Chapter 6

 

While Lieutenant Jackson worked on the necessary paperwork to get Jacob released into Reese’s custody, she left Tyler to wait there and drove a few doors down to a safe house where witnesses sometimes were given a place.

Jackson had told her about it and said that Miranda and her mother were there, and that Miranda had been asking about her.

Reese’s heart was heavy as she pulled into the driveway and rang the bell, heavy as the door was opened and she explained who she was, heavy as she was ushered into the living room and asked to wait while the girl and her mother were called.

But the expression on Miranda’s face when she rushed into the room was nothing but relief.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right!” she cried. To Reese’s shock, she threw herself across the room and into a tight, childlike hug, nearly knocking her backwards on her crutches. “When you left and I realized you were going after Clint, I was so worried,” she babbled. “I wished I hadn’t told you anything about him. But did you find your friends? Is everything okay?”

Reese needed a moment to process the questions, and to process Miranda herself—she had expected a broken, basket case of a girl. It struck her that even after everything that had happened, Miranda remained so innocent and so naive that she did not even realize how serious everything was.

She didn’t know to be more preoccupied by her own problems than enthralled by Reese’s.

Because that’s what she was—enthralled. She tugged at Reese’s arm as she pulled out of the hug, urging her to sit down beside her on the couch. “Tell me everything that happened. Where did you go? Was Clint there? Was Tyler hurt? Was . . “

“Miranda.” The voice, weary, cut her off. “Give Reese a minute to think.”

Reese lifted her eyes to the living room doorway, where Miranda’s mother, Julie stood.

And there was the broken basket case Reese had expected. Her eyes were swollen and red. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

She looked like she had aged.

Miranda was back to prattling something, and Reese realized she had tuned her out. “Oh, I’m sorry . . . Miranda, hold on a moment.”

She released herself from the girl’s hold, stood, and approached Julie slowly.

“It’s awful, what’s happened,” Reese said. “But it’s going to be okay.”

“We killed a man,” Julie said. Her eyes flicked across Reese’s shoulder. “My daughter . . .”

Reese turned, taking over, knowing it meant something to Julie to not be the one giving orders. “Miranda, can you give us a few minutes alone?”

The girl’s lip jutted out in an immediate pout, but with an expression of guilt over her own reaction, the girl nodded and left. She slowed a moment as she passed them both in the doorway, but a firm nod from Reese sent her the rest of the way out.

The moment she was gone, Julie began to cry.

This time it was Reese squeezing Julie’s arm awkwardly around the crutch, leading her to the couch, sitting her down, and embracing her like a sister.

“It’s okay,” she murmured.

Julie did not try to pull away, and Reese did not let go. She felt movement through her arms, through her embrace, a great drawing force, a presence far more than herself.

She was not just one woman offering solidarity.

She was the Oneness offering life and community forever amen.

Julie looked into her eyes and said, “Yes, I want to be what you are.”

And they both closed their eyes and felt it. Julie gasped.

The change.

The Joining.

Their spirits surged into one another and became one, and surged into the Other, and the others, and became one; their worlds expanded, joined, contracted, embraced.

Neither of them spoke.

They didn’t have to.

Their souls knew each other.

It was the first time Reese had truly felt One since the exile.

They really didn’t know how much time passed before Julie said, “Why did Jacob try to keep this from us? I know he is one of you.”

“One of us.”

She smiled. “One of us.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about him. But we’ve come to take him away. He needs to face what he is—and what we are. He needs the truth.”

“Yes,” Julie said, her eyes filling with tears. “Can you show him? Can you help him? I know . . . I know what he did was wrong, so wrong.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” Reese asked. “Did he ever tell you—why he feels the way he does about the Oneness?”

“Why he thinks you’re all infidels?”

“Yes. Thanks for putting that so kindly.’

Julie wrinkled her nose. “He’s called you a lot worse.” She thought about it a moment. “No, he’s never told us exactly what sparked it. But he tells us about what Oneness is supposed to be, and he tells us stories of its failures and how—excuse me—perverted it has become.”

Reese sighed. “I don’t think you need to pass those stories on. I think we’re going to hear them for ourselves.”

Julie looked anxious. “Are you going to visit him?”

“More than that. He’s coming away with us. He agreed to it—to travel with us and question himself.”

“He’ll try to teach you,” Julie said, alarmed, “and turn you to his way of thinking. He’s so convincing.”

“We know. That was part of our agreement.” Reese laughed, even though she felt nervous about the idea herself. “Don’t look so worried. We aren’t going to be that easily swayed.”

“You haven’t spent time with Jacob before.”

“I know he’s gifted. But I’ve been in this fight too long, and too hard, to let anyone convince me that what’s wrong is right. Or that demons are the real power of God in this world.”

Julie’s face darkened. “He wasn’t always that far gone. At first, when we first started following him, there were no demons. That didn’t change until Clint came.”

“Is that when you started to question him?”

Julie blanched a little. “How did you know I was?”

“Miranda told me that Jacob wanted her to marry Clint. You’re her mother. I can’t see you—”

“It was wrong!” Julie burst out, her eyes full of tears. “They all told me I was being unreasonable. And I didn’t protest in front of Miranda—I didn’t want to encourage her to rebel. She did that on her own.”

“Would you have let it go through?” Reese asked. “If Miranda hadn’t decided for herself that she was afraid of him—if everything hadn’t gone down the way it did—”

“I hope not. I hope I would have left. Would have taken her away.”

“But you don’t know.”

“No, I don’t know. Everything seems so clear out here—but then . . .”

“I understand,” Reese said. “When you’re being deceived—it’s a strong thing, a lie.”

“Very strong.” Julie looked away, ashamed of herself. Reese wanted to keep talking to her, to tell her it wasn’t her fault and she had nothing to be ashamed of. But she couldn’t. This one, Julie had to work through for herself. They were silent for a few minutes, and Julie gave way to a small smile. She laid her hand on Reese’s hand. “But I am Oneness now,” she said. “Truly.”

“Yes, you are.”

“So how can I help? You’re fighting a battle. Can I fight it too?”

“Yes,” Reese said, “you can.”

“How?”

“Pray.”

“I don’t think I know how.”

“You’ll learn. Ask the Spirit to teach you. He will. You’re Oneness—prayer is like breathing. Or dreaming. You’ll learn.”

“I will,” Julie agreed softly. “Is there anything else?”

“Just keep seeking out the truth,” Reese said. “The more free you are, the more free we all are.”

“I think I can do that.”

Reese smiled. “I know you can.”

 

* * *

 

The heat wavering off the blacktop when Reese returned to the correctional facility made her head swim. Tyler was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the building with a tall man standing next to him, clutching a bag. Jacob. She couldn’t see him clearly at first, but she knew who he was from the fist in her stomach.

He looked at her reproachfully when she walked up to them. His dark, stern eyes looked right through her—he knew. And she felt guilt.

For bringing Julie into the Oneness.

“They are my family,” Jacob said quietly. “And you have been spreading rumours about me, slandering me to them behind my back.”

“No rumours necessary,” Reese said, the fist in her stomach tightening. “They’ve seen for themselves the reality of what you are and what you’ve taught them.”

“You think I’m a deceiver.”

“I think you’re deceived.”

“So,” he asked, still clutching the paper bag that Reese assumed held the few personal effects he’d brought with him, “who first? Do I try to convince you, or do you try to convince me?”

“We’re first,” Reese said. “This is our offensive.”

“Fair enough,” was all he said, but he let his eyes flicker to Tyler for a moment and rest there reproachfully as well, as though to say, “Do you always let her tell you what to do?”

Tyler shot Reese a look but didn’t respond to either of them.

Jacob started talking again when they were only halfway across the parking lot to the car, his voice booming even though he was trying to be quiet. “So, let us make our objectives clear. You are going to try to teach me the error of my ways and convert me back to a more worldly understanding of the Oneness. To cause me to repent my ways.”

“More or less, yes,” Reese said. “Actually, I just want you to see the truth.”

“And in turn I am going to show you what the Oneness truly is. I’m going to show you that you are deceived, that you’ve been living all your lives in a half-truth. And when we’re done all this, I hope that you, my sister and my brother, will join me in leading the Oneness back to purity and power.”

Reese didn’t answer.

He was so sincere.

Not even just about his twisted point of view and his desire to prove his points. He actually cared about her. And Tyler. And thought he was doing right by them.

They got into the car, and Jacob seated himself without asking in the front seat, bumping Tyler to the back. Reese slid into the driver’s seat next to him, not happy with the idea of Tyler driving up front alone with this man. Yes, she would be in the backseat, but still . . .

As she started the car, Jacob asked, “Well, then, you may as well begin. Where are you taking me, and what do you hope I will learn from it?”

“Remember your end of the bargain,” Reese said, looking over her shoulder as she backed the car out of their parking spot. “You will question yourself.”

Jacob had the audacity to laugh. “You seem to think that makes me vulnerable. As though I’ve never questioned myself all these years—as though I haven’t asked question after question. But yes, I’ll remember my end.”

“Good,” Reese said. She eased the car onto the road and headed for the highway.

She hated to do this to Tyler.

But it was the place where Jacob’s questioning needed to begin.

“Are you going to explain?” he asked again, several minutes after they had merged into traffic.

“No,” Reese said. “Not until we get there.”

“Seems a shame to waste this time,” Jacob said, shifting his weight back to give more room to long legs and reclining in comfort as though he was completely at home. And in charge. “No speeches, no thoughts you want me to chew on.”

“Okay, sure,” Reese said. “You know what happened with Julie. You felt it.”

“Of course I did. I’ve been living at close quarters with Julie for years. She had almost come into your Oneness many times, and I’ve stepped in to prevent it. I knew the instant you brought her over.”

“I didn’t,” Reese said. “She crossed on her own. She answered the call of the Spirit, like she’s been trying to do for years.”

“So.” Jacob said. “Yes, I knew. What do you want me to gather from that?”

Reese held her temper at his tone. Somehow his playing humble student made his arrogance that much harder to handle.

“If the Oneness as we know it is all a sham, like you say, then why does it work? Why do you know the instant someone becomes One? Why do you feel me to be a sister, like I know you to be a brother, if we’re just a twisted perversion of what the Oneness is meant to be?”

“I never said that you are not Oneness,” Jacob said. “You are. Truly.”

“Then what . . .”

“But the Oneness has been corrupted. You have accepted false practices and false beliefs, and they’ve weakened and infected everything, so much so that you cannot tell truth from lie or power from weakness. The call to be One is a call to power and to purity, and you have neither. Yes, you have unity. But you do not remember what that unity is for.”

Tyler made a noise in the backseat, but he kept quiet. Reese pulled onto the highway and wondered if he knew where she was going.

“Our unity holds the world together,” Reese said. “It’s the fabric keeping everything from tearing apart. In the Spirit.”

“Talk,” Jacob said. “You use those words, but you don’t even understand what they mean. You don’t have any concept of how the world is fraying or what you need to do to keep it from reeling into total chaos. Yes, you exist to hold the world together. But you’re not doing it. You think you can accomplish the work of the Oneness just by patting each other on the back, and holding prayer meetings, and serving people. You’ve lost your reason for being here.”

Reese didn’t really know what to say. The heat outside was making her ill. Or else Jacob’s nearness, and his forceful conviction was. She set her jaw and kept driving, letting her speed inch up as she passed traffic and kept going toward the place.

She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Tyler had gone pale.

He knew, then.

I’m sorry, she thought in his direction. Oneness couldn’t read each other’s minds. But she hoped he could understand her heart.

Jacob stopped talking, thankfully, but she could feel him smouldering beside her. His presence was a force—like a storm front. Like a great mass pulling off the gravity of everything and everyone around him.

She did have to admit that he had power. More than your average member of the Oneness. She didn’t know exactly what it looked like, or how it manifested other than in a lot of talk, but she knew he had it. It exuded from him. Electricity building up in storm clouds.

They reached the place, and Tyler got paler in the rearview mirror, and Jacob looked first surprised and then smug—even more smug and arrogant than he had the rest of the drive so far. She pulled off the side of the highway, grateful there wasn’t much traffic.

Coming from Lincoln, the two directions of the highway had been separated by a grassy median. On the other side, the side heading for the city, both lanes had been blocked off by orange cones and caution tape, and traffic was routed over the median and onto the side where Reese had pulled off, narrowed to one lane in each direction. They got out of the car into the stifling heat, and Reese saw Tyler shiver like he was cold.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I know,” he said.

“I thought it was necessary.”

“It probably is.”

They looked both ways, waited for a couple of cars to pass going toward the city, and then crossed the lanes and the median. The grass was dry like straw, and they disturbed a cloud of insects. Reese waved them away and led onward, stalwart, toward the place where Clint had murdered two policemen who had pulled him over. With Tyler and Chris in the truck. Sent from Jacob’s farm.

They could still see blood on the asphalt and on the mile marker and the rail beside the road.

Tyler blanched. Reese thought he might be sick then and there. All colour had drained from his face, and he stared at the place, at the ground, at the memory.

“Did you see it?” Jacob asked. Clearly he knew what had happened here.

“No,” Tyler said. “I heard it. I was inside—I couldn’t see. And I didn’t look.”

“I’m sorry,” Reese said again, very quietly.

She was. She didn’t, really didn’t, want to put him through this.

“Why are we here?” Jacob asked. No making bones, this one.

“The awful thing,” Reese said, “the really awful thing, is that to some degree you, who are our brother and are supposed to serve the Spirit, are responsible for this. Men died here. Innocent men.”

But Jacob shook his head. “There is no such thing as an innocent man.”

“Are you saying they deserved to die?”

“Clint acts in the power of God,” Jacob said. “You want to know what threatens to tear the world apart? Injustice. Sin. That men are allowed to get away with very murder, when they wear a badge. And no one even knows. But Clint does. He is animated by the Spirit of God to bring justice. As he did here.”

She stared at him. He was looking around, seeing the blood, imagining the carnage, and his face was totally impassive. If anything, he looked satisfied.

She wanted to be sick, and not because of the murders.

Reese had seen a lot of terrible things in her years of demon hunting. More than Tyler could imagine, really. Nothing quite so horrifying as what he had been party to here, but plenty to turn her stomach.

But Jacob’s stomach wasn’t turned. He was nodding, slowly.

“What do you think they did to deserve this?” Reese asked.

He just looked at her, giving no answer.

The reality was slowly dawning on her. “You think this is what the Oneness is supposed to do? Kill people?”

“Restore justice. Restore order. You said it yourself: we are threatened with chaos. We are threatened with the wrongs men do, the things we call sin and evil. If those things are not corrected, if they are not paid for—yes, sometimes even in blood—then we will lose the world. It will descend into darkness.”

He met her eyes forcefully, his own burning like lamps in a dark face. “You want to do the right thing, Reese. But you, and all who are like you, are doing it the wrong way. You are contributing to the problem, not helping to solve it. Purity and power. We have to come back to our roots—to our reason for being.”

“Not this!” Tyler said. His voice was high, barely controlled. He stood on the asphalt, surrounded by orange cones and yellow tape, and spread his arms and circled slowly around. “Not this! This isn’t what we’re here to do. This is what we’re here to fight. What Clint did was wrong—it was evil. He killed innocent men!”

“I told you,” Jacob answered. “There are no innocent men.”

He advanced, almost as though he would swing a fist and knock Tyler for a loop, but instead he put his arm around him. Tyler pulled aside, a look of revulsion on his face, but Jacob’s own face was burning with passion now, white and earnest. “Do you want to know what those men had done? Then I challenge you to find out the truth. Do you know how many criminals hide behind badges? How many law enforcement officers do everything but? The fact that you are working with the police in all of this only goes to show how far gone you are—how far from the purity of the Oneness you’ve come. I have rescued girls from being trafficked by the very men whose deaths you’re mourning. I’ve stopped drug deals while the police were looking the other way, with their pockets padded for it. Greed and injustice—that’s all that’s driving them. Killed innocent men? Oh no. Clint—or rather, the Spirit that works in him—only put something right here. He mended what was tearing in the fabric of the world, as you put it, Reese. He did what none of you were willing to do, what none of you have the courage or the conviction to do. You are all too compromised, too weak.”

“You do keep telling us that,” Reese said. She felt sick. Not only because Jacob was so unmovable, but because he was right.

Or at least, too close to right for her comfort.

He wasn’t the only one who had seen police aiding the crimes they were supposed to stop. He wasn’t the only one who had seen men whose job it was to hold up the torch of law and order contributing to the darkness instead.

But she had never fought the men. Only the demons. They had tried to help influence arrests or get innocent people out of trouble, but she’d never believed the battle was primarily fought on a human front. Yes, the Spirit called people. And the Oneness sometimes rescued them. But they didn’t set out to bring justice or attack those who were serving and working alongside the demonic.

And now, even though she was certain that Clint was not anything good, that he was as opposed to the goals of the Oneness as it was possible to be, she wondered if Jacob could be right, at all, in theory.

And with that moment of wondering, her mind was off, travelling the trails of her memory, reconfiguring every fight, every event. What could have been different if they had taken the people out. It was rare that they ever fought a core, like they had at the warehouse: a gathering of demons, disembodied, empowered by a single great evil. Almost always, the fights were around people: possessed, oppressed, or just following their own lusts and greed with the help of the darkness. And if they had attacked them.

If they had gone after the people, the tools.

If they had stopped Clint long before he became what he was now.

If they had gotten to the men who were used in the massacre twenty years ago, the one that had killed Chris’s father and so many others.

If they had identified David.

And stopped him.

Before the exile.

“Reese?” Tyler asked. He had come up beside her, and his voice was quiet, gentle, pressing. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” She looked away from him, and her eyes met Jacob’s. He was watching her intently, and he nodded, slightly, and his voice softened.

“I know that what happened here was awful,” he said. “It’s hard to see how it could have been for the good. But I am telling you, it was. Take me up on my challenge. Look into the histories of the men who were killed here, if you can even get access to them. I didn’t understand why Clint had done it when I first heard the news. I’ll admit it bothered me. But when I heard their names—at least one of these men has a history worse than you can imagine.”

His eyes intensified, as though he knew he had her.

“In fact, one of these men, one of the ‘innocent’ men killed here, was central to what happened twenty years ago.”

Her knees felt weak.

The sun was calling up mirages from the highway on every side, wavering the world in its reverse rays.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said.

“Were you there? Is that what happened to you—to start you on this road?”

“Oh yes, I was there. I lost everything. But I’m not like your David. I didn’t lose faith in the Oneness. I just realized the Oneness wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. We never should have been vulnerable like we were. We never should have lost people, never should have gone down when the demons attacked.”

“I thought you said the demons were on our side.”

“No, I said Clint is on our side. The demonic is just a source of power. He’s learned how to use it. You know as well as I do what demons on their own are. Scattered, frantic, purposeless. They just destroy. We’re meant to get them under control.”

“We’re meant to battle them,” Reese insisted, her tone more vehement than she felt. “We’re meant to be the other side. To hold together what they are trying to tear apart.”

To her surprise, he just shrugged. “Have it your own way,” he said. He turned and gazed down the highway, into the heat, beyond the blockade. And she saw him for a moment as he saw himself: the lone voice in the wilderness, one strong man who believed in the truth and stood for it against all others, even against those who thought they were doing right, but were deceived. Even against her.

“We should go, Reese.”

She turned back to look at Tyler. His expression was haggard. Sweat was trickling down his face, but not just from the sun. He looked concerned, and afraid, and sick.

“You can’t tell me what happened here wasn’t evil,” he said.

Then he turned on Jacob. “It didn’t end here, you know. Your hero, this Clint guy, he didn’t just kill the policemen. Maybe that was justified—maybe you’re right, and he knew things I didn’t. But you can’t tell me he was good or right in the way he did it, because I heard—I heard him . . .” He stopped and shuddered, and didn’t finish the thought. Didn’t put words to the memory. “But he didn’t stop here. He took me and Chris to a house where he tried to kill us both. What did we do, Jacob? What evils are lurking in our past?” The words should have been fired at the man, a volley of passionate defence. But they weren’t. Tyler sounded tired, and like he was really asking.

Like he thought it was possible they deserved to die somehow.

Jacob just looked at him and said, “But you’re not dead.”

“Because Reese and the others intervened. And the strength of the Oneness came through for me.”

The big man shrugged, a tiny smile playing behind his beard. “Maybe. Or maybe everything happened exactly how it was supposed to all along. Maybe you needed to come back to me, like you are now, open and ready to listen. At the farm, you were closed. Your friend was addling your brain. You had too many suspicions, too many—”

Tyler interrupted, and this time the heat was there. “Don’t you blame anything on Chris.”

“He isn’t Oneness,” Jacob said. And his eyes strayed to Reese, and she thought he was looking through her. “You’re both taking direction and partnership from someone who refuses to become One. What does that say about you? Or about him?”

Reese flushed and turned back to the car. “Let’s go.”

“You’ve seen all you want me to see here?”

“Yes.”

“Not very impressive, I’m afraid.”

She didn’t know how the man could be so infuriating and so convincing at the same time. How he could inspire her to think new thoughts, and question her whole existence, and at the same time make her want to punch him in the face.

Of course, it didn’t help that he had brought up Chris.

She didn’t want to think about Chris right now.

They got back into the car, and she jacked up the air conditioning and was frustrated that it barely responded. The air blew warm. She put the car in gear and backed out onto the highway, glad again that there was no traffic for the moment. She wasn’t sure she would have processed the presence of other cars properly—her mind was spinning.

At least she understood better how a whole community of people could have followed Jacob so blindly.

Julie’s conversion came back to her and strengthened her, like a hug or a warm message. She had lived with this man and come to believe that he was wrong. She had been hurt by him. Her daughter had been hurt by him. He was dangerous.

“My turn,” he said.

It took her a minute to process. “What?”

“It’s my turn. You said we would trade. You lead and I follow. I followed you here. I considered what you said.”

Tyler made another sound from the backseat, but Reese ignored it.

Despite Jacob’s insistence on the highway of his own rightness, she believed him. He had, to some degree, considered their side.

And she was keeping her end of the bargain and considering his.

Calmly, naturally, he told her where to go. Where to switch highways, when to change lanes. Traffic grew heavier as they neared the city. In spite of herself, she was grateful for his guidance. She knew she should resent his taking her in hand, but she didn’t. She was glad for it. Glad he was leading, because it gave her time to think.

To remind herself of what she knew was true.

Behind her, Tyler brooded.

They were silent, the only sound that of the a/c toiling and the engine growling as they drove. She knew Jacob wanted her to ask. About twenty years ago. About the dead policeman’s role in what had happened. About Jacob’s role in what happened.

Twenty years ago.

A dark, mostly undefined shadow that had lain at the back of Reese’s whole life as Oneness. She had been only a child, and not One yet. By the time she came to Lincoln and became part of the cell there, twenty years ago was already a blot on the past that most people did not talk about. Especially David.

The cell would sometimes refer to it, whispering things, especially when David seemed morose or angry, which he did—maybe more often than most. Looking back, it was impossible to tell whether the signs of his disillusionment and enmity had been there all along, mistaken for normal discouragement and irritation.

After the last few months, Reese was disinclined to trust any impression as true, past or present.

But she had known, always, that something had happened twenty years ago. An attack, they said. A massacre, when they were more specific. There had been bombings, and killings after that, and Oneness on the road as fugitives. And the police had been involved somehow—not on their side, like they were now.

Assuming of course, that Lieutenant Jackson and the rest of the department that was letting him get away with working with the Oneness really were on their side.

And when Reese moved to the village cell, after her exile, after Chris and Tyler and Richard and Mary were the only people in the world who believed in her, she had learned that twenty years ago meant something to them too. Chris’s father had been murdered twenty years ago. Mary had gone through whatever exactly it was that had happened.

She knew Jacob wanted her to ask.

She knew she needed to know. To learn more, because the past wasn’t just in the past; it was influencing—even dictating—the present.

But she didn’t open her mouth.

She didn’t give him the gratification of knowing how much he had pulled her in.

And anyway.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to face the past just yet.