Those who Favor Fire
Disclaimer: Characters and premise are the property of Kazue Kato. I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.
Chapter Nine: Confrontation
"Well um, the portal to Assiah's this way. I guess I'll finally find out if I've got enough demon blood to make it open," Light said as he tucked his father's bible away again but Angel wasn't paying attention to him any more.
The seventeen-year-old exwire tilted his head to the side, listening intently to something only he could hear, "Caliburn's waiting for me," he said.
"It won't take Daphne long to realize that you're free," Light replied nervously tugging Angel in the direction of the portal.
Angel shook off Light's hand and started in the other direction. "This is better." He smiled dementedly, "I want to say goodbye properly." Determinedly he staggered down the corridor in the direction of Caliburn's voice.
Light took a last glance toward the portal then to himself he muttered, "It's not as if I knew what I was going to do to save my skin once I'd rescued him anyway." Then he hurried after Angel. He grabbed the taller youth's arm and pulled it over his shoulders a moment before Angel could determinedly crash into a wall. Together they stumbled onward.
Several minutes later the pair found themselves standing in front of a locked double-door. Light huffed and looked pointedly back down the hall in the direction from which they'd come. Angel shook his head. "All right, I'll try," Light sighed. His hand was still seeping blood from before, so he pressed his palm against the lock. Nothing happened. Light thought for a moment, then he whispered a quick phrase. Angel felt a gust of wind sweep down the corridor along with a translucent mist. The mist dove into the lock and a moment later it burst apart. The double doors swung open revealing a veritable dragon's horde of treasure but Angel only had eyes for one thing.
Caliburn vibrated with anticipation as Angel pulled him from his sheath. "Finally," the sword breathed.
"She's coming," Light said as the first traces Daphne's pheromones tainted the air.
"Good," Angel replied. He severed the last few inches of his braid, just above the tie. As his hair slowly began to unravel he turned back toward the door and raised Caliburn to the ready, his breath quickened with anticipation. Light faded back into the shadows.
"How did you ever get out my little toy?" Daphne appeared in the doorway, blood-red hair cascading around her shoulders, her pale skin luminant with good health. Then she saw Angel and her eyes widened in shock. She dove back down the hall a moment before a massive bolt smashed the door and walls around it to smithereens.
"Don't bring the roof down on us," Caliburn murmured softly. Angel didn't reply but his eyes gleamed with madness as he stalked after Daphne. He pursued her through the twisting passages, unleashing bolt after bolt, striding through the resultant rubble, uncaring of the danger to himself. As the blood oozing from the torn skin around his wrists trickled down through his fingers and was absorbed by the hilt of the sword the bolts took on a red tinge and increased in destructive power.
Daphne darted ahead, trying to lose him in the maze, when she suddenly came upon a dead end. "No!" she screamed looking up at the walls over her. "I'm of the colony, don't do this to me!"
The House didn't respond in words, it's mind was too inhuman for such things, but Daphne understood that, in the face of the damage Angel was wrecking, it no longer considered a relationship with her symbiotic. She was being sacrificed to pacify the demon-sword wielder.
She doubled back, trying to find a way past Angel before the House could shift again. The pheromones wafting around her thickened. A look of utter revulsion crossed Angel's gaunt face as his body began to react. When he caught up to her Daphne's posture shifted, she looked up at him with a fragile expression through her bangs. "Arthur, you love me, You don't want to hurt me."
In a smooth movement Angel reversed Caliburn, laying the massive blade along his throat. "You're right about one thing: I don't want to hurt you, I want to obliterate you," he growled. "I loved you and you betrayed me."
"You'd kill yourself just to destroy me?" Daphne asked, straightening and casting off her previous manner like a cloak.
"Gladly."
"My Angel no!" Caliburn exclaimed. "I don't need such a sacrifice for the likes of her."
"This way even the memory of her will be gone," Angel said.
"She'll win!" Caliburn shouted.
Before Angel could act Daphne crumpled to her knees with an expression of shock and pain on her face. As she fell Light was revealed standing behind her, a dagger bloodied to the hilt in his hand.
"How could you?" Daphne asked turning toward him. "I'm your mother."
Light shrugged. "Loyalty's a two way street, Mom. I tried telling myself that you having sex with me was because you loved me… but I was never that good of a liar." He watched dispassionately as Daphne slumped to the floor. "She's as good as dead," Light remarked to Angel. "But if you feel like finishing her off..."
Angel turned, he swung Caliburn viciously cutting an arc through the air. A red crescent of light flew from the blade, bisecting Daphne. As the life fled from her she left behind the body of an ancient withered crone. For a moment it seemed Angel would take another swing at her, but after staring at the unrecognizable corpse for several minutes he lowered his sword and turned and walked aimlessly away.
Light jogged after him. "It's not safe to wander here," he said.
"She was your mother?" Angel asked belatedly.
"Yeah," Light admitted. He backed away from Angel warily. "I guess I should have made the opportunity to do that a long time ago. I just… Well, there's me realizing what she was, what I was to her and then there's deciding to kill her. It's a big leap." His gaze strayed to the sword still in Angel's hand. "You mad that I didn't make it soon enough for you?"
Angel shook his head then turned and started to wander away again.
Light awkwardly tried to steer Angel back in toward their original destination. "You need to get back to Assiah," he said.
"Why?" Angel asked.
"You want to escape, get back to your world. That was the whole point wasn't it?" Light asked.
"Killing her was to be my last battle, the one I can't lose," Angel said. "But Caliburn didn't want my sacrifice and you killed her."
Light caught Angel's sleeve. "The portal's this way," he said taking charge. He led Angel through the maze of tunnels, around the twisted vortexes of time, to a wall that looked as if it were made of pulled taffy. "This is the place," Light said. He grabbed Angel's wrist and pressed his bloody hand to the center of the vortex. Slowly it began to unwind, leaving a black void at its center.
Angel drew back and stared impassively as his way back to Assiah. "What will you do?" he asked.
Light shrugged noncommittally, "I'll figure something out. With her dead there's no claim on me. I'm far from the only mostly-human around the colony. I can always find someone sane and hook-up with them. I tasted bad to her 'cause there's a bit of a instinctive imperative against feeding on your own off-spring. I can find someone demon enough to need- well food."
"You should come to Assiah," Angel said impulsively. "If you're too human to be anything but food here, you should be in Assiah."
"I-" Light faltered suddenly looking as off-balance as Angel had been since killing Daphne. "I can't. I told you, I've never been anywhere but here."
For a moment Angel stared at his hand, Light's blood drying on it as well as his own. "You don't belong here," Angel countered with growing determination to bring Light back to Assiah with him.
For a long time Light stared searchingly at Angel then he nodded. "I need to get some things if I'm really leaving," he said.
Once his mind had been made up Light led Angel purposefully through the burrow-like maze of halls and passageways until they reached a small room made utterly claustrophobic by the crudely built bookshelves covering every wall from floor to ceiling and jammed full of books. They weren't simply full, they were stacked two rows deep in places and when even that failed to suffice the books had been turned on their sides and slid on top of the ones standing upright. Angel's eyes were drawn to a shelf of brightly colored board-books for children who couldn't be trusted not to chew on the pages just below four shelves full of bibles. An unmade bed stood, like an island, in the center of the room and a dresser had been crowded out into the hallway.
Light grabbed a satchel out under the bed then went to the shelves after a moment's consideration he started stuffing books in the bag. Angel watched, bemused as Light finished filling the first bag then pulled a second one out from under the bed, he filled that one just as quickly and went back for a third.
Angel frowned as he recognized the latest bag, "Is that mine?" he asked accusingly.
Light flinched and quickly shove the bag in question back under the bed.
"It is!" Angel exclaimed. "What were you doing with my bag?"
"Books," Light admitted gesturing to the room around them.
Angel stomped over to the shelves of bibles and reclaimed a familiar copy. Light pouted at him, "My last New King James version fell apart," he said. "New International Version is better for translations but they took all the poetry out of it."
"Then buy your own when we're in Assiah," Angel snapped.
Light gaped at him for a moment before realization dawned. "Bookstores!" he exclaimed. "And libraries, I read about them. Whole buildings full of books. Those are for real?"
"They're commonplace," Angel stated. "Most towns have at least one of each. True Cross Academy students all have access to all sectors of the Vatican Library…"
Light's face took on a euphoric glow. "Over a million books, 75,000 codices, forty-two kilometers of shelves," he murmured to himself. "And it actually exists."
"But what to did you mean about translations?" Angel asked.
"The bible, it's better than the Rosetta stone," Light elaborated, snapping out of his rhapsodic trance. "I've got English, Hebrew, French, Japanese, Latin, Shawnee, Russian, Greek, German, Aramaic, Konkani, and Klingon translations. I've got nothing but time here. I read a lot, whatever I can get my hands on. I've pretty much memorized the bible, so I use it to translate languages I don't know yet. I haven't come across many other books in Klingon or Shawnee though."
"Klingon is a fictional language," Angel pointed out.
"I guess that explains it," Light replied lightly, but his knuckles turned white on the straps of the bag. "I know I should have waited-"
"Until I was dead?" Angel accused.
Light glanced away, as he did the neck of his shirt gaped and Angel caught sight of welts around his neck.
"Did you get all these books from her victims?" Angel demanded, although he was suddenly finding it harder to hold on to his anger.
Light shook his head. "The rest of the colony wouldn't mess with what was hers, but they have some," he grimaced, "pity for me. Most of the books come from them. Plus, I trade translations, Gehennans don't just know languages. You know whatever your host knows but you lose it after a while unless you merge. Anyway, I've got some contacts here and there, they'd get me business. I keep whatever I translate and I get paid in books mostly. Books are good," Light added a few moments later. He trailed a hand fondly over the spines of a shelf of fiction. "The only dependable company I've ever had."
"That will change," Angel promised. He shouldered one of the bulging bags Light had already packed. "Are you planning on bringing any clothes?"
"Naw, takes too much room," Light replied. "Think we could get three bags each?"
"Two," Angel negotiated, considering the weight of the bag he'd picked up.
"I'll make the third bag a small one," Light countered.
Twenty minutes later they stood before the distorted wall once again. Angel had tied his hair up so that it didn't drag on the ground and they were both weighed down with bags of books. Once again they pressed their bloody hands to the wall, this time when it telescoped open they walked through.
They found themselves on a hillside overlooking Rome on a clear night. Light gazed around himself, mouth hanging open in awe. He started at the city-lights spread out below and the stars above. "I read about it," he breathed. "But I never realized how big the world was."
A week later Angel walked into the Academy's on-call center to add his name to the duty roster for the first time after vanishing off the face of the Earth for six weeks. "You missed this year's Exam," the future Baltazar remarked.
"I know," Angel replied. He stared at the floor, his unbound hair falling around his face like a curtain. "You were informed of the circumstances?" he asked and the senior exorcist nodded. "Then you know I should have been failed even if I had taken it. I let her deceive me."
"You came back alive. You're not completely hopeless."
"You're very kind to say," Angel replied stiffly. "But everyone warned me against her."
For several moment Baltazar studied Angel silently. "Well, I told you: Thinking's not your strong suit. Doesn't make you any less talented a knight. Follow orders and you could still be an asset to the Order."
"There is one thing I think you're right about," Rin told Iblis. "You and I could settle this. We don't need anyone else getting hurt."
Iblis laughed, "You're honestly challenging me little brother?"
Rin's mouth thinned as he listened to Angel's increasingly labored breathing and the pauses between the passages Bon was reciting as the Aria had to searched his memory for verses that might help. "Promise you'll put a stop to the attacks on my friends and we can have it out."
"Or I could smash that barrier and kill you where you stand," Iblis threatened.
Rin's eyes blazed, "Doubt it."
"I'll indulge you, little brother," Iblis said. "I give you my word that your companions will remain unmolested as long as you remain unbowed."
"Deal," Rin said.
"Ms. Yuri," Iblis called to Rin's utter shock. "Leave off. I've promised your brat that his friends would have a respite until he's been put in his place."
The flames around Angel's chest flared. A ball of blue fire separated itself from the flames Rin had wrapped the two humans in to shield them from Gehenna. The ball of flames passed through Rin and Bon's barrier as if it wasn't there. Then the flames lit beside Iblis and reformed themselves into a slight woman with curly brown hair and turquoise eyes. Her resemblance to Yukio was so strong that even Bon instantly knew who she had to be.
Yuri gave Rin a sad look. "You're mistaken," she said. "You have no friends within the True Cross. Come over here Rin-sweetie, with your family. It's where you truly belong."
Bon left Karura standing guard over Angel and went to stand beside Rin. Gratefully Rin put his hand on Bon's shoulder. "Mom, these are my friends," he said.
"The Paladin has orders to kill you," Yuri countered.
Bon glanced back at Angel, shocked. Rin just shrugged, "Yeah, I guessed as much the third time he yelled at me for saving his life. But that's for him and me to work out, there's no way I'm gonna say Iblis' promise doesn't apply to him."