Chapter 15

 

Chris came out of nowhere and grabbed Tyler in a hug, and then practically threw him against the wall of the nearest building under the streetlights and said, “Where are they?”

“I don’t know where you just came from, but I’m really happy to see you,” Tyler said.

“You too,” Chris said, and despite the shortness of the words, his eyes said he meant it. “I don’t think we have a lot of time. Where are they?”

“I assume you mean Jacob and Reese, and you’re right, we don’t. They’re heading for a cemetery.”

“And you aren’t with them because . . .”

“It’s a long story.” Tyler’s eyes went to the man standing behind Chris, whose expression was somewhere between curiosity and nervous breakdown.

“Andrew Hunter,” Chris said. “He’s Miranda’s father. Julie’s husband.”

“Oh,” Tyler said. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

“What happened to her didn’t,” Chris said. “Well, it did, but she’s alive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let’s just say there’s something to all this Spirit stuff.” Chris’s eyes were dangerous. “Do you know where this cemetery is?”

“Yes. I just need a car to get there. I hitchhiked this far.”

“Come on, then,” Chris said. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Reese and Jacob left the car a mile from the cemetery and walked the rest of the way, creeping through the darkness closer and closer to the place where Jacob had spent the most haunted, tormented years of his younger life—the years after his wife’s death and the persecution of the Oneness that had left so many dead, wounded, and bereft. It was here, in the midst of the gravestones where he’d believed Bertoller to be buried, that he had experienced his greatest epiphany: that he could not fulfil his calling as Oneness, could make no real difference in the world, could combat the darkness not at all, if he was not willing to bring justice to the true vessels of evil in the world.

To men like Franz Bertoller.

Reese had been here only once before, but as they drew closer, through the dry grass and weeds buzzing with night insects, she felt something of the strange mix of apprehension, memory, and excitement Jacob felt—of all the places Jacob had shown her, of all the arguments he had levelled, it was the one encapsulated here that had most shaken her.

The insects stopped buzzing within a quarter mile of the cemetery. They went on in absolute silence, the only sounds those they made themselves—breathing, rustling in the weeds. Reese could hear her own heartbeat and suspected she could hear Jacob’s also.

A growing pressure in her ears alerted her to the presence of the invisible. Her entourage—the powers she had called upon to bring her this far. Jacob could feel them too. He was pleased they were there.

She didn’t know how she felt about it. Only that this man had to be stopped. Just had to be.

Nothing else would be good enough.

And if David was involved . . .

He could not be allowed to become another Bertoller.

 

* * *

 

A motorcycle growling up to the road to the cemetery came, bearing the last sacrifice not a minute early.

Bertoller had spent the last half hour cursing the lateness of their arrival. He badly wanted to get this over with.

When his hired man appeared in the torchlight leading another man, this one with his hands bound and his eyes blindfolded, Bertoller saw April cast him a look of question and deep concern.

As if he would answer her.

But he wanted her to know who this man was, so for effect, he said, “Welcome, David. I’m so glad you could be part of this after all.”

David spat out his response. “Bertoller! You backstabbing son of the devil! You don’t dare kill me!”

“Give me one reason why I would be afraid to do that,” Bertoller said, glad for the diversion the man provided. “Because you’re Oneness? I have spent most of my life battling the Oneness—and you hardly deserve to be lumped in among them. Because . . . hmm. I can’t think of a single other possible reason.”

“We had plans together,” David sputtered. “We were partners.”

“Yes, and the partnership ended when you failed utterly to fulfil your purpose in it.”

“I can still give you access to the Oneness,” David said, his words beginning to falter now. “You still need that. To infect the—”

“I have other access points now. Far more powerful ones. You’ve heard of Reese? Jacob? It turns out they’ve both given into the darkness more fully than I could have hoped.”

“How could you even know . . .”

“The demonic has ears everywhere. My power is not so diminished that I don’t know how to listen.”

“I gave you Reese,” David said. His tone was pathetic now—he had ceased threatening, ceased bargaining; this was nothing more than a plaintive whine.

“Your usefulness is done. Except for what you will provide as fuel for the fire.” Bertoller nodded to the man. “Chain him up with the woman.”

“No!” David said, trying to jerk away from his captor but to no avail. “No! I won’t die alongside her! I won’t be one of them!”

“You cannot help that,” Bertoller said. “The only grip in this universe stronger than that of the demonic is that of the Spirit, I’m sorry to say. And you will never wriggle loose of that grip.”

David was taken across the clearing and bound beside April, whose head was bowed. Bertoller half-expected her to say something—some cloying, sympathetic thing. She didn’t. Not a word.

He found that unnerving but did all in his power not to show that.

He would give anything to know what had happened to her between her first capture on this day and the second. Something had altered her—had altered everything. Something had changed her so deeply that it had taken this entire night out of his hands and made it a wild card.

He didn’t know what was going to happen when he began the sacrifice.

He quickly shut down that train of thought, only momentarily entertaining the idea of torturing her to force her to tell him what had happened.

That too was quickly dismissed.

He had a terrible sense that she would tell him, and the knowledge would make things more unpredictable than they already were.

Forcing his hand steady, he picked up a crooked knife, stood on the gravestone he’d been using as a dais, and said in a tightly controlled voice, “Let all who are not sanctified leave this place.”

The response was most of the men—only four had gone through the necessary rites. Only four wanted power other than money. Only four were willing to face the darkness and invite the demonic fully.

Under normal circumstances, Bertoller would have commended them for doing what he had done many years ago and never regretted.

Tonight, he wasn’t certain their choice would prove to be a good one.

What was happening to him?

The girl, Miranda, was starting to cry again—to whine and blubber. It would feel good to quiet her permanently. Her cries snapped him out of his paralysis. The hour was approaching. The sickle moon was high overhead.

It was time.

 

* * *

 

Visions dogged Reese as they drew close enough to the cemetery to see light—torchlight. They tormented her. She saw it over and over again: Jacob being shot. Chris being shot. Tyler sacrificed. David satisfied.

David smiling.

David free.

She saw Jacob shot down, point-blank, Bertoller holding the gun.

She saw a spray of bullets take Chris down.

She saw Miranda . . .

The visions were interrupted by an exodus of men from the cemetery, coming through the grass. One roared by on a motorcycle. Jacob saw them before she did and yanked her aside, the two of them hunkering down in the long weeds and hoping no one would trip over them.

She hoped Tyler was praying.

She wondered when she had lost the ability to pray.

When she had stopped trusting the Spirit to hear, or act, or care at all.

A sound was coming from the cemetery—unsettling, grating. It took her a moment to recognize it.

It was crying.

Hysterics, really.

A young woman or a child.

She closed her eyes and tightened her grip on the hunting knife in her hands.

Miranda.

The men had passed; it did not sound as though anyone else was coming their way. Jacob motioned for her to stay down and rose warily. They were within feet of the iron fence around the cemetery now, and keeping in the shadows of a row of trees, Jacob maneuvered closer.

Reese watched him, watched the dancing shadows, watched the moonlight and listened to Miranda crying.

Her heart beat out urgency: Get in there. Stop him. Save her. Save them.

Kill him.

It’s the only way.

Jacob reappeared beside her—it was amazing how quickly he could move. “It’s a ritual,” he said. “A sacrifice. He’s got . . .”

His voice trailed away.

“Miranda,” Reese finished.

He nodded. But he wasn’t telling her everything.

“And?”

“And others.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know the woman,” Jacob said. “A young woman. Blonde.”

“April,” Reese said, sure of it. She had been their target before. It made sense.

“Remember, Reese,” Jacob said, his voice so quiet it was barely audible, “stay focused. Go for Bertoller. Only Bertoller. No matter what. You take him down, you’ve defeated the worst evil our world has known in centuries.”

She nodded and flexed her fingers around the knife again. Even now, surrounded by demons, barely recognizable to herself as Oneness, she hated the thought of killing a man.

Even this man.

Maybe she would pretend he was David, and let her pain and confusion drive the knife home.

Maybe she would simply get revenge.

“No matter what, Reese,” Jacob said again.

“Yes,” she answered, irritated now. “I understand.”

 

* * *

 

There was a set order to the ritual.

It was supposed to begin with animal sacrifices, and that was to be followed by the preliminary human sacrifices—the girl and David.

It would culminate in the death of the great saint. And Bertoller and his lackeys would drink in the pleasure of the Power, and his spirit would fill their veins and flood their bodies.

He couldn’t follow the protocol.

He ran through the liturgy, the opening rites, but with every word the pressure grew—a deep inner panic growing by the moment. Either the woman was far stronger, or he was far weaker, than he had understood until now.

Eyes. He could feel eyes everywhere. Watching. Witnessing. Judging.

He was going mad.

The torches flared.

The moon glared down, waxing before his very eyes, growing stronger, rounder, a great eye.

The goats bleated and the girl-child cried.

His lackeys, cloaked in black, were going about the rites as he had taught them to do: going to the animals.

“No!” he shrieked.

He froze. His heart beating in his ears. They turned and queried silently, surprised as he was.

“Leave them,” he said. “Bring the woman.”

One of them dared question him. “But—”

“NOW!”

He wanted to watch them, but he couldn’t. If he did his eyes would fall on April, and he could not look at her.

He turned his back, wrestling, trying to slow his heartbeat, calm his voice, get back into control.

The eye of the moon stared down.

He heard the chains and the noise as they brought the woman to the pyre. There was a stake there, a shorter one, and they would chain her to it and burn her alive.

He gathered his wits and turned.

But the woman he saw was not April.

It was Teresa.

For a moment the breath was gone from his lungs.

She looked like she had six hundred years ago—hair long and dark, skin like cream, eyes dark. Her whole bearing holiness.

And her eyes full of compassion.

They were still full of compassion.

He had not thought he would ever see her again.

“You were wrong,” she said.

“No,” he tried to say, but his mouth was dry as the kindling, and he could not speak.

He kept hoping she would disappear, but every time he blinked, he opened his eyes again and she was still there. Standing in front of the pyre. His men were working behind her; April was there, but Teresa stood in his line of vision.

 

* * *

 

April could not tear her eyes away from Bertoller.

He seemed to have aged, even in the time since she entered the cemetery. Looking at him, she saw a man ancient and withered, hardly alive. But his eyes were tormented, and it was that that riveted her attention.

He was not dead.

He was not beyond reach.

Even this man had a soul.

She had always known that. The Oneness taught it—she’d heard it from Mary a thousand times. Every human being is a soul. Every human being needs saving, and is worth saving. Every one.

But she wouldn’t have believed it was true of this one, if she couldn’t see it with her own eyes.

She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t really know why. She stood in the midst of kindling with her hands chained to a stake, and she knew perfectly well what these men were planning to do with her. She was going to be sacrificed to the darkness to feed their lust for power.

But it was all going as she had warned Bertoller it would—even now, before they had finished the work. It was backfiring on them. On him. Something was waking his soul.

Miranda was crying, and that one detail tugged at her heart and broke through the strange, almost emotionless detachment she felt toward their circumstances. That, and David. Still tied to the first stake a small distance away, he was a pillar of rage and fear.

She wanted to give them what she had: the fearlessness that came of knowledge. Of knowing the Spirit.

But she couldn’t just give that.

They had to find it for themselves.

So she said the most natural thing she could say.

“Spirit,” she said, aloud. “Come.” She paused, and felt that the next words came from beyond her somewhere.

“I offer myself to you.”

 

* * *

 

The cloaked acolyte handed Bertoller a burning torch, his eyes questioning the change in liturgy but his actions still obedient. After all, Bertoller was the master. The one showing them the way.

The only one who could invite the Power itself into their presence and give them all to drink of its cup.

Bertoller took the torch, and as he did, Teresa faded from his vision.

Deep inside him, something cried out with grief at the loss. Reached out . . .

He cut it off, fixing his eyes on April, setting his mind to the task and the reward to come.

Power. Life. The drunkenness of the demonic. All he needed to do was honour the Power as he ended the life of this enemy in torment.

He began the slow, ceremonious walk forward.

And nearly dropped the torch.

Before his eyes—

—before all their eyes—

smoke was already rising from the pyre.

Smoke, and then flame.

Before Bertoller had taken another step, the sacrifice burst into flames. He watched as fire licked up the kindling and swallowed April in a blaze of heat. The roar of it filled the cemetery, filled the night, reached the moon.

 

* * *

 

“No!” Reese cried, even as Jacob cried “Now!” and shoved her forward. Her legs were already going. She vaulted the fence and ran toward the fire, the light, the place where she knew Bertoller was standing. The knife in her hand seemed welded to her.

The demon voices in her ears were shouting.

ONE TASK.

FOCUS.

STAY FOCUSED.

Bertoller saw her coming, and his eyes widened.

There were tears in his eyes.

And David was there behind him.

Her momentum might have carried her right to him, and the knife right through his heart, if the pyre had not exploded, a ball of flame surging out in every direction, the heat knocking her off her feet. Off course. Off focus.

Fire everywhere.

Everything was on fire.

In the midst, on the pyre, April was standing with her hands held high. Glowing like gold in a furnace.

Oh Reese, Reese, Reese, where have you gone?

The voice was the fire and the fire was the voice, and it burned—it burned to the depths of her soul and spirit, and she screamed at the heat and released it all in the scream.

One thing.

One task.

She saw Jacob running into the flames, looking wildly around. She heard Miranda scream his name, scream for help.

There was another explosion coming—she could see it. It was building up around April, the fire growing hotter and whiter, April herself transformed into something that was not human—at least, that was not human in any way Reese understood the word.

She dropped the knife and ran for David and threw herself around him, and when the explosion came, she took it.

 

* * *

 

“NO!”

The word came from Chris and Andrew at the same moment, and as one they broke into a run, pounding the dirt toward the cemetery, calling out the names on their hearts—

“Miranda!”

“Reese!”

“STOP!” Tyler tackled Chris from behind and managed to trip Andrew in the same moment. “Stop,” he panted, “you can’t go in there!”

Andrew turned frantic eyes on him even as he scrambled back to his feet. “That’s my kid in there!”

“You can’t help her! Listen to me. That’s not an ordinary fire. I can see it. It’s not just fire, it’s . . . please, stay here.”

Andrew shook his head and went to run again, but this time Chris stopped him, wrapping strong arms around him and wrestling him back.

“Listen to Tyler. He knows.”

They stood ten feet from the cemetery gates and stared into the inferno. Its roar had covered every other sound.

“Tyler . . .” Chris said. “What . . .”

“It’s the Spirit,” Tyler said. His voice shook. “The fire. It’s the Spirit.”

From the inferno, figures were taking shape. Golden, shining, outlined in the flames.

Three women.

They were coming, and Chris found himself slowly dropping to his knees. Andrew followed suit. Only Tyler remained on his feet, but seconds before the figures stepped out of the flames, he smiled suddenly and knelt beside the others. And bowed his head.

Chris looked up.

April stood there, every inch herself—and every inch transformed. She was glowing. She was holding Miranda’s hand.

On her other side stood a woman Chris didn’t know. Her hair was long and dark; she wore white, a simple dress that looked as though it came from another era.

Andrew choked up and reached his hands forward, self-conscious. “My girl,” he said, his eyes fixed on Miranda. “Miranda.”

Miranda just stared at him, but April nudged her forward. “You can go to him,” she said. “He’s safe.”

She exchanged glances with the woman beside her, and the dark-haired woman nodded and smiled.

And faded from sight.

The fire still raged behind them.

And Chris’s heart broke.

Reese had not emerged from the fire.

 

* * *

 

In the hours that the fire raged, Andrew took Miranda away. He had introduced himself, and she seemed strangely open to him—or just relieved to be able to escape. They were going to find some food, Andrew told Chris, to find some twenty-four-hour diner somewhere.

Chris just nodded.

Still staring into the fire.

Tyler and April disappeared somewhere. He didn’t know where.

He didn’t care.

How a fire could burn so strong, so long, he didn’t know. He couldn’t go closer. The heat was too great. Sparks rose and flames danced and the air filled with smoke until the moon and the stars disappeared.

And Chris sat in the grass and waited.

“I’m sorry, Reese,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more to find you. I’m sorry I didn’t try to bring you home—that I didn’t become One with you. If I had, maybe you would have reconnected. Maybe . . .”

He stopped.

He couldn’t go on.

When he thought about it now, he didn’t know why he hadn’t opened himself to the Spirit and become One.

Maybe he’d thought that if he did, and Reese came to love him, it wouldn’t be because of him. That he would lose himself in the Oneness. Lose his will, his strength, his personhood.

He wasn’t afraid of that now.

Because staring into this fire that was Spirit, he knew it wasn’t true.

That this fire refined. It did not muddy down.

Hours passed. Hours of heat and light until he wondered if his vision would be forever burned away.

“I don’t care anymore,” he said. “If you’re still watching me, you know that . . . you can have me. I need you.”

He paused.

“I’ve always needed you.”

When the sun rose, the fire died away. It left the cemetery a smoking, barren field, the headstones unreadable from soot, every last bit of grass and foliage burned away.

Chris wondered what it had found to feed on so long.

Tyler stood—Chris wasn’t sure when he had come back—but Chris didn’t acknowledge him. He walked through the gate into the smoking ground. He looked back just long enough to see April stop Tyler at the gate, and the two of them waiting—watching.

He turned away, wished he could steel himself with a deep breath but hardly able to breathe at all in the ash and smoke, and pressed further into the cemetery.

He knew there had been human beings here last night, but there was no trace of them. They had been consumed in the flame.

Bertoller, gone forever.

Jacob too.

The thoughts passed through his mind but hardly registered.

Reese . . .

He could not even form that thought.

He licked his lips. They were cracked and blistered. His whole face was cracked and blistered—he’d sat closer to the fire than he’d realized.

Smoke wafted in pillars and plumes, and yet, somehow, the air felt purified.

He looked to the side and saw the child, watching.

He raised his hand in greeting and dropped it again, setting his eyes forward once more.

And then he saw it.

An ashy mound on the slab headstone in the middle of the cemetery—

A mound that looked like bodies.

Clenching his jaw, he forced one foot after the other until he was looking down, unbelieving.

It was Reese. Covered in ash. Lying over top of someone else.

His hand was shaking as he reached out and touched her shoulder.

She moved. Rolled over. Looked up at him with her eyes open.

“Reese,” he said.

The man beside her groaned, and involuntarily, Chris’s eyes went to him. He took a step back as if he’d been shot.

David.

The man was David.

Reese sat up, slowly, starting to brush herself off and then giving up in futility. She rubbed her hands together to clean off as much ash as she could and then tried to clean her face. And she looked up at Chris and smiled.

Really smiled.

Not the broken, halfhearted, trying-to-believe-again smile that was all he knew from her.

He wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but she was in his arms a moment later, and he was holding her as tightly as he could, his arms sure they would never let go.