by Joey W. Hill
She put up a hand and blew, and a skitter of flame rolled across Her palm and disappeared. Jonah watched it vanish, even as he thought Her words were like Her breath upon that same precious spark within him, threatening to extinguish it.
"I dictate certain laws against interference, as you well know, and I make myself abide by them as well. But for that group of innocents, I forgot those rules. After I gave them each one small spark of my Light, I stole them away, through the skies, to Earth . . ." She looked around Herself. When Jonah blinked, he saw the desert and red rock formations in the distance, the sweat lodge.
"As you know, we have many worlds, but this one seemed best for them. A thousand children, left here to be given a chance." Her countenance darkened, and he felt it as a cold wind passing through his vitals, a shiver along his skin. "I underestimated the depth of the Dark Ones' obsession with their children, though of course that word has nothing to do with love. They have never stopped trying to reclaim them, only now there are billions of humans, far more than they ever imagined would happen. They didn't expect them to be able to reproduce, and perhaps it is my spark that made that happen. I do not know.
"To reclaim them, they have to get them to fully embrace their darkness again, and you've seen the many ways they attempt to do this. In some cases, they impregnate them, to see if the resulting spawn will be . . . sparkless, like them. But still able to procreate, unlike them. Dark Spawn."
"And that is why they hate female energy so much," Jonah said slowly, staring at the water, veering away when his gaze traveled to the tips of Her feet. "Because it was a female who stole their children."
She was silent for a long while. "They have no females among them. I do not know why. In the end, perhaps the humans will be reclaimed by their parents and it will all have been for nothing. But I took what was intended to be dark and evil and gave it something that could save itself, if a miracle happened. If we fought long enough to let that light grow . . ."
Jonah stared down at his knuckles. Time in a vision could be eternal, he knew, or simply seconds, but the silence that stretched out between them seemed to carry the weight of ages, before he found it in him to speak.
He raised his head, looked upon Her face, and the warmth and beauty pouring through him made him want to weep. Instead, as a soldier, he chose anger. "I thought I was fighting for You. Not them."
"It is the same."
"No. It's not. Else You would have told us, wouldn't You? Are Your 'mysterious ways' just an excuse for what You believed we couldn't accept?"
If Luc had been there, Jonah was sure the dark angel would have annihilated him for that comment, for the contempt he could not keep out of his voice. But the blood was there, on his hands. Spreading across Her Sea of Glass, staining the purity of it, and he thought he could see the bodies floating there beneath the water, under where She stepped, heedless of them.
"Jonah . . ."
"I must go and protect David and Anna as best I can. Unless You are going to tell me You are willing to protect them."
What had he told Anna about Gabe? They've stood inside that realm and screamed for answers, for accountability, and met only silence.
"Life is just moments, Jonah," the Lady said instead. He closed his eyes, something shattering inside him. "Each one has the chance to be Heaven or Hell. Think of it. How did you feel, watching Anna laugh and play in the waves? In that single moment, when there was no thought, simply seeing her that way, being with her . . ."
He'd always been honest, until that one moment when She'd wanted him to come to Her feet, and the darkness in him had recoiled. An angel wasn't supposed to know what lying was. Unlike his Creatress, apparently. But wasn't that just the nature of being female? He could be honest about this, though.
"It was everything."
"Exactly. Now, another moment . . ." A swirl of darkness. Ronin. His chest lay open, head arched back, a final scream, so at odds with his laughter . . .
Jonah was backing up, away, and yet She was there, staying with him. "What was this moment, Jonah? It was also everything, wasn't it?"
"No." He struck out at this vision and it was as if he were in a human coffin, trying to rip the planks away, his fingers bleeding, breaking, and it didn't matter. Pain was better than loss.
The Lady was there, but that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted Anna, but he was covered in blood, and he couldn't stain her with that. He had to run, but there was no running . . .
He howled, and the Sea of Glass exploded in a fountain of blood, wiping out the vision, tumbling him back through the sky, much like the night he'd lost his wing. Falling over and over. When he landed, he hit sand, not the sea, and found himself in the middle of the desert again. It was pouring rain, so he was lying on his back in a deepening pool of grit and bloodstained water. The rain would cause a flash flood and everything would be washed away. The turtle they'd seen. The lizard. The bristlecone pines would stand fast as they had for centuries, some of them. Others would fall . . .
Jonah, listen . . .
"No," he snarled, rolling. He was on his feet, running. The sword was in his hand, something he knew, could control. The enemy was waiting, and that was something else he could predict, their rage and bloodlust. Clean. Pure. Like his own.
There was no hesitation in his wings now. Powerful, sure, arrowing him through the sky toward the battlefield. They were ahead of him, a shifting horde, red eyes, claws, fetid breath. He was alone, but he was coming home.
Plunging into them with a battle roar that thundered throughout the heavens, he felt the surge of it. This was where he belonged. Hacking, snarling, drowning in violence, reveling in it, for it had no mind, no purpose. He was all alone, and that was what he wanted. Oblivion. Death. He wished he could have brought Gabe from the trading post with him, away from the draining demands of a daughter and grandson who didn't understand, who were better off without him. This was where soldiers belonged. Death was the friend, the companion, the answer to it all.
The skies blackened further as his rage grew. He let it loose, cared not if it incinerated the heavens. Nothing existed but the battlefield. Nothing mattered. Power surged through him. As long as he had something to kill, he wouldn't have to feel.
A devil's deal he was ready and willing to take.
Silence and darkness. His enemies and his sword disappeared. The roar of water closed over his head, a long, low cry of pain, perhaps his own, or perhaps a goddess's. Tears fell from the sky, battering his skin. His mind was numb.
The shaman sat in the corner of the sweat lodge, the door now open, the fire dead. It was daylight, and Jonah could see the desert stretching out beyond them, endless miles of wasteland, cluttered by only a few scrub bushes. The red rocks looked like infected sores in the distance, swelling in the ferocious heat.
Sam held Jonah's sword balanced across his knees. As Jonah opened his eyes, sat up from where he lay next to the fire, the ropes of beads and shells fell away from his bare shoulders with a tinny clattering noise. Sam offered the sword.
"You had no right to knowingly endanger her," Jonah said, his voice hoarse.
"You had no right to minimize your importance," Sam countered, just as harshly. "Second only to Michael in the heavenly armies, you protect all of us, the earth, the heavens. Her."
"I'm not protecting Her." Jonah snarled it, his voice thick with the venom of his dreams, and was not surprised to see the stoic shaman flinch back. "I'm protecting Her little human rats, swarming all over the earth, creating holes for the enemy to use. Stay out of my way, shaman. You mean nothing to me."
He stepped out into the open air, stretched his wings. The pain was gone, the connection strong, sure. Something pulsed within him, powerful, waiting. Not eager, just calm and ready. Dangerous and inevitable as violence.
David.
Silence. Then, faintly, through a haze of blood and pain, a message came.
They have her. Sorry . . . Jonah. I failed you.
No. Jonah
knew David wasn't to blame. He had failed Anna.
Twenty-two
WELL over a thousand years he'd fought. During most of those, he'd been a leader of some sort. A captain, a lieutenant, a commander. Now he was the Prime Commander, head of all the Dark Legion, the angels who fought the Dark Ones, which made him second only to Michael, who commanded all the legions. Total focus, total discipline. Total commitment. The fury of the elements channeled through his body were capable of a power that could crack Earth like an egg and disperse the yolk as a mere cloud of gas throughout the universe. Very few angels had that power.
It would have been incomprehensible to the power-hungry human world, that kind of capability turned over by the Goddess to Her select group of angels, unfettered by anything but morals, a clear sense of right and wrong.
But that choice of right over wrong, ultimately, was vital. It kept the universe balanced, the only law needed in the angels' world. If chaos came, Jonah knew it was because it was meant to be.
He took to the skies, for he knew where he would find Anna. The Dark Ones were making no attempt to hide themselves--from him at least. As he reached the Grand Canyon and managed the air currents to dive straight down a narrow defile into shadows and darkness, it reminded him of an earthly form of the Abyss. But that was a passing thought. He did not think much about anything, for there was only one thing. He'd been trained for that focus, and he used it now for the only thing that seemed to matter anymore.
The one fleeting thought which got through was what they might have done to her. That they might have treated her like Maggie, only with a far greater amount of time to defile her, rape her soul. He knew if he found that, then he might just use that destructive power to completely obliterate this planet, eliminating both Her problem and his at the same time. And if She opposed him in that, then he would fight the Lady Herself.
The cave entrance was narrow, but within a quarter mile it widened into a cavern as large as a dimly lit king's hall, domed with tons of red rock. Jonah was able to navigate the narrow corridor swiftly, his feet barely brushing the ground, and he heard them well before he reached that hall.
It was crowded with Dark Ones. Not yet an army, but the advance guard to one. As he paused in the archway, he noted the broad incline of rock that started in the center of the cavern like the arm of a sundial, running in a narrowing point to the upper ledge, probably the result of a thousand years of cave-ins. The symbolism of that was not lost on him. That rocky incline was covered with the writhing, hissing bodies of hundreds of Dark Ones, a nest of unnatural snakes. At the top, one stood taller than the rest. Big and broad as a giant, the Dark One reminded Jonah of how Anna had spoken of angels as large as giants. And earlier, how he'd said that men had once called all divine beings by the name of demon.
At the feet of this giant Dark One, Anna was chained to the ground.
As he stepped fully into the hall, the closest Dark Ones went aloft like startled pigeons, but lost no time diving around him like malevolent bats, veering away before making contact, taunting. There were too many to allow him to simply fly up to her, so he began to walk, ascending the mountain on foot, much as he'd made his journey over the past week. Packed so close together, he had no choice--and didn't care anyway--but to proceed by stepping on a head, a shoulder, a skeletal arm, feeling the greedy whisper of their hands, their saliva mark him, their nails occasionally dare to scratch his leg, his bare foot. None touched the purity of his wings, however, the symbol of his rank with the Lady.
He was surrounded by hundreds of them, the largest group he'd ever seen assembled since the last Great War. It was true, then. The fall of an angel could tear a hole in the universe so great . . . This was because of him. The false confidence he'd created in them.
I've become a liability, Luc. You'll know what needs to be done.
As he approached the top, he could hear her. The clank of the chains as she struggled, the thin fear in her voice as she nevertheless implored him. "No. My lord, you can't . . ."
They'd hurt her; he saw that. Blood had dried at the corner of her mouth and on her chin. Her eyes were haunted by whatever they'd inflicted upon her, but they hadn't done to her what they'd done to Maggie, probably because it would risk her life. They'd apparently believed he wouldn't deal for a damaged or dead mermaid. Never realizing the fact that they'd touched her at all meant he would come, if only to annihilate them. He stopped. "Free her."
"You know what we want." The giant's voice was a death rattle. Another Dark One, tall but not as tall as the giant, stepped before him, to the left of Anna.
When Jonah put out his hand, the Dark Ones nearest shrank away, except for that one. The creature's lips split in a decayed grin. From somewhere in the shadows of his body, he produced the sharp, iron-bladed dagger.
Jonah closed his hand over it. The weight of it was as much from the evil infused in the weapon as the metal itself. It was cold. So cold even the fires of Hell wouldn't warm it.
"Jonah, for the love of the Goddess, don't--"
He plunged the dagger into his own chest, just below the beat of his heart. When Anna screamed, the tall one's talons dug into the pale flesh of her arm, puncturing. Jonah stopped, his eyes narrowing, lips pulling back to bare his own teeth.
"Stop, or I stop."
The tall one removed his hand, though he held Anna back with a grip on the chains. Jonah started carving again. Methodically, while he kept his gaze on the other creature's face. Jonah wondered if the burning in its eyes was a reflection of the agony in his own, a pain beyond the physical, one that would drive him to madness. They were so close, angels and Dark Ones. Why should that surprise him? How many battles brought together odd moments of communion between enemies, only moments before they did their best to kill one another? The killing didn't really have much to do with the connection. Or maybe that was the connection.
The glowing flow of blue blood splashed to the rock. Dark Ones scattered, hissing in revulsion. Reaching in, he lifted his heart, took it out of his own body, but did not yet sever the arteries. The world was darkening around him. Darkening. Narrowing.
"Free her."
"Heart."
Jonah's lips curled back in another snarl, his rage made sharper by the pain ricocheting through his body. He could cut out his own heart and go on standing, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like a son of a bitch to do it. Immortality didn't come with a pain-free card. "Let her go now, or I'll crush it in my hand and laugh at you as I die."
The giant's eyes narrowed. When he nodded, the tall one shoved Anna forward, the chains dropping away in a shower of sparks. Anna stumbled and fell, but then she was up and at his side. Jonah caught her arm with his free hand before she could reach toward his chest. "Be still, little one."
She stopped, trembling, her eyes filled with tears. All that they'd done to her, but it was for him she was crying. His mermaid. His miracle.
He glanced at her then, bidding her to remain still with the silent command of his expression. Letting her go, he dipped his hand into his open wound and painted the blue cross on her forehead so it gleamed there, his mark. Her protection.
"Go," he said, and it was the tone of a man who had commanded an army for over five hundred years, and fought as a soldier over a millennium.
"No," she replied, and it was the tone of a woman who would not be budged.
"Anna."
Her face crumpled. "No," she whispered, though with the intensity of a shout. "I won't leave you with them." Despite that, her trembling knees gave way, but when she fell to her knees, she wound her arms around his legs. "You can't have him. You can't."
"Anna, come up here."
He had to wait a bit, and the Dark Ones milled restlessly, but they would not come near the blue circle of blood in which she now rested and he stood.
Eventually she rose, wiping her nose gracelessly with a hand, almost making him smile. "You need to go, Anna."
"I can't leave you here."
"You can. You will."
As he stared down into her face, Anna thought her whole world could be destroyed by the intensity of such a look. "There are many angels," he reminded her. "There is only one of you."
"There's only one of you," she sobbed out. "To me." She put her arms around him, despite the awkwardness of doing so while he was holding his own heart, his chest cut open. She put her cheek against the unmarked side, her breath sobbing out, lips brushing his bloody fingers. "I love you, Jonah. I love you with all of my heart."
"I know that, little one. And never has there been such a great gap between the value of a gift and the worth of the recipient."
She snuffled against him. "You told a joke. Your timing is wretched."
"No," he said into her hair, his eyes closing. Suddenly, there was a quiet in this dark and evil place, a still space of just the two of them. "You're just too good of heart to understand the cruelest truths. I wish you to be always so blessed. Go now. That's the gift I need from you. The mark on your forehead will allow you to leave, but it will only last awhile. You must warn the others. A battle will be coming, and I am the enemy my angels will be facing."
He put her away from him at last, firmly. Still balancing the heart in one hand, he looked between her and it. "You know this has always belonged to you, from the beginning. I give them only the shell. You take the true marrow of it with you."
"Jonah--"
But then he focused on the cross on her forehead, those dark, fathomless eyes sharpening. Anna found her feet leaving the ground, her body caught in the grip of bonds she could not shake, her body going cold from the expression in his eyes. Deadly. Still. Lifeless. "No, Jonah. Don't."
"Good-bye," he said.
He sent her soaring through the air as if from a catapult, high over the heads of the Dark Ones who would be unable to touch her with his protection, and out through the tunnels from which he'd come.
Somewhere deep inside, Jonah wished he could have warned her. He wouldn't want her to be frightened by how high and fast he took her in the sky, without his presence around her. But that didn't matter anymore. He pushed that away and focused on her destination, the deep well of the ocean, near where they had first met. When he was sure he had her on target, and that she would slow as much as needed before she hit the water, many miles away, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
