Dedication
To the Most High,
To our loved ones,
And to those who fanned the flames and kept the faith.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Prologue
1: First Things
2: Physician, Heal Thyself
3: Someone to Devour
4: Unclean Spirits
5: False Signs
6: One to Watch and One to Pray and Two to Bear My Soul Away
7: The Spirit and the Water and the Blood
8: Watchmen
9: Signs and Wonders
10: Birth to Sin
11: Intentions of the Heart
12: Into the Lion’s Den
13: Bought with a Price
14: Offer the Other Cheek
15: Fear No Evil
16: That Any Should Perish
17: This Present Darkness
18: Bold as a Lion
19: Bright as Crystal
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
About the Publisher
Map
Prologue
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
—Psalm 42
“Spare some change for a veteran?”
His words were empty, barely loud enough to be heard over the trains thundering on the elevated rail overhead. Some days, Lenny didn’t know why he bothered. No one listened. Most of them didn’t even look. They just walked by at top speed with their eyes locked on their phones, the sidewalk, the sky—anywhere but the homeless man huddled in his nest of newspapers, rattling his paper cup.
Lenny didn’t blame them. He couldn’t stand the sight of himself, either. Or, at least, he couldn’t when he was there. Present. Sometimes he drifted away, lost into memories that felt more real than the late November cold. When that happened, he didn’t care about anything. This afternoon, though, he was most definitely here. Here and hungry, so he kept at it, repeating the words and rattling his cup at every person who passed.
“Spare some change for a veteran?” Rattle rattle.
More shoes walking by. No one stopping. No one caring. Sure, they were cold, too. But theirs was a temporary inconvenience. For him, this was as real as it got, and it was about to get worse. The sun was getting low. He needed to head for a shelter—November nights in Chicago were no joke—but he couldn’t go in with nothing, so he decided to push, raising his raspy voice over the roar of the trains in the growing evening cold.
“Spare some change for a veteran!” Rattle rattle. “Spare some change for . . .”
His voice faded. Someone had stopped, a young black man in a heavy, black coat with the shiniest shoes Lenny had ever seen. That was a good sign. Stopping at all was a good sign, but shiny shoes meant money, so Lenny rattled his cup again, giving the smart-looking stranger a snaggletoothed smile. “Spare some change for a veteran, sir?”
“I can do better than that,” the man said, reaching into his pocket to draw out a crisp, folded bill. “What’s your name?”
“Lenny,” the homeless man replied promptly, reaching eagerly for the bill. He so rarely got paper money, but when he did, it was usually good. A five, maybe even a ten. Enough for a hot dinner, and maybe coffee tomorrow, too. But when his fingers closed around the money, the man with the shiny shoes didn’t let go.
“Tell me, Lenny,” he said, crouching down so they were at eye level. “Are you a God-fearing man?”
Lenny knew how this went, and he nodded rapidly. “Go to church every week.”
The man arched a skeptical eyebrow, but Lenny wasn’t lying. He hadn’t believed in God since the war, but when you were homeless you spent a lot of time in churches because they were open, they were warm, and that’s where the food was. Unfortunately, technical truth didn’t look like it was going to earn him dinner tonight.
“Is that so?” the young man said, gripping the offered money tighter than ever. “Show me. Quote me some scripture, and the money’s yours.”
Lenny didn’t know a word of scripture, but he tried anyway, reciting some phrases he’d seen typed on the church bulletins he took for fire kindling. It must not have been good enough, because the man snatched the bill right back out of his hands, making Lenny cry out. “Come on, man,” he begged, watching the man pocket the money again with loss in his eyes. “Have a heart. I’m just trying to survive.”
“Really?” the man said. “Just survive?”
Lenny nodded. “Ain’t we all?”
For some reason, this made the man smile. “And what if I were to offer you something better?” he asked, reaching his gloved hand inside his heavy winter coat to pull out a small glass bottle filled with a liquid so bright green, it almost seemed to glow in the dim light. “Something new?”
Lenny recoiled at once, swearing to himself. Just his luck. The one bite he got tonight, and it was a pusher. Unlike a lot of people he’d met on the street, though, Lenny didn’t truck with drugs. He’d had enough chemicals sprayed on him in ’Nam to last five lifetimes.
“Nah, man,” he said, scooting backwards farther into the shelter of the bridge. “I don’t touch that stuff.”
“It’s free,” the man said, tossing the green vial casually in his hand. “Try it.”
The first hit was always free. “Nah,” Lenny said again, backing away. “I’m clean, man. I don’t do that.”
Even if he had been a druggie, he wouldn’t have touched the stuff in the man’s hand. Lenny had never seen anything like the green liquid in the bottle, but it reeked of rotten eggs. Yet another reason to get out of here quick, before things got weirder. But as Lenny pushed himself off the pavement to walk away, the man in black grabbed his arm.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” the stranger said softly. “That wasn’t a request.”
Lenny swore and yanked, trying in vain to escape. It should have been easy. He’d been a soldier once, and still made a point to keep himself in decent shape, despite his life on the street. But the man in black was freakishly strong. No matter what Lenny did, the stranger moved him as easily as he’d move a child, letting go of his arm to grab Lenny by the jaw. He started to squeeze then, forcing Lenny’s mouth open with one hand as he popped the lid off the vial with the other. Eyes wide, Lenny lashed out with his feet and fists, but the man just seemed to absorb the blows as if they were nothing as he poured the green substance down Lenny’s throat.
It tasted as vile as it smelled, and Lenny tried to spit it up, but it was as if the liquid was climbing down his throat. Worse, it hurt. The burn was so bad that Lenny couldn’t even scream. His body had clamped up the moment the green crap touched his tongue. He didn’t even feel the sidewalk when he fell backwards, his body convulsing in the alley as the burning liquid rolled down his cheeks and sank into his skin. He was still fighting to take a breath when he heard the man whisper in his ear.
“Thank you for your service.”
Lenny’s eyes bugged open, but he couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but lie there and watch the stranger’s shiny shoes as they walked away, vanishing into the crowd of oblivious evening commuters pouring down the stairs from the elevated train station across the street.
No one caring at all.
1
First Things
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain;
the first things have passed away.
&
nbsp; —Revelation 21:4
Lauryn didn’t know it was possible for a cell phone ring to sound furious until hers went off, screaming like a banshee through the heavy fabric of her winter coat. She grabbed it as fast as she could, smiling apologetically at her clearly annoyed fellow commuters cramming the Chicago L car before turning to the window and whispering into the receiver, “Not now.”
“Yes, now!” Naree yelled on the other end, her normally faint Korean accent thick with righteous anger. “Are you out of your mind?”
Lauryn winced and hunched farther into the cold train window, meeting the annoyed gaze of her own exhausted, brown-eyed reflection as she adopted her calmest roommate-soothing voice. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“Do you know how many asses I had to kiss to get you that interview? I sold you to the head of HR like you were the second coming! That job was as good as yours. All you had to do was show up and say yes. So why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t want to work there!” Lauryn snapped, all attempts at calm abandoned. “I’m grateful you did this for me, Naree, I really am. But as I told you last week, yesterday, and this morning: I don’t want to work at a private hospital in the suburbs!”
“Why not?” Naree demanded. “The money—”
“It’s not about the money,” Lauryn said, pinching the bridge of her nose to head off the stress headache she could already feel building. “I could get a better-paying job anywhere, but I like working at Mercy.”
“Don’t feed me that martyr crap,” her friend growled. “No one likes working at a chronically underfunded inner-city hospital.”
“Well, I do,” Lauryn said stiffly. “They need me there. I became a doctor to help people, not treat rich ladies’ tennis elbows.”
“Rich ladies need help, too,” Naree reminded her. “And unlike Medicaid patients, they pay. You want to do charity work, join the Peace Corps.”
“Why should I go all the way to another country when there are people who need help right here in Chicago?” Lauryn argued. “I don’t fault you for using your new med degree to get a sweet job in a cushy private practice, but that’s not what I want for my life. Why can’t you understand that??”
“Because it makes no sense!” Naree said. “You need this job, Lauryn. I get your mail, remember? I know you’re drowning in student debt even with all your scholarships. It’s all well and good living on instant noodles when you’re a poor student, but we’re done with that. The only reason I graduated number two in med school is because you were number one. Number one from the University of Chicago—you know, one of the best schools in the world? You could get any job you wanted, so why the hell are you still hanging on at Mercy? Do you like being poor?”
“No,” Lauryn said. “But I like Mercy. And I’m not poor.” Mercy couldn’t pay its attending physicians what other hospitals did, but it was still doctor money, which might as well be millions compared to what many of her patients lived on. “I make enough to pay my bills, make my rent, and feed myself. That’s more than a lot of people have.”
Her friend snorted. “Maybe you can be happy just making ends meet, but what about your family? They scrimped and saved to put you through college and med school. You owe them payback. Isn’t your dad poor?”
“And we’re done,” she said, her voice flat. There were few topics that Lauryn liked talking about less than her father.
“You need to face facts,” Naree said. “Your dad could totally use—”
“Just leave my dad out of this,” Lauryn said. “He has nothing to do with my life now, and he wouldn’t take my money anyway. He’s a preacher. He works for a ‘higher reward.’”
“Like you’re any different, Miss I-Don’t-Like-Money-I-Just-Want-to-Help-People.”
“It is totally different,” she said, raising her voice as the commuter train’s breaks began to squeal. “I have to go. This is my stop.”
“This isn’t over,” Naree warned. “You’re too smart to be this stupid, Lauryn!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lauryn said as she pushed her way to the doors. “’Bye, Naree.”
She hung up right after, cutting off her friend’s inevitable attempt to have the last word. It was a childish move, not to mention a temporary fix—it was hard to escape your roommate, especially one as in-your-face as Naree—but after a twelve-hour shift, Lauryn just didn’t have the patience to deal with her inability to let things go. The fact that she meant well only made the situation worse. Naree was as good a friend as she was a doctor. So long as she thought Lauryn was hurting herself with this job, she’d never give up trying to save her. And that was the problem, because Lauryn didn’t need saving. She was already doing exactly what she’d gone to med school to do: helping the people who needed her the most. At Mercy, she routinely saw patients who’d never been to a doctor before her because they couldn’t afford to. And while it was frustrating and stressful and draining to work in a place that was always overcrowded and underfunded, it was also incredibly fulfilling. The way Lauryn saw it, working at Mercy meant making a difference, and that was more satisfying than any paycheck.
She just wished she knew how to put that deep satisfaction into a form her friend could understand.
Well, at least Lauryn wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout immediately. Even with her fancy new job, Naree would still be stuck at the clinic until midnight. Since it was only seven, that meant Lauryn had at least five hours before she had to have this argument again, and she was determined to spend as many of them as possible asleep in her own bed. That lovely thought was enough to send her racing down the stairs from the elevated train platform, but as she walked through the turnstiles and out into the icy street, something caught her eye.
Directly across from the train station, at the end of the narrow alley between the support beams for the L’s elevated track, a man was lying facedown on top of a pile of newspapers. He was clearly homeless, which sadly wasn’t uncommon in this area. What was uncommon was the fact that he was still outside this late on a November evening in Chicago. The sun hadn’t even set yet, and it was already below freezing. If he stayed exposed like that all night, he’d die.
Cursing under her breath, Lauryn hurried across the street, dodging cars and hopping over the frozen puddles. When she reached the alley’s mouth, she stopped to assess the situation. Working with the homeless was a delicate business. No one chose to live on the street in winter, which meant there were always complicating factors in a situation like this, generally drug use or mental illness. Or both. Either of those could make accepting help very difficult, but as Lauryn peered down the alley for clues to the homeless man’s situation, she spotted a familiar navy-blue veteran’s baseball cap lying beside an empty paper cup, and she relaxed—she knew that hat. She’d seen it in her ER just a few days ago, which meant the dirty man lying at the end of the alley wasn’t some unknown. It was Lenny.
Lenny was one of Mercy Hospital’s “frequent fliers,” people who used the emergency room as their one-stop shop. Most frequent fliers were pill poppers, opiate addicts looking to get more pain meds. That wasn’t Lenny, though. For all his other problems, he had never been a druggie. He was just confused, a Vietnam vet who’d never been able to leave the war behind. Years of poorly treated PTSD had left him unable to hold down a job and chronically homeless, but he’d always been a gentleman to Lauryn. But even if he’d been an ogre, she wouldn’t have left him outside in this cold.
“Lenny?” she called down the alley. “It’s Dr. Jefferson.”
She paused hopefully, but the man didn’t stir.
“Lenny!” she said again, louder this time. “It’s Lauryn from Mercy. The sun’s going down, buddy. We need to get you somewhere warm.”
Again, there was no reply, and a cold dread began to curl in Lauryn’s stomach. Pulling out her phone to use as a flashlight—and in case she had to call for an ambulance—Lauryn stepped into the dark alley beneath the tracks.
The cold hit her like a slap.
It was like a meat locker down here. The gap between the elevated subway’s support beams and the stone retaining wall, which kept back the hill that had been cut in half to build the track originally, was sheltered from the famous Chicago wind—but the shadow from the track above meant that no sunlight could get down to warm it up. Even here at the front, the alley leading back into the underpass was a good ten degrees colder than the street beside it. If Lenny stayed down here, death from exposure became a “when,” not an “if,” and that knowledge gave Lauryn the push she needed to keep going, walking farther into the dark below the bridge toward he sheltered nook at the back where her patient was lying motionless.
“Come on, Lenny,” she said, squatting down to grab his shoulder. “Time to wake—”
She let go with a gasp, snatching her hand back. She hadn’t seen anything in the dark, but the moment she’d touched his faded jacket, something slimy and cold had coated her bare fingers. It was still there, a thick, viscous liquid that shone sickly green when she held her hand under the light of her phone’s screen, and Lauryn shot back to her feet with a curse. How could she have been so stupid? Touching an unassessed, unconscious patient without gloves was a newbie mistake, and now her bare fingers were coated in an unidentified slime that smelled like a mix of rotten-egg sulfur and the sickly sweet reek of decaying wounds.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered, wiping her hand on the cement wall beside her while frantically dialing 911 with the other.
It took three rings for Dispatch to pick up. When the girl finally answered, Lauryn didn’t give her the chance to finish asking “what is the nature of your emergency?” before launching into doctor mode.
“This is Dr. Jefferson from Mercy Hospital,” she said, crouching down beside Lenny. “I’ve got an unconscious male down across the street from the Indiana CTA station. Early sixties, known mental illness, currently unresponsive to voice and touch. I’m going to need—”
A horrible, inhuman shriek cut her off as Lenny’s whole body seized, jerking up off the pavement like his belt was attached to a string someone had just pulled tight. The sudden movement made Lauryn jump as well, and she nearly dropped her phone in the process. Luckily she held on, but just as she was sucking in a breath to yell at the dispatcher that he was seizing and she needed that ambulance STAT, Lenny started to . . .
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