Erie Street Cemetery
Cleveland, Ohio
3:00 p.m., Dec. 24
Bartholomew clearly had been serious about his game of tag.
Before Finn could grab him, he’d taken off at a dash, not stopping until he reached the grandly arched opening to some kind of city park, which was dwarfed by the stadium across the street. He turned, as if to make sure Finn was following him. The lettering carved into the stone was clear in the harsh sunlight: Erie Street Cemetery. Bartholomew turned and ran lightly over the snow-encrusted surface of the sidewalk, his body fleet and agile.
Finn staggered along behind him, still far faster than mortals, but nowhere near reaching Bartholomew’s speed. He’d not fully gotten used to being Fallen yet, while Bartholomew had had six thousand years of practice, and there was that small problem of recently having taken more than his share of a beating. He glanced around as he jogged down the long central roadway of the cemetery. Trees dotted the landscape, the precious real estate otherwise taken up with row upon row of tombstones, most of them easily over a hundred years old.
Figures that Bartholomew would choose a cemetery. To a being that lived forever, a cemetery was like Disneyland. A glimpse into an experience they would probably never know.
Finn felt the change in the air as Bartholomew stopped, pivoted. He stopped as well, cautious. Not sure how to play this.
The Fallen laughed. “You haven’t gotten used to the weight of the atmosphere yet, have you? You will. When I finally accepted what my role was on this earth. It became…far easier.”
“You left the church in Lyon. Why?”
“You’ve been speaking to Father Franks, I see. I knew there was something about the man that was important—knew it. But I couldn’t decide exactly what. That’s the problem with the Fallen’s perspective. You’ll know what I mean, if you live long enough. You can see, if you look hard enough, entire lifetimes. Not merely the path, but every step along the path. Franks was a vital key to my future, I knew it in my bones, but I didn’t understand how, back then. It was only after the good father made his way to this city that he met Walter Griffin. A man who’d spent so much time in the presence of the light, I mistook him for the light himself. It took me years to realize my mistake, but still proved to be vitally important to me.”
Finn frowned at him, and Bartholomew came up closer to him, just out of reach. “You’re no match for me, Finn. You aren’t strong enough. It’s best if you acknowledge that.”
Finn’s anger filled the small space between them. “What do you want with Lester Morrow?” he asked.
“Ahh… my dear Lester. Had I known how close I was to his operation fifteen years ago, when my pets killed Walter, I would have made much better use of my time in this pit. But it took me finding Lester along the trail of his own greed to realize what he was, what he might have. And honestly, I have to thank you for that. Were it not for you being sent here by your precious archangel, I might still believe that Lester was merely a minor player in this game. But he isn’t, is he? He’s the ringleader. And Dana is his star attraction.”
Finn shifted. “How do you know anything about who sent me?”
Bartholomew ignored the question to ask another of his own. “Tell me, Finn, how will it feel when you’re asked to leave your precious Dana Griffin behind, knowing that merely for having met you, she’s become a target? If you thought she was in trouble before, rest assured. You’ve all but ensured her death.”
He sighed. “Too bad I can’t let you stay to help her.” And he launched into Finn.
This time, however, Finn was ready. In some ways, he’d been ready for more than six thousand years.
Finn took the weight of Bartholomew’s attack as a storm of absolution, the feeling of power and thrust knocking him backward but not down. As his fist connected with the rogue Fallen’s temple, the crunch of bone against bone exceptionally gratifying.
But Bartholomew had been fighting on this plane for far longer than Finn, at least in this present form. He jerked his head back from Finn’s punch, then came at Finn with fists pounding in explosive, percussive bursts, his movements fueled by rage and fire and more hatred than Finn would have thought possible. He was the most dangerous of breeds, the madman who thought himself sane. The self-righteous zealot who thought himself justified.
And in questioning what might happen to Dana after he’d left her to face life as a newly awakened Dawn Child, he’d opened up a hole inside Finn that might never be refilled.
Bartholomew dragged in a breath, and Finn followed it with a crack to the jaw with his elbow, his body pressing forward as he pushed Bartholomew down to the snow-covered ground. They scrambled there, neither one getting the upper hand for some time until Finn finally threw Bartholomew over onto his back.
“And what do you gain from this list?” Finn seethed as Bartholomew scrambled up to face him. “Why are they so important to you? There’re simply not that many of them.”
Bartholomew laughed, a sharp, guttural sound. “Even a handful of the Dawn Children are enough, properly trained.” His eyes blazed with feral intensity. “Which is why I won’t give them that chance.”
“You are filth.” Finn surged forward and crashed into Bartholomew again, the rogue Fallen falling into the snow face-first, rolling to the side to avoid Finn’s lunge.
“Maybe,” he gritted out, as he wobbled once more to his feet, circling Finn to the right. “But at least I know what will happen to mortals when they are subject to the rule of Fallen and demons. At least that rule will be straightforward. As it stands, these people are slaves. They know so little. They can’t even protect themselves. They deserve to know their fate, not be led by the nose to slaughter.”
“They’ll never allow themselves to be ruled by the legion,” Finn spat, both of them glaring at each other, lungs heaving.
“And how long do you think they’ll last with so many new demons free to roam the earth? A year? A week? Either way, they will be ruled. It’s the natural order. Because the legion know what the humans do not. Earth is dying, its people losing hope day by day. Soon only demonkind will thrive here, and humans will serve them like dogs.”
No. Finn blew out a long breath, keeping silent, not willing to countenance Bartholomew’s words with agreement or denials. “And the Dawn Children?”
“Would only delay the inevitable, if they don’t accept my rule. But they will, or they will die. The time has come to act.”
“Then act,” Finn said, but Bartholomew only laughed at his ready stance.
“I would never tire of this,” he said. “But I’ve made promises to the horde that I must keep. You’ve taken them out one too many times, I’m afraid. They have a bit of a score to settle, and I have generously offered to even their odds.”
Finn frowned at him. Evening the odds didn’t sound good.
“You’re new to being a Fallen, you’re weak, and now you’ve been properly tenderized,” Bartholomew continued. “It’s not every day that fresh Syx is on the menu. And no one is hungrier than a demon who’s forced to hide in a meat sack to evade capture from the deadliest enforcers on the planet.”
Bartholomew threw his hands high, and light burst forth at Finn’s face, blinding him as a new wave of noise pounded into the clearing. Finn whirled around, his eyes on fire. The men from the nightclub were back—and more on top of that—but here there were no shadows and throbbing music to distract anyone from the task at hand. A task which, apparently, was him.
Nevertheless, with his eyes dazed, Finn could rely only on his auxiliary sensory skills, which laid out each of the humans in front of him like a blueprint, their faces obscured while their very souls were revealed.
All of them had been possessed. He could see the demons straining inside the bodies of their mortal hosts, could feel their palpable need to burst through the flesh of the mortals and take physical form. He could sense their anguish, their hatred for what they had been forced to endure since the Syx had begun their work in this plane. And he could sense it all pressing toward him. Heavy upon him, seeking to crush, to destroy.
They wanted to send a message—to his team, to the archangel. And he was the canvas for that message.
“Leave enough of him for identification,” Bartholomew said from somewhere on his right. Then he was gone.
Finn turned, first to the right, then the left, trying to see what the demons saw, willing himself to keep standing. As he staggered to the side, he heard the voices starting up, calling out his name. The creatures within urged their humans forward, the whites of their eyes showing. Their faces contorted into the angry face of the mob. All around him, the sky was little more than a white blur, and Finn reeled as the first pipe came down upon his shoulders, hard enough to drop him to the ground again. He crouched, trying to protect his internal organs.
He couldn’t win this fight, he realized. Whatever Bartholomew had done to his eyes, his body as a newborn Fallen, it was too much. All Finn needed to do now was get away. Not fight, not kick back, just make a hole and go into it, through the swirling snow, through the biting wind, through the agony of the thudding torture that was filling his mind with numbing blindness.
But he wouldn’t get that chance, he didn’t think. He’d been stupid. Prideful. He hadn’t planned on another attack of the horde. He hadn’t expected to ever be weak.
He thought of everything he’d done to this point, everything he’d seen.
All of it felt lost to him. An empty pit in his stomach.
He’d been sent here on a madman’s course, to procure a list of souls the rogue Fallen wanted to execute—or worse. But what would the archangel do with that list? Would his treatment of the Dawn Children be any better?
A kernel of truth Finn would not be able to fully explore, unless he got away from the Possessed and their clubs.
Finn tasted blood in his mouth as another beam struck him square in the jaw, the screams of the demons morphing into the guttural howls he knew so much better. They piled on him anew, and they were too much…too much.
He crashed down to the ground as a screech of tires sounded in the street beyond the cemetery walls, a car thudding over stone barricades.
“Finn!” Dana screamed as a wave of searing-white heat sealed his eyes for good.