by eden Hudson
The trucks were fanned out across the whole street, the one dragging Colt in the lead, two on each flank.
A black shadow flapped across my vision. Something smashed into my side. I rolled and skidded across the concrete. My skull cracked against the steps of the Witches’ Council building.
I started to get up, but a crow landed on my chest. Before I could knock it off, it shifted to human form—two hundred-plus pounds of tattoo artist, Lonely Pershing. I swung at him, but he pressed his thumb to my forehead and made a half-human, half-crow caw at me.
My fist dropped. My body locked up. It was like the garlic trick the Witches’ Council had pulled so they could take me to Kathan. I was paralyzed.
Psychotic murder-metal roared through me, head to toe. Inside, I kicked, clawed, twisted like a snake pinned under a shovel. I was going to rip Lonely’s tongue out, stake him to the ground, tear his wings off, set him on fire. It’d been a while, but I remembered how to kill a crow. Hell, I could make it last all day once his wings were off. Lonely was going to be one sorry birdy.
Bombs detonated in my muscles. Fire swirled through my veins. Every inch of me crawled and itched and ached to move, but I couldn’t even blink my eyes.
That cock sucking NP bastard watched them drag Colt away. He just fucking sat there and watched.
“So ends another white knight,” Lonely said.
Bullshit! I wanted to scream it until my throat bled. This wasn’t the end for Colt. Colt would be fine. God would bring him back again. Colt was the holy champion. Shot dead in the bakery—that wasn’t the end for him. Lonely would see. Everybody would see.
Lonely gave me a creepy crow look, then bobbed his head like he was shrugging. He twisted one of his lip rings with his split tongue and stared off in the direction they took Colt.
I’ll rip you apart! The screaming in my head ratcheted up to deafening. I could feel my insides boiling, pressurizing, ready to explode. I’ll level this fucking town with you and everybody else inside!
“You will,” Lonely said. “But not yet. We’ll talk first.”
Desty
Tempie and I followed Kathan down the hall of the Permanent Residence Wing and out through the mansion’s trashed foyer onto the grandiose front steps. The sun was coming up, illuminating the last wisps of smoke from those burned-out cars.
I heard vehicles. Kathan stood rigid, staring down the lane. His expression was completely blank, but I could feel the excitement radiating from him like static electricity. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I shifted my weight onto my other foot, then back again, taking what I hoped was a subtle step away from him.
A Jeep turned down the lane, followed by a second, third, fourth, and fifth. The first four pulled past and circled around to park. The last drove right up to the bottom step.
Motocop—I couldn’t remember his real name—opened the door and hopped out, his wings shuffling as if they were adjusting themselves after being crammed into the Jeep.
Kathan started down the steps. “The Whitney kid?”
“Right here.” Motocop gestured toward the back of his Jeep.
At first, my brain refused to make sense of what I was seeing. Ribs. Meat. The only thing that came to mind was a deer carcass after it had been skinned and cleaned. Except it was the wrong shape and covered in dirt and gravel. Shredded blood-soaked denim clung to it.
Jeans.
And then I could see it. Bloody feet sticking out the bottom of the jeans. At the top, the ribs were connected to a chest, an arm, a head…
“Oh God, oh God, oh—” My stomach heaved. There was nothing in it to throw up, but I couldn’t stop gagging.
Kathan lifted his palms and took a step toward me. “Modesty—”
“This is wrong!” I was practically screaming. “Colt was sweet! He was a good guy! You can’t do this! Oh my God, how could you do this?”
Something smacked me so hard that I spun around and fell to one knee. I pressed my hand to the stinging pain in my face.
Tempie brought her hand back up.
“That’s enough, Temperance,” Kathan snapped.
She stepped out of the way as he came over. He crouched beside me.
“I didn’t want this, Modesty,” Kathan said. “I didn’t want to fight Colt. I never wanted to fight any of the Whitneys. God chose them. He set them against me. And He’ll keep doing it. He will keep reaching down into a humanity that cannot stand against immortals, selecting innocent families who will be destroyed physically, emotionally, and mentally, and setting them against me.”
I didn’t want to look at what was left of Colt’s body, but I couldn’t look away, either. The longer I looked, the whiter the ribs and the brighter the blood seemed to get until the whole scene seemed to vibrate.
“I know you don’t want violence,” Kathan said. “None of us did. Just as Colt and Tough didn’t get to choose their father, I didn’t get to choose mine. We were all driven to this by a cruel and unjust Creator, a sick and sadistic puppet master. A God who can only be made to answer for His crimes by the Destroyer.” Kathan took a deep breath and let it out. When he continued, his voice was even softer than before. “I wish I didn’t have to ask this of you. The last thing I want is for you and Temperance to share in this burden. But I can’t keep letting Him do this. Not when I have the power to stop it.”
Every part of me felt heavy, like I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
“You’re our only hope,” Kathan said. “The other half of the Destroyer. Temperance is the fury, but you, Modesty, you’re the savior. The one who clears the way for all things new. You’ve been a protector your whole life. You took care of the people around you. You got jobs when bills needed to be paid, you put food on the table, you found someone to care for your mother, you came after your sister to save her from what you saw as self-destruction. You’re the one who rescues your loved ones from the fire. You’re stronger than you know, Modesty.”
Kathan took my hand and squeezed it gently. Until he touched me, I hadn’t even realized I was freezing.
Shock, some detached part of my brain said. Stimulate circulation to avoid fainting.
“Modesty, without the Godkiller there can be no true justice. When we stray, we receive punishments—often many times greater than our crimes. Sometimes completely undeserved. Tell me what you did to deserve this. Tell me what Colt did. Do you want to know what I did, Modesty? I questioned Him. I questioned the sadistic, bullying tendencies of an unchecked tyrant. Now I’m cut off from My Father’s love, cast out forever from my home, forced to defend myself against the humans I once protected. That’s not justice. That’s a child throwing a tantrum. Help me return justice to Creation, Modesty. Help me rescue your fellow man. Help me stop Him before He does this again.”
I pulled my hand away from Kathan. That seemed to break the bloody corpse’s spell over me. I shut my eyes and rubbed them with both hands, wiping away tears I hadn’t realized I was crying.
In my head, I saw Mom the way she used to be. I didn’t used to be able to think of her as anything but a mom, but now, so far away, I could tell she had been beautiful. Her smile must’ve been what made Dad fall in love with her. What had made him leave? Why didn’t he even tell me goodbye? Was he too ashamed?
I saw Tempie grab me by the waist and spin me away from the sink while I was trying to do the dishes that had piled up for who knew how long. I saw Tough’s crooked grin, all sex and jokes and music, just barely hiding the pain underneath. Colt in the kitchen of the cabin, worrying like a big brother about me cutting myself on the broken glass. Jax massaging Harper’s shoulders, whispering in her ear. Scout smirking, trying to hurt me as much as it hurt her that Tough had picked me instead. Even that idiot vampire Finn. None of them were evil. They were just trying to survive, trying to make their lives livable while their world was constantly trampled on by a God they could never touch.
I’d spent my life wishing I could do something, help someone. Now I had the chance
to set things right. The chance to fix something.
“Okay,” I told Kathan. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Colt
I’d never thought much about that phrase heart in your throat, but when I stepped into the kitchen at the farmhouse, I felt it. Everything was exactly how it’d been before Mom died. The table pushed over against the wall, the old wood stove in the middle of the floor, the smoke marks at the top of the walls from that time Sissy tried to cook bacon for us while Mom and Dad were out on a date. The pan had gotten so hot that it warped. The whole kitchen had been full of smoke. All four of us had tried to scrub the walls clean before Mom and Dad got home, but all we’d done was make these swirl patterns in the greasy gray residue.
Chairs scraped, but I couldn’t look away from the swirls at the top of the wall. My eyes watered. Everything blurred. Every breath I took huffed back out of my lungs like I’d been punched in the gut.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I couldn’t do this.
“Colt!” Sissy threw her arms around me.
“’Bout time you got here, Sunshine.” Ryder. “What were you trying to do, set a record?”
I didn’t open my eyes. Without looking, I knew he was tipping his chair back on two legs like Mom always used to yell at him not to.
“Son…” Dad’s hand squeezed my shoulder.
Sissy backed off. A split-second later Dad was hugging me. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. Dad hadn’t hugged me—any of us—since the day we buried Mom.
“I know, buddy,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. For everything.” He squeezed me so hard I thought my ribs would break. “But you did such a good job. I’m so proud of you.”
“Dad—” My voice cracked.
“You can open your eyes,” Dad said. “It’s real. You’re home. You’re safe. It’s okay. It’s all over. You can rest now.”
Just hearing that, I could feel the weight rolling off my shoulders like broken chains. I took a shuddering breath. Slowly as I could manage, I opened my eyes.
Sissy had turned a chair around backward and was sitting with her chin resting on her arms. Ryder had his chair tipped back on two legs and his knee propped up against the table for leverage. Standing at the head of the table—
“Mom?”
Dad let me go and stepped back.
“Sunshine,” she whispered. She touched my cheek. “My little black-haired sunshine.”
I had never realized how tiny Mom was. The top of her head barely came up to Dad’s shoulder—and my shoulder, now, too. But when I was little, she’d seemed so huge. It was her personality, her voice, her attitude. In my memories, she had been larger than life, dominating everything she was part of.
When I hugged her, it felt like scooping a baby bird up in your hands. She was so small and fragile. I didn’t want to hurt her.
But she locked her arms behind my back and squeezed until my back popped.
They all looked… When you see someone on Earth, all you can see is their skin. But in Heaven, it’s like you can really see people. Like I didn’t just see that the scar Sissy used to have on her cheek from the battle at the school. I saw Sissy screaming for everyone to get outside, retreat. I saw Principal Baumeyer, gut-shot and bleeding out, telling her to leave him, and Sissy fighting off two vampires and a limn demon to drag Baumeyer out with us. I could see this deep well of concern for every soul she’d ever fought alongside, this sadness for every vamp she’d ever staked, every demon she’d ever sent back to Hell. I could see that she had always known good and right would triumph and she had never given up on that hope.
When I looked at Ryder, I could see that while he was alive, he had never wanted anything as bad as he’d wanted to have a family. A wife to love and protect, kids he could play football with and read Dr. Seuss books to at night and make breakfast for on the weekends. I could see that he’d found the woman of his dreams up here and met his unborn kids.
Mom…everything that she had given up, everything that she’d tried to do to protect us from herself, from the black noise… I had to shut my eyes again. She blamed herself for what I’d gone through. At first she’d been afraid Sissy would have it. Then Ryder showed up and he had the same short fuse as Mom had. And Tough had been so much like Mom in every way. It had seemed like if anybody could’ve heard the black noise, it would’ve been Tough. She’d never thought it would be me.
“You were so quiet, so sweet,” Mom said. Or maybe she didn’t say it. Maybe I felt her thinking it. It was hard to tell. “My good boy. Of all my babies…”
“It’s okay.” I cleared my throat, but I couldn’t get my voice above a whisper. “It helped me stop Mikal.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Mama’s Sunshine, same as always.”
You would think being talked to like a baby in front of everyone would be embarrassing, but I hadn’t been babied in so long. I just squeezed her tighter and soaked it up.
After a while, Mom’s grip loosened and I took the hint. I put her down.
“So, I’m—” I cleared my throat again. This time it worked. I could speak at a normal volume and didn’t sound like I was about to cry. “This is Heaven. Is it like this for everybody? They go back to their families or—”
Dad shrugged. “‘In my Father’s house are many rooms,’ or in a different translation, ‘many mansions.’ Ryder and Sissy have their homes, their families…”
“We just came over to see you,” Sissy said, grinning. “Just wait until you meet your niece. She’s just like her Uncle Colt—thinks she knows everything.”
“This is Mom and Dad’s, though?” I said.
“Sure ain’t my place,” Ryder said, dropping his chair down onto all four feet and leaning toward me. “Mine’s got poles, stages—”
“Ryder,” Dad warned.
Ryder winked at me.
“Just kidding, Sunshine,” he said. “There’s only one pole. Candi likes to see me shake my moneymaker.”
Dad and Sissy both rolled their eyes at him—same time, same right-to-left motion—just like when they were alive.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed a real laugh that came out like an explosion. It all hit me at once. It was really over. I didn’t have to fight anymore. The world didn’t depend on me anymore. No more fighting fallen angels I could never beat. No more being hated and reviled by the people I was trying to protect. No more failure, death, or shame. No more holding back the black noise, no more fighting to hang onto some shred of sanity.
I turned to Dad. “The last battle—”
“It’s not your responsibility anymore,” he said.
“I gave up the sword.” As I said it, the last few minutes of my life came back to me. “The Sword of Judgment. I gave it to Rian. To save Tiffani.”
Dad looked down at the floor, quiet.
“Baby,” Mom whispered, rubbing my back.
“Tiffani,” I said. “Where is she?”
“She’s not here,” Dad said.
I took a step backward. I didn’t mean to, but my legs didn’t want to hold me up anymore. The only thing I could do short of fall was step back.
“Hell?” I swallowed. “Tiffani’s in Hell?”
“Son, you knew that. Vampires—”
“—go to Hell?” I was yelling. But I couldn’t keep my voice down. Tiffani was in Hell.
To me, Heaven looked like this—an eternity with Tiffani and my family, relaxing for the rest of forever in God’s arms. Sissy and Ryder had found their families. Mom and Dad had each other back.
But Tiffani wasn’t just not in Heaven. She was in Hell, being tortured for all eternity.
This weird, wired shaking started up in my chest and spread down my arms to my hands.
Eternal hellfire. Screaming. Gnashing of teeth. Unending death.
“That vamp made her choice,” Sissy said. “You used to understand that.”
“Yeah, well I’m not a fucking robot anymore.”
Sissy made a disgusted sound in her
throat. “Nice language. Real intelligent.”
“Children,” Dad said.
“Tiff saved me. She—” Even as sick and screwed up as I was, even knowing what it would cost her, Tiffani had saved me. “How can you guys not understand?”
Beside me, Mom had started crying. Looking at her felt like looking into the infinite reflections of two mirrors facing each other. I could see that she was looking at me and seeing Dad saving her. No matter how far gone she was, Dad had always saved her.
“Dad, you would’ve done it for Mom. I know—”
“No, you don’t know.” Dad shook his head. “Only a sinless soul can walk out of Hell. The only way a condemned soul can be redeemed is—”
“—substitution,” I said. “I know. A sanctified soul takes its place.”
“Well, I hate to point out the obvious,” Sissy said. “But you’re no Jesus, Colt. If you walk in, you’re not walking out.”
My hands balled into fists. That weird, wired shaking had spread out through my whole body. How could they not understand? Tiffani was in Hell. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.
Ryder clicked at me. When I looked, he nodded at me—an I got your back nod.
“Speaking of the J-man,” he said, tipping his chair back up on two legs.
For a second, I could see the day Principal Baumeyer called Ryder and me into the elementary office and accused us—rightfully—of clicking at each other during school-wide standardize testing. Baumeyer had tried to play us against each other, but neither of us would snitch. When he threatened to take us both down, Ryder had given him the sort of casual cussing out that elementary school legends are made of. Baumeyer had been so pissed that he’d forgotten all about me.
Ryder scratched his jaw and gave Sissy the same look he’d given Baumeyer just before he called him a fart-sucking fat-ass.
“You’re supposed to be the logical one, Sis. But here I am, the only one who’s going to point out that there’s probably a reason JC didn’t show for the meet and greet? Like maybe He already knew Colt wasn’t here to stay?”
