by Diane Capri
“Do it, now!” Serena growled. “You know she wouldn’t spare you.”
True, but could he trust this wolf in human clothing?
Before him, just above his eyes…the dark vapor. The wolf stood over him.
“Nick...” Lena’s voice sounded faint. Her eyes sought no sympathy. They did, however, bare the look of someone lost and resigned to her fate.
With just over two minutes to go, he had to act.
Now.
In one swift move he spun around and plunged the blade into the mass of fur standing over them. He wasn’t sure where he’d stabbed the wolf, but it backed away, snapping its jaws at his face. For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he grabbed Lena’s hand, pulled her up, and pushed her away.
“Get out of here.”
The vortex swelled. A thunderous crack of lightning made the wolf back away further, still eyeing Nick and Lena. It stopped baring its fangs and used its teeth to pull the knife out of its shoulder.
Lena was staring at Nick. “Why—”
“Never mind why. Go!”
With a perplexed look, Lena said, “May you live to regret this.” Then she vanished.
The timer!
A minute and ten seconds...
If only he could get close enough to Serena.
The wolf wasn’t there.
Dammit, where is she?
The answer came from behind—tearing through his shirt with blunt claws. Glaring at him with Serena’s terrifying eyes, the wolf snarled, its fangs red with blood.
Then something astonishing happened.
Using its fur as handholds, Hope scaled the wolf’s back, the hunting knife’s handle between her teeth. She then proceeded to stab at its neck, over and over. The wolf spun around and tried to snap at her but couldn’t reach. It started writhing violently. Any minute now, Hope would be thrown off.
But before that could happen, a pale vapor appeared and instantly resolved into the form of a tall, dark-haired man.
Harold from Angel Resources.
He did not look pleased.
Serena, though more than twice his size as a wolf, backed away, oblivious to the vortex raging behind her.
“Morloch...”
“Where is she?” he said.
“Forget Lena, she was never—”
“I will determine how the accounts are settled!” The Serena-wolf backed even further away. “You were supposed to apprehend her if she failed. Now it is you that has failed.”
Serena stopped just a few steps from the vortex, which began pulling at the fur on her back.
Hope held on but was starting to rise up in the wind. Nick called out to her. “Get down!”
She rolled off the wolf’s back and pointed to the suitcase, then to her eye.
The retina scan.
59...
58...
57...
Morloch lifted a finger—pulsing with a crimson glow—and pointed it at the wolf.
“The accounts must be reconciled.”
“Morloch, please—” Serena said as he disappeared. The vortex expanded, charged lightning spider-webbed into the air. The wolf dug its claws into the ground, forelegs trembling with exertion, snapped at Hope, and clamped its fangs on her midsection. As she lifted her off the ground, Hope let out an agonizing scream.
“Hope!” Nick shouted.
She stabbed wildly with the knife. The wolf thrashed about with Hope impaled on its teeth. But the vortex began to pull its physical body backwards into the blazing aperture. Just as its hind legs entered, Hope stabbed the knife into the wolf’s left eye socket, and dug furiously.
It opened its mouth, dropping Hope to the ground.
A howl filled the stadium, then died as the vortex swallowed the wolf completely. All around, cries of pain and terror rang out. All throughout the stadium, spirit forms were being sucked out of the Hernandez and Suarez gunmen, and into the vortex.
But Hope, lying on the ground, held out Serena’s bloody eye to Nick in her right hand.
He knelt down with the retina scanner.
15...
14...
13...
“Oh, God. Hope!”
“Hurry...”
He took the eyeball from Hope, pointed it at the retina scanner.
10...
09...
08...
“It’s not working…the lens is cracked!”
Hope’s eyes fell shut. With a sigh, she dropped her head.
And then Nick remembered something he’d learned from Lena. A long shot, but his only chance.
“Hang on!” He backed up a couple of steps.
06...
05...
Please, just one last surge. He focused every bit of remaining energy into what he was about to do.
02...
01...
00...
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
THE NUKE DETONATED. Searing heat blasted through Nick’s entire being. With every bit of strength remaining, he contained the explosion within a globe of his own destructive red energy. He had never experienced such intense pain and burning before, but he would not release it. Not unless his own body turned to ash.
Limbs shuddering, Nick fell to his knees.
Outside the red energy dome, Hope lay on the ground, bleeding, dying.
He started to feel himself lose containment of the nuclear energy.
No! Not yet!
Then he felt it.
The sharp pain in the eyes.
The nausea…
The final surge.
Nick looked up at the stadium roof. Envisioned the stars above.
Focused on a spot about 100 miles from the Earth’s atmosphere.
But the strain was overpowering him.
Just keep it together...a few more seconds!
He found that familiar spot, the one between the layers, between the realms. It wasn’t as simple as transporting water, or solid objects like a rifle or bullets, this was infinitely more difficult. But he had to do this before he became fully mortal.
Even if it killed him.
The nuclear energy was about to burst out of his containment field.
Nick started to lose all sensation.
Oh God, he was going to die.
First, the blinding light overwhelmed him.
Then it all went black…
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
FALLING...IT SEEMED TO GO ON FOREVER. Blindly hurtling downward.
Nick’s shoulder, arm, and entire right side struck something hard.
The stadium floor.
His vision cleared.
Just in time to behold a wide column of red light blasting through the glass dome of the stadium. Through the gaping breach, he saw a fiery ball launch into space. A second later the night sky lit up, bright as noon.
It worked!
He rolled over, struggled to his knees, and let out a triumphant grunt, despite the pain and nausea nearly overwhelming him.
“Hope!” Fighting the pain, he crawled to her and knelt over her. Shards from the dome lay around her. Terrible wounds from the wolf bled all over the grass. He touched her face gently.
She was alive, but just barely.
“You did it, Nick...”
“Shhhh. Don’t talk right now.”
She smiled, her eyelids fluttering. “It’s...okay…”
“No, don’t let go.” If he could muster the last remnants of his abilities to divert a nuclear explosion, surely he could do this, in his last moments as a supernatural being.
“Nick…” Her breaths grew shorter, quicker.
“Hang on, Hope.” He placed his glowing hand on Hope’s wounds.
As expected, the dark vapor appeared. So did Lito and Maria, who watched but held back while Nick brazenly broke angel law for the last time.
“Come on, come on, come on...”
The wounds started to take on the healing glow.
“That’s it, love! Just—” His voice broke. “It�
�s going to work!”
But the wounds weren’t closing properly. The glow was fading from his hands.
“No!” Nick lifted his hands, willed them to work. “I can do this!”
The glow was gone.
The dark vapor descended.
Nick flexed his fingers, trying desperately to conjure up the healing, but he knew—this time absolutely.
All his powers were gone.
He became aware of skin peeling from his hands, of radiation burns searing his body.
He had become fully human.
Still on his knees, he fought the agony of his burnt flesh and reached into his pocket.
“Look.” He placed the jade pendant into her hand.
Hope’s struggled to keep her eyes open. “You found it…”
“You see? You have to stay.” He grabbed her hand, which was disturbingly cold, and kissed it. “I know it’s not an engagement ring, but...Hope Matheson, I love you. Will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”
She tried to keep her eyes on his, and managed to say, “Yes, oh yes,” then her gaze went a million miles away and she smiled as if she’d just seen something unutterably beautiful. Her eyes closed, but the smile on her face didn’t fade. “Nick…don’t be afraid…It’s just a dream, it’s all just been like a dream. We’re going to wake up one day and…”
“Hope…don’t.”
A look of perfect peace fell over her.
Nick kissed her, and wept softly.
He’d failed as an angel.
And on his first day as a mortal, he’d failed the woman he loved.
The dark vapor fell over him.
Enveloped him.
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
IN THE ABSOLUTE BLACKNESSS, Nick felt neither cold nor warm. He felt no pain. In fact, he felt nothing at all. So this is what death is like for a mortal.
How long before the dark reapers came for him?
An eternity—at least that’s what it seemed like. He’d lost all sense of time.
Whatever happens, face it with dignity. Like a guardian. Like the warrior you once were.
The darkness began to lighten, gradually turning from dark to pale grey to bright white. Nick rubbed his eyes and looked around, but with no discernible point of reference he couldn’t tell where he was.
A thin strand of black smoke wove through the air, growing longer and wider before him. He soon recognized it as the dark vapor, yet he didn’t fear it. The thought of its constant presence at pivotal moments in his existence comforted him. And then, for the first time in all the thousands of years it had followed him, it transformed into something.
Or someone.
“Johann?”
As usual, the tall angel didn’t speak. His dark glasses concealed his eyes—no way to tell if he came as friend or foe. Or otherwise. He stretched out his hand and gestured to the side, where a dark portal opened.
“I see.” With Johann at his side, Nick approached the portal. “You’re a dark reaper, aren’t you?”
Johann didn’t respond. He didn’t even look at Nick. He just accompanied him into the tunnel through which Nick had taken countless human souls to the Terminus. Only this time, he was the one getting on the train.
With a dark reaper.
“Right. Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
A moment later—it could have been centuries, hard to tell in this realm, now that he’d experienced life and death as a mortal—they arrived at the Terminus. Only it wasn’t quite the construct he’d created every time he escorted a soul. No, this was an amorphous sea of light and consciousness. Rather unnerving, actually.
“Would you mind?” Nick said. “A construct, please?”
Johann turned his head to face the expanse and there it was, the construct.
Nick’s construct.
Victoria Station, 1907.
Johann motioned for him to go through the open doors of the train waiting on the platform.
For the entire ride, he sat across from Nick without word or expression. No one else was in the car they occupied, so it was quiet. Nick could not stop thinking of Hope, though a multitude of thoughts crowded his mind.
“You know, for as long as I can remember,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to take one of these rides, see what was on the other side.” He shook his head.
The corner of Johann’s mouth twitched ever so slightly.
At last, the train stopped.
The doors hissed open.
Face it with dignity. Nick took a deep breath, stood up, and left the train with Johann.
Once again, an absolute void. The train doors slid shut behind them and left them there, alone in the dark save for a narrow beam of light that drew a circle on the wall where they were standing.
“What are we waiting for?” Nick said.
Johann became the dark vapor, and vanished.
“Brilliant.”
The circle of light on the wall grew wider and wider, revealing a great gate on either side of which stood a magnificent creature. Their wings rose high above their shoulders, and the swords in their hands blazed. Nick resisted the impulse to fall at their feet.
Before him stood the archangels Michael and Gabriel.
He held his head high, prepared to face the same judgment as Lucifer and his demons.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
THE GREAT GATE SWUNG OPEN without a sound. A figure emerged and came forth. Nick could not have described it because the light emanating from it overwhelmed his sight. Its presence caused him to fall to his knees and bow his head. No angel of his stature had ever stood so close. That was reserved strictly for the holiest.
Or those facing eternal damnation.
Nick could barely speak. But he did, with fear and trembling.
“Father.”
“Nikolai.” He didn’t exactly hear the voice, he perceived it. And the voice didn’t just resound—it rippled through the universe. “You stand before the judgment seat, having touched humanity, having intervened and taken on their likeness and nature. What have you to say for yourself?”
“I make no excuse, Father. I’m ready to accept the consequences of my actions.”
“Have you no advocate?”
Michael stepped forward, scowling down at Nick.
“There is one, Father.”
The dark vapor appeared again.
Nick drew a sharp breath. Not Johann.
The vapor became Johann, then it evaporated into a glowing cloud which coalesced into...
“Tamara?”
The dark vapor? Johann? They had been Tamara all along?
“I vouch for Nikolai, Father,” she said.
“Then you have taken full responsibility for his actions,” He said.
“I have.”
“May I speak?” Michael said. Father nodded, whereupon Michael proceeded to cite each count of Nick’s “flagrant” disregard for protocol. “And the most grave of all: He was found to be in collusion for a time with the Dark Dominion.”
Though Nick hadn’t realized it was them until it was too late, there was no use trying to explain. It would only make things worse.
Father passed his hand before Nick, who now found himself wearing what appeared to be the dress uniform of an officer in the British Army, circa 1900. The medals on it and the sword at his side evoked his glorious stint as a decorated guardian.
Now, before his cosmic hanging, he would have his medals stripped, his epaulets torn from his shoulders, his sword broken in half over Michael’s knee.
Father’s eyes were fixed on him with a look both terrifying and compelling.
“Come forth, Nikolai.”
Nick obeyed, his back ramrod straight.
Michael held out his hand.
Nick turned over his sword.
Tamara removed his coat.
“Bow, Nikolai,” Gabriel said.
Nick bowed. Down on one knee, face to the ground, he awaited the final blow that would send
him into the fiery pits, to suffer everlasting torment as a mortal.
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
NICK CONSIDERED ABANDONING HIS PRIDE and throwing himself at Father’s mercy, and begging for forgiveness. He never got the chance.
“Arise, Nikolai.”
When he lifted his head, Father stood over him, shining like the morning, a brilliant smile spread across his magnificent countenance. Nick got up.
To his surprise, Tamara put a purple robe over his shoulders. Michael handed him a new sword so brilliant, it seemed to blaze with white fire.
“I...I don’t understand.” Nick looked all around.
“My son, do you not see?” Father placed His hand on Nick’s head as though in blessing. “Once you were lost but now are found. Once you were dead but are now alive.”
“But I chose to defect. I broke the law.”
Father laughed, the sound of it remarkably like thunder.
“Did you really think any of what you did could go on without my knowledge?”
“Well, no, but...”
“You are loved with an everlasting love, my son.”
Nick glanced over to Tamara—she’d told him that, the day he resigned. Or thought he’d resigned.
“I know your character,” Father said. “After all, I created you. I knew the path you would take given the settings and conflicts in which I set you. And you have developed just as I hoped.”
“Have I? Then why did you—why did I have to become human?”
“Ah, that is the question, isn’t it?” Another of those brilliant smiles. “You were destined, Dear Nikolai, to be a champion of my children, the humans. That is why you overcame your limitations and sacrificed everything to save them from that nuclear blast. And that is why you could never serve the purposes of the Dark Dominion. You love the humans.”
Nick raised an eyebrow.
“Well, you may have gotten a bit too close to them, but I’ll overlook it. I have the authority to do that, you know.”
“Of course,” Nick said, unsure if he should smile.
“You were allowed to become human so you could learn compassion for those you protect, empathize with their struggles.” He leaned down to Nick’s ear and whispered. “I’ve done it too, you know.”
He straightened up and resumed speaking in what Nick perceived as his normal voice.
