by Elicia Hyder
She was worse, if that was possible.
Much worse.
John was staring, slack-jawed. “That could happen to my son?”
Torman beat me to an answer. “That could happen to all of us. What has the Morning Star done?”
Even for a demon like Torman, a line had been crossed. Stormed through, judging by the horror in his voice.
“Your daughter helped create this,” I reminded him. “They are no longer discriminating between humans and angels.”
“I see that.”
“You understand now?” I asked.
He turned slowly to face me. “Yes. I understand. He’s truly turned on his own.”
“You’ll help us then? Really help us?”
He nodded, something akin to repentance in his eyes. “Yes. I will help you.”
“So will I,” John said. “And I’ll shut up and get along with the angel.”
If he was waiting for Torman to agree to something similar, he’d be waiting forever.
Torman turned toward me. “As soon as Iliana is finished, we’ll get to work. But be warned, it’s going to take everything she’s got.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Warren, you have a visitor.” I could hear a smile in Nash’s voice over the intercom.
Several of the guys and I were watching Die Hard in the living room. The bunker had a limited collection of “Emergency Apocalypse Films”—the box was labeled—and most of them were on DVD. The television was a beast compared to the slim-line mounted screen I’d spotted upstairs in Echo-5.
“Wonder who he’s talking about,” I said to whoever was listening.
“Fury?” Reuel asked.
I shook my head. “Fury and Anya are in the gym.”
The click-clack of angry heels down the hallway prickled the back of my neck.
Dr. Swain stepped into the doorway, a crease already between her eyebrows. She pointed at me. “You have some explaining to do.”
Ionis paused the movie.
I took my boots off the coffee table and dropped them to the floor. “I can explain.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I certainly hope so. What did you do in my classroom today?”
“Would you like to sit down?”
“No.”
“We needed human tears to create a cure for Cassiel.”
She turned her head, her eyes narrowed to slits. Her expression was caught somewhere between amusement and are-you-serious? “Come again?”
I got up and crossed the living room. “You heard me correctly. My daughter can create a cure from human tears that no disease can stand against.”
“You think that teenage girl of yours can create a broad-spectrum antidote for all diseases?”
“Yes.”
“From human tears?”
“Yes.”
With a smirk, she shook her head. “You’re all crazy.”
“It’s true,” I argued. “And we needed enough humans in one place to get it done. I’m sorry the only place I could think of on short notice was your classroom.”
She put up a hand to silence me. “Let’s say I believe you. How did you do it? An odorless gas of some sort?”
“No, no. It was completely harmless.”
“How is it harmless? You took two hundred of the brightest minds in this city and reduced them to blubbering crybabies.”
“We had the help of some other angels. Angels who can manipulate emotion. I promise, there will be zero lasting effects from today.”
She looked skeptical.
“Have you had any lasting symptoms today?”
“No.”
“Completely harmless.” I started toward the door. “Come. I’ll show you what we’re working on.”
With an exasperated sigh, she followed me across the hall to the kitchen and dining room. Kathy McNamara was working around the moonshining equipment to make dinner.
Dr. Swain stopped halfway through the room. “It looks like a meth lab in here.”
I sniffed the air. It smelled a lot like the osteria where Cassiel and I had eaten in Rome. My stomach growled in response. “Kathy, what are you making?”
“Lasagna. I hope you’re hungry.”
“I’m always hungry now.”
As if on cue, Reuel walked into the room and headed straight for the refrigerator.
“What is all this?” Dr. Swain asked.
“Well, it’s a moonshine still,” I answered.
“You know moonshining is illegal in this state, right?”
My head pulled back. “Really? After all these years?”
She didn’t speak, but her eyes were asking, “Where have you been?”
She wouldn’t believe me if I told her.
“Why are you making moonshine?”
“We’re not. But we are using a modified process to distill the tears we collected today from your classroom. We do something similar to create a healing liquid called crystal water where we come from.”
She lowered her voice. “Where do you come from?”
I smiled. “That’s a conversation for another day. I apologize again about the disruption in your lecture. I hope things improved after we left.”
We’d left the Angels of Ministry behind to calm the emotions of the students. Help them focus and be a model classroom after the disruption we’d caused.
She lifted an eyebrow. “They may have been the best students I have ever taught. After you and your friends left.”
“Glad to hear it.”
She looked over all the equipment. “You really think you can cook up a cure with all this?”
“We hope so. It’s the best chance we have. We’re going to try here in a moment. Perhaps you’ll be here to see the results.”
I had hoped we’d have this finished by now, but Iliana needed to rest after treating Cassiel again. Her grandmother had ordered her to bed. Poor kid was worn thin.
Dr. Swain reached into the bag she was carrying. “I got the results of Cassiel’s bloodwork.” She handed a sheet of paper to me.
On it was a list of acronyms and corresponding numbers. None of which meant anything to me. Most of the numbers had asterisks beside them, indicating the numbers were out of normal range. There were a lot of them.
“We also found an incredibly high amount of a foreign toxin. It might be a heavy metal or an element we don’t have on our periodic table. I took it to some of my coworkers in the lab, and they said it has similar characteristics to arsenic. Her symptoms show the same.”
“So how do you treat arsenic poisoning?”
“At this stage? You don’t.” Her face was grim.
I held up the paper. “So this is worthless?”
“Afraid so.”
I crumpled it. “Anything else?”
“Her blood-cell count is almost nonexistent. There’s no way a human would survive with her levels. She needs a blood transfusion, but her blood type is the rarest on the planet. She can donate blood to anyone, but there are only a handful of other people around the globe who could donate blood for her.”
“Rh-null blood.”
Her head jerked. “You know?”
“The golden blood type. All angels have it. She’s in a bunker full of donors right now, but I’m afraid it might only fuel the poison. Whatever is killing her was designed to seek out and latch onto those blood cells. The blood cells survive long enough to kill everything in their path before they too are destroyed.”
She looked at all the equipment again. “Then, for your friend’s sake, I hope this works.”
“For all our sakes, I hope so too. Want to check in on Cassiel?”
“Yes.”
We started toward the door, but I stooped and looked back. “Reuel, you coming?”
Standing in front of the refrigerator, Reuel still hadn’t chosen anything to eat. He closed the door, glanced quickly at me, and shook his head.
He hadn’t spoken much since we’d left that morning. Not exactly out of cha
racter for him, but now he wasn’t eating. Come to think of it, he hadn’t joined us for lunch, and I couldn’t remember seeing him snacking at all that day.
Something was definitely off.
I looked at the doctor. “Go on to the infirmary. I’ll catch up.”
“OK.”
When she was gone, I walked over to him. “You’re not hungry?”
He sighed.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I think she’s dead,” he answered in Katavukai, the language he was most comfortable speaking.
“Who?”
“Brienne.”
“Oh.”
“I asked Nathan about her when we were on the island. He said she closed the bakery and moved away from Asheville before the virus hit.” His eyes fell. “Luca helped me look for her online today when we returned from the university. We found nothing.”
“Maybe no news is good news. She could be fine.”
Or she could easily be dead.
He lifted his giant head, but I could see in his eyes, he didn’t believe me. I put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find out. I promise.”
A small window of time existed between allowing Iliana to rest and Cassiel needing another treatment. Jett brought her to the kitchen at dinnertime, as Nana insisted Illy eat first.
The second we’d all finished the amazing meal, it was time to get to work.
“Place your hands on either side of the pot, and channel all your healing energy into it,” Torman instructed, standing beside her.
“Will the metal of the pot reduce its effectiveness?” Rogan asked.
“Yeah, there are no pressure cookers in Eden,” Jett added.
Torman tapped his creepily long fingernails on the metal side. “Do you really think this is any match for an angel’s power? Iliana, go ahead. Only your healing power of life. Please don’t turn this thing into a projectile.”
“Please,” I echoed.
Iliana’s hands brightened, and the pot to began to vibrate against the granite countertop.
“More,” Torman instructed.
She gave it everything she had until I could no longer see the pot or her hands around it for the light.
“Good. Keep going. As the liquid inside heats up and forms steam, the pot will pressurize. The steam will travel through the copper tubing, through the bucket, and will hopefully empty out into the jar,” Torman explained.
“How long will it take?” I asked.
Torman lifted both shoulders. “As far as I know, this has never been done before. The only other angel capable is the Morning Star, and he wouldn’t have much use for it.”
“The Morning Star?” Dr. Swain asked from her place at the table.
“Yep,” Ionis said. “Satan himself. He’s not really in the business of healing people anymore.”
The doctor visibly shuddered.
Everyone watched in bated silence. James stood behind Kathy, near the refrigerator, with his arms around her shoulders. Kathy’s hands were clasped in the prayer position, beneath her chin. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were moving. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that prayers were worthless without the spirit line.
My heart thumped nervously, and my hand was sweating around Fury’s. She finally pulled away and wiped her hand on her pants.
Soon, sweat glistened across Iliana’s forehead. “Is anything happening?” she asked through gritted teeth.
John was leaning against the counter behind her, by the stove. “Doing this the human way can take ten to fifteen minutes or more for the pot to pressurize. It will take even longer for the steam to begin collecting in the tube.”
She groaned loudly.
Jett curled his arm around her waist for support. For the first time, it didn’t bother me. She needed all the help she could get.
The minutes ticked by slower and slower. It didn’t help that my eyes were set on the clock.
Finally, John wrapped his hand around the copper tube. “It isn’t working.”
I walked over. “What do you mean?”
“Feel it.”
I touched the metal. And shrugged my shoulders.
“It should be hot by now. Whatever she’s doing isn’t enough to build up the steam.”
With a frustrated guttural scream, Iliana let go and grabbed onto the countertop for support.
I grabbed her waist to hold her upright when her knees wobbled. “Breathe,” I said calmly in her ear.
“I can’t do it. I don’t have anything else to give.”
“What do we do?” I asked Torman.
He was sitting at the far end of the counter, leaning his elbow on the countertop. “I was afraid this might be a problem.”
“So how do we fix it?” Jett asked.
“She needs rest and food.” He cradled his head in his hand. “I’m not sure she’s going to be able to produce enough power to do it, even if she had a vacation to the Caribbean to recover. Her human body hasn’t been purified by Eden. She’ll never access all she is until that happens.”
“So what do we do?” Rogan asked.
“What if we bring Taiya in here?” I asked Torman. “Iliana can use the power of other angels, and you said it yourself, Taiya still has healing properties buried in her body’s cells.”
“Taiya’s the only thing keeping Cassiel alive right now. You pull her in here, and we might as well not even do this,” Iliana said.
I hung my head. “Dammit.”
“Warren, we have company outside,” Kane said over the intercom.
“Who is it?” I replied, raising my voice toward the speaker in the tiles overhead.
“I have no idea. It’s an old guy and another dude who kinda looks like Thor with black hair.”
Every angel in the room except Torman, me, and Iliana jumped up and bolted toward the door. My whole body relaxed, and I exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.
Dr. Swain looked around confused. “What? Who’s here?”
I kissed Iliana’s temple. “The Father.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Reality had threatened to break my brain many times since Fury and I had leapt seventeen years into the future. But not even Iliana being all grown-up was as jarring as the sight of the Father, God Almighty himself, hobbling with a cane down the hallway.
I had finally given up waiting and went to investigate what was taking so long. Upon seeing him, the delay made immediate sense. I was a little surprised it hadn’t taken him a year to get down all the steps.
As long as I’d known him, Father John—as he went by on Earth—had been an old man. Now? He was elderly.
Hunched.
Shriveled.
Feeble.
Even though they told me he’d been in Eden most of the time I was gone, the Father seemed to have aged more than the rest. Had it not been for the birthmark shaped like South America stamped on his forehead, I might never have believed it was him.
His wrinkled old face brightened when he saw me. “Warren,” he said, breathing heavily from the journey to the bunker.
Gabriel and the other angels were behind him, but greetings for Gabriel could wait.
I closed the space between us in a couple of strides and embraced the Father gently, so as not to break his certainly brittle bones. “Father.” I’d only ever seen him in the form of an old man, but now he felt small and frail in my arms. I pulled back to search his tired eyes. “Forgive me, but you’re so…”
“Old?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes.”
“This body ages here on Earth as any other would. Except, I fear the complete absence of Eden’s power is fueling the process.” He glanced back and chuckled. “And those stairs didn’t help any either.”
After almost wrecking reality in a negotiation gone sour with the Morning Star, the Father had imposed limits on himself for his visits to Earth. Never again would he be able to travel here with access to his full power, for his own fear of unintentionall
y undoing everything he created.
“Sorry about the stairs. I’m afraid that’s my fault.”
“So I heard,” he said with a smile.
“I’m really glad you’re here. Thank you for coming all this way.”
“I told you, Warren, I’ll always come when you ask me. Even if I am falling apart.” His bony fingers reached up to touch my cheek. “You, on the other hand, haven’t aged a day. How are you?” His eyes were deep pools of emotion, filled with questions well beyond how my day had been. They were pained. Sad. Maybe even a little regretful.
My gaze fell an inch. “Did you know?”
“About the time difference in Nulterra?”
I nodded.
“Prophecies cannot be avoided. They aren’t guesses; they are glimpses of the actual future. So I suspected the Morning Star had tampered with time.” He took my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“I’ve thought a lot in the last few days about why you didn’t.”
“And?”
“I would have gone to save Anya, even had I known.” The shock of the moment I saw Iliana grown fluttered once again in my chest.
The Father must have noticed because his head fell slightly to the side, and a small smile played at his thin lips.
“I’m pretty sure anyway,” I added quickly.
“Of course you would have. It is because of my certainty in this that I didn’t tell you. I’d hoped to save you from even a few days of this pain. Now, I wonder if I made the right choice.”
I would probably spend the rest of my life, however long it was, wondering the same. But he was right, as always. There’s no way I could have lived with myself, knowing that an innocent woman was trapped in Nulterra when I had the power to free her.
Not to mention, Fury would have gone with or without me, and I would have died had anything happened to her.
But there was no use in pondering the what-ifs. Life only makes sense when looking back from tomorrow, and if we didn’t hurry, tomorrows would be in short supply. I certainly didn’t summon the creator of the universe to Asheville for an explanation.
“You’ve heard about Cassiel?”
