* * *
The sensation of Nick’s renewed distress slammed into April like a wrecking ball, and she gasped and lurched forward, grabbing the dashboard to steady herself. Chris swerved in response but quickly got the truck back under control, eyeing her as closely as he could without losing all attention on the road.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“It’s Nick. Something’s really wrong. He’s terrified.”
“You think it’s demons?”
She closed her eyes.
Yes, she did.
She remembered the terrors she’d felt at various times in the battle with the hive—the first time she was abducted, and the encounter with the man sent to kill her in the cell house, and the creature that hunted her along the coastal shore. Nick felt that terror. A kind of fear that stemmed from something more primal and horrible than the filtered evil of human beings.
“Yeah,” she said. “Can you go faster?”
“Going as fast as I can.” But he sped up anyway. “I don’t get this!” he said. “We beat them, didn’t we? How are they coming after us again?”
“We beat the people,” April said. She hadn’t even realized the truth until she said it, now, speeding up the coast toward Bywater in the desperate hope of reaching Nick in time. They had beat the human leaders and thereby fractured the hive’s power, but there were still spirits—demons—that could think and feel and that wanted revenge.
“Don’t they need people? Demons don’t just act by themselves, right?”
“They’re using Shelley,” April said.
“Shelley’s not even there.”
“But she’s supposed to be caring for Nick—sheltering him, not exposing him. And his dad. His dad should be out there covering for him, not getting drunk in a pub while he lets us look for his son and indulges in bitter feelings toward his ex and her boyfriend.”
April acknowledged the bitterness in her own tone, her own soul, as she spoke words she knew were true though she hadn’t formulated them till now.
Parents were supposed to cover their children.
And when they didn’t, it tore a hole open over kids like Nick, and like April herself, that made them vulnerable in a way they were never meant to be.
Which meant Nick wasn’t just afraid for no reason. The danger he was in was real.
It all came crashing together. Shelley and her husband and their irresponsibility and selfishness had left Nick exactly where the demonic wanted him:
Where they could get to him and hurt the Oneness.
Where they could tear into the village cell with all the ferocity of grief and loss and heartache.
Maybe after all, it wasn’t just Oneness who were inextricably linked to one another. Maybe the whole human race was linked, so tightly that no one could act without in some way affecting everyone else.
Her head spun.
A highway sign announced Bywater in fifteen miles.
Fifteen miles that might mean forever.
* * *
Nick’s heart was pounding so hard that he couldn’t see straight; the whole dimly lit, fiery world in front of him was a wash, a blur of nightmarish machinery and orange light.
He knew something was there. The bear he’d imagined. Just beyond his eyesight. He’d run in one direction as hard as he could, skidding and falling and scrambling back to his feet to run again, and then scathing fear warned him to turn around, so he did. And ran and skidded and scrambled until fear told him to turn again, and he ran another way, and every way he went, he hit invisible walls of fear.
So finally he found a little spot in the midst of a tangle of machinery he couldn’t identify. He slipped into cracks and between tightly packed vehicles and cranes until he reached a spot the size of a barrel in the midst of it all, and he curled himself up there and cried like a baby.
Why wasn’t anyone here to save him?
Why was his dad still so far away?
Why didn’t his mother care about him?
Why were even the Oneness not here yet? He knew April was coming . . . she had promised. And April never broke her promises.
He remembered fish and chips at the pub, and a new sketchbook, and the drawings he was supposed to be working on for her.
He wished she would come fast so all those things would really happen.
His face was a mass of tears and mucous and his sides and his eyes hurt from crying, but he couldn’t make himself stop.
Even though he was sure the sound was alerting them all to where he was.
The demons were coming.
He could see them now—in the shadows.
The shadows were growing and taking form and looming over the tops of the machines.
In his hand, he felt something hard.
He looked down and saw, forming before his eyes, a sword.
It was small. Like a toy. Nothing compared to the swords he’d seen some of the others carrying—Reese and Tyler and Richard. Theirs were great weapons in great hands.
This was just a dagger clutched in the fist of a little boy.
But as he stared at it, his tears began to dry and his vision to clear.
Before he ran from his mother and Tom, he’d been drawing a comic book about Richard. He was really proud of a panel that showed a battle, with enormous demons and a sword in Richard’s hand that Nick had patterned after one he’d seen in the movies. And Richard had another weapon: his words. His voice that could stop the enemy in their tracks. He had drawn Richard shouting words that sent the enemy spinning away in a panic.
He’d wanted to be like that someday.
He’d dreamed of doing great things with a sword and a voice and his drawings, like April’s.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, Nick. If you’ve only got one shot, then make it a good one.”
He cleared his throat and tightened his grip on the little sword, still staring hard at it.
He felt . . . alone.
And not alone.
He straightened his legs and stood in the little barrel-shaped hole, and he stared up at the shadows and the things he was sure were lurking there.
Doing his best to imitate Richard’s deep tones, he shouted, “You are not going to win!”
The shout came out as more of a squeak, but he cleared his throat and tried again.
“The Spirit is greater than you are! And the Oneness is more powerful! You see this sword in my hand?”
He waved the dagger in the air, feeling braver as he did, even though his voice wanted to crack again. He forced it to hold steady. “I am going to take you down with me!”
Above him, directly in front of him, something enormous was starting to form in the shadows just above and beyond a crane truck. Something with huge shoulders and a huge head and huge teeth . . .
Nick turned and darted through a crack in the machinery and started to run for open spaces.
He hadn’t planned to do that, but instinct kicked in and told him he wasn’t going to win a fight if he didn’t even have room to move.
Behind him, something roared.
Its voice was so strong it rattled the machinery and made the ground shake.
Chapter 18
Julie still didn’t understand why she was alive. The question plagued her at times.
Alex was sitting in their living room watching TV, and Miranda was popping in and out of the kitchen and her bedroom, staying mostly away from Alex but getting close enough to say hello or get a look at him every time she walked into the kitchen. Julie had stopped counting the reasons she found to go in there: need a cup of tea, need to wash the cup, need to find a pencil, need to look something up. Andrew had decided it was best if Alex and Miranda didn’t actually interact, so he’d banished their daughter to her bedroom.
It felt good to have someone else laying down the law. Especially Andrew. Even with all his distrust of her, she trusted his heart.
She was also glad that whatever was alive in Alex, it seemed content to remain dorman
t for now. The TV watching was annoying—she’d lived without any media intrusion for fifteen years, and she found television especially to be incredibly intrusive and grating—but it was better than a demonic manifestation any day, especially considering that the demon or demons inside the teen quite likely wanted her dead.
Which brought her back to the question of why she was alive.
Had any other member of the Oneness, in all of history, ever been raised from the dead?
She filed that away to ask Richard. He might know. She had asked the Spirit, but he hadn’t answered. She had quickly learned that the Spirit who presumably knew all things was not prone to giving answers to everything all the time, though she did have a strong sense that he liked for her to search for them.
Maybe you value something more if you have to search for it, she thought.
Maybe that was why not all answers came easily.
Deep in thought as she was, it took a moment before she realized the TV had been turned off.
Miranda had gone back upstairs; the house was silent except for the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall.
“Andrew?” she turned slowly, dreading to see what might be standing behind her in the door between the kitchen and the living room.
Alex was there.
And his eyes had disappeared in a wash of darkness.
* * *
Nick’s mad scramble through the machines brought him out into the open again, into the glare of orange lights where the sounds of distant workers could reach him. For a second he wondered if he should keep running and try to reach them—if the men at work building ships could help protect him.
But his feet didn’t want to move anymore.
Even though his legs were shaking and his whole face was twitching with nervous energy, he had to stand.
Face the enemy.
Not lead the demons to other people who they could hurt or possess.
He was Oneness. It was his job to protect.
Even if nobody was there to protect him.
It was his job to fight the enemy.
So that was what he was going to do.
He spread his feet out in a fighting stance and held his dagger at the ready. “Come on!” he called. “Let’s see you!”
Whether his words actually called the demons into visible form or whether they would have materialized anyway, he didn’t know. But suddenly, there they were. The bear—huge, black, clawed and toothed and red-eyed, and about to rip his head off, just like he’d imagined it.
And a lot of others, too.
And beyond them—
Others.
His breath caught, because he wasn’t alone. Not at all.
Wreathing the entire arena was a cloud—silver and misty and made up of figures, figures even the demons could not see.
Some were men and women. Three stood together, a man with dark hair and two women, one a redhead and one beautiful and foreign-looking. Some were creatures with wings and animal heads and many eyes. Some looked like people, even children, but they were not—something about their eyes was different. Watchers, he thought. Like Chris had told him about.
They were all watching him, and they all had encouragement and joy in their faces.
The bear advanced and reared up on its hind legs. Nick crouched and prepared to drive his dagger into its heart. He yelled.
The entire cloud yelled along with him.
A battle cry.
And a wave of heat blew through the industrial complex and sent machines and pallets and demons flying.
* * *
“Alex,” Julie said. “Alex. Come back. You’re in there . . . come back.”
A sword was forming itself in her hand. She knew, from Reese, that this was what happened when Oneness and the demonic came into each other’s active presence. Instant defense.
But she closed her hand and wished it away.
It vanished.
She stood empty-handed.
Andrew was somewhere—in the garage, maybe. Working on his truck. Or trying to talk to Miranda.
She could scream for him and he would come, but not fast enough. Wherever he was, he wouldn’t get here soon enough to make the difference needed.
The boy’s eyes were staring into hers, but they weren’t eyes—there were no whites, no pupils, no colour. They were black holes. Windows into an abyss far deeper than one young man’s soul.
Into death itself.
This was not just a demon.
“Alex,” she said again, her voice calmer than she could understand. She didn’t understand what possessed her at this moment, why she was not terrified, why she did not want to fight.
Except that fighting this would kill the boy, and she didn’t want that.
She didn’t want to give death any victory at all.
Still he did not answer, or move. He stood in the doorway in the silence and stared.
The eyes were beckoning her.
Trying to suck her in.
Trying to pull her back.
“No,” she said, and now she was not speaking to the boy any longer. “You did not win. Even if I had died, you would have not won—you would not have held me. The light would still have rescued me.”
His hand shot out and touched her shoulder.
Cold pierced through her to the heart. She gasped and struggled to keep standing; she was on her knees—did not know when she had fallen—and then she did not think she was in her body any more at all.
She stood on a vast, empty plain.
Darkness everywhere. Not the starry, moonlit darkness of night, but a deeper black, an emptiness, a void.
A being with no face stood before her, still dressed in her husband’s clothes, still wearing the frame of a teenage boy.
And yet nameless, faceless.
A nothing.
No soul, no true being at all. A negation of being.
She was colder than she knew it was possible to be, yet she did not shiver.
The creature in front of her stood utterly still.
It did not, she realized, even breathe.
It could not. This place was without air, without atmosphere.
So how was it that she was breathing?
For she most certainly was.
And with every breath, the deadness and void of this place quaked.
She felt that deep within its core—it shook as though in fear.
It was not air she breathed in and then let out again.
Rather, she was breathing from something within herself and then releasing it into the void.
And as she did, the void itself began to change.
It began with light.
Far off, on the horizon, pulsing to the rhythm of her lungs. And then rising as a sun.
Its rays burst out over the land, piercing through the silent figure of Death before her.
She raised her hands high and heard herself cry out words that, like the breath in her lungs, came from somewhere deep inside herself and transformed the landscape around her:
“Let there be life!”
She blinked, and she was in the kitchen. Back on her feet, somehow. And the boy, Alex, was crumpled prostrate at her feet.
The TV was still on.
“Julie?” Andrew’s voice said, sharply, from behind her.
But the news anchor’s voice had already arrested her attention.
“A massive fire has broken out in a shipyard in Bywater. Authorities say all workers are accounted for, but there may be someone else still trapped in the blaze . . .”
* * *
Not one of us knows who we are.
It’s clearer when you’ve crossed into the cloud . . . but even then, much is shrouded in mystery.
Not one of us knows.
Not one of us . . .
April stood in the midst of the shipyard and burned.
The flames licked up masts and scaffolding and warehouse walls, oil drums and pallets and netting and machinery. The sky and water themselve
s were ablaze, and April in the centre of it all stood and regarded it and saw.
She saw that though all was on fire, nothing here burned.
Nothing here would burn.
Nothing except those things that were invisible to everyone but her—
For this was a purifying fire.
The human side of the hive had perished in the first fire, in the cemetery. Bertoller forever finished, Jacob gone, David saved—though to what end remained to be seen.
But the demonic side had not. The core, fed so long by so much evil, had retained much power, and they had concentrated here and gone after Nick.
She should have seen it coming.
They all should have known the enemy had not given up.
She of all people should have known that where the Spirit rose up in strength, manifesting himself in power, everything in creation that was not of the Spirit would betray itself in protest.
But Teresa’s words still repeated in her memory.
Not one of us knows who we are.
Or what we are, April thought.
Or what dwells within us.
Not one of us knows what it is, who it is, that seeks Oneness with us.
Nick cowered behind her, clutching her leg, afraid but riveted.
By the glory of the flames.
And April, this time, only smiled and waited and watched as the fire burned and the enemy alone, the enemy out of everything here, the enemy whose forms and voices she could only just make out in the pure flame, was consumed.
The fire had been there after all. Not for her to conjure up or manipulate, but there, hot, ready to burn for its own purposes as soon as she agreed to those purposes. The enemy had gathered together—all of them, every spirit that had battled them in the hive, every regional terror that haunted the coast. Drawn by one small boy’s vulnerability, and by a hatred and desire for revenge that made them blind to the way they courted their own destruction.
That was how, in the end, the darkness would fall. Through its own mad desire to destroy at all costs, a desire that would cheat and betray them in the end.
On the perimeter of the shipyards she could see and hear fire trucks and news vans; a helicopter passed overhead for the second time. If anyone could see them, she had no idea. The fire did not smoke, but it was so bright as to be nearly impossible to look into. Chris was back there somewhere, maybe trying to explain.
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