by eden Hudson
As soon as the shockwave had passed, Dad yelled, “Colt!” But I was already in motion.
Faster than I’d ever been while I was alive, I sprinted across the ruined parking lot, hopping over debris and bodies. I could hear the Gatekeepers of Hell—their entire legion—following along behind me.
At the lip of the crater, I stopped. Grace was at the deepest point, pinning Kathan to the ground. Her arms were embedded to the elbows in his chest. He roared and shifted—from his angelic manifestation to an enormous horned beast and back again—but he couldn’t break free.
I slid down the slope and ran for them.
Inhuman squealing and screeching sounds filled the crater like sludge, slowing me down. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move any faster through the noise.
“Father of Lies,” Grace intoned, her voice carrying through his shrieking. “Lawless serpent. Corrupter of innocence. Arrogant, unrepentant, blasphemous creation. Your Judgment has come today.”
As I got closer, I raised the sword over my head. I brought the fiery blade down with every ounce of strength in this heavenly body, an all-or-nothing killing blow. Kathan shifted back into his angel form just as the strike landed. The head of his earthly manifestation rolled away.
Grace pulled her arms out of his chest.
Kathan’s headless body shifted into the beast again. Black flames roared from his nose and mouth as he bellowed.
The Gatekeepers closed in. He pawed at the scorched dirt of the crater and spun in a tight circle, trying to keep them from surrounding him, but there were too many. He fought them, goring and tossing and howling with fury.
It took every single one of them to drag him to Hell, and it was going to take every single one of them to keep him there.
Tough
When the wailing and roaring and screeching died down and the greenish-blackness of Hell finally burned away, Desty—what used to be Desty—rose up out of the scorching crater and hung in the air. She looked around, her body shooting off sparks like fireworks. That bloody purple-red light around her swelled until it took up half of what used to be the sky.
Fallen angels scattered, flying off in every direction, trying to get away. Dad, Sissy, Ryder, and Tiffani chopped and hacked and stabbed. They drove some of the fallen angels back, but they couldn’t stop them all.
Desty spread her arms out wide and opened her mouth.
“This world is evil and broken.” Desty’s—the Destroyer’s—voice was cut with high and low notes that made my brain crawl. The sounds were huge and thick and scary as shit, and they kept on playing in the air, even when she stopped talking.
Colt climbed out of the crater, holding that flaming sword.
I grabbed Mom’s wrist and almost tipped her off balance. She caught herself just in time and hauled me up.
My legs were fighting rigor mortis—one more benefit to being a stupid fucking vampire—but I forced myself to stumble into a stupid-looking run.
What’re you going to do, genius? You can’t talk. Even if you could scream, there’s no way she’d hear you over all this noise.
I kept running, trying to ignore my brain. If I didn’t do anything, Desty would destroy the world and Colt would send her to Hell.
Colt, can you still hear me? I tried to think-yell it at him. You got to wait. Please, just let me try to stop her first.
“Tough!” Sissy tried to grab me as I passed, but she wasn’t fast enough. “Tough, what are you doing?”
I shot past her, Ryder, Clarion, and a couple of Naomi’s fighters who had survived the battle. I hopped over bodies of people and NPs I had grown up with and ones I had never met before tonight.
The Destroyer’s eyes rolled over the blasted-out Dark Mansion, but it felt like she was seeing all of Halo, the whole countryside, probably everything in this whole shitty world.
“The sentence for your transgression is death,” Desty said in the Destroyer’s voice.
I skidded to a stop at the edge of the crater, and started clapping my hands and whistling, trying to get her attention.
Should’ve grabbed a gun.
Yeah, right, like a couple gunshots would matter to something like her. She probably wouldn’t even hear them.
I waved my arms over my head and jumped up and down, clapping my hands together. How was I supposed to get her attention? How could I get her to notice me?
Look at me, Desty, I begged deep down inside. Please just look this way.
She turned toward me. From that distance, I couldn’t see if her eyes even had pupils anymore—the whole things looked bloody purple-red and electric—but I felt it when they focused on me. She was looking through my skin, all the way down to the inside of my soul, to the worst parts of who I was and everything awful I’d ever done. She could see everything.
I didn’t know what else to do. I stood up on my tiptoes and stretched my arm over my head as far as I could, holding my hand out to her.
The image of her holding out her hand to Colt when he’d started to freak out popped into my head, then memory of how soft her palms had felt on my face while I was losing my shit over killing Jax. The things she’d been whispering in my ear came back with that, the lies about how everything would be okay, it was all going to be okay.
It’s not going to be okay, I thought, half wishing she could hear me, half hoping like hell that she couldn’t. I’m sorry. There’s no point to saving this shitty world. It never gets better, it only gets worse. But please don’t destroy it. I can’t stop Colt from coming after you if you do. I’ll try, but I won’t be able to and then we’ll both end up in Hell. Please.
For a long time, she just stared at me.
“You’re the reason,” she said.
That bloody purple-red halo of light around her sucked inward, then exploded off her skin.
Every fallen angel on and around the battlefield disintegrated into a cloud of black bugs that rained to the ground. None of them reformed.
I blinked my eyes, trying to get rid of the afterimages glowing in my field of vision. I was still standing—me and every other surviving human, crow, coyote, and soldier of Heaven on the battlefield that used to be my home.
About ten feet away, Desty sat on the crater’s rim of dirt and rocks with her face on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs. Naked, covered in human and angel blood, and shaking like crazy. But alive. Not in Hell and not destroying the world.
So that was something.
Colt
A burning hand clapped me on the shoulder.
“I knew you were the man for the job,” He said.
I sheathed the sword in Hell. The flames barely touched my hand.
“I’m just glad I didn’t have to fight Grace,” I said.
“Me, too,” He said. “You would’ve won.”
We watched Tough take a step toward where she was sitting curled in on herself.
“Is she going to be all right?” I asked, scratching my hand through my hair.
“She’s not one you can protect, Colt. She’s not your responsibility. Never was. She’s more like…the opposite side of your coin. Or a close relation.”
The memory of the way she had smiled at me back in the cabin flashed through my brain.
“Like a little sister,” I said.
He nodded. “Just like that.”
I took a deep breath. “So, I’m done here?”
“Forever,” He said.
I let the breath out in a rush.
At the other edge of the battlefield, Tiffani was standing alone, staring at the slice of red-orange sun coming up over the tree line.
“Go ahead,” He said. “We can talk later.”
I gave Him a smile, then picked my way back through the wreckage and corpses to Tiff.
She didn’t turn to face me, but she must’ve heard me coming.
“It’s been so long since I could look at it like this,” she said over her shoulder. “Since I could feel it on my skin. I missed it.”
/> I slipped my arms around her waist. She leaned back against my chest and tucked her arms inside mine.
We stayed that way for a long time, watching the sun come up.
Tough
I took a step toward Desty, then stopped. The hair hanging down around her face and over her arms wasn’t Desty’s hair, it was Tempie’s—long, with orangish highlights—and there were wings tattooed the full length of her back. Desty hadn’t had any ink.
Maybe she wasn’t even in there at all anymore. Maybe it was just Tempie now.
Doesn’t matter who she is. She’s still naked and shivering and maybe crying. I swallowed and tried to make myself take another step.
“Hey, Tough,” a voice behind me said. “Wait up a second.”
I turned around, glad for any excuse not to go over there yet.
Then there He was. He put His hand on my breastbone like Lonely had done earlier to wake me up, except instead of a fist, He pressed His open palm to the bullet holes in my t-shirt that were still sticky with blood and vamp venom.
His touch burned like fire. Underneath His hand, I could feel things moving, growing back together. My heart beat. Once. Twice. This time it didn’t stop. It got into a steady rhythm and kept going. With every pump, heat spread out from the center of my chest, down my arms and legs, up my throat to my face and ears, all the way around to the back of my head. The warmth forced out the cold and sunk in—all the way—until even my bones were warm again.
Then He reached up and touched my throat. The movement in my vocal cords was subtler than Him putting my heart back together, but I felt it. I felt it with my whole body and soul.
He put both hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes. “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
The tears were running hot now. For a second I could barely get my shit together enough to breathe. I swallowed hard and wiped my eyes on the hem of my shirt.
“That supposed to be some kind of joke?” I asked.
He laughed a lot harder than the sarcasm called for. “I mean, kind of. But it’s how you finish, not how you start, right?”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Here.” He picked my John Deere hat up off the ground and slapped it on his leg to clear some of the dirt and ashes off, then held it out to me.
“Thanks.” I put it on and adjusted the bill. “So, was that the end of the world?”
“Nah. The last battle’s done, but that was sort of just the beginning. There’s a lot of work left to do yet. For both of us.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know what He meant.
Past the old fencerow, over by the Dark Mansion, Dad and Mom were standing together, looking my way.
“They have to go back,” He said. “Going to go tell them goodbye?”
Hearing that was like getting shot in the chest again. I reached up to pull down on the bill of my hat, then made myself stop. I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“I…” I cleared my throat. “I can’t.”
“They love you, Tough.”
Their eyes were cutting right through to my spine. Mom lifted her hand in a tiny, awkward wave. Dad put his arm around her and held her close.
“Am I going to see them again? When I die? The next time I do, I mean.”
“Yeah, but—”
All the tension went out of my shoulders at once.
“I’ll wait,” I said. I would do better. Be better. Then I could face them.
After a few long seconds, He said, “They don’t care about that. At all.”
I couldn’t force any words out, so I just shrugged.
“All right.” He took a step away, then stopped and gestured at Desty. Or Tempie. Whoever she was. “Take care of them.”
I took a long breath, filled up my newly healed lungs, then blew it up at the sky. I could feel the difference. It sounds so stupid, so obvious—that being alive feels different from being dead—but until you feel it, it’s impossible to understand how different it is. I was alive.
“I’ll try to,” I said.
“You always do,” He said.
He started to head back toward the battlefield.
“See you later?” I said.
He laughed. “Count on it.”
I watched Him go, all the way over to where my parents and Ryder, Sissy, Colt, and Tiffani had gathered beside the Dark Mansion foundation. Even from far away, I could see Ryder smirking at me. Colt nodded goodbye.
Sissy looked from me to Dad and back. She asked Dad something. I couldn’t hear her, but I knew what she’d said.
She took a step in my direction, but Dad grabbed her arm and said something. She looked from Dad to me and back again. Finally, Sissy nodded. Because that really was it. For now.
When Dad looked my way, I gave him a jerky nod to say thanks. Dad nodded back and tried to smile.
Then my family went home.
*****
I never wanted to stop looking at where they’d been, but I made myself turn around.
Desty was still sitting over at the edge of the crater, shivering even though the temperature had to be getting up over ninety already.
It’s ridiculous how many things you wish you could say when you can’t talk, but then the second you get your voice back, suddenly your mind goes blank.
I whipped my shirt off over my head. It was bloody and dirty, but hopefully better than nothing.
I sat down next to her. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should touch her, so I just cleared my throat.
Even though I’d done it expecting a sound, my vocal cords actually doing their job surprised me. I jumped a little and so did Desty.
She sat up straight and wrapped her arms around her chest.
Game time. I held out my shirt. “I thought if you were cold— I didn’t know if you wanted something to cover up with or—”
Then I saw the nose ring. Tempie.
She took the shirt—slow, like she was in a daze—and pulled it on.
“Can I talk to Desty?” I asked. “Is she in there anymore?”
She stared at me for a second, then she wrinkled her eyebrows.
“I think…I think we are.” She nodded. “Yeah, we’re still one. Like, for good.”
“Can she hear me?”
“We’re one, not deaf.”
I glared down at my boots. “You know, even when I didn’t have a voice, Desty always got what I was trying to say.”
“I can hear you,” she said. “I’m saying I’m not Desty or Tempie anymore. It’s me. We’re me—one person—for good.” She sighed. “This is going to cause a lot of nomenclature problems.”
I snorted. That was Desty.
Her muddy hazel eyes stared off like she was trying to remember something. “When I was with God, He called me a new name. But it was right. Like that had always been my name. The name for both of us at once, I mean. Grace.”
“So, do you want me to call you that?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Grace.” I tried to think of something else to talk about so I didn’t have to bring up what I had to bring up next, but nothing came to mind. “My mom said you were…” I nodded at her stomach, not sure I could say the word. “She said you were pregnant.”
Desty—Grace, I mean—looked down at the ground. “You drank off somebody before we had sex that last time, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Scout. She was there after I killed Jax and…” And every time I’d done something with Scout or any other girl could be chalked up to her being there and me being a sack of shit. “So…the baby, is it…still alive?”
For a long time, Desty stared at the ground, biting her lip.
“Bred in the bone the same, born in the flesh the same.” She swiped her hair out of her eyes, hooked it behind her ear, then looked up at me. It was a move I’d seen Desty make a hundred times, but with hair too short to do any good. “They couldn’t kill it. But it’s not just ours. It’s part Kathan’s, too.”
My
fists clenched and psycho-screaming metal roared through my veins. “That fucking— Did he—”
“No, he didn’t touch me…Desty… He didn’t touch Desty. It wouldn’t work like that, anyway. I had to be—I mean, Tempie had to be—pregnant so we could become one, so I convinced Kathan to do it. And when we became one, the fetal cells did, too.”
“So, it’s…what?”
Desty shrugged. “Alive.”
I waited for the pissed-off to drain out of me before I said anything else.
“If you’d known about it before you left, would you have stayed?” I asked.
She shook her head.
That was a kick in the balls, but I nodded. You don’t stay with the asshole who cheated on you and almost killed you.
“I wasn’t that person,” she said. “Not then.”
“I probably wasn’t, either,” I said.
We sat quiet for a while, me staring at her bloody hand in the grass. I really wanted to pick it up, but I didn’t think she would let me.
“So, what now?” Desty asked.
I took a deep, deep breath and let it out. It felt so damn good.
“Well, I’m going to sit here and stare at the sun until my eyes shrivel up in their sockets, and just be glad it doesn’t set my ass on fire anymore.” I looked at her. “Want to stare at it with me?”
After a few seconds, she nodded. “Sure.”
I leaned my elbows on my knees. Desty scooted over next to me, pulled her long legs up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them again.
I tried to be a gentleman about it, but I couldn’t help it. I looked.
She caught me.
My cheeks burned, turning Whitney-red, but I pretended like I didn’t notice that I was alive enough to blush again.
I pointed my nose back up toward the sky. “You look great without pants on.”
“You look good without a shirt on,” she said. “No farmer’s tan or anything.”
I snuck a peek at her. She was smiling.
We just sat there. While the NPs and humans picked through the bodies looking for survivors, while Kathan burned in Hell, and while my family did whatever they were doing up in Heaven, we sat there and watched the sun climb up the east side of the sky.