St. Vincent Charity Hospital
Cleveland, Ohio
9:10 a.m., Dec. 25
Dana opened her eyes with a painful flicker, then screwed them shut, the bright light harsh against her eyes. She drew in a rough, crackling breath and gagged, her mouth viciously dry.
She reached up to touch it, startled when her hand felt heavy, unwieldy. What…what was wrong with her hands?
“I wouldn’t do that, Dana,” The voice brushed over her softly, but she struggled against it, its lulling tones forcing her back into the numbing sleep that could not happen. Not now, not when she had to escape—escape.
“Hush, Dana,” Franks said with greater urgency. “Don’t make them think they need to put you under again. The sooner you can get yourself together, the sooner we can get out of here.”
She stilled, suddenly aware of more than the heaviness in her hands. They were wrapped in bulky bandages, and the entire room smelled like sunburned antiseptic. But she was here. She was…safe.
Although her mind couldn’t quite acknowledge that reality, her eyes began to sting, the salt of her tears apparently abrading whatever was left of the soft tissue around her lids. She opened her eyes, her stomach pitching a bit as she heard the clicking noise of her lids lifting over her corneas.
Her eyes ached with the brightness of the room, the affront of Father Franks standing hunched over her bed, his hands shaking as he smoothed the hair out of her face with gentle hands. She felt her lips tighten into a moderately painful smile. She could practically feel her pupils dilating against the bright sunlight, and she tried to speak, her voice rough and raspy as her lips stung with the movement. “Hi,” she managed.
“Hello, my dear, sweet child,” Father Franks said softly, his scowl deepening the lines on his face that she’d never really seen before. She’d never considered him old before. She’d never considered him anything but—there. Solid, secure, protected by God. But his dark eyes were sunken as he watched her, tears leaking out at the corners. “We didn’t know when you would be back with us. Thank you for beating our expectations.”
With shaking hands, he lifted a water bottle toward her face, angling the straw between her lips. She drank as deeply as she could, but swallowing was more difficult than she had realized, and she winced as he dabbed a fine linen handkerchief at her mouth. Her skin felt tight, stretched too thin over her face, and her hands…
She stared down in horror at the mummified bandages encasing her fingers. “Where am I?” she asked. She remained blessedly numb, but all the information her fear was holding off pressed against her, clamoring to be known. “What happened to me?”
“St. Vincent’s,” Father Franks said. “Your mother is safe. She’s heavily sedated and will be for days, I’m afraid, but she’s doing well.” He cleared his throat. “And you were admitted with burns to your hands, and some heat damage to your skin, nothing more. You started out…horribly burned. Your clothes disintegrated, nothing but a gold cuff on you. Which I have.”
He shuddered, clenching and unclenching his own hands. “By the time we brought you here, however, you were remarkably recovered. We were able to say it was a boiler accident.”
“The church?”
“There was nothing,” Franks said, though she couldn’t really follow what he was saying. “No fire, no pit, no nothing that you and I both saw with our own eyes. It was as if last night never happened. None of the congregation reported seeing anything but a particularly beautiful starlit sky.” He drew in a heavy breath. “The Possessed and demons—all of them disappeared the moment the fire vanished. Just…poof. Bartholomew too. Lester, I’m afraid, isn’t doing so well.”
She frowned at him, his words still an incomprehensible cascade. “Lester?”
And it all came rushing back.
She jolted upright in her bed, her eyes going wild as the machines around her went crazy and her arms strained against the tubes keeping her in place.
“What is this shit?” she growled.
“Pain medication only, Dana. Your hands were badly burned, but they’re healing. Dammit, Dana, they’re going to come—”
A nurse slammed into the room. “What’s going on in here?”
“Call the doctor, Nurse Tilly,” Franks said. “It appears our patient is awake.”
“Miss Griffin, you can’t be out of bed, you’ll hurt yourself—stop!”
Dana threw her legs over the bed, her head spinning. She lost the rest of the conversation between Franks and the nurse, the unendurable need to retch overcoming her. She coughed heavily but didn’t throw up, though she spit into her hand, her mind slewing sideways at the thick, wet sludge that came out of her mouth, as if she’d directly inhaled exhaust fumes for the past three days straight.
“Jesus,” she muttered, grabbing a towel off the table before anyone else could see it. Her body had started shaking uncontrollably, the combination of the cool refrigerated air on her skin and her own adrenaline jacking her recovery process into overdrive. She looked down at herself even as Franks hustled the nurse out of the room, demanding for a Dr. Milton to be sent for right away even as the woman called for orderlies to come to the room.
She looked…remarkably whole, she thought.
Her hands were bandaged heavily, the thick gauze covered with loose gloves of some breathable fabric, giving her a seal hard enough to tap through. She peeked under one of the edges of the fabric and shuddered. Not quite healed yet.
She closed her eyes with an audible click and stiffened.
Eyelids weren’t supposed to click.
Dana stood and unsteadily moved over to the bathroom, her feet unnaturally heavy on the cold floor. She shuffled into the bathroom, looking down at her bandaged hands for a moment until she glanced up at her face.
Her own face stared back at her, the skin red and tight, but intact. Only her eyes had changed. They…they almost seemed to glow, a little.
Dana gripped the sides of the sink, her body giving over to tremors as the memories she’d been holding off crashed down around her. The fall into the hellish pit, the farther fall into what could have been heaven but, so much more likely, was the den of evil that spelled the end of all mankind. Finn, dropping beside her, plunging to her rescue, pulling her back and pushing her up, sacrificing everything he had to save her, to make her live. He would want her to be strong. She knew it, even as her arms buckled over the cold porcelain sink, as tears tracked down over skin that was far too tight for comfort, but at least not covered in gauze.
But she didn’t want to be strong.
She was here, and he was gone.
All she could recall was that she had reached for him, begging for him to look up, though his face and body were a nightmarish fright and his eyes were harsh with a light that seemed to burn from within him. He was still Finn, and she couldn’t imagine life without him.
She couldn’t imagine life at all.
She pulled away from the sink, her hand going up to touch the skin around her eyes. They looked out at her from the mirror, haunted. Angrily, she turned her arm over, her heavily bandaged hand jabbing at the skin of her right arm. It was unbroken. Whatever doctor Franks had allowed to treat her, they hadn’t taken the chip. The Children were safe, and now they could be found again.
If the list hadn’t melted inside her.
She shook her head, turning away from the sink. Max would know what to—
She stopped cold. “Max,” she murmured, and her fear mounted inside her again. She came out of the bathroom even as Franks came back in.
“I’ve brought you a change of clothes, Dana,” he said. “You’ll be released after another review of your progress, and you can visit your mother. She won’t be going home yet, but you won’t have to spend Christmas here.”
“Where’s Max?” she demanded, and Franks blanched.
“We haven’t heard from him,” he said. “But that could simply mean that he’s—”
“No, he’d die before he didn’t check in,” Dana said, wincing at her unintentional meaning. “We have to find him, Father. He’s out there. I have to go.” She looked at her hands, and the specter of her last visit to the hospital overtook her. “What did they do to me?” she demanded, her voice cracking.
“Nothing. You’re safe.” Father Franks grasped her shoulders, holding her tight. “Your hands were damaged because, apparently, you held on to the equivalent of a live wire. It’s going to take time for those to heal, more time than the rest of you. Your face is already nearly healed and we left your eyes,” he swallowed, “untreated, to keep the curious from lifting your bandages before we can get you the hell out of here.”
She looked at him, not comprehending. “You let them touch me?”
“Yes, I let them touch you. My God, Dana if you had any idea what you looked like when you crawled back over the edge of the roof. By the time I reached you, there was no one left, Possessed or otherwise, but the entire place looked like a bomb had gone off on it, the church was surrounded by fire, and then—” He shook his head. “And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. It was all back to normal. You and your mother—”
“Lester,” Dana cut him off. “What happened to him?”
Father Franks sighed heavily. “He was admitted as well,” he said hesitantly. “The psych ward, for the moment. They say it’s only precautionary, but… I don’t know how far he’s gone.”
“Pretty damn far, Father,” Dana said coldly. The ache in her chest yawned wide again, her body shaking. “I want out of here.” She turned away from Franks’s kind eyes, staring blindly at the side of the room. “I just want…” She blinked. “What the hell is that?”
An enormous planter of poinsettias festooned the side table, threatening to collapse it. Franks sighed behind her. “I know, Dana. I know. They were delivered this morning,” he said, and she turned back to him sharply, her heart swelling at the emotion in his voice. “No name, no card.”
Dad.
“But…how?’
The priest shook his head, as mystified as she was, though his eyes were overbright, tears threatening at the edges. “That…I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. We need to get you someplace more private, however. The police don’t know you’re here yet, but that’s not going to last for long.”
Dana struggled to focus, not to lose herself in the cocoon of despair. Father Franks was right. She had work to do. They all did. She tapped her wrist with a heavily bandaged hand. “This is a chip full of data we need to dig out of me, like right now. How are we going to do that?” she asked. She scowled down at her forearm, palpating the skin. There was definitely still something there.
“One thing at a time.” Franks looked up as the door opened, looking no doubt at the doctor who was going to check her hands.
“It’s about damned time,” Franks said, but Dana didn’t turn around.
“I don’t want him touching me,” she said, not bothering to look up.
She heard another deep sigh—not Franks, this time. “I am sorry, Dana,” Finn whispered in a rasping voice, and she froze. “I never wanted you to be harmed.”
“Finn!” Dana’s head came up, and she spun around, careening into Finn as he met her halfway, her arms wrapping around him despite the awkward bandages, though his skin also felt too warm beneath her touch. But the pain was nothing against the roar of emotions welling up inside her, racking her with sobs. She couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t be here.
“It’s all right, Dana, you’ll be all right. I tried to protect you, tried to—but there was so much—”
“You’re here!” she gasped, pulling back from him, trying to read his eyes. They glowed an almost incandescent blue. “But, how? I thought you couldn’t stay. I thought you wouldn’t—”
“I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.” Finn nodded, giving her a rueful smile that healed her more than any doctor could. “But then I met you.”
“I lost your note to me,” she said, miserable with the sudden memory. “It—it burned. Everything burned, I couldn’t save it.”
He frowned at her. “My note?” he asked, then his eyes widened. “Oh, the—”
“Coming through, coming through!”
The clatter in the hallway had them both turning, and Dana blinked, straightening in alarm as a woman of truly Amazonian proportions strode into the room. She was easily six foot four, dressed in a starched white nurse’s uniform straight out of the 1950s, complete with crisp white cap over her dark brown bobbed hair. The uniform fit the woman’s impressive proportions as if it’d been custom-tailored for her, down to the white stockings and—
Dana stared. Did they make platform nursing clogs?
The nurse tapped the oversized clipboard she held as another woman rolled a wheelchair in. The second female was also tall, though nowhere near as tall as the nurse, and dressed in the more standard white medical coat and black slacks. She had keen eyes, a face that betrayed no secrets, and her light brown hair was cut short and businesslike. And given the disapproving frown on her face, she looked like she meant business too.
“Good morning, Dana,” she said, her gaze flicking to Dana’s hands, then her position against Finn. “I’m Dr. Sells. You should be in bed.”
Father Franks stepped forward. “I’m sorry, when were you assigned? I’ve met Dana’s doctors.”
The woman turned to him, while the statuesque nurse tapped her clipboard. “Father Franks, Catholic priest, exorcist. Not a Dawn Child, not a Connected in the traditional sense, but definitely somebody to pay attention to going forward, especially now that we’ve gone all Day of the Demon,” she said. “Props to you, Padre. You rocked it in the cemetery, from all accounts.”
Dana’s eyes popped wide as Franks turned on the woman. “Excuse me?”
“Sorry, I know introductions are in order, but we don’t have a lot of time.” She held out her hand. “Nikki Dawes. An absolute pleasure. Really. I’m a huge fan.”
The priest reached out, and Nikki pumped his hand enthusiastically, her grin going broader. “Yup, definitely something going on we need to study more, Padre.” She turned to the doctor. “This is Dr. Margaret Sells. She has a clinic for people whose needs go a little beyond your typical Doc in a Box. And we should probably be getting you to said clinic, stat, Dana. Especially since you’ve apparently got Genealogy.com, the Dawn Children edition, stuck in your arm.”
Sells strode forward to Dana, gently peeled her left hand away from where she held Finn in an ungainly hug. “Have you scanned it since last night? Is the data intact?”
A pang of fear arrowed through Dana. “I haven’t,” she said. “It may be destroyed.”
“If it is, we’ll recover it. We’re good at that,” Sells said reassuringly. She pointed to the wheelchair. “But we do need to get you someplace you can heal more satisfactorily.”
“But who—who are you?”
“They’re friends,” Finn answered for Sells, and Dana looked up at him. He smiled at her, his expression bemused, as if he was still surprised to be standing in the same room with her. She understood the feeling. “I work with them in Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas?” Father Franks bleated. “I can’t possibly—”
“We cleared it with your bishop already, Daddy-o,” Nikki chimed in. She winked as he stared at her. “Said you bowed out of the service last night due to heart trouble. We may have exaggerated your health concerns the tiniest bit, but you’ve got the clearance to take some R&R for as long as you need it. Apparently, someone in charge thinks you work way too hard as it is. But we had a nice long conversation regarding your exorcism activities, and trust me. Given the givens, we’re all ears about that topic these days.”
“I…” Father Franks stared at Nikki, clearly flummoxed. “I don’t know what to say.”
Finn chuckled. “Nikki has that effect on people.”
Dr. Sells continued briskly. “We’ve set up a suite of rooms in my clinic to ensure your privacy and allow us to scan and extract the chip while preserving its data. We’ve taken the liberty of transporting your vice president of cybersecurity—”
Dana blinked. “My what?”
Nikki scanned her clipboard. “Max Garrett?” she said, and Dana hiccupped a laugh. Max had given himself a promotion. Which was fine by her. He deserved a corner office for all he’d done this week.
Sells continued. “He’s on his way to Las Vegas now, and we’re preparing a tech room to his specifications to set up a new headquarters for the Dawn Children. They were…exacting.”
“I bet they were.” Dana snorted. Still, relief surged through her. Max is okay.
“So all that’s left is you,” Sells said, not unkindly. “I understand you’ve been through a very challenging twenty-four hours, but we should be going before our arrangements pick up any additional notice.”
“Ah, Dr. Sells?” Another nurse dressed in a far more traditional attire appeared at the door. She blinked at Nikki a moment before Sells turned to her. “We need some signatures, and you’ll be cleared.”
Sells nodded curtly and moved toward the door, and Dana pointed at the chair with one of her bandaged mitts. “I don’t need that. My legs aren’t burned.” She frowned down at herself. “Though…shouldn’t they be?”
But they weren’t. The skin beneath her hospital gown was pink and smooth…a little too pink and smooth, come to think of it. “Well, that whole healing thing is getting faster all the time, I guess.”
Nikki snorted. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy getting to know you too, sugar buns. But let me go park this wheelchair first. Be back in a jiff. Pops, mind coming with? So, so many questions I want to ask you.”
Franks flinched in surprise as he realized Nikki was addressing him, then shook his head, flushing with embarrassment. He was clearly as overwhelmed as Dana was. “Of course…of course,” he said, hurrying out after Nikki.
When they left, Dana stared at the door, then up at Finn.
“What exactly is happening, Finn?” she asked.
“Too much at once, I can tell you that.” Finn sighed. “But the short version of the story is…you have an entire group of people who want to help you, Dana. To support you and others like you, to help you do what you were born to do. To be your family.”
“Family,” Dana echoed, her heart thudding. She swallowed. “And what about you?”
Finn turned her toward him, and the emotion shining in his eyes was almost more than she could bear.
“I had the chance to leave you, to return to a place I’d wanted so long, the desire had been etched into my bones. It was my right to return. I’d passed the test. I’d…I’d been forgiven.” He smiled lopsidedly. “I even forgave myself, I guess.”
“But you didn’t go. Something happened…you’re here,” she whispered, and then nearly choked on a sob as a tear slid down Finn’s cheek.
“I’m here. Because once my eyes were truly open, once I understood, I knew my real purpose in this universe wasn’t high above this earth, as glorious and as beautiful and as magical as that realm really and truly is.”
“It’s not?”
He shook his head. “Some people spend their whole lives not knowing what they were meant to do. As it turns out, it only took me six thousand years and twenty-four hours to learn that my place was here. With you. Teaching you and your kind, helping you learn your true potential. Watching you grow. And…” He swallowed, and now Dana could feel her own tears falling, trickling down her too-smooth face. “And being your family, Dana. Through storm and fire and pain and…and one day, if you’re willing, love.”
“Finn—” she began, but her throat closed up, the words too much for her to say.
“My beautiful, brightest star of hope,” Finn whispered. He opened up his arms, and she went into them, the tears falling faster as he wrapped his arms around her. “That note I left you was all I thought I could offer you, the barest pinpoint of light in a universe I longed to open for your eyes. But now…everything’s changed.”
Dana exhaled a long, shuddering breath, nodding against him. “It’s changed,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was a…a promise, she thought. Almost a benediction.
Finn brushed a light kiss over her hair. “Tomorrow, the world will be waiting for us. The archangel, the Syx, the Children. Today, I simply want to hold you.” He rested his cheek gently against her head, still holding her tight. “And to convince you that for now, forever and always, a lifetime without end, I will never let you go.”
Dana closed her eyes, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, truly believed.