The smell of gas was getting stronger.
Another figure moved into place. Reese had been wrong: the shadowy living room wasn’t empty. A young man wearing all black, with a thick head of blond hair and smile that was pure mockery, stood in the doorway and held up both hands. Arcane symbols were tattooed on both palms.
And his fingernails were ruddy with blood.
The spirit of murder was so strong in his presence that Reese almost choked on it. Murder and witchcraft.
He beckoned slightly with one hand.
“Come,” he said, his voice slightly accented. “Come to the fight you are so eager for.”
“Where are Chris and Tyler?” she asked.
“Come and see.”
She knew better.
She knew better than to answer the demons’ taunt, than to step forward when they said step forward. She knew better, even though she kept doing it. She knew better, but she had no choice. They held all the cards.
So she stepped forward.
Beneath her feet, the floor turned to mud and sucked her down, rug and floorboards buckling and then liquidating in a whirlpool of world turned wrong. A howling filled her ears, and she heard Richard shouting something, and she fell through.
The fall was sharp, quick, over as she hit concrete and heard the snap of a bone. Searing pain ran up her leg. Her sword gone, she rested her weight on both hands, but they threatened to slip away from her. The floor was slick with kerosene, the air choking with it, the whole room a pyre. Darkness suffocated any light; she could see nothing and hear only the drip, drip, drip of kerosene from above.
But she wasn’t alone.
Tyler and the twins were here. She could feel them, knew they were alive, though no one moved or said anything.
She tried to pull herself forward, and in the process her hands found someone.
It only took a minute to realize it was Chris.
He was breathing, but his skin was cold, and he didn’t respond to her presence. She found a cast on his arm and a bruise swelling the side of his face. But she knew that face, even only under her fingers. She had memorized it, without realizing she was doing it. She knew the jawline, the eyes, the mouth.
She didn’t want him to die here.
Not just because it would be a setback in this war. Not just because it would put Diane at risk of turning. Not even just because it would put her at risk of turning.
She didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t want him to die without becoming Oneness, without knowing who she was in the deepest way and being known that way in return. And she didn’t want to lose the future with him in it, whatever it might mean, whatever it might look like.
Chris was a pawn, a game piece in a game the demons were playing, and she hated it with every atom of her being.
Tears were streaming down her face as she positioned herself next to him, wrapping him in her arms.
Sometimes terrible things happened, and the Oneness would pull themselves together and call it a plan. They would say the Spirit directed and held all things together and nothing was meaningless, and because it was not meaningless there was an element to all things that was good, redemptive.
Not to this.
The vehemence of her own belief frightened her, but she did not—would not—back down.
Chris’s dying here was not a plan she would accept.
No matter the cost of unacceptance.
If that put her against the Spirit and the Oneness itself, so be it.
* * *
Mary backed up, standing alongside Richard, and struggled to keep her footing as the floor continued to swirl and morph into something it should not have been. The young man in the living room door laughed.
“That’s enough,” Richard said, quiet but stern. His hands were still held by the stone-faced children, and he did not move a muscle.
When he spoke, the boy shuddered from head to foot, shaking so hard that Richard found himself hanging on to the boy’s hand instead of the other way, trying to comfort him and keep him standing.
The floor steadied and straightened, but the young man only grew taller in his arrogant assurance. “You don’t think we did not prepare for you and your tongue? Speak again, and we will kill the children.”
Richard closed his mouth.
The young man was not bluffing.
The children stared forward.
“You think you have such great power, with your words and your spirit life. But ours is the power of the earth and the air, and we are embraced by humans and made gods. You cannot even fight us. You are trapped by your loves and your unity.”
“Then why do you want to emulate it?” Mary said, answering for Richard. “Why join yourselves in this monstrosity? Why seek any kind of unity at all?”
“It is useful,” the man said, smiling. His face should have been handsome, the smile even more so, but with the demon speaking through him it only looked hideous.
Another figure in the other room stirred, and David appeared beside the young man.
Mary closed her eyes.
“You might as well face it, Mary,” she heard him say. “I’ve anticipated everything. Reese’s passion, Richard’s mouth. Your dogged loyalty and unwillingness to hurt children—or even these others, who would only be hurt because they’re hanging on so hard to their own demonic masters. This fight is over.”
“And when we’re dead?” Mary said. “Where will you go from there?”
“Oh, you won’t all be dead. Richard, yes. You, probably. But I intend to bring Reese up from below before we burn this place down. A resurrection, if you like. Because I know that she will do what I did when I lost everyone I cared about in a demonic attack—in a fire. She will turn against the Oneness. I’m sorry Diane isn’t here yet—I wanted her to see the fire and smell the smoke for herself. But I think seeing the remains will do it.”
“And me? You’re considering leaving me alive because you think you can turn me too?”
“Not really,” David said. “But I can make you suffer. And I want to. Everything I have gone through—you were the reason for it all.”
She opened her eyes and looked him full in his. “You haven’t won everything. You meant to kill April, twice now, and you didn’t. She’s still alive. You lost the man you sent to shoot her.”
She saw the faltering in his expression, but he didn’t react. “Even a cat goes through its last life eventually.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary whispered. She cleared her throat, trying to force her voice to come out more loudly, more clearly. “I didn’t wish this on you.”
“It’s too late now.”
“It’s not too late. It’s never too late.”
He laughed. “What, did you think Reese’s letting me go was going to strike me to the heart? That I would repent and become a new man, undone by her kindness and love? Reese is a stupid girl. I want the release of death. I want to be released into chaos. But I refuse to die without taking as many of you down with me as I can.”
He smiled bitterly. “After all, I am still Oneness. All for one, and one for all. Reese sins against me, I sin against you.”
Mary could see the disdain in the eyes of the young man who still stood next to David, disdain and impatience. Patience, care, planning—these were not the demons’ strong points.
Which was why, she realized in a flash of insight, David had indicated they would not wait for Diane to burn the house down—even though he had not known about the failure to kill April and bring Diane here. He could not contain the demonic in this house much longer. They wanted death, and they were going to get it.
She exchanged an anguished look with Richard. Mary had faced death before. She’d done it with courage and grace. Death was not the end for the Oneness.
But this time she felt little courage, no grace, no peace.
For one reason:
Chris.
A teenager appeared from the room where the children had been. He held up a shining light—an oil lamp, Mary saw
, an old-fashioned lamp with glass panes and a burning wick. He wore all black, and his eyes were eager.
“Now?” he asked.
“All right,” David said, keeping his eyes fixed on Mary. “In a minute. Clint, go get Reese.”
* * *
Tyler heard it when Reese fell through the ceiling, and he felt her presence now, a throbbing, burning, pulsating flame. He felt her love and her fear and her anger, and the danger that surrounded her.
He swallowed hard, glad to find he had that much control over his muscles. Even before becoming Oneness, he had cared about Reese.
In the dark, he could hear her crying.
He wished he could help.
You can, a voice told him.
I can’t, he answered back. I can’t even move.
He hated how weak he was.
The door upstairs opened and footsteps came down, silhouettes in the light from above. The Wizard and the kid. Reese tried to fight them off, but she couldn’t.
“You can’t win,” the kid said, his adolescent voice cracking in his excitement. “We planned it all. You’ve all just walked right into the plans.”
They disappeared again, the door shut, the darkness ruled.
Tyler still couldn’t move.
The kid’s words bothered him more than he could say. Plans—plans were supposed to be a thing of the Spirit. But in this case, the teen was right. They had planned everything. And the Oneness had just walked right into their plans.
The only thing that could beat them now, Tyler thought, is a surprise.
Like if I got up and walked out of here.
If I could do that, maybe I could do more. Because they wouldn’t expect it. Because they think I can’t move.
The power of the unexpected could win.
And he didn’t know it was his own voice or the other one he kept hearing, the one that told him to do ridiculous things like pray, but he clearly heard the words, So do it.
I can’t move! he reminded whoever it was.
So don’t use your own strength.
The thought was like seeing a sun rise for the first time and suddenly knowing that you are a planet in relation to other orbs, and that the world that feels still under your feet is moving. As soon as it came, he knew it was possible.
He knew that the Oneness could move his body even while drugs were supposed to be paralyzing it.
He knew that it didn’t matter how weak he was, because he had the strength of thousands of others.
I don’t know how, he meekly offered.
But he was running out of time.
* * *
In the kitchen, beside the basement door, Alex and the demon inside him had neatly stacked two bales of dry straw, brought from Jacob’s community farm. They would light easily and burn well, then burn down the trail of fuel under the door and down the steps until the fire hit the kerosene.
Alex’s hands shook with anticipation, and he almost dropped the match. They’d planned it to give them all enough time to get out, but he almost wished he could stay here and walk in the fire like a demon himself. Only the ingloriousness of dying alongside the Oneness, almost like he was one of them, made him decide against the idea.
The Wizard would be able to walk through the fire and live, but he was not as experienced or as full of demons as Clint. Yet.
He turned to take in the sight of the house, picturing it in flames, picturing the smoke, the heat, the walls peeling and ceilings collapsing and floors giving way in a roar of flame from beneath. He laughed.
His own laugh kept him from hearing the basement door behind him opening.
He turned to light the fire, and the demon inside him screamed out with rage.
* * *
“What’s keeping him?”
A minivan in the garage had been pulled out, and they sat in the driveway with the engine running: David in the front passenger’s seat, antsy and voicing it, the young man, Clint, beside him. In the middle bench Mary waited with the woman next to her. The empty seat next to her, beside the open van door, was for Alex. The children were huddled in the backseat.
Reese, wrists and ankles duct-taped and a blindfold pulled over her eyes, had been dumped in the back. Richard, unconscious, had been left inside.
“He’s an idiot,” Clint offered.
“I only gave him one job! What’s taking him so long?”
“He’ll do it. He’s hungry for this.”
Their eyes, all their eyes, were fixed on the front door of the house.
But Alex didn’t show.
Finally David jumped out of the van and started pacing.
“Get back in,” Clint said. “Someone will see you. The last thing you want is to draw attention to us now.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do!”
Mary found herself looking around, hoping someone would see them and come to inquire what was going on. But what was—
Tyler.
She felt him reach out for her and knew he was inside, alive, and active. Somehow, impossibly, he had stopped Alex from lighting the fire.
One of the children, the girl, let out a long, hopeless wail.
The woman turned on her, but Mary turned at the same time, and she saw. She saw the child looking out past the demonic sheen, the desperate plea for help.
Before today, these children had chosen their demons.
They weren’t choosing them any longer. At least, this one wasn’t.
Mary reached out without thinking, immediately grabbing the child’s hand and speaking the words of release to one who had requested it. “You are heard! You are free!”
The woman turned on her in rage, but the damage was done. The demon left the child’s body with a shriek. The little boy, at the same time, lurched forward and grabbed Mary’s arm with both his hands. At first she thought it was an attack, that he was trying to stop her. But his eyes, again, told the story. She repeated the words. His demon let loose.
The woman reached out to grab Mary’s throat and strangle her then and there, but the sword was already in her hand, and she pierced the woman through.
Her scream, of pain and anger and shock, shook the van.
Mary held the sword, driving it forward, driving the demon out, and prayed silently that the woman would not die. At any moment she expected Clint to stop her. Or David. How long could it take them to turn around, to get into position to do something, to respond?
The demon left her in a cloud of writhing smoke, and the woman collapsed. The children, scared, were crying. Mary looked at them. “Get down,” she said. “Untie Reese and stay with her. She’ll protect you.”
She turned, one hand on the seat in front of her, the other hand holding her sword at the ready. Clint should be in that seat, should be fighting her.
He wasn’t.
At some point between the first child’s wail for release and the woman’s collapse, he had exited the van and charged toward the house. He stood on the doorstep now, frozen in place, with a sword point at his throat.
Richard was on the other end of it.
And behind him, Tyler.
David stood in the midst of the yard, raging. He was shouting, but relief and triumph and the sudden flood of hope throbbing through Mary’s ears drowned out his words completely.
And then something else was drowning him out.
Sirens.
Three police cars, one after the other, pulled up in front of the house. Lieutenant Jackson got out of the first one. Across the street, another car pulled up to the curb, and a man Mary suspected was the real Dr. Vincent Smith got out, followed by a woman who might have been his wife.
Her hands started to shake, and she felt the tears coming.
“Reese,” she said. She turned . . . the children had managed to get Reese out of half her bonds, and the blindfold was gone. She was propped up against the side of the van, standing on one leg high enough for her head and shoulders to show above the backseat.
“That’s Dr. Smith,�
�� Reese said, her voice full of emotion.
“I thought so.”
“Did we save him?”
Him. Chris.
Mary smiled through her tears. “Yes, I think we did.”
Chapter 13
The cell house was quiet at midnight. Prayer was over, the police had gone. Mary sat at the dining room table, sipping a cup of tea and mulling.
Richard sat down next to her. She hadn’t known he was still up, but she smiled wearily at him.
“I wish they were all home,” she said.
“They will be soon. The boys just need to get those drugs out of their systems, and they’ll let the twins out as soon as they can prove nobody got hit too hard in the head.”
Mary nodded, holding the heel of her hand against her mouth. She removed it and sipped at her tea again, looking absently into the living room. It seemed unreal that April had killed a man in there earlier the same day. April, at least, had passed a medical examination and been allowed to come home right away. Nick had wandered in after ten, after dark, and said very little but shown tremendous relief to find April okay.
His mother was upstairs in one of the beds, but they didn’t tell him that. He would find out in the morning.
To Mary’s comfort, Diane had announced her intention to stay here tonight also. No going away to a home of her own—no leaving the family. She and Reese were still at the hospital in Lincoln, hovering around Chris’s room, but they would be home soon.
The cell house had never been this full. And yet, Mary’s heart would not truly quiet until they were all home, all safe, all here where she could see them and know they were okay.
It might not even truly quiet then.
“When . . . when they come home. It still won’t be complete.”
“You can’t turn David’s heart,” Richard said. “How he is—it isn’t your fault, Mary. He’s made his own choices.”
She nodded, but she kept her eyes distant, fixed on the door. She had already made arrangements to visit Julie and Miranda, the woman and her daughter from the community who had outed Jacob, and would try to visit Jacob himself, and his wife, as soon as they were allowed visitors. A court date hovered in their near future. What exactly the charges would be, no one knew yet.
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