by Jenn Stark
None of the others seemed to notice, and Dana swallowed, even as Lester’s smile grew beatific, his gun hand starting to quiver against Claire’s temple.
“The time has come, as Bartholomew promised. God will hear his cry, and you’ll be forged in the fires of his Holy War!” Lester declared, and the wind roared even higher, as if goaded by his words.
Dana stumbled forward toward the edge of the roof and looked down. Surrounding the church, below the thin layer of streets and cars and people, lurked a pit of molten fire that apparently, no one else could see. It roiled below an increasingly busier street as a few people who, Good Catholics that they were, escaped the church before the mass was well and truly complete. They bustled to their cars, clearly unaware, but there was no mistaking the fiery pit beneath them. She felt its pull, drawing her down.
This was where she would be forged as a weapon, Lester said. A place of fire and desolation. Was that what her future held? All her tomorrows? Could God really be so cruel?
But what was her alternative? To lie down before Bartholomew and let him strike her—strike them all—dead?
She swung her head back, her gaze skittering wildly over the roaring Possessed that chanted around Finn and Bartholemew, apparently locked in, well, immortal combat.
She couldn’t let Bartholomew win. Hers was one life, but within her, she held fifteen hundred souls. They knew only a hundred names so far, but Max would find more. He’d know what to do. Maybe Finn could help too. She thought he would, for her.
But she couldn’t risk Bartholomew—or anyone—taking this list from her to do with it what they would. The Dawn Children deserved to be more than fodder for Bartholomew and his Possessed, and they deserved more than what the Society of Orion had in store for them. They deserved a chance, no matter the cost.
“Lester, you’re right. It’s time,” Dana said, forcing a smile to her face as she moved toward him. “I can hear God’s call.”
“You can?” Lester gasped, whirling around. “I will be a general in his army. And you will be his sword!”
“That’s right,” she said, stepping toward him. “I can see Him, his fiery angels, ready to reclaim his creation. There!” She lifted a hand, pointing, and Lester turned excitedly.
Dana bounded forward the last few steps, her arm swinging in a roundhouse that connected with the side of her uncle’s skull. He went reeling in one direction, while she threw Claire down to another, her mother now passed out cold.
The list was still inside her, though. The list that needed to be kept from Bartholomew and his demon horde above all else.
The bells of Christmas began to ring, and Dana leapt toward the edge of the roof.
Chapter Thirty
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
Cleveland, Ohio
12:00 a.m., Dec. 25
Finn heard Lester’s insane litany of his and the Dawn Children’s place in the war as if it was delivered on the night wind. He heard Dana’s careful response, her course of action plain in her voice as she finally surged forward, cutting Lester down, thrusting her mother aside.
But she didn’t step away from the edge of the roof, from the fiery pit that Finn knew had opened up all around the church, the destiny of the demon horde that howled upon the rooftop. Instead, she homed in on it, apparently oblivious to the danger as the Possessed closer to her realized that she was no longer in the thrall of the human but had once again begun acting on her own.
That was what they’d been summoned for—to stop this from happening. They wouldn’t let her go.
“No!” he shouted.
Even as he rushed forward, Finn was thrown to the rooftop as another thundering crash boomed above the cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. The howling wind mingled with the clanging bells of the cathedral, announcing the end of Midnight Mass and the official birth of the Christ child. The surge of joy and belief lifting up from the congregation was almost tangible, fueling the flames of the fiery pit and creating a thinning of the veil. He could almost see God’s angels on the other side—true angels, he thought, glowing with holy fire. What he’d once been, all those millennia ago. What he could never be again.
There were more than he expected.
He fought his way through the crowd, determined not to lose sight of Dana. Lester and Claire were no longer in his line of sight, but Dana was moving closer to the edge of the roof, not away from it. She couldn’t know what she was about to jump into. The pits that masked the portal to heaven were every mortal’s incarnation of hell itself, and for good reason: they represented the faithful’s greatest, most primal fear.
And Dana was facing it.
The demons raced for the rooftop’s edge, suddenly realizing that Dana was about to deprive them of their prize.
Finn thrust one Possessed out of his way, then another. As soon as a pathway opened up in front of him, however, he could see he was too late. Dana was determined to do whatever it took to protect the fifteen hundred lives that even now slumbered in unknowing anticipation of the greatest battle mankind would ever face. If the list fell into the hands of Bartholomew and the demons, she would betray them. If it fell into the hands of the Society of Orion, she would destroy them. In death, her body burned to dust, she would save them.
She leapt off the edge of the roof and plunged toward the pit.
No!
Finn burst forward, and both demons and Possessed surged away from him, giving him another few moments of renewed speed and anger. And then he found himself at the edge of the rooftop, crouching at its edge as he looked down into the darkness. Time stopped, frozen as he perched there, a madness that seemed almost distantly familiar rushing through him, pouring into his bloodstream as the world went red, then white. He couldn’t imagine how this had looked to Dana. Whatever her worst nightmare had been, she had seen it.
And she had leapt. One meaningless human who’d played her part for God. Who’d sacrificed all she had. He should honor her for that sacrifice, use it as inspiration. Find the other Dawn Children, deliver the partial list he’d recovered to the archangel, and let Dana give her life for what she believed in, a life that was, after all, hers to give. A life that she thought could only be worth so much…
Because he hadn’t told her any differently.
“No!” Finn raged again, and for the first time in his immortal existence, tears rushed to his eyes and spilled over, pouring down his face. “No.”
He leapt after her.
Dana knew she was falling into flames, but the rush of boiling heat was something she could never have imagined. Something brutal slashed her as she fell, her body on fire, her eyes clenched shut even as her mouth tore open in a scream she no longer had the voice or oxygen to sustain. She had leapt to her death without knowing where she was falling, conscious only that with this one act, she would save the lives of fifteen hundred souls, men and women who deserved the right to live their lives in secrecy, protected both from those who would own them and those who would turn them…and those who would kill them.
Her heart cried out for Finn as her clothes burned away from her body, the terrible lashing flames scalding her with liquid heat. Her eyes were fixed open, and a terrifying wasteland exploded in front of her.
Dana was in hell.
She fell to the ground with a thudding agony, the wind whipping around her, her hands on fire as the pressure forced her down, the ground opening before her with nightmarish visions of people crawling out of subterranean caverns, picking their way out of superheated slime, their faces in anguish, their eyes filled with agony. The screams of children and babies rocked her, crying out, their hands reaching toward her—too many to help, too many to save, too many to heal in a world where she had never been forced to believe.
She couldn’t save them all. She couldn’t save any one of them. She had failed.
Dana stumbled back from their grasping hands, but they caught and held her fast, her body convulsing. The chip in her arm suddenly seemed to
burn with cold venom, forcing her arm close to her chest, pulsing against her bone, sending rivers of agony through her. Then the ground opened again and she was falling into white light, soft and beatific.
And far more frightening.
Dana’s lungs began to labor. There was no air here, there was no life, and she knew she had somehow not died at all. She flinched away from the light, the welcoming flash of deceptive beauty, the outstretched hands of men whose faces were covered in hoods and whose eyes watched her darkly through the veil. She reared back, stretching hopelessly away. Surely she could not survive this, surely her body would be destroyed before they could reach her.
Surely she would not betray the saviors of mankind.
A blast of heat opened above her once more, and Dana felt her body caught up against a man’s, strong and certain, hauling her back up through the white light, back into the hellish nowhere filled with darkness and despair. Finn. She writhed in his grasp as he tried to pull her toward the heat, her body finally succumbing to the impossible pressures of this place. She would die here, and she must die. She must do this for the men and women left on Earth. It was the only way she would know for sure.
But she’d be damned if Finn died alongside her.
Finn yanked her up, his face hard as he yelled at her soundlessly. Something was terribly wrong with his eyes. They glowed like white-hot coals, boring into hers as if memorizing her face for all eternity. He pulled her up farther, into the blasting heat, and the coiling darkness converged on her. She strained away from him, desperate for him to leave her, to escape, and cried out in silent horror at his stricken expression.
There was no more air to be had, and her lungs collapsed like tinfoil, crushed in the heat and oppression.
Finn’s mouth covered hers.
Dana’s eyes popped open, knowing that the breath he was giving her was keeping him from breathing, knowing that his body had already started to deteriorate. He poured all the energy of healing he had as a Fallen into her, but to his own detriment. His nerves began to crackle with the force of the energy exuding from him, and his strong arms around her body weren’t enough to sustain them both. He couldn’t die for her, not in this hellhole, not like this.
And yet he was. As much as she struggled and writhed against him, Finn used her energy, her focus to lift them both upward, through the fire and clouds, through the smoke and grasping hands that he shoved away as he climbed, pulling her up, covering her mouth in a saving kiss, then straining ever upward to bring her back to Earth. She could see it now, far above them, a precipice of light that shone with grace and beauty where around them there was only nightmarish scenes of waste and dereliction.
Dana’s body reacted where her soul would not, stretching upward, helping with his trek. He whipped his head down toward hers, reacting with fierce joy, grabbing her shoulders with such an electrifying jolt that she felt the energy whip through her body, leaping within her, forcing her upward. His smile meant everything to her suddenly, the joy in his wild eyes overcoming her fear at the mania that drove him. She could do this, she would do this with him, and she grasped his arms and began to pull him up as well, his joy turning to frenzy as they clawed their way back up through the clouds and heat.
Finally, though, he began to flag. He pushed rather than pulled, his own body slipping farther and farther down into darkness even as he shoved her higher, so high that she could no longer touch him with her fingers. As she grasped toward him, reaching down, he shoved her mercilessly back up, the heat beginning to crowd his face, to crumple it in, the lack of oxygen turning her eyes dizzy and making her heart hammer. With one last surge, he propelled himself up, and she gasped—yes! He threw himself against her and gave her the very last breath of life he had, driving his energy into her, his madness, his hope, his desperation—
His love.
Dana’s eyes flew wide as Finn pulled away, his face a mask of loss and misery. He shoved against her, and she went up again, finally feeling the rush of air back into her lungs as light cascaded around her, the natural pull of life reclaiming her as its own.
“No,” she begged, but Finn was too far away for her to reach, and he plummeted back down into the pit of hell, a million hands grabbing for him, drawing him away from her, damning her forever.
He was gone. Blackness closed around her.
“No!” she cried again, a conflagration raging around her as she flung her last conscious energy out to him, her heart crushed in two.
Finn drifted in darkness, the pain filling his lungs with fire and his bones with lead.
But that was nothing compared to the terror that had overtaken his mind.
True madness, he thought, and his hand crept up, touching his lips where he’d kissed Dana—he felt he’d been drifting here for too long, that his last sight of her had been not moments ago, but years, an aching, mindless space that stretched into eternity while he was caught between the planes, lost to both sides.
Unable to enter his own world and face his own death. Unable to conjure the strength to return to Earth.
He would die here, utterly alone.
Finn drew in a ragged breath, throwing his head back. His body was burned beyond recognition, the skin giving way to muscle, the muscle giving way to bone and blood. He burned in retribution for sin, or he burned from not knowing his sin. It no longer mattered which.
And he burned most of all for the loss of his human.
He could not shut his eyes, his lids fused to his head, his mouth chattering in the heat that seared him so strongly that it became cold, an aching wash of agony he could neither hide from nor fully embrace. He wanted to die—but never die. For to burn alive for eternity and have the memory of Dana would be more valuable to him than to die and lose any bit of her smile, her glance, the feel of her hair against his fingers and the touch of her body on his. His heart swelled and made him gag with pain, his head throbbing with the weight of his memories, and yet he couldn’t forget her, not even for one moment.
He had sent her back to Earth, where she would lead as one of her own kind, where she would take the list that was within her and prepare the world for what might come. And Finn would wait until eternity was done with him, and in the explosion of the planets and solar system, he would join once more with her.
It was worth the pain, the aching loss and loneliness. She was more to him than life, than death, than immortality.
She was his very heart.
“Far-Seer.”
The name was spoken with such grace, such boundless love, that for a moment, Finn couldn’t process the actual sounds, could only revel in the all-consuming power of the music of it, uttered in a thousand voices at once. He cracked open his eyes, struggling to see in the blast of light that came at him from all sides.
“Far-Seer, blessed angel.” The words rushed over and through and around him, filling Finn with an energy so profound, he cried out, his body suffused with both wonder and joy.
This was the portal, he realized suddenly. Not the pit of fire that hid it, not the endless well of despair. This was the portal to heaven itself, and the gates were open for him.
He opened his eyes more fully, trying to form any words at all.
“Your gifts are full and precious to my Children, and you have suffered long to protect them. Suffered, and did not believe. But believe now, and you may have anything you desire. To stay not only among the broken and the lost souls of this world, but among their brightest jewels of hope. You are bound by the contract of your brothers, yes, but if they succeed, then you will stay with the Children of the Dawn. You will teach them, suffer with them. Live and grow with them. Or…I would offer you another path.”
Finn stared, and in that moment, all his memories returned to him. His joy, his oneness with the light of heaven, his connection with all that is and was and had ever been. The overwhelming sense of belonging, of family, of endless love and boundless knowing. Everything he had ever yearned for without realizing it, mour
ned without remembering it. A place once more in the heavens, as he had been created for.
The voice poured over him in a cascade of light.
“You may leave your contract with the Syx. You have earned that right, and you finally believe enough to take that step. You may return to the light to add your grace to the fire of heaven, brightening the beacon for My children to find and follow. It is a role you served in well, and a role that gladly awaits you. You are forgiven, Far-Seer. You are claimed. You are a Child of God forevermore. And so, the choice is yours. Ask, and it will be given.”
Finn gasped, speaking the ancient words he’d forgotten until this moment, the high words of a language that could kindle the embers of the universe. He reached out, and the light reached back to him, welcoming him in, gathering him close, promising him all that he’d ever wanted, all that he’d ever craved, all that he’d once believed and could still imagine, except—
He stopped.
The universe bowed out around him, allowing him to circle, to see, to use the gift and the curse that was his own to bear. He turned his gaze back to Earth, and so much of it was what he had seen before. The pain, the devastation, the fire and the flood. The breaking of the faithful—and not merely those who believed in God, but those who believed in anything, who strove to lift themselves and their loved ones to the next plane of existence. Their lot was bleak, and getting bleaker. The tides of despair crashing over the earth, wave upon wave. Darkness everywhere, thickening, growing, spreading…
Except where it didn’t. There was one and then another burst of brightness, tiny stars that gleamed forth, determinedly pushing back the shadows, burning in the murk. They could never overtake the dark, it seemed impossible, and yet…these stars hadn’t been there when he’d first gazed down upon the earth all those millennia ago. He hadn’t put them there. God hadn’t put them there.
