CLAUDIA.
Darkness pressed against my open eyes, as if I were swimming underwater. An instant of sheer black fright swept through me—had someone come in through the window? Had I remembered to lock the door? But as I lay in bed with my head off the pillow, my body tense and rigid, I heard only the dull rumble of traffic outside my closed window.
I let my head fall back to the pillow and sighed in relief. The day had been stressful, the walk home long and thoughtful. I had not seen any sign of Asher at Pincio Gardens, and since the gardens were well north of his apartment and only a few blocks from mine, I had walked home, taken a hot bath, and eaten a pizza strewn with arugula.
I closed my eyes and patted my stomach. The arugula must not have agreed with me.
I turned onto my side and stretched out, willing myself back to sleep. I had just withdrawn into that vague grayness between wakefulness and sleep when I heard the voice again, as insistent and unfamiliar as before: Claudia.
I sat up, clutching the sheets to my chest. “Who’s there?” I whispered, peering into the darkness. I could see nothing but the neon glow of the electric numbers on the alarm clock: 12:15. My glands dumped such a dose of adrenaline into my bloodstream that my heart contracted like a fist, but still I saw nothing in the blackness. I heard a dull thump overhead and looked up, then someone upstairs flushed a toilet and the pipes in the wall began to sing.
The twins. They were romping around, bedeviling their mother, and refusing to go to sleep. Nothing unusual; nothing to worry about.
I closed my eyes and felt my shoulders relax. I must have been more stressed than I realized if every little sound had the power to spook me.
I lay down again, but this time I pulled the spare pillow to my chest and hugged it, then pulled the blanket up to my earlobes with my free hand. On the off chance I was wrong and an intruder had entered my room, maybe he’d just take my laptop and wallet and leave. As long as I played possum, he wouldn’t bother me.
If there was someone.
But there wasn’t.
After lying awake for what felt like an eternity, I drifted into a shallow doze in which memories of the day mingled with inchoate fragments of dreams. I saw Asher standing before Justus, Justus’s angry face and blazing eyes, the gardens upon the hillside, the vast panorama of the city lit by the orange rays of the setting sun. A little boy stood beside me, and I heard his mother call, “Samuel!” and then suddenly it seemed to me that the city itself was aflame, the ancient walls burning in an orange and scarlet conflagration, and Justus was there, thirty feet tall, standing with one foot on the rooftop of the Global Union headquarters and another on the nondescript office building next door. “I am not a lunatic,” he bellowed, his uplifted fist piercing the swirling gray clouds overhead. “I am the Antichrist!”
Hatred radiated from him like a halo around the moon while ambition, stark and vivid, glittered in his eyes. Watching him from my bench in the garden, all I could feel was fear, growing and swelling like a balloon in my chest. A scream rose in my throat, but I clapped my hand across my mouth, choking it off—
Claudia.
Drowning in my nightmare, I swam upward toward the soft and insistent voice, finally crossing the void between sleeping and waking. When I opened my eyes this time, nothing in the room had changed. I felt so grateful to be in a safe and secure place that tears of relief flooded my eyes.
Then I remembered. Samuel.
The name stirred the nearly forgotten memories of a shadowy night in my childhood. I was spending the night at my grandmother’s house, sleeping in the room where the big brass bed reminded me of a jail, and something flew past the window and sent shadows racing across the wall. I screamed, and Grandmother came running, then held me close to her heart while she soothed my fears and combed her fingers through my hair. And then, while I breathed in the whisper of rose sachet and felt her cool hand upon my brow, she told me the story of a little boy who heard noises in the night and decided God was calling him. The boy’s name was Samuel, and the third time he heard the voice of God, he said, “Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth.”
And God spoke to him.
A cold shiver spread over me. I sat in the stillness for a moment, then cautiously brought up one hand and peeled the covers from my chin. The room was silent, the numbers 1:16 were glowing in the dark, and nothing had changed . . . except my willingness to face the unknown and unlikely.
“Speak, Lord.” My voice emerged as a hoarse croak, crusty with swallowed apprehension. “For thy servant heareth.”
I can’t really describe what happened in the next moment. The voice wasn’t audible, and nothing changed in my physical surroundings, but suddenly I knew God was speaking to my heart in a way he never had before. The air beside my bed stirred with the inaudible vibration of angel wings, and my heart thrilled to know I was a beloved child, entrusted with a command. I had been given a simple task, and when I lay back down to sleep a moment later, I knew I would obey.
Once the sun rose, I had to find Asher as soon as possible. He would need me.