by Ching, G. P.
“Asher?” Lucifer said firmly.
The brother shivered at the Devil’s voice. His movie-star good looks snapped into place on a sharp inhale. “Yes, My Lord.”
“Stop wasting my time. You have work to do.” Lucifer motioned toward the three brothers. “You all do.” With an obedient bow, Asher turned on his heel and left, Damien and Levi following close behind.
When Auriel moved to join them, Lucifer called her name. “Auriel.”
She stopped short. “How may I serve you, My Lord?” she asked enthusiastically.
Lucifer fixed her with a cutting stare. “Stay here, and most importantly, stay out of the way.”
The words knocked Auriel off balance, sending her staggering toward the windows.
Lucifer ignored her, passing her stricken form to join the rest of the brethren.
Chapter 13
The Hedonic Party
“Watch it.” Dane jerked Ethan out of the way. The bullet skimmed past the Soulkeeper’s head as the car holding the shooter jumped the curb and skidded toward them sideways.
“What the hell?” Ethan’s power slammed into the vehicle, tipping it on two wheels.
At first, Dane thought their winter gear had failed them and that the bullet was meant for him. All of the Soulkeepers were on America’s most wanted list, after all. But the man in the car was looking behind him. A boy in a red hoodie paced toward the car, gun sideways in his hand and pointed at the man behind the wheel, who still had his own gun drawn.
“You’re dead,” red hoodie yelled, pulling the trigger.
It was Ethan’s turn to pull Dane out of the way of the bullet.
The back window shattered as the other man floored the accelerator and pulled into the street.
Boom. The driver’s gun went off and red hoodie collapsed, twitching, to the sidewalk. The driver sped away, going the wrong way down a one-way street.
Dane watched the shot boy’s blood drip off the curb and run into the sewer. “Should we help him?” he muttered.
“Too late,” Ethan said. “And by the looks of things, we better move.”
Dane glanced up to see a group of three red hoodies heading toward them, and they looked pissed. The three Soulkeepers dodged around the corner at super speed, searching the shop windows for help.
“Here,” Cheveyo said, pointing to a copy of Tom Sawyer propped in the window of a place without a sign. It might have been an antique store or a secondhand clothier from the looks of it. The building was painted chalky white, and besides Tom Sawyer, the window was filled with junk.
“Let’s hope they have what we need,” Ethan said, yanking open the door. Dane led the way inside, Cheveyo closing the door quickly behind them.
“It’s like the wild west out there,” Cheveyo whispered. “It’s the middle of the day. Those were humans. What’s going on?”
Dane shrugged and shook his head.
The dark room was crammed with furniture and miscellaneous décor. Haphazard stacks of junk seemed held up by will alone. Ethan and Cheveyo dropped into a single-file line behind Dane in order to navigate the piles.
“Belongs on an episode of Hoarders,” Cheveyo whispered.
“Turn your pockets out,” a gruff voice said from the back of the store. Dane had to lean to the right in order to see the man with the gray beard and a shotgun pointed in their direction. The wrinkles on his face made him look at home among the ancient artifacts, but his trigger finger seemed spry enough.
Dane turned out his pockets and held up his hands.
“You buyin’ or sellin’?” the man asked.
“Buying,” Dane answered. A dark foreboding in the pit of his stomach warned that the copy of Tom Sawyer in the window might have been just an old book and not a symbol of an underground revolution. “We were interested in the copy of Tom Sawyer you had in the window.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, sir, and we need more Tom Sawyers. A few bags full.”
“That’s a lot of reading. Can you pay?”
Dane nodded.
The man stood. “Warm in here. Why don’t you take off your gloves?”
“I’d rather keep ‘em on if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind.” The man grabbed Dane’s right hand and peeled his glove back before he could protest. At the sight of his smooth, bare skin, the man nodded and smiled a mouthful of yellow teeth. “You must be brave or stupid coming by here today. It’s war outside that door.”
“We noticed.”
“Stay here. Don’t touch anything unless you want to lose a finger.” The man hobbled past them, scanning the store right to left. When he reached the front door, he twisted the deadbolt and pulled Tom Sawyer from the window. “Our policy is one customer at a time, for safety’s sake. Our safety mostly.”
Shotgun still gripped in his hands, he walked to the far corner of the store, where a giant trunk leaned against the wall. “Well, come on. I haven’t got all day.”
Ethan glanced back at Dane and carefully navigated the rows of junk toward the man with the shotgun. Cheveyo wasn’t quite as careful. He tripped over a plate of armor on the floor, the clang of metal ringing out awkwardly around them, and tried to steady himself on a small side table. The wood leaves of the table snapped on his hand like a bear trap. At super speed, Cheveyo retracted his touch, barely saving his fingers. He widened his eyes at Dane.
“I warned you not to touch the antiques,” the man said sternly. Cheveyo crossed his arms protectively and gathered in the space in front of the chest. The man unlocked the padlock and flipped open the lid. Three knocks on the bottom and the wood swung open to reveal a passageway. “Tom will be waiting for you on the other side.”
Dane nodded and ducked inside.
“This is cozy,” Cheveyo said as the lid closed behind him and the sound of the lock sliding into place echoed in the tunnel. “I wonder if we are at risk of losing a limb or being shot back here too.”
“Definitely the most elaborate so far. The Tom Sawyer Society must have multiplied,” Ethan said.
“Like the loaves and the fishes,” came a voice from up ahead.
Dane emerged inside a warehouse with shelves and shelves of boxes. A black man with large brown eyes and an expression that seemed older than the rest of him waved them inside.
“I’m Tom. Come on in. Pick what you need. Everything’s marked. Prices are high, and we don’t have everything, but it is all available without a mark.”
Cheveyo’s mouth dropped open. “Wait, you’re Tom? Like the Tom behind the entire Tom Sawyer Society?”
The man circled his neck and gazed pitifully at Cheveyo. “We are all Tom—everyone who runs a place like this. The guy up front? Tom. The guys in the back? All Tom. Get it?”
“Oh,” Cheveyo said.
“If you’re wondering, the first Tom was a bike messenger who decided he had to stop Milton Blake when he fed a bum on a street corner. Harrington is evil. A brand on your skin? It’s a form of dominance over the branded, and it’s only going to get worse now.”
“Worse? I didn’t think it could get any worse,” Dane said.
“You haven’t heard the news?” Tom asked.
Dane shook his head.
“Milton Blake’s mentee, Asher James, was nominated for president at the Hedonic Party National Convention last night.”
“Hedonic Party?” Ethan asked.
“You never heard of ‘em?” Tom laughed. “That’s because they didn’t exist until earlier this week. Guess what their motto is.”
“I have no idea,” Ethan said.
“Take back what’s yours. Total freedom. No consequences. They’re selling anarchy, folks, and the sad part is you know that everyone with a mark on their hand will vote for him. They’ll have to. Someone else is pulling their strings.”
Dane glanced at Ethan and Cheveyo. “Are you saying that come November, if any of us are still alive, we could have a president who answers to Milton Blake?”
“Don’t
worry about November, my young friend. The Hedonic Party is now. People are signing up in droves, and they are living the lifestyle. The police are in Harrington’s back pocket. There’s no law anymore but Harrington law. Unfortunately, I think things are going to get much worse for the Toms.”
Ethan tugged Dane’s elbow. “Come on, Dane. This isn’t getting the shopping done.” Father Raymond was scheduled to drive by their starting point on the hour. If they wanted a ride back to Sanctuary, they’d have to hustle.
Dane nodded. Tom rolled him a cart from a corral, and Dane led the way to the rows.
“We’re losing,” Cheveyo said, lifting a box of cereal from the shelf and placing it in the cart.
“Don’t be stupid. There’s another gift coming,” Ethan said. “We just need to be patient.”
“You don’t get it, Ethan.” Cheveyo shook his head in frustration. “The people with that brand on their hand have sold their soul to Milton Blake. If there are more of them than us, they win. I’m pretty sure we’re at the tipping point.”
“Malini says people have free will. They can change, with or without the mark,” Dane said.
“Yeah, but why would they?” Cheveyo asked.
“You’re optimistic today,” Ethan said sarcastically.
Halting abruptly, Cheveyo’s usually cheerful disposition melted into something baleful. “You don’t know, Ethan. You haven’t had your people almost wiped out by a competing government. All of this? What’s happening now? This happened to the Hopi.” Cheveyo’s finger pressed into Ethan’s chest. “Starve them out. Poison their minds until they conform. And how many Hopi caved to the white man’s game? Those were strong, proud, good people, Ethan.”
“I’m sorry.” Ethan looked Cheveyo straight in the eye. “You’re right. I’m sorry. This is serious.”
Cheveyo backed down, turning his attention to the list in his hand. With a deep breath, Dane met Ethan’s gaze, trying to comfort him. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged before returning to their work.
Chapter 14
Connections
“Malini, we need to talk,” Dane said, rushing into Sanctuary with his arms full of contraband.
“I know,” she said. The look on her face was somber but composed. Dane had seen this before. In Nod, when she’d handed herself over to Lucifer, she’d had the same look. This was the Healer he was talking to, not his seventeen-year-old friend. “Come with me.”
She donned her coat and led him outside, around the back of the rectory, to the cemetery where Abigail, Gideon, and Master Lee were buried. He sat down next to her on an iron bench facing the graves.
“Asher James has been nominated for president,” he said.
“I heard. It’s all over the television. I think it’s the fifth curse.”
“How do you know?”
“People are tripping over themselves, hanging on his every word. He was nominated only days ago by a party that didn’t even exist days before that. Where is the opposition? I think Lucifer has given him a golden tongue.”
“What do we do about it?”
“Try to survive until the next gift.” With one toe, she rubbed a trail through the light dusting of snow on the packed earth. “And kill as many Watchers as possible while we are surviving.”
Leaning forward, Dane rested his elbows on his knees, collecting his thoughts. “I did what you asked me to … with Hope.”
“What did you learn?”
“That isn’t just her guide in the In Between; it’s a part of her soul. The part with her Soulkeeper powers. The part in her human body has no power. She said we must reconnect her to her body or she will die.”
Malini turned her face to him sharply. “Said?”
“Her guide is the same as yours, Mal. She can only answer questions about the future.”
“I should have known. Hope is sicker than yesterday. I can’t heal her. I’ve tried.”
“I tried too, I mean, to fix her. I can’t borrow her power because I can’t touch her in my physical form. Cheveyo can’t possess her for the same reason. I can’t bring her body over, and I can’t bring her soul back. It’s as though she’s trapped in that stone. Her soul is being kept from her body.”
“It is imperative that we solve this puzzle and reconnect her with her body.”
“Of course. I don’t want her to die,” Dane said.
“We would be lucky if all we had to worry about was the death of a Healer.”
“What are you saying?”
“Cord, show yourself, please.”
Cord formed over Abigail’s grave, a shimmer of light that solidified into a broad-shouldered angel with lapis eyes. “You called,” he said.
“Can you tell us again about the day you were transformed?”
Folding his hands and bowing his head, Cord reverently began to speak. “I came here to kill you, all of you,” he said. He pointed to a tall skeleton of a tree, still hibernating in the winter cold. “I waited in that tree and watched Gideon die at the hands of a Watcher who I didn’t care to know. I followed Abigail’s body inside, hoping to bring her back to Lucifer. What a prize she would have been. The only thing that stopped me was self-preservation. You, Healer, were too close, too dangerous.” Cord licked his lips and turned his face toward the sinking sun.
“Go on,” Malini said. “I know this is hard for you. It’s painful to revisit who you were, but we need to go there. We need to know how you changed.”
“I watched Hope’s birth.” Cord looked away, expression vacant and morose. “I planned to eat her, not simply because I was hungry, but for the purpose of torturing you. I waited for an opportunity to strike. You handed the baby to Bonnie, wrapped in a worn blanket. Then you ordered the rest of the Soulkeepers away.”
Malini nodded. “To hide the RV and prepare a place for Abigail and Gideon’s burial.”
“I was alone with Bonnie and the baby.” Cord rubbed under his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I crept up behind her, as quiet as a mist. Bonnie said, ‘Let’s see you.’ I paused, directly behind her, because I thought she was talking to me, but she was talking to the baby. She lowered the blanket to expose Hope’s face, but she must have heard me because she turned on her heel so that we were eye to eye. I saw the baby nestled into Bonnie’s neck beside the red stone necklace she used to wear, and a warm feeling, the love she felt for the baby, hit me straight in the heart. I was transformed.”
“Back up,” Malini said. “Were you looking at Bonnie or Hope when you changed?”
“Both.”
Dane interrupted, “But you had seen Bonnie before, at Harrington, and hadn’t changed.”
“Correct. I almost killed her in the stairwell. We were face to face.”
“So it must be Hope,” Dane said, turning toward Malini. “That must be Hope’s power. She can change Watchers into angels.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Malini said. “The piece of Hope’s soul in the stone must have worked with her body for Cord’s transformation, but if we could unite her soul with her body—”
“There was another element,” Cord said. “I felt Bonnie’s love for Hope. I think it was the love that sparked the change, not the baby.”
Malini rubbed her chin. “Perhaps Hope is like a lighthouse. Love lights the beacon and calls the fallen to change.”
With his hands spread, Dane asked the obvious question. “How do we use this? Somehow, we need to get Hope in front of the Watchers. If we could start turning watchers, we’d win this war.”
“I agree,” Malini said, “but we can’t be wrong about this. Taking Hope out of Sanctuary puts her at risk, not to mention Bonnie.”
“Bonnie?” Cord asked. “Surely it wouldn’t need to be Bonnie who delivered Hope’s gift to the world. That honor belongs to the Healer.”
Malini shook her head. “We need to reproduce what happened to you exactly. Soulkeeper powers are always changing and growing. Jacob started with the ability to move water, but he can also read
and translate every other language on Earth as if it was his own. My speed and strength came long after I became a Healer. For all we know, something about Bonnie’s power helped Hope’s to work. If we use Hope in this war, it has to be Bonnie who pulls the trigger. You said yourself, it wasn’t just Hope; it was the love you felt between the two.”
“It pains me to think of her at risk,” Cord said.
“I know,” Malini said. “But it’s necessary. She’s on rotation tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to her about what we know. Maybe we can capture a Watcher and do a test run. Try to reproduce the phenomenon.”
Cord frowned. “You know best, but I do not look forward to seeing Bonnie and Hope in the presence of such evil.”
“I think the same thing every day,” Dane said. “We don’t have the luxury of safety.”
The angel’s glow faded a little as he nodded solemnly.
“Thanks, Cord, that will be all.” With a gesture of Malini’s chin, Cord dissolved into the light and disappeared.
Malini turned to Dane. “Remember, tell no one of this. I will talk to Bonnie tomorrow, but the less who know all the details the better.”
“But—”
“I’m serious, Dane. I know you want to tell everyone why Hope is sick and how we think Cord changed. Don’t forget what it means that she’s a second Healer. The world only needs one.”
“Maybe the others should know, to try to keep you safe.”
“Every person who knows becomes a liability. Remember that Hope’s greatest protection is the fact she is not on Lucifer’s list of Soulkeepers. The Devil doesn’t know she exists. The less people who know, the greater chance of keeping it that way.”
“I don’t think anyone would tell, Mal.”
“I’m not worried about them telling. I’m worried about the information being taken from them. Lucifer has ways. He can get inside your head.”
“Right,” Dane said. “Her secret is safe with me. The Devil will have to kill me before I share it.”
“I appreciate that.” She placed her mittened hand on his. “You’re a good friend, Dane.”
