The Triad of Finity (17 page)

“Illisius is powerful,” said Oliver, remembering his display in Arcana.

“So he is,” said Malcolm.

“And,” Oliver added, “Désirée is with him.”

This caused a murmur to pass around the room.

“Then we’ll fight her as well,” said Malcom.

“Whatever it takes to save our children,” Talia added.

“Now,” said Malcolm, “what exactly is
your
plan?”

Oliver hesitated, but it seemed the only way forward was to reveal what they were up to. “We’re going to find out where Half-Light is keeping Theia, the oldest Orani. She knows what the Triad of Finity is.”

“The what?” Malcolm asked.

“Exactly,” said Dean.

“It’s some kind of safeguard,” said Oliver, “that we can use to resist Illisius and keep from opening the Gate. So, if we can find it before we’re summoned, we might have a chance.”

Malcolm nodded. “It sounds like about as big a long shot as our plan, but I guess two long shots will improve the odds. How can we help?”

Oliver looked at Lythia. “We need to know where you got that orb that you used to freeze time, the night you killed Dean,” said Oliver.

Lythia peered at him. “An Orb of Synchrus?”

“Whatever it’s called,” said Oliver. “We need one, and we need to know how to use it.”

“What for?” Lythia asked.

“So that we can interrogate Mr. Crevlyn. We think he knows where Theia is being held.”

Lythia’s eyes brightened. “And then we could create a false memory so he won’t remember afterward,” she finished. “Which will give us time to make our getaway.”

“Something like that,” said Oliver.

Lythia smiled. “I have to say, Nocturne, that’s actually pretty smart.”

“We’ve been tracking Mr. Crevlyn’s activities,” said Malcolm. “He’s currently waiting at your house, figuring you’ll return there.”

“That’s what we were thinking, too,” said Oliver.

“So then let’s go,” said Lythia. “I know just where to get an orb.” She looked from Oliver to Emalie to Dean, then nodded with a smile. “Guess I’m finally part of the team.”

Emalie huffed at this. Oliver wondered about Lythia’s smile. It had always been one of her least trustworthy features. Then again, they had so much loss in common, and they were after the same thing now. …

Also, at this point, they had little choice.

“We’ll station ourselves outside your house,” said Braiden. “Mr. Crevlyn will no doubt have a security team standing by.”

“Okay, then,” said Oliver, “here we go.” He and Emalie and Dean headed back through the submarine, their new ally trailing behind them.

Chapter 14

The Last Dinner

Morning was gray, but bright enough that Oliver and Dean took the sewers back to Twilight Lane. Sunday morning: two days before the end. The thought made Oliver’s body tense, made everything feel tight, and with the addition of Jenette’s grief, his movements felt so heavy that he wondered if he could make it through what was to come.

And yet, as real as their circumstances were, and despite all that he knew about the prophecy and the Gate and his destiny, it still seemed impossible that these stone tunnels that he’d known all his life could actually be destroyed. Or the heavy wooden door he was opening now. Their crypt, coffins, his school, all of it.

He stepped inside and looked back at Dean. Dean shrugged his eyebrows. A new crack had broken open on his temple. A black line of infected fluid ran down his cheek and neck, staining the collar of his t-shirt. He rubbed at it now, looked at the stained finger, and sighed. “I don’t suppose the Triad of Finity can fix my skin.”

“Probably not.” Oliver listened; the house was silent. He knew what awaited him upstairs, but pretending he didn’t was essential to the plan. “Hello?” he called.

“Up here, Oliver,” Phlox answered. He could hear the tension in her voice.

“Here we go,” Oliver said quietly to Dean. The two walked up the stone spiral staircase, crossed through the kitchen, and entered the living room.

“Well, well, here he is.” Mr. Crevlyn sat on the chair opposite the couch, grinning at Oliver. “Home safe at last.” His Codex knelt on a pillow beside him. Incense burned in the stone bowl in front of him. Mr. Crevlyn already had the Menteur’s Heart out. It lay on its black velvet on the coffee table, glowing pink.

“I must say it is a great relief to see you, Oliver,” said Mr. Crevlyn, his smile so wide it seemed as if he had extra teeth. “I’ve already spoken with your parents, to fill them in on what happened with you last night. They were quite surprised to hear of your appearance at the sewer clubs, and also that you made a trip to the Underground.”

Oliver glanced at Phlox and Sebastian. They weren’t looking at him.

“But they were most surprised to hear of your exit from Pele’s Lair,” Mr. Crevlyn continued, “and full of worry as to where you’d gone. I have to say I share their concern. So, let’s try to straighten everything out here, shall we? First off, I believe I observed you being whisked away by an Aeonian courier demon. I assume it brought you out to their post office boxes at the Acheron Cataract.”

“Yeah,” said Oliver.

“And so, why were you brought there?”

“To get a package.”

“What kind of package?”

Just then, there was the clicking of the door opening downstairs.

Oliver looked at Mr. Crevlyn, and returned his smile. “See for yourself.”

Two sets of footsteps clopped up the stairs to the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Crevlyn’s smile lessened, his teeth disappearing like a light dimming.

“Oliver …” Phlox said quietly. He looked over and saw the worry in her eyes. He hated having to do all this without informing them, but there’d been no other way. Oliver tried to say as much with a shrug of his brow.

Voices echoed from the kitchen.

Emalie’s: “No way, you put that in his drink?”

And Lythia’s: “Sure did. It was so gross. His mouth foamed for like two days, but he got what he deserved.”

“Man, you’re twisted,” Emalie said. Oliver couldn’t be sure, but it sounded friendly. Were Emalie and Lythia bantering?

They sauntered into the living room hip to hip. They were about the same height, and if it hadn’t been for the living and dead colors of their skin, respectively, someone might have mistaken them for sisters.

Oliver could barely believe it. Lythia had asked for Emalie’s help procuring the orb of Synchrus in the Yomi, as the Merchynt was notoriously hard to bargain with, and Lythia no longer had a demon. Emalie thought it was a good idea, mainly so she could keep an eye on Lythia. The plan had been for Oliver and Dean to go ahead and put Mr. Crevlyn at ease. But Lythia and Emalie becoming pals had not been part of the plan.

“Hello, everyone,” said Lythia.

Oliver saw Mr. Crevlyn staring at Emalie. His smile was still missing, but his eyes had widened. He looked … almost … hungry.

Emalie gazed right back at him. “ ’Sup.”

“Well,” Mr. Crevlyn hummed, “the Anointed Orani, the Muse, Eos, Emalie. You’ve returned. All is coming full circle.”

“You have no idea,” said Lythia. She pulled her hand from behind her back, revealing a staff with the blue crystal orb at the top, same as the one Bane had brought to the school gym, so long ago.

Mr. Crevlyn’s eyes darkened. “Well now …”

Lythia slammed the staff against the floor, and blue iridescent light exploded from the orb, washing over the room in a flood. As before, everything turned topaz, the walls, the furniture, even the air getting still, dust particles hovering in mid-drift, only this time, Oliver wasn’t frozen. Nor were Dean, Emalie, Lythia, Phlox and Sebastian. Only Mr. Crevlyn and the Codex had been stilled, their skin frosty.

Lythia leaned the staff against the wall and walked over to Mr. Crevlyn. She put a hand on his head and quietly muttered unintelligible demon words. His face suddenly stirred like he was awake, but his skin was still blue, and his eyes remained closed.

Meanwhile, Emalie picked up the glowing Menteur’s Heart from the table. She whispered to it in demon tongues and it glowed brighter; she’d changed its purpose from detecting lies to preventing them outright.

Emalie held the crystal up to him.
“Obey,”
she hissed, her eyes glowing red. She blew on the stone, and a wisp of pink-colored smoke curled off of it and over Mr. Crevlyn’s face.

Mr. Crevlyn spoke hoarsely. “What have you done?”

“Turned the tables,” said Lythia. She looked at Emalie. “Go ahead.”

Emalie sat down on the coffee table in front of Crevlyn, leaning toward him like a hard-boiled interrogator. “Tell us where to find the oldest Orani.”

“You … I …” Mr. Crevlyn seemed to be trying to resist, to say something else, but he couldn’t fight the Menteur’s Heart. “We are keeping her in the research facility beneath the island of Amchitka.”

“Of course,” said Sebastian. “That’s in the Aleutian Islands, practically in Russia. It’s a top-secret facility, easily hidden because there’s still some fallout there from nuclear testing.”

“How do we get in?” Emalie asked. “Are there passwords?”

“No passwords, only guardian demons. The only way you’ll get in is to fight.”

“And do you know what the Triad of Finity is?” asked Emalie.

“The Triad …” Mr. Crevlyn’s face contorted, again as if he was trying to resist answering. “That is a riddle we have long been trying to solve. We’ve performed centuries of tests, but the demosapien woman only speaks in gibberish, unconnected thoughts.

“She repeats triplets of words,” Crevlyn continued. “Earth, Eve, Dawn. Light, Dark, Choice. We are unsure as to their exact meaning. And with all the tests, it’s been decades since she could respond coherently. At this point, the demosapien has no rational thoughts left, near as we can tell.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Dean.

“No,” Oliver agreed, “but we still—”

“Wait,” said Emalie. She peered at Mr. Crevlyn, the look on her face deadly. Her voice lowered with her next question: “What did you mean, ‘demosapien’?”

“That is the classification of an Orani,” said Mr. Crevlyn. “Or, rather, Orani are a subspecies of the demosapien lines.”

“Explain,” Emalie growled.

“Demosapiens are humans in which the demon essence is more acutely expressed. All living creatures have a bit of demon inside them; it is a necessary building block for life.”

“That’s what Dexires was talking about,” Dean said to Oliver.

Oliver nodded.

“In nearly all living beings,” said Mr. Crevlyn, “the demon essence exists in balance with the soul, yet in the case of the Orani, the demon is stronger, more … active.”

“You’re saying I’m part demon?” asked Emalie thinly.

“My dear,” said Mr. Crevlyn, “all living beings are. It’s just that your demon self is more awake, and you actually feel it, and express it. It’s where you get your powers. It’s how you feel the forces of the larger universe.”

Emalie looked away, her fists clenching.

Mr. Crevlyn seemed to sense this, even though his eyes were still closed. “It’s not a bad thing,” he continued, his grin inching wider, as if talking about all this pleased him. “In fact, we have found, in other Orani test subjects, that if the demon element is isolated and removed, the subject dies, just the same as if her soul was removed.

“It is quite remarkable,” Mr. Crevlyn went on, “how demon and soul coexist within the living vessel. How they need each other. There cannot be good without evil. And the balance of their struggle is Life. That is the Architect’s model. They have this whole notion that
feeling
is some great advancement of the universe. Needless to say, it’s not part of our plan for the next one.”

Oliver was trying to wrap his brain around all this. It seemed important somehow, though he couldn’t quite grasp why.

But Emalie was still focused on the Orani. Her voice became a hiss. “How many of my sisters have you killed in these tests?”

More of Mr. Crevlyn’s glossy teeth appeared. “Well, you’re a hard breed to catch. Let me think. … I have presided over the removal operations on … about twenty three, dating back to the 1600s, though many of those were during the Salem witch trials, which were a brilliant piece of revisionist history to hide our experiments. Salem was the only time we ever found the Orani Circle of Six and their families in the same place. Silly girls, thinking they’d be safe in the New World. That was where we found and captured Theia—”

“Whoa!” Dean shouted.

Oliver had been half-listening, still lost in his thoughts, but he tore his gaze from the floor and had just enough time to notice that Emalie’s hands were over her head, and in them, an enormous Persian Shamshir sword was materializing. Her eyes flared red and she sliced downward.

“Emalie!” Oliver began.

“
Recompenssss!”
She hissed. Oliver knew the Skrit word for “retribution”—

The sword cleanly beheaded Mr. Crevlyn. The last thing Oliver saw of him was his smug smile tumbling sideways, then disintegrating to ash, along with the rest of his body. Dust pattered on the stone floor.

A moment of utter silence passed over the group. The only sounds were Emalie’s short, fast breaths. Oliver watched her eyes change from violent red back to brown, watched her pupils cool from white-hot embers to coal black. She handed the blade to Lythia, their eyes meeting.

“Nice work,” said Lythia.

Oliver reached out and touched Emalie’s arm.
Had to
, she thought to him.

“No more killing for him,” said Oliver.

Emalie nodded in agreement. “Just in case we do save the world, he won’t be in it.”

“Well then …” Phlox stood up. “I’ll get the vacuum.”

Dean surveyed the ash on the couch and floor. “This is probably going to make things more complicated.”

Sebastian walked over to the table. He picked up the Menteur’s Heart, placed it beneath the spotless heel of his shoe, and crushed it into powder. He turned to Lythia. “Can you wake the Codex?”

“Sure.” Lythia spoke quietly beside his hooded head. The Codex hauled in a rattling breath.

Sebastian knelt before him. “What is your wish, ancient one?” he asked.

“
Cindrethhh
…” the Codex whispered in his ancient, sandpaper voice, the Skrit to return to ash, or dust.