard himself howl when it hit him, and he staggered as it flooded back
into him. But it felt smaller now, no larger than his own soul, and he
was able to accept it with a deep, gasping breath and a single convulsion
of something that was not quite pain. He regained his balance,
swallowed, breathed.
He was alive. More than alive. He was himself again.
Quickly, he dropped to his knees beside Lucien and Aanu. Had he
left them anything? Anything at all? He only needed half a heartbeat.
Gently, he touched Lucien’s chest. He had known him longer,