Forgiven

by Gina Detwiler

  “I should have taken more.” Speer throws his head against the back of the couch with such violence it rocks backward. “I should have bled him dry. I should have chained him to the bed. I thought I had him, you know? He was so docile. He’d given up. I thought he was all mine.”

  “Darling, you’re cured. You’ve seen the test results yourself. The disease has not come back, no matter the side effects. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “No.” He speaks through clenched teeth. “No. It’s not enough now. I like being this—who I am now. I need it. I crave it. I can’t live without it.”

  Lucille’s eyes widen slightly and her head tilts. Her mouth turns down at the corners. “You can live without it,” she whispers. There is fear in her voice.

  “You don’t understand,” Speer says. “You’ve never understood. You’ve always been beautiful. You’ve always had men falling at your feet. It’s so easy for you. I can’t go back to what I was, don’t you understand that? All I’ve done, all I’ve built, was to become this. I’m not going back.”

  ***

  “I see something!”

  The spotter tells the chopper pilot to hover and shines the spotlight down on a clump of something that appears to be moving across the ice.

  “Bears, maybe” says the spotter. “No. Two-legged, upright. People in fur coats. Huge people. They’re headed for the mountain.”

  “Is the kid with them?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Don’t shoot them. Use the net gun.”

  The chopper drops low and follows the figures, who suddenly break apart and scatter. The spotter draws a net gun, aims, and shouts at the pilot.

  “Bank left!”

  The aircraft swerves and the spotter launches the net. One of the running figures falls, entangled.

  “Got one!”

  He launches again and another goes down. But the first one has already torn the net open and escaped.

  “Nets won’t hold ʼem. Switch to rifles!”

  “Don’t kill any of them but keep them away from the mountain,” the pilot orders.

  The three men in the back of the chopper fire a haze of bullets around the running Nephilim. Some are hit, but they are up in a flash and race away again.

  “It’s not working,” the spotter shouts. “Try the grenades.”

  The chopper banks sharply and the men launch three grenades at the mountain, over the heads of the Nephilim, who have already started to climb. They are blown backward, momentarily stunned. A few are on fire. They bellow in fear, and their cries echo hellishly against the rockface.

  “Now! Net ʼem!”

  The spotter launches more nets to trap a few of the stunned Nephilim. One of them rises before the hovering chopper and raises his arms in surrender.

  “Set down,” he says. “They’re surrendering.”

  The men jump to the ice and quickly surround the creatures huddled around the one with his arms up—Rael. The men gasp at the sight of this huge, outlandish being.

  “Let them go,” Rael shouts. “Take me.”

  “What the heck?” says one of them under his breath. “What are these things?”

  “Aliens,” says another.

  “Where is Jared Lorn?” the leader shouts.

  “If you let the others go, I will find him for you.”

  “How?”

  “Take me to Speer. I will speak only to him.”

  “He won’t fit in the chopper,” says the spotter. He tells the pilot to radio for another aircraft—the biggest one they can find.

  39: Miracle

  Grace

  He walks in the door. Just like that.

  No one heard the door open or close. Ripley never saw him on the surveillance feed. It’s like he materialized out of thin air.

  I stare at him, convinced he is a ghost. He’s so pale, his skin is almost as white as his hair. His eyes blaze blowtorch blue, the only color about him. He wears canvas pants and a coat over a gray t-shirt that reads, “Berserker Training.”

  I take in all these details in a frozen instant, unsure what to do or say.

  He speaks. “Can I come in?”

  I don’t remember walking or even running but am suddenly wrapped in his arms. His body is cool, even cold, perpetuating the ghost theory. But he’s real. Totally, completely real. I can see him, smell him, and touch him. I never want to let go.

  I pull myself away and beat my fists against his chest so hard he actually stumbles back.

  “Where the Fred Flintstone have you been?”

  “Jared!” Penny screams from across the room. She runs and leaps into his arms. Everyone else comes running, even Ripley, all talking at once, shouting, and crying. Ralph’s eyes are misty and he babbles like a child, unable to put two words together. Silas, who had been napping, comes out of his room and blinks. He wraps an arm round Jared’s neck as tears stream down his face. It’s some kind of crazy miracle.

  “So,” I say once all the hugging is over with. “You’d better start explaining right now.”

  He tells us some of his story, with me and Ralph and everyone else interrupting constantly to ask questions and make loud exclamations like Holden Caulfield and other literary favorites. Emilia practically spoon-feeds him hot chocolate and then beef stroganoff, which he tries without success to refuse. A few times, I think he’ll be sick. As he talks, he relaxes and a trace of color returns to his barren cheeks. He stops twitching at every random noise.

  Iceland. Norway. A remnant of thousand-year old Nephilim. Michael the archangel appearing as a human to travel with him, watch over him, rescue him. It’s too much to take in. And yet there is much he hasn’t explained. Why he went on that boat in the first place. As the first blush of joy at seeing him again starts to fade, I am suddenly overwhelmed by unanswered questions.

  “But do they really believe Speer will open the Abyss?” Penny asks.

  “They believe it,” Jared says.

  “It’s like the mother of all conspiracy theories.” Ripley is, of course, ecstatic. “I knew it was true all along.”

  This must be a dream. It can’t be real that he’s here, in the Hobbit Hole. Back from the dead…again. Shannon’s accusations hover at the corner of my mind. I need to know the truth. But at this moment, all I care about is that he’s back and he’s alive.

  “Uh, hey—” I turn to see Mace standing in the kitchen entrance, looking uncomfortable. “Don’t mean to interrupt but I should probably be going now.”

  “No,” says Penny.

  “What is he—?” Jared jumps up, his skin flaring. He rounds on Mace, who steps back with eyes wide, hands raised in surrender.

  “It’s okay,” Penny says. “He’s with us now.” She goes to Mace. “You aren’t leaving.”

  Jared looks at me, questioning. I coax him back to his seat and explain all about Mace. He relaxes, the glow dying away.

  “Look,” Mace says, “I appreciate all you folks have done for me, but it’s really time for me to go. I don’t want to take your room—”

  “No,” Jared says. “It’s…fine. I don’t sleep that much, anyway.”

  Mace lets out a breath he’s probably been holding for an hour.

  Later, after everyone else goes to bed, Jared and I sit together on the couch. I wrap myself around him, trying to touch every part of him at once. He holds me like he’s holding a life belt in the middle of a raging ocean. We don’t speak for a long time. So much remains unsaid between us.

  “I missed you,” he says.

  “Duh.” I sound like I’m sixteen again, meeting him for the first time, when I was overwhelmed by his beauty, his presence, and his power over my body and my soul. Yet there is something irrevocably different about him—like he has shed some of his angel-ness. He seems depleted, finite. Human.

  “How did you get back here so fast?” I ask. “Michael did some kind of angel-thing?”

  “I guess so.” He breathes and his chest moves against mine. “I’m sorry, Gra
ce. For leaving you. For not…believing.”

  “I forgive you. Well, I will forgive you, eventually. How’s that?”

  “Good enough.”

  I kiss him. He doesn’t pull away. This, at least, hasn’t changed.

  “I need to know something.” I sit up to put space between us. “Shannon told me you were working with Speer, that you’d partnered with him to make millions of dollars selling your DNA. She said you…wanted to do it, that you signed a contract.”

  Jared averts his eyes. “I did agree to it. They tied me up, they drugged me…but that’s no excuse. At the time, I didn’t think I had a choice. I thought it was my destiny.”

  “Your destiny?”

  “It’s who I am. I couldn’t escape it.”

  “And that’s why you went to the Abyss.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Darwin Speer is really a Nephilim now.”

  He closes his eyes, unable to answer.

  I tell him about Dana Martinez and my suspicions regarding her ‘suicide.’ He leans forward and buries his face in his hands. His body trembles and I hear a muffled sob. It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard.

  “Once he gets a taste for it—” He seems to want to shake the thought away. “I should have died. Why didn’t I die? Why did Michael—”

  “Maybe you aren’t as forsaken as you thought.” I push a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Maybe God has a plan even for you.”

  “What can I do? Only damage. Anyone who comes near me ends up dead.”

  “Hey, I’m still here. Not dead yet.” I grin.

  He doesn’t laugh.

  “Jared…there’s more.”

  He raises his head to look at me. I tell him about the attack on the Lighthouse. His eyes widen, his skin flickers.

  “That’s why we’re living here. The loft is still a crime scene.” Before he can speak, I launch into our plan to destroy Torega’s shrine. “We think if we destroy the shrine, he’ll believe he’s lost his protection and leave town, close up shop. Apparently it’s happened before. But we don’t know where the shrine is.”

  “How will you find it?”

  I tell him, and he shakes his head. “Ralph agreed to this?”

  “Not exactly, but he knows he can’t stop me. I’m twenty-one and a legal adult. Besides, he knows there’s no other way. But don’t worry. I have the bracelet.” I hold up my wrist, still encircled by the tracker bracelet Ralph gave me two years ago. “I still can’t figure out how to get it off. Anyway, no matter where they take me, Ripley will be able to find me. The plan is foolproof.”

  “When is this happening?”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yeah.”

  His head drops back. “That’s what he meant.”

  “Who?”

  “Michael. This is why he sent me home.”

  I sigh and put a hand on the side of his face. “I’m glad he did.”

  40: Start Again

  Jared

  I want to rest, talk more with Grace, and get everything off my chest—to unburden my soul about the journey I’ve taken. But I don’t have time to do that. The next morning, she and Silas go to the police station for a briefing and final instructions about the sting operation they have planned. I want to go with them, but she won’t let me.

  Penny goes to church to pray. She’s found an old church in the Broadway district called The Church of the Transformation. It’s been abandoned, as so many churches in this city have been, but a small group of former parishioners continue to go there to pray. Mace goes with her. It’s weird seeing him all cleaned up and filled out, thanks to Emilia’s beef stroganoff, no doubt. And his genuine affection for Penny, a girl he almost killed, is mind-boggling. God does work in mysterious ways.

  With Ripley in the Lair and Emilia in the kitchen, I decide to talk to Ralph. The Hobbit Hole isn’t likely to be this quiet again.

  He reads in his favorite chair, as usual, a cup of tea on the table beside him. I sit opposite him. He looks at me, closes his book, and takes off his glasses.

  “What’s up?” He picks up his teacup and takes a sip. “Is everything okay?”

  “I had this dream. In Iceland.”

  “Oh?” Ralph’s eyebrows wiggle a little. “Tell me about it.”

  I tell him about the ritual, the fire and the dancing and the chanting of the word “babble.” “Since then, I’ve had more memories. In one of them, there was a woman wearing a red cloak, and her skin was red too. She was riding—a goat.”

  “A goat?”

  “It looked like it was covered in blood. Or maybe it was the firelight. I’m not sure.”

  “Was the woman in red holding anything?”

  “A cup. Like a chalice.”

  Ralph sets down his tea. “It could be a reference to Revelation 17, when the Scarlet Woman, sometimes called the Whore of Babylon, appears riding a horned beast.”

  “Why would I dream this?”

  “Jared…what happened before the ritual began. Do you remember?”

  I think back to being inside the house and following the noises to the balcony. And then I recall something else.

  “Powder.” I frown at the memory. “White powder. Someone…or something…blew it in my face.”

  “I see.” Ralph is silent a moment. When he speaks, his voice is gentle yet tinged with doom. “Jared, I don’t believe that what you experienced was a dream.”

  My stomach tightens like I’ve been punched. This is what I feared.

  “The powder could have been Burandanga, better known as Devil’s Breath. A potent hallucinogenic drug. It renders a person incapacitated, although still conscious, and highly suggestible. It’s popular with street thugs, who use it to get their victims to hand over their valuables. It also causes amnesia, so the victims rarely remember what happened to them. Did you see who blew the powder in your face?”

  “It was a woman. Maybe Lucille.”

  “You’re sure it was a woman?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t Speer, that I know. But I don’t get it. What was this ritual about? What did it have to do with me?”

  Ralph leans back in his chair. I don’t like the expression on his face.

  “It sounds like the occult religion Thelema, once very fashionable among the intellectual elites. The purpose is to unite the woman they call Babalon—that was most likely the word babble that you heard—with the Great Beast or Dragon in order to bring about the birth of a so-called Moonchild. In other words, the Antichrist.”

  “Unite?” I said. “You mean…”

  “Think hard, Jared. Who was she? The woman with the goat? Was it Lucille?”

  I shake my head as if I can loosen the memories. I see her clearly in my mind—the red skin, the red lips, the red hood, and the shadowed eyes. But suddenly, there is a new detail, a strand of hair plastered to her cheek. Red hair, not dark like Lucille’s.

  The blood drains from my face and pools in my throat.

  “It was Shannon Snow.”

  ***

  Ralph is too stunned to say anything. I’m glad, because I can barely think anymore. I want to go to sleep and wake up to find that none of this really happened.

  “How is it possible?” I whisper. “She couldn’t have been there. She’d left Iceland the day before.”

  “Are you sure of that? Did you see her leave?”

  “No.”

  “What day was that?”

  “I don’t remember. The day I sent that email to you.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember now. But it was a day or two later that Shannon called Grace and asked to meet with her. So perhaps she didn’t leave Iceland right away, after all.”

  A coldness seeps into my bones. “Why would she do this? We got rid of Lilith—”

  “This is not Lilith we’re dealing with. This is, I believe, the Whore of Babylon. A far worse demon. Our getting rid of Lilith merely paved the way for this one. Or maybe it was there all the time, waiting
for Lilith to leave so it could take over. It might even have helped us push Lilith out.”

  I lean back on the sofa, my hands over my face. “Okay, so they used me for their ritual. Shannon and Lucille. But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a stupid, occult ritual that has no power—”

  “Jared.”

  I look at him.

  Ralph takes a long moment before speaking again. “She’s pregnant.”

  The word takes a long time to penetrate my brain.

  “Who?”

  “Shannon.”

  Cords of grief wrap around my chest and tighten so I can’t breathe. This is my worst nightmare. My ruination.

  “We can’t tell Grace about this,” I say, when finally I am able to speak at all.

  Ralph shakes his head. “You must tell her, Jared. Not only for her sake, but for yours.”

  “I can’t do that. It will destroy her. It will destroy…everything. Besides, she has enough to deal with right now.”

  “Do you prefer to live a lie? There is no future in that.”

  “Ralph, please. Promise me you won’t tell her. What does it matter anyway? The woman has a husband. He’s most likely the father, isn’t he?”

  He sighs, and in that moment, he seems to age ten years. “Yes, it’s certainly possible. I won’t tell her. But you are making a mistake.”

  “I’ve already made so many. One more will not make that much difference.”

  41: Fighting Furies

  Grace

  It’s cold the day I drive to Silo City. I wear a heavy green cardigan and red boots, but I’m still freezing. I’ve replaced my angel necklace with a small, black, heart-shaped pendant the cops gave me. It contains a microphone and recorder so the detective in charge, Don Beranski, can hear what’s going on—assuming they can get the radio van close enough. Beranski tells me not to lose it, because he borrowed it from a precinct in Queens and it cost a fortune. Under the circumstances, I find that hilarious.

  I insist that Jared be allowed in the surveillance van. Beranski is against it, but he goes along because I won’t back down and neither will Jared. I need to know that he is nearby if something goes wrong.

  Silo City looks deserted, except I know it isn’t. Cops in unmarked cars are parked all around the entrance and along the road. If Torega comes for me, they plan to follow him back to his “lair” where we assume the shrine is located. And a whole big stash of drugs, we hope.