Cruel as it made her feel, it worked. Behind her, she heard Will start to follow, but then he stopped with a curse. When she glanced over her shoulder, he was rooted in place, glaring at her like he was trying to make her come back with sheer force of will.
Lauryn gave him a final scowl and kept walking. It was better this way, she told herself, picking up the pace. She might not want him to lose his job, but Will wasn’t part of her life anymore. If he wanted to risk everything chasing after a mysterious event that the people in power clearly wanted to forget, that was his business. She wished him the best, she really did, but she had her own career, life, and sanity to think about, all of which she’d already nearly ruined with a morning’s worth of sticking to her guns. Right now, her best hope was to go home, get some sleep, and hope that when she woke up tomorrow, everyone would still be in agreement that this whole mess was nothing but a blip of temporary mass hysteria too strange to go on her permanent record. It was a long shot, but it was the only hope she had at this point, and Lauryn clung to it like a lifeline, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other as she walked out of the hospital and through the gently falling snow toward the doctors’ lot where her dad’s car was waiting beneath a fresh layer of powder.
The moment she saw it, her whole body slumped. In the crazy rush of this morning’s disasters, she’d completely forgotten she’d run off with her father’s prized Buick. Now she’d have to return it, which meant there was zero chance she’d be going home to her own apartment. The cops had only just given her back her phone, so she hadn’t had a chance to check it yet, but even if Will was right and this was all being covered up, there was no way a medical disaster involving hundreds of people wasn’t going to be all over the news. Her dad was probably having a fit at this very moment, which ironically made her feel a little better. Maxwell was the only person in Lauryn’s life who would have seen her actions in the burn ward as something to be proud of rather than those of a crazy person. Too bad Lauryn could never tell him the truth. Not unless she wanted to be pestered about church and Bible study and going to seminary and all that other crap for the rest of her life.
That was a depressing thought, so Lauryn put it out of her head, vowing to never tell her father anything about what had happened as she opened the door and plopped into the Buick’s freezing driver’s seat. She’d actually started rehearsing what she planned say to her dad during the inevitable confrontation under her breath when she realized there was someone else in the car with her.
“Jesus Christ!” she cried, jumping so hard she whacked her head on the sedan’s padded ceiling.
“Language,” Talon said, cracking his eyes to glance up at her from where he was lying on the reclined passenger seat. “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
Lauryn chose to ignore that, clutching her pounding chest instead. “What are you doing in my car?”
“Waiting for you,” he replied, like hiding in someone’s car waiting for them to come outside was a totally natural thing to do.
“This is not okay,” she said, angry she had to tell him that. “Get out.”
Talon frowned and returned his seat back to the upright position. “I will if you wish,” he said, moving his sword to rest between his legs. “But while I try to appreciate all the facets of God’s glorious creation, I’d rather not ride my bike in the snow. Also, I thought you’d have questions.”
Lauryn had a lot of those. She also had the beginnings of a very nasty fatigue-and-stress-induced headache that was threatening to explode all over her. But though she knew it was a terrible idea, in the end, her damned curiosity got the best of her. “Will your answers make sense this time?”
“I can only promise to tell the truth,” Talon said. “Whether that lives up to your expectations, though, only you can decide.”
That frustrating nonanswer didn’t bode well for the rest, and Lauryn wasn’t sure why she’d expected any better. She knew she should just kick him out, but even though she’d absolutely meant what she’d said to Will about putting all of this behind her, she found herself buckling her seatbelt instead.
This is absolutely crazy. Talon was the very last person she needed in her life. But tired and scared and over all of this as Lauryn was, she hadn’t forgotten that Talon was the sole reason she and Will and probably everyone else was still alive. Putting it that way in her mind, kicking him out of her car seemed kind of ungrateful, especially since he was offering to explain himself. And anyway, it wasn’t like this day could get any weirder.
“Okay,” she said with a defeated sigh. “You can stay. But only because I want answers.” And then, because she’d had politeness drilled into her since before she could talk, she added, “And thank you. You know, for saving my life again.”
“Give thanks to the Lord,” Talon replied. “For he is good.”
She frowned. “Psalms?”
“One oh seven.”
“Of course,” she muttered, starting the car. “I bet you killed at Bible Jeopardy.”
He gave her a confused look. “What is Bible Jeopardy?”
Lauryn sighed, slumping down in her seat. It was going to be a very long drive.
9
Signs and Wonders
So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”
—John 4:48
Someone must have given an official statement that the crisis was over, because by the time Lauryn made it to the exit, the ring of news vans and emergency response vehicles that had besieged the hospital all morning was finally breaking up. No one even knocked on her window as she pulled out into the snowy street, pushing her way into the tangled mess of normal afternoon traffic. Even so, Lauryn bit her tongue, waiting until the towers of Mercy Hospital were safely out of sight before she finally worked up the courage to ask the question that had been burning a hole in her head all morning.
“So,” she said casually, glancing at Talon. “Are you an angel?”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Do you believe in angels?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m a doctor. I don’t believe in any of that stuff. It’s just that, given what happened, I felt like I should get the obvious question out of the way.”
“So you’re asking if I believe I’m an angel?”
Lauryn shrugged, and he flashed her a smile. “What do you think?”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Honestly, I don’t know. It would be so much easier to believe you’re crazy, I was hallucinating, and none of that was real. But I was there. I felt it, saw everything with my own eyes, so . . .”
She trailed off with a shake of her head, but inside, she was holding her breath. She wasn’t lying when she’d said she didn’t believe in angels, but after this morning’s events, Lauryn’s ideas of what was and wasn’t possible were no longer as set in stone as they’d once been. To be honest, part of her wanted to believe. For someone who found comfort in facts and rationality, the events of today had been a nightmare for Lauryn in more ways than one. At this point she’d have taken any explanation that would have put what she’d seen in some sort of understandable, explainable context—even angels.
“I’m not an angel.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling oddly disappointed, which was stupid. Finding out that the person riding in your car didn’t think he was an angel should have been a good thing. Still, at least this meant Talon wasn’t as delusional as she’d initially—
“I’m a soldier of God. Part of an ancient monastic order known as the Soldiers of El Elyon, God Most High.”
Spoke too soon.
“An ancient monastic order?” she repeated skeptically, giving him the side eye. “Really?”
Talon side-eyed her right back. “After everything you saw today, that’s the part you don’t believe? Would you have been more satisfied if I had claimed to be an angel?”
Lauryn rubbed her eyes. “Look,” she said tiredly. “I admit that
today has been . . . different. But that doesn’t change the fact that what you’re saying is really hard to take seriously. I’ve never even heard of the Soldiers of El-whatever. Is that like the Templars or something?”
“The Knights Templar were a Crusader order created by the pope to push the Roman Catholic Church’s conquest of the Holy Land,” Talon said authoritatively. “My order is utterly different. The Soldiers of El Elyon—the SEE—answer to no earthly power. We are chosen by God himself to do his will on earth, and we go wherever he sends us. That’s how I came to Chicago in the first place, and how I found you. Or did you think it was mere coincidence that I just happened to appear in that alley the moment you needed help?”
“Considering how much noise I was making, I don’t think the situation needs a heavenly explanation,” Lauryn said stubbornly. “Most people would run to help if they heard someone being attacked.”
“That still doesn’t explain what happened once I arrived,” he said. “You helped me reach Lenny when he was lost, and then you saw me heal him when all of the others who’d been exposed to the green compound died. What could explain that save that God guided my hand and answered my prayers?”
Lauryn set her jaw stubbornly. “Just because I can’t explain something doesn’t mean God did it.”
“What about the water?” Talon pressed. “You must have believed in the blessed water I poured over your hands, because you asked me to make more of it this morning. The sprinklers were your idea, and it worked. Those people were saved because you prayed for help and were answered with a miracle. You personally have received countless miracles over the last two days. How many more will it take before you believe?”
If the past few days had been blessed, Lauryn would be happy to do without miracles. “Just because I was willing to go along with you this morning doesn’t mean I’m still on board now,” she said. “I was trapped in a closet! Any solution sounds good when you’re cornered. But there are a lot of perfectly valid reasons for why those sprinklers did the job that have nothing to do with miracles. Maybe the water washed off the drug residue that was causing the hallucinations. Or maybe the drug wore off on its own and it just looked like the water did it because of the timing. Just because something looked miraculous at the time doesn’t mean everything that happened isn’t explainable through normal, rational, scientific means.”
When she put it that way, Lauryn almost believed her own argument. She could almost buy that what had happened this morning had a plausible explanation. But Talon was shaking his head.
“You’re reaching too hard,” he said. “One of the chief principles of rational science is Occam’s razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. You’re an intelligent, educated doctor. I’m sure you could come up with a thousand complicated explanations for why this morning wasn’t a miracle if you tried hard enough. But wouldn’t it make more scientific sense to accept the simplest explanation, which is that you asked, and God answered?”
“No,” Lauryn said. “Because this isn’t the Dark Ages, and God is never an appropriate answer to ‘why did x happen?’ in any kind of reasonable science.”
Talon shrugged. “If you can’t accept God as the answer, then I have nothing else to give you. I can only speak the truth, Lauryn. Whether you listen is up to you. You have been shown signs and wonders greater than any I have ever seen today. If you still won’t believe in the face of so much evidence, I don’t know what else I can tell you. Even so, I will not give up.”
“Why not?” she asked angrily. “I just called you crazy to your face. I’m never going to believe in this nonsense, so why keep pushing? Do you need to be right so badly?”
“I don’t need to be right,” Talon said, his voice deep and sure. “I am right.”
As much as she wanted to call bullshit, the utter conviction in his voice made her tremble. He sounded more sure of those three words than Lauryn had ever felt of anything in her life, and she just didn’t understand. “How do you know that?” she demanded. “Can you see God or something? Talk with angels?”
“No,” Talon said. “But that’s the nature of faith. We can’t see gravity, either, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hit the ground when we fall. Faith is a real force that allows humanity to do great, some would say impossible, things. In Thailand, years ago, I saw a monk set himself on fire to protest the government’s persecution of Buddhists. The whole time he burned, he never panicked. Never made a sound. The strength of his faith in the dharma was so great it allowed him to overcome the physical reality of his body’s death. He was at peace in meditation from the moment the flames caught until the moment he fell to ash. What can we call that save a miracle?”
“Horrible.”
“No more than how the very human government was treating his people.”
“True.” She bit her lower lip, afraid to say what was on her mind.
He saw her, though, and asked, “What?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking back at the road. “I just find it really weird that you’d use a Buddhist monk as an example of faith. With all the Bible quoting, I took you for a holy roller.”
“There is no contradiction,” Talon said. “God is bigger than our labels. I am a Christian, but I do not presume to say that an infinite God is defined by my mortal—and therefore limited—vision of him. He is our father. To some, she’s our mother. To others, there are many faces that wrap into their vision of him. But however he appears to his children doesn’t matter. He’s there wherever and however we need him. That is the great mercy and understanding of the Almighty. He understands us in a way we can never understand him. That is why our faith never goes unrewarded, even if we can never fully explain why.”
He bowed his head as he finished, and Lauryn sighed. “You sound just like my dad,” she said irritably. “Not the multicultural thing. I don’t even know if he’s ever met a Buddhist. But he talks about faith the same way. He’s the kind of guy who’d walk off a cliff without a second thought if he thought God wanted him to do it. But I’m not like that. You can talk about faith all you want, but so long as there’s a chance of a logical scientific explanation, I’m always going to go with that, because the alternative is insane. I can’t just believe that some all-powerful Creator is paying attention to our lives and manipulating us like puppets to his own ends.”
“God does not manipulate,” Talon said firmly. “He guides.”
“Same difference.”
He glared at her, a look she’d never associated with Talon in the admittedly brief time she’d known him—and Lauryn sighed. “I’m not trying to be insulting, but I’ve heard this sales pitch before, and I’m not buying. If God is real and cares as much about us as you claim, why doesn’t he come down here and fix all the horrible things that are wrong with the world? All it would take is one giant sign in the sky, and the whole world would get its shit together. That would be a miracle, but according to you, he’s mucking around blessing fire systems instead. What kind of sense does that make?” She shook her head. “None. I’m sorry, but I can’t believe in something that makes so little sense just because you tell me to.”
She tensed at that, fully expecting Talon to keep arguing, but he just settled deeper into his seat. “Belief is hard,” he said at last. “That’s why God asks it of us. If it was easy to believe, everyone would do it, and faith would mean nothing. But those who believe without seeing are blessed in God’s eyes.”
“What about the rest of us?” Lauryn asked. “Are we SOL?”
“Never,” Talon said. “We are never alone. God is everywhere, all times and places. He is with all of us always. All you have to do is reach out to him, and you will be welcomed into his arms as warmly and lovingly as those who’ve believed all their lives.”
“And if we don’t believe, what then?” she pressed. “Does he toss us to the devil?”
“No,” he said firmly. “God never abandons us, but if the dr
owning man will not lift his hand to grab the rope, there’s little God can do. You can’t force salvation. It’s a matter of free will. If everyone was forced to believe, then the decision to believe—to reject the devil and be faithful—would have no meaning. God gave us free will so that the choice to be righteous and good would be ours to make. Otherwise, what’s the point? Without the ability to fail, success has no meaning.”
By the time he finished, Lauryn was having bad flashbacks to her dad’s Sunday sermons, but what more could you expect from a man who claimed with absolute seriousness to be a literal soldier of God? She really should just pull over and boot him, but something about what Talon had said just now and what he’d told her in the burn ward was bothering her—and since it would be cruel to kick him out on a busy road in the snow, Lauryn decided to go ahead and clear it up.
“Not to imply that I buy any of this—because I don’t—but if you can’t force someone to be saved, how does that fit with what you said back in the burn ward about those people being forced to fall?”
Talon’s expression darkened. “That’s different,” he said, his voice grim. “Those people were suffering greatly, but not just from the pains and ills that cause people to turn to drugs in the first place. There was something else, an evil force weighing them down and leaving them open to a corruption far beyond the measure of their own sins.”
“Exactly,” Lauryn said. “So how does that jibe with all the other stuff you just said? Why is it God can’t pull us up unless we ask, but the devil apparently can pull us screaming into hell whenever he pleases?”
“Because you’re missing the part where those people had invited the devil into their lives,” Talon said sadly. “Whenever we sink into temptation and evil, we open the door for our own destruction. It’s not an absolute decision. A lost soul can always repent and choose salvation, but the devil isn’t known for playing fair. That’s why despair and fear are his greatest tools. If sinking souls never see they have a chance at redemption, or if they don’t think they can be forgiven, it’s the same as having no choice at all. By making us feel powerless and hopeless, he takes away God’s greatest gift: our free will. Or, at least, that’s how it’s worked in the past. With this new weapon, though, the situation has changed. You saw their faces. Those people were trapped in their own minds. Even the most violent among them was terrified, babbling about demons and monsters, but all words of comfort couldn’t reach them. They were imprisoned by fear.”
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