by Lou Paduano
Soriya nodded. “Sever the connection and no more resurrections. Or whatever they think this is.”
“Just like that?” he asked, unable to move. Of all the things they had seen in the last few years working together, doubt never crept into her voice. She believed in everything, had seen everything there was to see in the city. Her city. She doubted this of all things.
He didn’t.
“Loren?”
He shook his head, stepping back for the stairs. “Think about the good it could do, Soriya.”
“It isn’t right, Loren. You know that. Now let’s—”
“No.” Loren pulled out his sidearm, taking aim at her.
“Loren, what are you doing?”
Security rushed down the stairs, following the sound of their argument. They hesitated behind the armed detective.
“Stopping you,” Loren answered. He took another step back and the guards took over, rushing the young woman from all sides.
“Loren,” she cried out. “Don’t do this!”
Loren simply watched, tucking his gun away. The guards were effective, their number in the confined space overwhelming the brutal attacks of the young woman. She managed to take out the first two quickly, but by then the second pair were on top of her. They restrained her, her flailing limbs subdued. Her eyes pleaded for an answer, some explanation from him. For his betrayal.
“I’m sorry, Soriya,” he said. “I have to do this. I have to save Beth.”
Chapter Twenty
“You did the right thing, Greg.”
Loren wasn’t as sure, slowly climbing the stairs. Security dragged a solemn Soriya Greystone behind him, her eyes begging for his help, before being pulled away. Her wrists were bound and she shuffled along with their prodding until they were out of sight.
Richard’s hand fell on Loren’s shoulder. “Greg?”
“I never thanked you, Richard.” Loren turned to his friend. “That was wrong of me.”
“You don’t—”
Loren shook his head. “You’re a good friend.”
Richard smiled. The pair turned for the double glass doors and the entrance to the nave of the church. All eyes were on them. “Are you ready?”
He had been ready since her death. Since he lost every connection with the world. Beth kept him grounded but also lifted him up, letting him soar higher and higher. She made him better. He needed to feel that again. He needed to feel her again. No matter the cost.
They walked up the center aisle. Each step brought them closer to the altar. On both sides Loren was met with congratulations from well-wishers. Smiles from complete strangers yet not strangers at all. Bound together through their common experience. Their grief, their loss, and their reborn hope.
Inching closer to the first pew beneath the altar, Loren noticed the change. The white sheet continued to cover the ancient stone in its center but now a figure could be seen beneath it. The shape of a body.
“Is that—?”
“That’s her,” Richard said, proudly.
“Can I?”
“After the ceremony. You’ll have eternity.”
Loren nodded, quietly ushered into the pew. He thought of praying but couldn’t find the words. He didn’t know who to ask in the first place. Was this God’s will or the will of the people? He didn’t know the first thing about what was happening, only that it was necessary. It was all that mattered to him—his girl back in his arms, forever.
“He’s wrong, Loren,” Soriya whispered. She sat, restrained in the pew behind them, fighting through the guards’ grip to get closer to her friend—the man he was supposed to be, anyway.
“Why is she here?” Loren asked Richard.
“I asked them to bring her. To see for herself the miracle. To be a witness.”
Loren shook his head. “I don’t—”
“We have nothing to hide,” Richard said with a sincere smile.
“You have everything to hide,” Soriya snapped. Audible gasps filtered through the crowd. “Loren, you have to listen to me.”
“No,” he snapped, refusing to look at her. “I have to do this. I have to save her.”
“You are damning her,” Soriya said. “Not saving her. Look around you. Look at the so-called saved.”
He kept his eyes on the altar, the figure beneath the sheet. “I don’t—”
“Look at them, Loren. Really see them.”
He did. In each of their faces he saw their happiness, their joy. Being back, being with the ones who missed them so much, truly content.
“They’re happy, Soriya.”
“They have to be,” Soriya yelled, pulled back by the guards. “Have you heard them say a bad word? Share a negative thought? Argue? They aren’t whole. No one comes back whole. You want to save Beth? What would she want? Have you even asked yourself that? You have to stop this, Loren. Please.”
He looked again. This was his friend, the woman that had carried him along for the last few years. She saved him at his lowest point and he returned the favor by betraying her. But she was wrong. She had to be wrong.
Except he could see it. In their eyes, tinted black under the dark red shadow of the moon above. They were not the same as the men, women, and children that grieved for them. They were not connected to them. Not the same.
“That’s enough,” Richard said, standing. “Get her out of here. We’re starting, Greg. You’ll have your wife back soon and everything will make sense again. I promise.”
The guards pulled Soriya down the pew, her cries to Loren chilling him. A cloaked figure moved over the covered form of Beth. The Founder, Richard had called him. He was the man who built this place, who funded the machines humming beneath their feet. Science and faith as one.
Loren turned to Richard, the man’s smile saddened by the words of Soriya. He gripped the hand of his wife tighter, needing it more and more as a crutch. The past was unable to fade, to give room for a future. Jennifer said nothing in her defense. She simply smiled beside her husband, without a thought or a care as to the three years she spent buried. Dead and gone from the world.
“No,” Loren muttered.
“What?” Richard asked.
Loren stood, rushing for the center aisle.
“Greg, what are you doing?” Richard called after him. The cloaked man on the altar paused, the machines buzzing louder and louder.
“Loren?” Soriya asked, the guards pulling her away. Loren’s sidearm was in his hand. He said nothing, letting the weapon throw out his demand, to which the pair of guards acquiesced, falling away from the bound woman. He turned Soriya around. His pocketknife sliced through the bindings.
“Loren, what are—?”
“Do what you have to,” Loren said.
Soriya nodded. The guards rushed them, and Soriya knocked them back with a stiff roundhouse kick. She flew down the aisle for the altar. Richard tried to stop her, eyes wide with panic, the same panic that kept the crowd locked in their seats, unsure and unable to act. Loren shook his head at the attorney, gun raised.
“Greg? Why?”
“Because she’s right, Richard,” Loren said sadly. “This is wrong.”
“We can bring her back.”
Loren shook his head. “That’s not my choice. I won’t be selfish like that. No matter how much I want to be.”
Soriya leaped up toward the covered sheet, forcing the Founder back with the swat of her hand. He fell back then pounced at her, hands up in a rage. He bore a thick beard and dark eyes, the only things visible within the darkness of his hood.
Soriya didn’t flinch; she was fearless, just as Loren knew her to be. She waited for his assault, dodging his blow then swept her fist up, catching his chin. The force drove him back, his hood flying off and his head slamming into the image of the dove. He slid down and did not stand again. Soriya moved for the body covered in the white sheet.
“Loren!” she yelled down to him.
Richard charged Loren, grabbing at the detective�
��s shirt desperately. “Tell her to stop, Greg. We can make this right. Just stop her. Please.”
“I need you to say it, Loren,” Soriya said, “I…I won’t do this if you tell me to stop.”
Richard’s grip on his collar tightened. Loren heard the pleas of those surrounding them. The desperate, holding onto the grief of their losses. They were miserable, unable to live—like him.
“Do it,” Loren said. “Please. Just do it already.”
Soriya nodded. She stood back, the stone locked in her grip. Light beamed along its surface, filling the great hall of the church.
The humming of the machines sputtered and wheezed, sparks flying in all directions. Fire erupted from beneath them; the building rocked as if from an explosion. The hum of the machines ended, destroyed, but the fire continued, spreading further and faster all around them.
The patrons of the Church of the Second Coming raced for their lives, rushing down the aisles to the exit. Richard stayed behind, no longer pleading with Loren, his hands falling to his sides, his eyes full of terror.
“No.”
Soriya lifted Beth’s covered body from the altar, before it was consumed by flames. The Founder shuffled down the pulpit, joining his flock in their panic. The dove rising from the earth disappeared behind a wall of flames.
In that instant, with the altar enflamed, everything changed. The returned fumbled and faded. It hit Jennifer first, the closest to the fire. Her smile went crooked, her eyes closing before she collapsed to the ground.
“Jennifer!” Richard choked.
The others fell quickly, littering the church with bodies. More kindling to burn. Richard ran to grab his wife, pulled back by Loren. The detective forced him down the aisle, kicking open the doors for the others to flee from the growing cloud of smoke. By the time they made it to the street, Loren realized Soriya was gone.
So was the Founder.
Richard collapsed in the center of the road, the cries of the grieving congregation louder than the approaching sirens. Loren crouched beside his friend, the man who had attempted to save his life. His hand fell on his shoulder, tears joining the others on his cheeks as the two men watched their world burn.
“I’m sorry, Richard,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Loren waited for the end to come.
Three days passed since the fall of the Church of the Second Coming. Three days of arrests, interviews, and a mountain of questions asked on both sides of the table. The perpetrators became the victims, their hope and happiness lost in the fire that consumed the church. Most had nothing to offer the police; their thoughts were turned to their losses. Their grief, much like Loren’s, returned in full.
Most were released quickly. They played no part in the mass robbery scandal making its way through the major news organizations. Stories of the dead returning, of loved ones long since passed walking among the rest of the city, were squashed early even by the most fervent followers. A secret kept between them. Who would believe it anyway?
All record of the church was buried deeper than the mechanism that brought their loved ones back to life. The machine, their faith, whatever it might have been. Loren still didn’t know.
When all was said and done, the Founder, though still in the wind, was the one to take the fall. His name unknown, his stories denied even by the members of his church in the aftermath of the fire, the Founder became the bogeyman the city needed for the crime of stealing loved ones from their place of rest. A sketch showed a white man with a thick black beard, and it littered the walls of every precinct in the city, displayed on every newscast for days—all without resolution.
Out of all the congregation, Loren remained concerned about only one in their flock, but even Richard Crowne escaped unscathed—in the eyes of the law at least. Professionally, Richard quietly tendered his resignation from the district attorney’s office. Loren went to visit him at his home only to find a For Sale sign on the front lawn. Loren wanted to search for him. To try and help him understand things even the tired detective failed to fully grasp.
Unfortunately, he had bigger concerns.
Sitting patiently, hands folded between his knees, Loren stared at the floor. Black loafers shifted from right to left, a slow pace around the confined space of the office. Ruiz’s office. The captain called him in early for his shift, his first official one since the incident that left Robert Standish in the hospital with a broken arm and a concussion. The glass on the door had been boarded up with cardboard and a roll of duct tape. Ruiz, his friend for so many years, looked at him with sadness in his gray eyes.
“I don’t have a choice,” he finally said, his hand resting on the letter on top of his desk. “Not after Standish, after everything. You’re to be suspended immediately.”
It felt like a hot poker slipped between Loren’s ribs at the sound of the word. Suspended. His work life had met his home life in one unavoidable collision of mistakes. It was his own fault—the path he had chosen months earlier. His anger, his malaise, and the errors in judgment that came with the pair.
Ruiz sat, hand to his brow, unable to glance at him directly. The same way things started at the courthouse only a week earlier. “A panel met to review your conduct over the last few months. I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that. I had a few choice words over it but with what they came back with…let’s just say I couldn’t say much. They’ve recommended leave and therapy—something you’ve needed for a long time.”
Loren heard it in his friend’s voice: the disappointment, the never-ending pity.
“You agreed with them.”
“I did,” Ruiz said with a nod. He leaned forward, hands drawn and open. “Of course I did, Greg. They wanted you gone. For good. No matter what Internal Affairs has found on Standish, which it turns out is quite a lot. Jacobs was hauled in trying to board a plane, more than happy to flip on his so-called savior. Doesn’t matter here, though. This is about you, Greg. You need help. Professional help.” He scoffed. “Not that you’ll take it.”
Loren stood and walked to the window. The sun slowly sunk behind the obsidian tower at the center of the city. Sunsets were few and far between lately. It was once always a priority, when Beth was alive. They made it a point to watch pink and purple hues dancing across the sky, which bound them together before he left for work. Even after he lost her, he tried to catch it, thinking for an instant she was with him, holding his hand, smiling at sharing the moment. There were so many they never had the chance to share.
“I will,” he whispered.
“What?” Ruiz asked, surprised.
Loren turned to his friend, nodding. “It’s the right call, Ruiz.”
Of course it was. After everything? All the mistakes? After turning on Soriya, the one person who had stuck with him through and through, all for his own selfish needs? Part of him would have let her die rather than lose Beth all over again. If not for her being there, for being his strength for so long, Loren would have been lost to the world years ago. But after the anger and the distance shown on the job and off? To all those around him, including Ruiz?
It was the right call.
Loren unclasped his holster and removed his sidearm. His badge and weapon slid between his fingers. He placed the items on Ruiz’s desk, patting them lightly before letting them go. “I’ll be back for these. When I’m ready.”
Ruiz stood, leaning hard on the desk. “This isn’t what I wanted, Greg.”
“It’s what I deserve,” Loren replied.
The door to the office pulled open, the sound of the bureau quieting at the sight of him. Soft stares, quiet looks of contempt rushed over him. He turned back to Ruiz, saddened.
“This and a lot more, Ruiz. A lot more.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
They should have been celebrating. The church was destroyed. Everything was back in its place. It sounded to Soriya Greystone like the perfect excus
e for a night off and some fun. Instead, a chill beyond the strong gusts of wind ran through her.
Atop the Rath Building, she watched him depart. Sullen and broken, Greg Loren cast a long shadow over the quad, longer than the great statue at its heart. He walked slowly, head down and hands deep in his pockets, lost in thought.
She wanted to call out to him, to pull him back from his grief, to comfort him. To do something.
A hand stopped her.
“Don’t.”
She didn’t turn to face Mentor; her eyes locked on her partner and friend.
“I have to,” she said quietly. “He needs me.”
Mentor shook his head, his hand unyielding. “You need him.”
Her eyes fell away. The shadow of Loren faded from her view as he approached Heaven’s Gate Park before disappearing beyond its borders. She bent low, picking at the stray stones littering the roof’s ledge.
“He lost everything, Mentor,” Soriya said, clutching a small pebble between her fingers. She flicked it away, watching the stone tumble to the street below, the sound of its end muted against the rush of humanity. “When someone finally gave him some hope, a future to hold, I pulled it away. I took it from him.”
Mentor sat beside her at the edge of the roof, staring out at the city before them. “It was the right thing to do—the only thing to do. And it was his choice.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
Mentor smiled, taking her hand in his own. “In time.”
The shadow was gone now, Loren lost to the night. Soriya wondered if she would ever see him again. Would they ever share a joke or break a case together again?
She wished she could hold onto the way things were for just a little longer.
“And Loren?”
Mentor said nothing to this, letting out a soft sigh before standing. He helped her up, the strain visible on his aging face. He didn’t need to answer.
It was the same.
Time. All they needed was time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Greg Loren set his badge next to his gun and closed the center drawer of the desk. His fingers stayed on the knob, lingering in thought and motion, until they fell away. The chair slid back into place, blocking the drawer.
