Chapter 9

 

Despite having lived by the sea for nearly twenty years, Mary had never really spent time on it. It took her a few hours to get comfortable with the rhythm of the waves and the smell and weight of the salt spray, much heavier out here than in the village. David didn’t seem to have the same luck; he stayed green well after her stomach had adjusted. His strategy for dealing with his situation seemed to be to wait, hands folded and eyes closed, like a man expecting an execution or taking a nap.

It made Mary angrier than she could explain to herself.

He was so normal to look at—so middle-aged and average—that she had to keep telling herself how evil he was, and recalling all the scenes that had played out before her eyes since he was discovered: his exile of Reese, his shooting the hermit on Tempter’s Mountain, his dragging them all off to be killed at the warehouse, and his later presence in the house alongside Clint where Tyler and Chris were nearly murdered. She had to remind herself that he had something to do with children and teenagers being possessed, and that he had found the most evil people he could, and the most threatening demonic entities he could get power over, and pulled them together into a hive with the aim of infiltrating and destroying the Oneness.

All that, and she could swear he was snoring.

Humanity, she thought, you are strange.

So much power and passion in skin and bones, with a stomach to go queasy on the water and sinuses to snore under the influence of sleep.

She tried, too, to pull to mind the events of twenty years ago, the events David said had turned him, events he said she had been involved in. You brought me into the Oneness, he had told her. You were there when I turned against it.

But she didn’t know what he was talking about.

The metal rings on the sail tapped against the mast with a tink, tink, tink, and she looked up at it and the blue sky beyond, wracking her memory.

Was she crazy somehow?

Had she blocked it from her memory?

There were plenty of horrible memories from those days. Plenty that could have turned a man. Plenty that could have made his heart go cold and even full of hate. But that wasn’t how she remembered any of it. In all the destruction, and betrayal and cruelty, and demonic enterprise and death, she remembered the Oneness drawing closer together. She remembered unity strengthened and fired by affliction, new members—like Diane and nearly Douglas—coming in, death being shown up for the sham it ultimately was when you were One. That was what she remembered of those days: that she had never seen the Oneness so clearly, or known her own place in it so proudly, or believed in it so passionately.

David’s experience had been different, evidently.

And she had been there.

There were birds in the sky again, flying near the boat, soaring and diving to fish. April and Chris, at the far end of the yacht, were eyeing them nervously. She knew they feared a demonic attack—and it might come that way, from the air. But she feared far more that it would not. She feared that she would be uninterrupted in her talk with David—whenever it really began—and they would say all there was to say, and he would not repent.

And they would have to kill him.

Because they could not allow the hive to go on.

They could not allow him to continue to threaten the Oneness the way he had, and did.

But . . .

She closed her eyes. Shook her head at the thought. Felt the cold chill of it fall over her.

To kill one of their own.

To deliberately take his life, even in justice, even in fair retribution for the lives he had taken and the lives he had ruined.

What would it mean to them?

Would it cripple them—change their unity somehow?

Could the Oneness even survive it?

She cleared her throat to open conversation, but he didn’t acknowledge her or move.

Maybe he really was sleeping.

The sail cast shade across his face and the pile of netting he was lying on. She struggled to remember that face younger.

All her clear memories of David were from more recent years. She knew him as head of the Lincoln cell. The fishing village was quiet; they rarely crossed paths. When they did, there was the quiet sympathy of leadership; they both knew what it was to watch out for others and try to steer them, even more than was the usual lifestyle of Oneness. She had considered him a friend.

But before that . . .

What was before that?

She was still trying to struggle through that when Chris strode up and, without warning, kicked David in the side. The man rolled over and glared up without a yell. He’d been awake, then.

“Chris!” Mary burst out.

He looked down at her, his eyes smoldering, but didn’t answer. Then he turned his gaze back to David. “Time to wake up,” he said. “Mary’s here to talk to you. And I’m not out here just to give you a nice long nap.”

“We don’t have much to talk about,” David said, looking at Mary.

“Talk about the Oneness. Talk about what you’re trying to do to it.”

“You care a lot for someone who refuses to join,” David said. “Watch your interest in that girl, Christopher. Oneness women will lead you places you don’t want to go.”

Chris flushed. “Shut up.”

“You told me to talk.”

“To Mary.” He seemed to realize he was being drawn into a childish word game, and he glared at David again. Then to Mary, “I didn’t kick him hard. Wish I had.”

“Chris, you had better go steer the ship,” she said, noting the weariness in her own voice.

Weary already, and this hadn’t even really begun.

Chris turned away with a last glare at David and stalked back across the ship. For all that she knew he didn’t need to steer anything—they were really just drifting out here, and didn’t plan to do anything else for a while—she was grateful for his obedience and more grateful for his presence.

So amazingly much like having Douglas with them.

Diane was below. She had not come up yet, burying her nose in a paperback—a novel, of all things, at a time like this—and saying little to Mary or anyone else.

It wasn’t really fair that she should have to be part of this fight, but she was Oneness—and Oneness could not isolate.

Not even if they wanted to.

“Chris is right,” Mary said. “We didn’t bring you out here for a nap.”

“You brought me out here to kill me,” David said gamely. “So why don’t you do that?”

“We don’t want to kill you, David.”

“You should. You should want to eradicate the evil that is me. Do I have to remind you what I’ve done? And that’s not even all. I could tell you a lot more.”

She wondered if she should pursue that line of conversation. He might tell her something that would help Richard or the others.

But somehow she doubted it. David was all about control. He was not going to give that up just for the sake of goading her.

“That’s not really what I care about,” Mary said.

“Oh, that’s right. Because you care about me, yes? Like the Oneness cares about every individual. So much that you invite us all to be lost in the conglomerate and suffer all our lives under the impossible burden of unity when we were made to strive, to be ourselves, fully ourselves, to make ourselves. To realize what we are supposed to be, like I can never do, because I have you and all the rest tied to my ankle like a millstone.”

“Oneness is what we’re supposed to be,” Mary said. “You know that.” She regretted those words instantly. “Or maybe you don’t. I don’t know what you know anymore—what lies you’ve let twist your mind. So maybe you don’t know anything. But Oneness is not a loss, David. It’s a coming into yourself—into who you are meant to be.”

She brightened just a little at the idea that maybe, just maybe, he only needed to hear this again. That maybe he just needed to be reminded of the truth.

“If you would just embrace that,” she said. “If you would just stop striving against it, you’d see. Oneness would allow you to be all you are. It would allow you to embrace your life and your destiny. You never can if you try to do it on your own.”

“But I’ll never know that, one way or the other, because Oneness refuses to let me go.”

She looked away, over the water. She couldn’t handle looking into his face right now—the pallor, the anger, the bitter, bitter cold. The wind was brisk and raising white caps in the distance, but here the water was relatively calm. She marveled at tides and currents, at the way it could all be one ocean and yet affected so differently in different places just yards away. And she tried to put herself in David’s place, just for a moment.

“What is it like?” she asked.

This time—maybe for the first time—she caught him off-guard.

“Excuse me?”

“What is it like—being held by the Oneness when you don’t want to be? What do you experience that as? I know what Oneness is to me. I don’t know what it is to you. I can’t fathom it—can’t imagine it.” She turned her eyes back to him and looked him in the eye after all, gratified that she had raised something in them that wasn’t the controlled, calculated freeze and taunt of a few minutes ago.

“It’s a never-ending fire,” he said. He sat up, suddenly, loosing his hands and leaning forward, close to her, his face close to her face. “It burns every minute. It’s noise that never ceases, when all I want is to be alone. It’s guilt that never dies away. Every time I try to dream, every time I want to hope, Oneness is a million voices and a million threads pulling me away from myself, scattering me, forcing me to care when I do not want to. It is the weight of the world—of the universe—when all I want is to be light and to be free.”

She considered his words.

She did not want to, but this was the first time she’d felt like she was seeing the man behind the monster of betrayal. She owed it to him to consider his words.

“Come now,” he said, very softly. “You can go deeper than that.”

Her eyes fluttered open—she hadn’t realized she’d shut them. “What?”

“You’re thinking about what I said. But you’re holding yourself back. We are still One, you and I. You can go deeper. You can feel what I feel, if you’ll just care enough to enter in. I haven’t invited anyone into my spirit in two decades, Mary. I’ll invite you. You really want to know the key to all this? Come in.”

She closed her mouth—she was gaping.

“No,” she rasped.

He sat back, smug—but perhaps disappointed, too.

Perhaps even hurt.

“You’re afraid to,” he said. “We are all One. We are all meant to share in one another’s souls, one being, one body in heaven and earth. But you are too afraid to enter into what it is to be me.”

He closed his eyes and folded his hands again, the posture of sleep. “My soul is too dark. So I am One, and I am completely alone.”

Never alone.

The words were the watchword of the Oneness, the words the Spirit whispered when you first joined, the words that were promise and strength and new being.

Never alone.

But he was.

And her heart moved with compassion.

He did not open his eyes. “I feel that, you know. You all think I’m cold and hardened, but I feel Oneness acutely. I know you are pitying me. And I also know how afraid you are.”

She stood, almost thrown off balance by the waves, and grabbed the rigging to steady herself. Her breath was coming fast. She turned on her heel and almost threw herself down the short, narrow stairway into the cabin. She leaned against the wall and tried to slow her breathing down.

From the bed, Diane looked up over the ratted pages of a mystery novel, the cover looking damaged by damp. She raised her eyebrows and then lowered her glance back to the pages before speaking.

“He’s getting to you?”

“He’s . . . I don’t know.”

“He’s dangerous. He’s getting to you.”

Mary didn’t answer.

“You shouldn’t have brought me,” Diane said. “I can’t help you with this. I look at him and just want to kill him for what he’s done, and then I sympathize with him. I wouldn’t mind out of the Oneness myself, sometimes.”

“You have a role,” Mary said faintly. “You’ll find it.”

“You, on the other hand, are going about this badly. You’re not going to win this playing war as usual.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Diane sighed and put the book down on the bed beside her. “What’s getting to you?”

“That I can’t remember . . . that he’s goading me with something I seem to have forgotten all about. That he can read me like a book.”

“That he’s playing with you,” Diane said.

“Yes.” She almost laughed, hopeless. “He told me to come in . . . to form a deeper connection with him and go plunging into his heart. I can’t.”

Diane fingered the book like she wanted to disappear back into it, but didn’t. She fixed Mary with a steady gaze, a challenge in it.

“Tyler walked,” she said.

“What?”

“Tyler walked. Tyler used the power of the Oneness and walked when he should have been paralyzed by the drugs he was on, and Tyler is new to the Oneness and not that good at anything. But he reached out and did a miracle and saved a lot of lives.”

“Yes, he did,” Mary said, lost.

“And yet you’re afraid to use your power. You can form a deeper connection with David.”

“Yes . . .”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

She shuddered.

“You’re afraid of what you’ll find there,” Diane said. “But you’re a soldier, aren’t you? You can’t just stay out of enemy territory because it might be dangerous. It is dangerous. This is war.” She frowned. “When you talked me into the Oneness all those years ago, you did it by painting a picture of a world that was supernatural, where we could all become more than ourselves, where anything could happen. But you don’t live like that world really exists. Yes, you’re good to others—good to me, good to your cell. Unusually good. But you’re ignoring a whole lot of power.”

Mary blinked and lowered her eyes to the smoothly polished floor.

Was she right?

David frightened her more than anything on earth. She would have faced a battalion of demons before she would go exploring his heart. And yet he was her brother. He was Oneness. He knew her like she refused to know him. And maybe he frightened her so much not just because of what he was, but because of what she was.

Because he was challenging her to find out what she was.

Maybe, just maybe, she had buried herself in the Oneness after all. How had he put it? Lost in the conglomerate.

Not because it had to be that way, not because the Oneness demanded it, but because she wanted it—wanted the safety of numbers and anonymity and being one more component in a great machine.

A body, she reminded herself.

But what good was a body part that didn’t function properly? Or to its highest potential?

She looked up and fixed her eyes on the deck.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Diane asked. She hadn’t moved—or picked her book back up.

Mary just looked at her, and after a moment nodded slowly.

She ascended the stairs feeling like she was walking off a precipice. Spray met her as she came out into the air again, wetting her hair and clothes. The water was cold, but in the hot air that hardly registered; it felt alive and made her feel alive.

She wondered what she would leave behind by entering into David’s world with him.

His expression changed as she approached this time—somewhere between elation, surprise, and fear.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re going to come in?”

“I need to know what you know,” Mary said. “And feel what you feel.”

“So you can rescue me? So you can pull me back out?”

“Yes.”

“You know that, once you’ve been in my soul, it might be you who need rescuing.”

“I know.”

“No one else will come in after you. I’ve been with Oneness for twenty years, and no one has ever dared go that deep. You have power, you know—we all do. And no one uses it.”

“Not no one.”

“Who does? Richard? He buries himself away in prayer. Speaks with power but never pushes the limits, never seeks to be all he is. The hermit I killed? He was even worse—cut himself off from the rest of you, for all intents and purposes. Because he was too strong, and too afraid of his strength. Some other nameless, faceless millions, all over the globe? They’re all like you. Every single one I’ve seen is like you—using your power to stay low and lose yourself in the mass instead of distinguishing yourselves in any way. The Oneness are fools. They pretend to embrace great power and terrible reality and then spend their whole lives hiding from both.”

She almost smiled. “You sound like an apologist. Like one arguing for the Oneness, not against it.”

“I would, if I didn’t hate it so much. I don’t want to be great on your terms. I want to be great, or at least to exist, on my own. And you—you all—have denied me that forever. That doesn’t mean I can’t see what you do not: that the Oneness truly is power.”

He leaned back, but his eyes didn’t take on their early languidness. They were sharp, bright. He was interested now. “The demonic are different. They exult in, bathe in, play in power. It is everything to them. Imagine if you were to do the same, how much would be available to you.”

“Power is not our goal, or our lifeblood,” Mary said. “Love is.”

“Well then,” David said, smirking, “come inside and love me where it’s real. You know you can. You know you must. Do it.”

 

* * *

 

The woman got into the car escorted by bodyguards, but they did not stay with her, instead fanning out to the rest of the alley and ensuring the car got out without a hitch. Richard pulled his cap low over his eyes and pulled the car out smoothly, raising his hand in a friendly signal to the bodyguards that all was well—dearly hoping it would work.

The moment she entered the car, he felt all that her music had aroused in him. He knew her, knew her heart and soul, knew how passionately she believed in higher things and how deeply she wanted to call others. He also felt the conflict: whatever it was that held her back. Stopped her from issuing invitation to the Oneness, stopped her short of being what she was.

He eased the car into traffic without saying a word, just checking in the rearview to ensure his passenger was real, was really there, and was all right. She was more beautiful up close than she had been on stage, simple and elegant. She seemed distracted, staring out the window in a way that betrayed agitation.

He didn’t think she would notice if he went the wrong way.

Not that he didn’t want to take her home—he just didn’t know where that was supposed to be.

Guessing, he headed back to the freeway. He had some idea where the wealthier apartments and condos were; hopefully she was staying somewhere in that district.

To his surprise, she noticed.

“You’re going the wrong way,” she said abruptly. He didn’t respond.

She leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. “Kevin. You’re going the wrong way. We’re in the penthouse this time, remember?”

He cleared his throat, debating whether to actually turn his face for a moment, but in the time it took him to ask that question, she got over her distraction and really saw the man in front of her.

“You’re not Kevin,” she blurted, with surprising calm, and two seconds later, “You’re Oneness.”

“True, and true,” Richard said. “My name’s Richard. My apologies for the unconventional introduction, but I need to talk to you.”

He was impressed that she didn’t seem startled or intimidated. There was in her an openness he hadn’t expected from someone David was targeting. The others he had gone after—Diane, Jacob, even Reese—had been hardened to some degree, had thrown up walls. But openess seemed the primary characteristic of this woman’s soul.

“The car isn’t a good place to talk,” she said. “I can steer you toward home if you’re willing.”

“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” he said.

“Good then. Get off that exit and turn around.”

He obeyed. A quick glance in the rearview showed eyes that were alive with interest and curiosity. Far from being suspicious or cagey, she was treating him like a welcomed friend.

“Just a few exits up,” she told him once they were back on the freeway going the other way, and then added, “What did you do with Kevin?”

“Gave him something of a hangover,” Richard said, wondering how much to tell her. But then he decided to be as open with her as she was with him. “I set him free.”

She was quiet at that, sitting farther back in the seat and pondering.

“How much do you know about me?” she asked.

“Very little. I know your name—Melissa. I know you’re one of us.” He lowered his voice. “And I know they’re targeting you.”

“Pull off here,” she said softly, and directed him down a busy three-lane one-way street to a high-rise on the left, where he pulled into a parking garage, parked in the reserved spot where she told him to, and got out to open the door for her.

“Thank you,” she said. She wavered a little on her high heels when she got out, and he put out a hand to steady her. She let him.

“You’re very trusting,” he said with a smile. “Most women don’t like to be alone with strange men in a parking garage.”

“You’re not a strange man,” she said. “You’re one of us. Most men, I do not trust. You, I do.”

He liked her. He liked her immensely. He wasn’t sure he had expected that. He’d been counting on finding another Jacob or David—someone swallowed by her own twisted perspective or eaten up by hatred.

He wasn’t expecting to find Melissa.

She led the way to the elevator and from there to the penthouse suite, but in such a way that he felt like he was leading, or at least doing more than following like a flunky. She passed her elegance on, endowing others with it, rather than making them feel low. He knew it was this way with everyone, not just him; he could feel that.

The penthouse was like her: elegant, simple. An open-concept apartment with windows on all four sides looking out over the city, it was uncluttered, graced with a few carefully selected paintings on the wall and furniture the colours of cream and wicker. She poured him a drink without asking and then seated herself on a love seat, gesturing for him to sit down across from her.

He did.

“What do you know about me?” she asked.

A slightly different question from the “how much.”

His answer was much the same. “Very little. You are brilliant; I attended your concert this afternoon.”

“Oh,” she said, perking up and seeming pleased by that.

“And as I told you before—I know your name, that you are Oneness, and that they are targeting you.”

“Who is this ‘they’?” she queried, but he was fairly sure she knew the answer.

“The hive,” he said grimly. “They’ve been sending you children. They’re trying to turn you against us. I’m just not sure why or how.”

For the first time, a troubled expression crossed her face. “I love the Oneness,” she said. “I always have. I have been One since I was a child—six years old. My parents were One.”

“Married? That’s unusual.”

“It was a blessing.” She put her wine glass down and paused, as though pondering whether to tell him more. “The Oneness has been my whole life. When I began to play and to write music, it was with the express purpose of putting the Spirit’s invitation into notes, where others could hear it audibly.”

“But that’s not what you played this afternoon,” Richard said gently. “Forgive me, but while you expressed our ideals and our hope, you did not express the invitation. You backed off.”

“I can’t play it anymore.”

“Why not?”

She lifted troubled blue eyes to him. “Because I’m not sure I believe in it anymore.”

“You love the Oneness, it’s your whole life, but you don’t believe in it?”

“I am not sure I believe it is what it says it is.”

He sighed. “Then I know why the hive is targeting you.”

She stood and faced a window, looking out, folding her arms in front of her. “I don’t like that word. Targeting. Like I have nothing to do with it. Maybe I am exploring.”

He considered joining her but decided to give her space instead. She swept one arm out, encompassing the city. “Down there, what I see is two things: order and chaos. The Oneness and the darkness, the demonic. No?”

“It’s an apt picture.”

She turned. “Then tell me why the Oneness cannot give me order, and the demonic can.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean by that.”

“You mentioned the children. Do you know what they do when they come here?”

He didn’t. “I have no idea what their visits to you look like.”

She walked back to stand before him. “Then you probably also have no idea that I am dying.”

Her words startled him so much that he physically jumped.

She sat down. “Cancer. I am told it’s incurable. I am told I will die within a year.”

“You don’t look sick.” It was a stupid thing to say, and he kicked himself.

“Nonetheless, my body, which is Oneness, which is supposed to be tapped into the Life beyond life and given strength and vitality by the tapestry of beings all across the world, is corrupt and corrupting. And I sought the Oneness for answers, I have prayed, I have tried to connect to the strength of others, and I have found no help at all.”

Despite the force of her words, she did not look away or betray any undue discomfort. They might have been discussing music or a public event.

“But then the children started coming. Yes, I know they are possessed. But they are forcing me to rethink my beliefs about that. Because when they come, they are innocent—they are children. The demons only give them power.”

Richard thought of the same children holding his hands at the house where Clint and David had tried to burn several of his friends alive, and he shuddered deep within. The face they had shown Melissa was only a partial one. There was always another side to the coin.

“They can heal,” she continued. “When they come, I surrender to their power, and they heal me, bit by bit. The doctors confirm it. They don’t know why I ‘don’t look sick,’ as you told me. They don’t know why the cancer isn’t progressing like it should.”

“But they have not told you that you’re in remission?”

She hesitated. “Let me rephrase. The cancer is progressing. It’s growing. But it’s having no effect on me. The treatments I get from the children are canceling out its power. They are giving me life. Life the Oneness can’t give.”

“How often do they come?” he asked.

“Once a week.”

“When are they due to come next?”

“In two days.” She gave him a pointed look. “You’re very much bothered by this.”

“I am, yes.” There was little point in hiding that. “You say you love the Oneness, yet you’re betraying it.”

“Perhaps not,” she said. “If the Oneness is that which gives life, and it is not giving life, then perhaps the Oneness is corrupt and needs to be called back to purity. If what we call chaos is imparting wholeness, then perhaps we need to question our terms.”

“Or,” Richard said, “perhaps you are deceived, and your terms are skewed because your perspective is skewed.”

“Life and death are rather clear. If one thing is giving me life, and another giving me death, it’s not hard to see where the true power and goodness lies.”

“That would be true,” he said, slowly, aware that he was treading in deep waters, “if death was the end. But Oneness has always been the transcendence of death—the lasting beyond it. So death is not the ultimate evil.”

For the first time, her face clouded, and he saw hurt and defensiveness there. “That’s easy for you to say when you are not facing it,” she said.

“I have faced it. Recently. In battle with the demons.”

“Good, then. Die in a glorious fight, convinced that you’re a hero and your death is a blaze, and leave me to waste away and lose everything. My music—my purpose—everything. Not in a fight, just in corruption. I’m only thirty-three years old, Richard. I should not have to die like this.”

He closed his eyes, unable to continue meeting the expression in hers, but he could not shut out their connection—the Oneness, the communion of souls that even now racked his with her pain and abysmal sense of loss, of waste.

He couldn’t blame her for her questions. Couldn’t even blame her for turning to the powers she had, when they offered her another way—a way to save herself, her work, and her sense of destiny.

David had been right to target her. She was enormously vulnerable because she was enormously gifted, because she cared more deeply than most people, Oneness or not, ever would.

He couldn’t possibly tell her that he had taken her “healers” away. They would not be coming in two days. Maybe not ever again.

He saw that from her perspective, and winced. The Oneness had not only been unable to heal her. It had denied her the one source of healing she had found—had actively cut it off.

He couldn’t say that.

He did say, and he wasn’t even sure why he did, “I don’t want you to die.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Likewise.”

She smiled. “I believe you really do care. You’re very sincere—I sensed that from the moment in the car when I realized what you were. And you have power of your own. You’re a man of the Spirit like few are. I’m sorry that my questions, and my journey, are an affront to you.”

He wanted to protest that, but in a sense she was right. She was questioning, actively pushing back, against everything he stood for.

“Did you know your driver was possessed?” he asked.

“Kevin? Of course.”

“So the children aren’t the only hive members you’ve had around.”

She smiled, almost indulgently. “I’ve been questioning the reality of things. About what exactly the demonic is. So while I am unsettled about the answers, I’m practicing tolerance.”

She leaned back and interlocked her long, slim fingers over her knee. “So, I’m afraid if you came to rescue me, it’s not going to work. I have chosen what I’m doing. I’m not really open to being rescued.”

He shook his head, smiling, and reached for the drink she had poured him. He needed it. “There are more than one of you, you know. It’s an all-out attack, a strategy. David—”

He stopped. She looked puzzled.

“You don’t know this side of the story, do you?”

She smiled. “You may as well tell me.”

He nodded. “It’s long. Or it feels long. But there’s a man—one of us. His name is David. Unlike you, he hates the Oneness. Something happened to him twenty years ago, we don’t know what, that made him want to be free of us. He can’t be, and he’s become twisted—angry and bitter. He’s the one who began the hive.”

“I’m listening.”

“Somewhere along the way, he decided that if the Oneness will not let him go, then he is going to destroy it. And he sees clearly what everyone else does not—that if the demonic and the Oneness come together, chaos will override. The Oneness will became an agent of darkness, not only not holding the world together or combating darkness as it should, but actively spreading it. Death will ultimately triumph.”

She made a sound but didn’t say anything. He kept going. “So he has done two things. First, he has gathered demons together under his leadership and organization, creating a hive—a conglomerate of humans and demons working together toward a single goal. The children are part of that hive. So are . . . others. Others who are much more obviously evil. He’s been careful. This hive has many faces.”

She took a sip of wine and waited for him to continue. But he could see a wall up behind her eyes—she was not truly open to some of what he had to say.

“Second, he is going after members of the Oneness he sees as weak, trying to turn them. He wants to turn the Oneness against itself, infect it from within—transform it into a parody, a monster where once there was a man.”

“You’re poetic.”

“I’m telling the truth. David himself is the first—and he’s worse than anything I’ve seen from the purely demonic. There’s another man, called Jacob, very different but also frightening. He’s been responsible for the deaths of several men recently, and has been controlling the lives of others—control, not unity, and not freedom. He’s used fear and manipulation and isolation to create his own utopia. Not exactly Oneness ideals. I heard your music—I know you would never agree to the things Jacob does or believes.”

“You are connecting me with him rather arbitrarily, don’t you think?” she cut in.

“Not that arbitrarily. The children—” He stopped himself. He had almost told her what had happened, that he had driven the demons out and the children were no longer part of the hive—that he was keeping them in a secluded place, under a shield, where the demons couldn’t even reach them.

Thereby destroying her victory over cancer.

“The children talked to me,” he said slowly. “They told me that David has targeted you as well, and that they have been visiting you with the purpose of turning you against the Oneness. They aren’t trying to lead you into truth or give you life. They’re trying to use you. You told me you love the Oneness.”

“I do.”

“How much?”

Her face paled, and she looked away as her whole body went rigid.

They didn’t speak.

But the question was clear.

How much?

Enough to suffer for that love?

Enough to die for it?

“You have no idea what you’re asking me,” she whispered.

She looked as though she would stand, perhaps to pace, but instead she trembled with profound weariness, and he saw not only the woman who had just played a concert for hundreds and moved them deeply, who had not only just spent herself in two hours of sheer artistry, who had not only opened her soul to a stranger and discussed things so deep they had to cost just to talk about, but who had been fighting a protracted battle for far too long.

She was tired.

Weary.

He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I think I should leave now. You need rest, and I . . . I can give you time to think about this.”

“You don’t have any choice about that,” she said faintly.

He smiled. “It’s true. But I’m glad to give you time. You said you love the Oneness, Melissa. I think I can say the Oneness also loves you.”

He stood and reached out his hand. She looked at it a moment before taking it, and he helped her to her feet and steered her toward her room. He had no desire to leave her, but he knew he didn’t have an option.

She turned just before she closed her bedroom door. “You’ll stay nearby?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

And he would.