He roared in challenge and whirled to find more, but a woman's cry silenced him. He froze in shock and looked down at Blossom as she screamed his name again. Part of him wondered how she'd gotten so small, become a tiny thing half his size. Another part wanted to crush her, squeeze the jelly out of her, slam her into the wall until she burst.
He closed his eyes against the madness and, shuddering, took a knee next to Dawkins's bloody form. The psychotic rage within him quieted but didn't disappear. He took a few more breaths, steadied himself, then got to work.
He pulled a tangle of blasting caps from his pocket with thick, clumsy fingers. Monica's necklace fell to the floor, bent and twisted. He picked up the cross and entwined the chain in his fingers so he wouldn't lose it. He pressed two blasting caps into the C4 and another into the det cord.
A worried glance at Dawkins told Matt he might live. He'd lost an enormous amount of blood, but the gush had dwindled to a trickle, and flesh knitted under new skin. He groped on the floor for his forearm, lifted it, and held it to the stump at his elbow. The screaming voices in Matt's head wanted to kill him anyway. He reached out—
"Matt," Blossom said. She'd reloaded his AA-12 and tossed it to him. He caught it, turned his gaze to follow hers. Six more demons—they had to be demons—materialized around the bed. He sprang to his feet and hoped there weren't many more of the things, even as he grinned in anticipation of the slaughter. If Gerstner couldn't manifest more than a few at a time, they could keep this up for a while.
But not forever.
Gerstner sat up. The shriveled corpse's dry, cracked skin sloughed off, taking the tubes and tentacles with it. The manacles that held it in place fell through its flesh as the withered meat and bone faded to black smoke. Wings of ash and fire unfolded over the machine. The angelic being rose to her feet on a pulsing column of writhing jade light.
Matt shot the column on full auto. The tiny grenades punched into it and disappeared. If they exploded, he couldn't tell. He dropped to the C4 and—
STOP.
The whispers screamed it with one voice, her voice, and Matt stopped. Blossom had frozen in place next to him, her eyes wide with panic. The sound of Dawkins's first gasping breath broke off mid-stream. The root-like tendrils of jade shifted; instead of flowing from her, they pulsed upward from the ground, filling Gerstner's shadow with blinding brilliance, at once a great beauty and a skeletal monster. Silence reigned, except for Brian's mewling, blubbering cries.
KNEEL.
Matt fell to one knee. He clenched his fists but could do nothing more. Blossom kneeled on his right. On his left Dawkins let go of his ruined neck to bow his head in homage. The demons dropped prostrate and groveled without sound.
She stepped from the table, skeletal feet cracking as she approached the crumpled form of Brian Frahm. The jade column writhed around her, at once part of her and something other. She crouched next to Brian, put a clawed finger under his chin, and lifted him. He clambered to his feet, tearful eyes locked on hers, his face an expression of pure adoration. His intestines slithered to the floor in a ropy mass as he let them go.
His voice carried the tiniest hint of breath. "I am yours."
She leaned in and kissed him with lips that weren't there, and he sighed as his body turned to ash. His human form crumbled, but instead of falling to the ground it swirled around her, joined with the majestic glory of her wings. His shriek joined the whispers as they gibbered their love for their mistress, who grew more beautiful with every step.
Matt struggled. In his mind he screamed and raged and cried out, but his massive, rippling body did nothing. He heard something then, a tiny murmur. Dawkins's lips moved, a bare whisper escaping them. Matt recognized the chant that he had used on the egregoroi. He tried to pick out the words, to repeat them even if he couldn't understand them, but his lips did not move.
Gerstner turned and glided over to kneel before Dawkins.
She smiled, lush lips superimposed over a starving skull. Dawkins shuddered as she ran her hand through his hair. The whispers spoke along with her, a single voice consuming Matt's mind and blocking out all else, all his wants and fears subsumed to her power.
"Ah, my Israel, my Jacob." Matt couldn't comprehend the beauty of her voice. "You've brought so many to my fold, would you now play Judas?"
Dawkins's chant grew louder, his voice stronger and more confident, and her anger crackled through her form in wisps of jade lightning. Dawkins sneered, continued his chant, and moved to rise in defiance of her will.
NO.
Her voice reverberated through Matt.
YOUR SINS BETRAY YOU.
She knelt and grabbed Dawkins's head with both hands. He grew louder still, his face stiffening with resolve even as his neck knitted together, but he dropped back to the floor. She silenced his soul with a kiss.
As Dawkins's body crumbled to dust and swirled into her being, Matt prayed. He squeezed Monica's battered cross in his hands and, though he didn't have the words or even the faith, he prayed for the strength to protect her from this demon, not the strength of his inhuman body, but something more.
Gerstner cooed in pleasure and glided to Blossom, brushed her cheek with the back of her fingers. "Would you be my Lydia, and follow my fathers to their deserved glory?"
As Blossom nodded with eyes raised in rapture, Matt's fist squeezed the necklace. A tiny tendril of jade broke from the column that surrounded Gerstner, slithered across the floor and touched his hand. It turned silky white as love poured from it. He felt Monica first, then Akash and Garrett and old police buddies he hadn't seen in a decade, then a torrent he couldn't hope to stop.
The dam broke. Gerstner's victims, countless thousands of souls damned to serve her, junkies and slaves, kings and emperors, human sacrifices and high priests, filled him with divine glory. The jade column surged into him white hot, not with fury but with the triumphant joy of salvation. In that maelstrom he felt the tiny, gasping light of his son entwined with Monica's faded spark.
He couldn't hold on to this power, could never survive it. But for everything he couldn't do for her, everything he couldn't provide for his son, he could at least do this. He picked up the C4 and stood.
Gerstner stumbled back from Blossom, away from him, her lack of grace a stark contrast to her prior confidence. He held out the cross and stepped toward her. It blazed a pure, white light, a tangible epiphany that illuminated the black skeleton within her stolen, ephemeral flesh. White wisps slithered from it to wrap her in gossamer threads. Where they touched the jade tendrils, they burned. The whispers shrieked and snapped, a brittle sundering that sent shudders through the angelic glory before him.
Behind him, Blossom moaned. He didn't know if she could hear him, but he said, "Sakura, run."
"I'm not leaving—"
RUN! The world reverberated with his command.
He took another step, bathing the thorn demons next to the altar in white light. They writhed, turned to shadow, and vanished.
Laughing, Gerstner backed into the table. She shimmered in the light, a woman terrible in her beauty, a black withered skeleton who drank it in. Her bright green eyes blazed into his soul. Her voice rang in his mind, her dark whispers a susurrus drowning in the sonorous clamor of those who had broken free.
"Do you think you can do what the Father could not? What his Son could not? I am Bathsheba, Jezebel, Lilith, Nyx, and you cannot destroy me. Your sad faith holds no power over me."
The jade column blackened, shriveled, devoured the light. The cocoon withered, and Matt stumbled. Blood ran down his ruined face. More gushed from his back, his chest, his leg. He burned in agony as strength leached from his withering muscles, as brittle bones splintered under too much mass. He groaned under the weight of his wounds. The world grew dull. Gone were the infrared and ultraviolet signatures, gone the superhuman strength, the speed. And yet his soul rejoiced as the yoke of the whispers left him.
Gerstner laughed again, cruel malevolence
given voice. "All that you are, you owe to me. I own your body, I own your soul. You will serve me."
Matt blinked. He knew the truth.
White tendrils snaked upward, entwined Gerstner's wings of ash, solidified the smoke and bound them to the machine. Silk strands flowed down her throat, into her nostrils, and where they touched the illusion of beauty and power crumbled into dusty, skeletal reality.
"I'm a husband. I am a father. I am a servant, but not yours." He reached out with weak, trembling hands and draped Monica's cross over Gerstner's head. She screamed, a piteous wail devoid of hope for salvation. Matt smiled and shoved the C4 into her unwilling hands even as she gasped out a stream of spiteful gibberish.
"God allowed you to remain after the flood, to tempt but not to take form. You've violated His command so you could take men's souls against their will. But you can't have them. You can't have mine. And you sure as hell can't have hers."
He jammed his thumb down on the trigger. Gerstner screamed, and her rage obliterated him.
Chapter 19
Matt's eyes fluttered open on a world of agony.
Bright light. Too bright, too brilliant. He closed them. He hurt too much to sob, and he couldn't speak. A shadow loomed over him, so he tried again. He couldn't make out the face, but the curly brown hair that surrounded it seemed familiar. The world floated in a lovely warm soup. He giggled, then coughed in agony, which faded to a dull ache.
"Shhh," the figure whispered. A cool hand stroked his head. "It's okay. You'll be home soon, I promise."
He closed his eyes and drifted. I am yours. He shuddered as the thought wracked through him.
* * *
He came to again, and a black nurse smiled at him with unnaturally white teeth. "Hey there, Mr. Rowley. How you feeling?" She set down her clipboard and put one hand on his.
Everything hurt, more than he'd ever imagined anything could hurt, but he didn't care. He took a deep breath but it ended up shallow, cut off by a stab of pain. "Hard to breathe. My skin feels . . . tight."
She gave him a matter-of-fact nod. "That's the bandages. You looked like a fried chicken when they brought you in. Was pretty cut up with some nasty burns besides."
"Were." He smiled.
She grinned a very pretty grin and waggled a finger at him. "Don't you sass me, Mr. Rowley, or I'll swap that morphine with water. Or something worse." She left the room muttering.
He hazed out, and when he came to, Monica sat next to him, hands on her bulging belly, short, platinum blonde hair showing dark roots, her face a pale white tinged with green. His eyes widened. "Shit, Mo, you need to be lying down." His words slurred around a thick tongue.
She squeezed his hand. "I know, but I need to be here more. They brought me a cot for when I should sleep, which they seem to think is all the time."
"Where am I?"
"Saint John's. ICAP had you flown home as soon as you were stable enough."
"How long have I been out?"
"Eighteen days."
He tried to move and grunted. "I hurt."
She smiled. "I imagine, silly. You're like our first car. Remember that thing? Got a dozen broken bones, bruised lungs, some patched arteries, and I hate to say it, you won't be winning any beauty pageants any time soon." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But you're alive, baby. And you're home."
She almost hugged him, a leaning touch that seared against his bandaged skin. He tried to hug her back and got as far as wiggled fingers before he gave up. "I love you."
"I love you, too. Now rest."
She stood to leave, but he stopped her with a question.
"Sakura?"
"She's fine. She's the reason they found you underneath all that rock."
"Can I talk to her?"
She kissed him through the bandage on his forehead. "You rest, baby. They been debriefing her the better part of the week, and they're fixing to do the same to you now you're conscious. Some real important people died, and they're all 'nothing's working' this and 'stuff ain't happening right' that. They tell me you're to blame, and some big time folks ain't too happy about it."
He squeezed her hand. "I am."
He closed his eyes to a silence where nothing whispered, and added one more word to the thought.
I am yours.
He smiled, and slept.
* * *
He hobbled up next to Blossom. He let go of his walker to put his arm around her shoulders as they wheeled her daughter into the operations suite. He knew better than to reassure her: without regenerates, Kazuko's cancer had returned, though it had been knocked back to what might be operable levels. Maybe.
She patted his hand, like the rest of him still covered by bandages. "Thank you for coming."
"Yeah."
"And I'm very sorry for what I did. But—"
"No, Isuji, don't. Some things you don't get to apologize for."
She said nothing for a while. "Thank you."
They stood there, not quite blocking traffic through the hospital. "When will they know?"
"They're going to start chemo either way."
"And then?"
"A month. Maybe two. There will be tests and tests. But my Kazuko, she's very strong. She will fight."
"I'm sure she will.”
Chapter 20
Matt limped up the steps of St. Martin's with the help of his cane, a minor indignity compared to his now-discarded walker. The doctors, expecting a year of physical therapy before he'd be able to get by with just a cane, shared their amazement that he could walk at all. Matt had never been happier to prove people wrong. Even so, the crisp early March morning didn't help his shattered, arthritic joints. He stepped into the church and braced himself for the shriek of whispers he hadn't heard in twenty-one weeks. They didn't come.
He hobbled down the aisle, sat in a pew, and tried to ignore the stares and gasps, especially from small children. Even without skin grafts his scars had shown remarkable pliability, but the pink mass of scar tissue that passed for his face couldn't be fun to look at.
He sat through the service, the chanting and bells and robes and songs, neither kneeling nor standing nor going up for the bread and wine. The words washed over him, and the looks he got when he didn't respond weren't any worse than the looks he got just being there. When it finished, he waited for the precession to go by: cross, incense, giant Bible, other guy, another other guy, two altar boys, priest. He followed them out, hobbling at full speed to the wide-eyed entertainment and bemusement of the masses.
They stopped outside, the altar boy and rectors breaking to the left, Father Rees stopping to say goodbye as people exited the church. Rees took his hand when he offered it, and Matt admired how well he hid his distaste.
"Good morning, sir," the priest said. "Thank you for coming today."
Matt laughed, a haggard, unpleasant sound from a raw throat. He squeezed harder when Rees tried to pull his hand away, and despite his injuries and lack of augs, Matt remained the stronger man.
He enjoyed the pain in Jason's eyes, and smiled. "Don't you know me, Father?"
The shock of recognition jolted Rees's whole body. "Rowley. I didn't recognize you." His face tightened into a guarded, threatened mask. He tried to step back and Matt didn't let him. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave or I'm calling the cops."
Matt's smile widened. "You did that once already, only it wasn't the cops. You won't survive a second time, so let's cut the threats."
All premise, all kindness, all Christian charity dropped from his face. "What do you want?"
Matt let go, pulled out his wallet, and produced a photo. Monica sat with their son, Adam, against a cloth backdrop. Three weeks old, you couldn't escape the family resemblance: he had Monica's cheeks and nose, and Matt’s eyes. "This is my son, Adam."
Jason cleared his throat. "He's beautiful."
"I almost didn't live to meet him."
Matt punched him in the stomach, and Rees folded, gasping. They knelt together, and
Matt ignored the wide eyes of the parishioners who'd stopped to stare. Somebody said something about calling the police, and Jason waved them down.
Standing on the steps of an alien church in a town not his own, Matt leaned in close and whispered the only things he knew for certain were true. "You set me up. You forced me to kill good men who were just doing their job. They died for your vengeance, and there is no forgiveness for it. So God help me, if I ever see you again, or if she ever sees you again, or our boy sees you even once, I'm going to kill you and leave your body to rot in a ditch."
Jason nodded once, gasped, and Matt helped him to his feet.
"You have a nice life, padre." Matt hobbled down the steps on his cane, got into the car, and drove south.
* * *
Matt walked up the stairs to his home with the help of the railing and cursed the creaky third step that he still hadn't fixed. It went back on the list, higher this time. He opened the door to the smell of honey and a diaper that needed changing. Monica met him halfway to the kitchen, a honey cake in one hand, Adam in the other.
He mussed Adam's hair, kissed his wife, and stole the honey cake. She opened her mouth in an "O" of indignant shock as he shoved it whole into his mouth and chewed.
"You, good sir, have no manners."
He chewed a bit more, swallowed, and grinned. "I've been told that before. Good thing I'm so pretty."
She grabbed him with her free hand, pulled him in for a long kiss, then hugged him tight. "Ain't neither of us are perfect, but you're all mine."
"Yeah," Matt said. "I'm yours."
* * *
Two weeks later, just before seven am, his phone rang. He rolled out of Monica's embrace, held it up, and squinted at the screen. The caller ID read, "Sakura, Isuji."
He hit "talk" before the second ring could wake the baby. "Hello?" He shuffled to the bathroom, and a jolt of pain in his left knee told him that leaving his cane by the bedside might have been a mistake.
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