This was great. I wiggled farther into my seat and clasped my hands. It was like being told a very cool bedtime story that had no truth to it whatsoever.
“You’re going to do something,” he said to me, his expression severe. “I’m just not sure what. You’re going to gain some kind of power, or make some big decision that is going to change the course of human history. You are going to bring an army against the ruler of hell and put him down once and for all. And he is doing everything in his power to stop you.”
Oh, yeah, Garrett needed to be on medication. “But why would I want to do all of this? And how would I raise an army? I’m just not that good at organization. Will they expect to be fed?”
“I don’t know how you’re going to do it or what part you’ll actually play. I was shown only bits and pieces, and with all the information I got from the underworld, trying to separate fact from fiction, reality from dream, it was hard to sift through it. Thus all the research.” He lifted the notes for me to see.
“Where on Earth did you find all of this?”
“Like I said, I have interesting relatives. eBay helped, too. All I know is that grim reapers – by the way, they aren’t actually called that down there – are extremely powerful. Not like the angelic beings or the demons from the dimensions we know of. They have souls and can exist in this realm either in human form or as spirit. They are a completely different species. They’re like butterflies in a world of moths.
“But you,” he said, staring pointedly, “you are even more powerful than most of your kind. You were born with the ability to draw energy from anything around you, animate or inanimate. Your powers are like liquid, ever changing, forming and molding to the situation. They called you a word from their language that meant ‘malleable,’ ‘adaptive.’ From what I could tell, you were very special even in your world. And you were royalty of some kind.”
“Wow, you guys had quite the talk.” Reyes had told me about the royalty thing. The rest was new, though, and interesting enough. Still, I couldn’t help but question his sources. Maybe it was all a big con, but not the way Garrett thought. Maybe Satan wanted Garrett to believe he was lying.
“Like I said, it’s different there. It’s like you internalize the contents of a thirty-five-volume encyclopedia in the span of a few seconds.”
“I so could have used that in college.”
“Do you remember that letter you found in my apartment the other night?”
“Yes,” I said, ignoring the pang of jealousy that rushed out of Reyes. “The one you ripped out of my hand.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
He wasn’t. He really wasn’t.
“It was from a Dr. von Holstein from Harvard Universtiy. He’s been working on some translations for me.”
“Translations of what?” Cookie asked.
“And how did you find him?”
“He’s published quite a bit. I came across his name during a search for dead languages. And translated from some very old documents I found on an antiquarian book site. And, again, a couple were on eBay. Unfortunately, no one could read them, so I contacted Dr. von Holstein for help.”
“The cow guy can read ancient texts?”
“A hell of a lot better than I can. And once I told him my story, he helped me gather information and told me what to look for. What really interested us were the works that were reportedly written by a Byzantine prophet named Cleosarius.”
Cookie tsked. “That’s an unfortunate name.”
“Yeah, well, it’s probably really old,” I told her. “Though I knew a Cleo once. His wife killed him with a meat cleaver.”
She shuddered. “Was it still in his head when he came to you?”
“No, thank god. How creepy would that be?”
Garrett cleared his throat.
“Sorry,” we said in unison. Then I whispered to Cookie. “I’ll tell you more later. That woman was psychotic.”
“’Kay,” she whispered back.
Garrett waited to make sure he had the floor.
I blinked. Surveyed my toenails. Chewed on my lips.
“Unfortunately,” he continued after a millennium, “we can’t find much on Cleo. But historically, prophets couldn’t just go around spouting prophecies. They would be marked as heretics and executed. So many wrote their visions down in verse. Nostradamus wrote in quatrains. A monk from Tibet named Ajahn Sao Chah recorded his visions in poems even though he would never have been condemned for them. He said he got his visions from magical amulets. But this guy Cleosarius wrote in code.”
“Like a secret code?” I asked.
“Exactly. At first Dr. von Holstein thought the documents were written in Illyrian. No idea what that is, but they weren’t. The code threw him. Once we figured out the guy was Byzantine, the doctor knew what language he was using and could go from there. But take the fact that this Cleo guy wrote in both a dead language and code… Let’s just say Dr. von Holstein had his work cut out for him.”
Cookie sat fascinated. “So, he deciphered the code and translated the texts?”
“He’s gotten only bits and pieces so far.”
“And he did all of this in —” I raised my gaze in thought. “— in two months?”
“He’s been a little obsessed since I contacted him. He said it’s like finding the Holy Grail. It was always there in different historical texts, but no one ever made the connection between a dead language, prophecy, and code. The way I understand it, everyone just figured the guy was a lunatic and called it good.”
“Okay, what did he find out?”
“Just that all of Cleosarius’s prophecies revolve around one person. You.”
“Me?” I asked, suddenly super-duper interested.
Garrett nodded and tore through his notes. “I realized it when Lucifer referred to you as the royal daughter and once he called you the royal daughter of light. That’s what I based all of my searches on. The royal daughter of light. There are several texts that refer to you as either the royal daughter or as the daughter of light. But in his later writings, there are a couple that refer to you as just the daughter, and that’s where things get really interesting.”
I scooted to the edge of my seat. “Okay. I’m hooked. Why?”
“Those are the ones that refer to your unimaginable power and your army.”
“Okay, power’s good. I’m still not sure about the army thing, though.”
“Not just power,” Garrett said, growing excited. “Unimaginable power. According to his prophecies, you will recruit a warrior, a scholar, a prophet, gatekeeper, a warden, and a couple of other figures Dr. von Holstein is still working on.” He read from a letter. “Okay, here’s the part I was looking for. The ruler, or king, of evil will take the daughter’s father captive to lure her into a trap —”
“Wait. What would Satan want with my dad?”
“Maybe it’s not your father here on Earth, but your other dad.”
“Oh, right. The king from that other realm?” I asked Reyes, but Mr. Farrow was busy stewing in his own thoughts.
“And with the daughter’s army protecting her,” Garrett continued reading, “she will take on the ruler. There will be a great and terrible battle, but she will defeat him and peace will settle on the Earth for a thousand years.”
Reyes stood and walked to gaze out the window. I had no idea where his thoughts were. But I knew exactly where mine were. “Um, I don’t think that’s how it happens in the Bible,” I said, suddenly skeptical again. “And I don’t really want to fight Reyes’s dad. Can I just hand in my resignation now? Cross that off my to-do list?”
“But isn’t it amazing that this guy wrote hundreds of prophecies about you hundreds of years before you were even born?”
“So you believe. And there’s just one problem with your theory. Reyes wasn’t sent to kill me. He was sent to kidnap me, to take me back to hell with him. Right?” I looked at Reyes. He stood looking out over our illustrious parking lot. He
was so not cooperating.
A microsecond before I was going to continue my rant, Reyes spoke at last. “And how do you think I was supposed to manage that, Dutch?”
I crossed my legs. “What do you mean?”
He turned to me, his expression severe. “How do you think I was going to get you into another dimension?”
Garrett looked at me sadly. “He was sent to kill you, Charles. There was no other way.”
The oxygen evaporated from the room as the realization that Garrett was actually on to something dawned. I brought my knees to my chin.
Cookie’s fingertips rested on her mouth in a mixture of astonishment and regret.
Reyes turned back to the window. “My father gave me the same line of shit he gave Swopes. And like him, I doubted my father’s motives. Swopes is right. Why would he want back into heaven? It never made sense. Every word out of my father’s mouth is full of ulterior motives, but that was different. I always got the feeling he was hiding something. He created me for a reason. He needed to make sure I would make it through the void and onto this plane. And he had me wait. For centuries I waited in the dark until you were chosen.”
“But you saw me,” I said, my feelings hurt. I felt like a silly schoolgirl. “You saw me in another form and you fell in love.”
He bit down and lowered his head as though embarrassed. “I did.”
“Still,” I continued, memorizing the pattern on my sofa, “if you hadn’t, you would have killed me?”
After a moment, he leveled a hard gaze on me. “Most likely, yes. But I also didn’t trust my father. He wanted your physical body destroyed, and I didn’t know why. I cannot say what I would have done. Either way, you would still have been you. You would still have been the reaper incorporeally.”
I nodded, trying to swallow his admission. “So, all that crap about the key inserted into the lock —”
Garrett’s head snapped up. “You know about that?”
“Yes,” I said, suddenly tired, “one of the demons told me. Said that if Reyes and I got together in the flesh – if the key was inserted into the lock, so to speak – it would start a war or destroy the world or something else equally as horrid. You know, the usual doom and gloom. But let me tell you, the key has been inserted into the lock, and while the earth moved, as far as I know, we did not start a supernatural war.”
He looked down at his books in thought. “I can’t figure that one out, either. I remember hearing that same caveat. I think it’s part of the prophecy I was told about, but I just don’t know what it means.”
“And who told you about this prophecy?” I asked. “Lucifer wouldn’t have done that, not if it meant you would figure out he was lying to you.”
“The only one who could have. The only being with enough power to both send me to hell, then rip me back out again. And the way I see it, only one being has the power, the know-how, and the inclination to send me to hell and back.” He cast a hard stare at Reyes. “The son of Satan.”
I blinked in surprise, then scoffed. “Reyes? Swopes, that’s ridiculous. Why would Reyes do such a thing? More importantly, how would he do such a thing?” After a few seconds defending my man, I realized I was the only one in the immediate vicinity who was doing so. I turned to Reyes, to the frigid glimmer in his eyes as he fixed a steady gaze on Garrett.
“You’re smarter than you look,” he said.
Garrett’s expression turned deadly. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I saw an opportunity and I took it,” Reyes said. He was the picture of tranquillity on the outside, but his insides were churning, boiling with aggression and unspent emotion. “There is an instant,” he continued, “when a person dies and is brought back to life where his soul is caught between two dimensions. In that instant, I decided I could use you as a spy.”
While I sat dumbfounded, Garrett’s anger swelled. “Only I wasn’t in on the plan, jackass,” he said, his voice harsh with barely contained fury. He leaned forward, his teeth welded together. “You sent me to hell.”
“For all the good it did me. You didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know.”
Garrett’s fists were in Reyes’s shirt before I knew it. He lifted Reyes off his feet and attempted to throw him against the wall, but naturally Reyes got the upper hand in a matter of seconds. He turned the tables, threw Garrett back, shoved him against the wall, and jammed his forearm in Garrett’s throat.
Cookie jumped back as I had the opposite reaction. I rushed into the melee.
“Reyes, let him go!” I shouted, pulling on his arm.
But Reyes wanted Garrett to know how much effort he was not expending. He smiled as Garrett grunted and fought. I was worried he would actually crush his larynx.
“We get it,” I said to Reyes. “You win. Now, let him go.”
Cookie recoiled, her face ashen, her eyes wide.
Reyes released his hold and threw him to the floor. Garrett coughed and gasped for air, holding his throat. I bent to help him up and while I half expected him to shrug off my offer, but he put a hand on my shoulder and tried to stand. But he was heavier than I remembered and I struggled to get him to his feet. Reyes had no choice but to help me. Together we got him up, but Garrett started to stumble into me. Reyes caught him and in the next instant, Garrett proved just how good a con artist he was. He shoved Reyes back, pretending to be falling, drew a long dagger with a razor-sharp point, and buried it in Reyes’s chest.
A startled shock of electricity dumped adrenaline down my spine. I covered my mouth with both hands in utter disbelief as Garrett smiled and leaned into the man he’d just stabbed. It was Reyes’s turn to suffer. He tossed his head back and tried to breathe as Garrett buried the blade deeper, impaling him to the wall.
“I did learn a few things about how to bring your ass down.”
When Reyes grabbed the knife, Garrett pushed again and Reyes groaned in agony.
I didn’t understand. It was just a knife. It had a long thin blade, almost like a small sword, and it wasn’t in his heart but just under his right collarbone. He’d been shot with a .50-caliber bullet, something that would rip a normal man to shreds, and walked away. Why would such a slim blade paralyze him?
I ran to them and tried to pull the blade out, but Garrett pushed me back. I tripped and fell to the ground.
He locked his jaw, his expression full of hate, his anger palpable. “Do you have any idea what they did to me?”
Reyes couldn’t answer. His eyes rolled back, his hands braced on the wall beside him. Then he reached up and ripped at his shirt like it was burning him. He clawed at it, but once he tore it to shreds, I realized he wasn’t clawing at the shirt, but at himself. His tattoos, the crisp lines and patterns of the map through the gates of hell, began to crack. A bright orange light, like molten lava, began to seep through them.
I sat on the floor, transfixed. Why didn’t he just pull out the dagger? I didn’t understand.
Garrett braced both hands on the tip of the handle, one on top of the other, and pushed again. Reyes groaned through clenched teeth as the blade slid in even farther. As the fissures widened and a roiling fire began to leach out of them. And I knew what was about to happen. Reyes was about to die.
Was this it? Was this Rocket’s premonition?
It couldn’t be. I stood and prepared to charge forward. If I could just get Garrett off him, I could pull out the dagger. But how? He was tall and strong and —
A sharp thud sounded and we all stood there a stunned moment before Garrett looked back at me and crumpled to the ground. I glanced at Cookie. At the frying pan she had in both hands like a baseball bat.
Another grunt from Reyes had me lunging forward. I took hold of the dagger, braced a foot on the wall beside him, and pulled. The blade slid out easier than I thought it would, and I fell back with it.
“No killing friends in the house,” Cookie said, terrified and shaking. “I am so glad I didn’t have a son. Boys are so destructive an
d violent.”
Reyes gulped huge rations of air. The fissures that covered his torso darkened and closed until he was back. Garrett stumbled to his feet at the same time I gained my own balance, and the murderous glare on Reyes’s face was like a jump start to my nervous system. Before I could shout a warning, he took hold of Garrett’s head and twisted.
Time slowed as I watched Garrett’s head spin to the side, farther than it should. Then I was in front of them. I broke Reyes’s hold with my arms and caught Garrett to me, stopping the momentum of the motion by cradling his head to my chest.
Then I closed my eyes and let time snap back into place. It hit like a freight train crashing against my bones. Garrett and I tumbled to the ground with me holding his head so tight, I was afraid I would break his neck with the fall. Fortunately, he seemed okay. Just dazed, unsure of what had happened.
But Reyes’s anger still raged. He came back for more. Bound and determined to end Garrett’s life, he charged forward. I straddled Garrett and turned on him like an angry bear protecting her cub. And Cookie was right beside me, frying pan in hand, jaw set in determination.
“Stop,” I said to him, my tone low, even. “Now. This is not going to happen.”
He fought for control, then growled and turned away from us, shaking off the pain that had consumed him. I helped Garrett up.
He tested his neck and jaw before addressing Reyes again. “This knife will kill you. Not just your physical body. You. All of you. Your essence. Your incorporeal being. Your spirit. Everything.”
The fact that he’d come very close to dying just then struck me hard. I looked at Reyes, confused. “Why didn’t you just pull it out? What stopped you?”
“The dagger,” Garrett said.
He tossed it to Reyes, who caught it, then just as quickly dropped it with a hiss of pain. He shook his hand, then glowered at Garrett again.
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