A Mystery of Light

by Brian Fuller

  They leapt the gap. Mars and Corinth went first so they could leap from the hallow. Helo and Melody followed, landing in water past their knees and sloshing to an unsteady stop. A large, circular building loomed to their right, an arena of some sort.

  “I think KC Live! is left down this street, then the first right,” Corinth said. He flung his arms outward, water snapping off his shirt. “Dude, this sucks. Never coming on a mission with you again.”

  They turned left, putting the glass arena to their backs. Up to their thighs now, the water kept the going slow, the current pushing them along. It was like their legs weighed a hundred pounds each. And it kept getting deeper, feeling hungrier, anticipating its Ash Angel victims.

  Redbrick stores and restaurants lined the streets, trees in planters thrashing in the violent air. Then that accursed feeling came again. Helo spun just in time to see the Sheid splash down fifty feet behind them. The ground shook. Hard. Helo’s knees buckled, but a hand from Melody kept him upright. Mars leaned on a planter. Corinth flailed backward into the water and popped up only to get a blast of Sheid fire straight in the chest. He crumpled back into the abyssal flow, his clothes and ash swept away.

  Helo froze. Corinth gone, just like that. It didn’t feel real.

  “Get Avadan!” Mars roared. The Archus Strength jumped into the air at a low angle, sanctified sword glowing in the night. Helo wasn’t about to turn away. He blasted Angel Fire at the Sheid at the same time as the Sheid whipped a tentacle at Mars. Melody extended her hallow outward. Mars couldn’t dodge the tentacle and got whipped in half midair before the Angel Fire nailed the Sheid. The Archus fell into the water and was gone. Melody’s hallow engulfed the Sheid, and a moment later Sparks dove from a rooftop and stabbed the Sheid through the head with a sanctified sword—the one Helo had left behind in the car.

  The Sheid exploded. Sparks stumbled but caught himself on a wall before he dipped into the water. There was no exultant victory yell this time. His face was a mixture of rage and sadness. He’d lost Finny, Helo was sure of it. The two were like the left and right hands of the same body. Melody ended her hallow, which left Sparks’s face pinched as he trudged his way over through the deepening water. Still the storm raged. Was there another Sheid? That would just be cruel.

  “My Virtus is about spent,” Sparks said. “Surviving that bastard Sheid almost did me in.”

  “I’m about done too,” Helo said. This had to have been Avadan’s plan all along. Armies of Shedim and Possessed to drain them dry so they’d have nothing left to fight with when they found him. Not that an abundance of Virtus or Ash Angel soldiers had helped them before. “How about you, Melody?”

  “Not much left,” she said. “What now?”

  “Keep going,” Helo said. “I can feel him.”

  “Me too,” she said, face sour.

  The hopeless pull of Avadan’s presence tugged at his heart. It urged him forward not to victory but to a final defeat, an end of struggle. That poisonous feeling assured him that resistance was pointless, that a surrender to their destruction was the only option that made sense or was even possible. Come, it said, come and lie down. Let the inevitable wave of darkness wash you out of existence.

  But Melody. The thought of Melody in Avadan’s clutches, tortured until she became a Dread, sent fear slicing through Helo’s heart. That nagging desire to force her to stay behind slipped back into his head. He could break her down, hide her somewhere the Ghostpackers and Shedim couldn’t find her. He and Sparks could take down Avadan, and if they failed, then Melody would be safe. At least for a while. But somewhere inside he knew that if they failed, nowhere would be safe. An entire world would be desecrated, its inhabitants fodder for evil spirits.

  He took in Melody’s rain-drenched face. She looked back at him. And he kissed her. For just that moment, the rain and lightning and desecration faded. He’d never regretted his lost six months more than now.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Sparks muttered, face tight. “This desecration might be a walk in the park for you two, but it’s a bit painful for the rest . . . for me. And would you do me a favor, Melody?”

  “What?”

  “Sing.”

  It was a strange idea. Sing in the middle of a flooded street surrounded by evil’s henchmen? Melody’s face registered surprise, but after a moment she nodded with a speculative “Hmm.” “Lead Kindly Light,” one of Dolorem’s favorites from the Redemption Motorcycle Club, rose over the gloom. Sparks had the right idea. The gloom seemed less gloomy. The taint of desecration around them loosened its hold. Her angelic voice even dulled the hopelessness that radiated from Avadan, who was somewhere close, just around a corner ahead of them.

  Together they waded forward. Helo peeked around the edge of a building. About a hundred feet away, the submerged sidewalk led to a set of concrete steps rising out of the water. A walkway at the top of the stairs disappeared behind the buildings.

  Ghostpackers, at least fifteen of them, stood on those partially submerged steps, all of them statue still. All of them held guns to the heads of one of the other Ghostpackers. More of Avadan’s sick games. Vexus flowed past them up the steps and to wherever the sidewalk led.

  Helo rounded the corner, Melody and Sparks following behind. Melody kept up her singing, and as they passed more immobile Ghostpackers, the evil spirits on their backs squirmed like they were trying to roll out of a fire. But their human hosts remained still, rainwater waterfalling down their chins and noses. As they got closer, the arm of a man in a police uniform started to tremble, and in a flash he switched the hand holding the gun.

  “Don’t like the look of this,” Sparks muttered.

  The walkway emptied out into an open commons. To their left, the commons was packed with Possessed, all armed and pointing guns at each other. To their right, a short set of stairs led up to a platform where bands might play.

  Lightning flashed, and Avadan stepped onto the platform, then moved to the head of the stairs. For once he actually looked like Avadan, his dark hair flowing out from beneath his top hat. He wore a soaked, button-up white shirt with a bowtie, and dark slacks. It was the most coordinated ensemble Helo had ever seen him in. The runes on his forearms glowed a faint red beneath the shirt. Another Sheid trailed him, this one morphed to look like Billy Wickett.

  “Welcome to my show!” Avadan said.

  Helo went to blast him with Angel Fire, but Avadan was faster. The black torch hit like a wall. And there was no resisting it. Melody screamed. All he knew of the outside world was that he was on his knees in floodwater up to his neck. His mortal senses had returned, but it didn’t matter. The black torch had swallowed his mind.

  Chapter 46

  The Mysteries of Light

  Helo had always thought of despair as a pool of dark, freezing water, a numbing killer that slowly sapped light from life, a gradual rotting of the soul. Somehow Avadan had turned despair into a sledgehammer. It pounded at Helo, breaking the very bones of who he was, imprinting his body with the bruises of a life that had so often beaten him down.

  Coward.

  Screw up.

  Unloved.

  Insufficient.

  Unwanted.

  Too little.

  Too late.

  It was cowering before his drunken, angry father again and again. It was reliving Terissa’s betrayal over and over. It was watching his brother blow his brains out in a shopping mall. It was seeing Aclima turned into a Dread. It was losing Melody to that same fate.

  Fight! Resist! Stand!

  Those words ran like jackrabbits away from him, impossible to reach. Dimly he was aware of hands on his body. Fight it! He was Angel Born! He had to snap out of it, had to get to Avadan. But why? Avadan was going to win anyway. He was too much. Too powerful. Nothing they had ever done to him had worked. It was folly to think they could ever get close enough to even touch him with a sanctified weapon. He would kill them all. It was probably moments away from happening. A quick burn th
rough the heart and then a trip into the water. As long as he killed them. No torture. Please, please, let Melody escape or die with him. She couldn’t be a Dread.

  That thought infused him with some grit. His eyes fluttered, vision watery, sounds echoing in his ears. Dripping. The rushing of water. Two Ghostpackers had looped their arms under his armpits and were dragging him forward, to the front of the stage. A generator growled somewhere, casting light around the stage. A framework of girders created an arched roof open on both sides, which protected it a little from the rain. But the quaking had opened up a chasm that gashed down the middle of the commons until it intersected with the stage, water from the incessant storm pooling at the bottom.

  And on both sides of the crack, a crowd of Ghostpackers stood dumbly, and like the ones outside, they held guns to the heads of those around them. Randomly they would switch hands when one side got tired. Helo blinked and shook his head, trying to get his mind straight. The Ghostpackers dumped him right next to the crack on the floor, depositing a squirming Melody and a completely unconscious Sparks nearby. Avadan crossed the stage to stand over Helo, Vexus sucking into the Loremaster wherever he went. How big was the desecration field now?

  Helo got to his knees, feeling wobbly. He reached out to Melody to Inspire her, but the Sheid Billy Wickett kicked him down and blew holes in both of their hearts. This was not going according to plan. At all.

  Avadan trotted along the stage, peering down at them with his piercing, crazy-man stare. He raised both his hands, runes brightening, and blasted Helo and Melody with Vexus, poisoning their bodies.

  “I was hoping not to have to deal with you this particular evening, but just as well. I am sad you won’t get to see the fruition of this little work.”

  “What’s that?” Helo said. If he could lure Avadan down from the stage . . .

  “You see,” Avadan said, “even though I kept King from taking my body, he and I agree on one thing: control is best. The evil spirits have to do what I say. It’s really quite convenient. Now, there really is only one reason you’re still alive. I want to know how you do it.”

  “Do what?” Helo asked, knowing what Avadan would say. Melody was working her way up to her knees.

  “Hallow an entire city, of course,” Avadan said. “The energy required to desecrate such a wide area is tremendous. My union with King enables me to pull from his connection to the infinite darkness, but there are limits, of course. You must have found a way to tap into infinite light. Is it an Angel Born thing? I have no record of it ever having been done. Either it’s new or it’s a secret, so which is it?”

  Helo wasn’t going to tell Avadan anything, but Melody was looking at Avadan like he’d said something profound.

  “No?” Avadan said. A gun went off, and one of the Possessed collapsed into the crack with a bullet wound to the head. The slack-faced woman who shot him turned her gun on someone else. “How about now?”

  Helo’s mouth opened and then closed. It was a mystery, something he couldn’t even tell Ash Angels. Then again, what could Avadan really do with the information? He couldn’t use it himself, and if he told the Ash Angels, it would only help them.

  Another gun went off, another Ghostpacker falling in a spray of blood. Helo felt sick.

  “Come on, now,” Avadan said. “Is it an Angel Born ability? Micah never wrote of it.”

  “It’s not,” Helo answered. He could reveal that much.

  Avadan’s face brightened. “Really? Now that is fascinating! But if any old Ash Angel can connect to the infinite light, then why haven’t they been doing it?” He started pacing, tapping his chin. “If it’s not been done, that means it’s a new discovery, perhaps a lost secret. And/or it’s something with such high requirements that it’s difficult to attain.” Then he frowned. “And if you’ve figured it out, why aren’t you using it right now?”

  While Avadan mused, Helo noticed Melody looking at him, a wistful smile on her face. She got unsteadily to her feet. “It’s the requirements,” she said. “They are, as you said, difficult, but a lot of fun to figure out. Right, Helo?”

  She was up to something, wanting him to understand. Where was she going with this?

  Avadan’s eyes lit up. “Yes! You have compassion. You will talk to save these people. What is the secret? I must know.”

  She nodded. “It’s union, the joining of two as one.”

  “Yes, yes,” Avadan said impatiently. “But how do you achieve this union with the infinite light? Achieving what I have with King was mortifyingly difficult. Be direct, or all these people will come down with a case of twitchy fingers.”

  Melody looked at Helo meaningfully. “It’s not the union with the light. It is the union with the other that brings the light.” She turned back to Avadan. “Do you understand?”

  Helo didn’t get it. By the twist of Avadan’s face, he didn’t either. A gun went off, another victim falling. Melody flinched, and Avadan strode forward, finger jabbing down at her. “I said a straight answer!”

  “Okay, okay,” Melody said, hands up pleadingly. “I’ll let Helo give you the rest. I won’t do it.” She turned and looked at Helo, face sad and soft. Her eyes still seemed to want to tell him something he couldn’t figure out. “I love you,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

  Then she jumped into the chasm, a deep splash sounding in his ears as if with the force of thunder.

  No! Helo surged to his feet. He would follow her in. If she was alive he would save her. If she was ash, he would be ash too. He would not stay in this world without her in it. He would go with her into the light. He jumped toward the chasm only to have the Sheid grab his backpack and hammer him to the ground. Helo wanted to Hallow, but there was nothing left. The Sheid sliced off his legs with a fiery tentacle. Avadan jumped down from the stage and lifted him up by the straps of his backpack so they were eye to eye.

  “This must be a great secret,” he purred. “Both of you are willing to die to keep it.” A trio of gunshots went off, Ghostpackers falling, their killers retraining their pistols on new victims.

  Helo stared him down. Then his body felt warm. It started as a seed within him, building and growing like Rapture in slow motion. It was Virtus, an infinitely deep well of it.

  Avadan shook him. “How much blood do you want on your hands, Helo? How many deaths? Tell me your little secret, and I’ll throw you in the water to join . . . to join . . . your belo . . .”

  Avadan’s voice trailed off, realization dawning on his face. “Damn!”

  Helo headbutted him, sending the stupid top hat tumbling from his head. At that same moment, a glory filled Helo, a deep reservoir of light he had only felt for fleeting moments during Rapture and when he and Melody had Hallowed Saint Louis together. Now his body was suffused with it. The dark poison that Avadan had pumped into him washed away.

  Avadan turned toward the chasm, ready to chuck him in, but Helo formed two swords of light and chopped Avadan’s arms off at the shoulders. The flow of Vexus stopped.

  Helo’s legless body dropped to the ground in concert with the severed limbs. Avadan yelled. Helo immediately Hallowed the ground. The Sheid jumped away, and Avadan scrambled up to the stage, howling in pain and rage. The Possessed all dropped their weapons, now gawking in horror and confusion.

  Helo spotted one of Avadan’s arms nearby and swept it into the dark water of the chasm with a sword.

  “No!” Avadan yelled, looking longingly at the other arm lying a few inches out of Helo’s reach. He needed to get to it.

  A tentacle of Sheid fire shot at Helo, but with a thought, the sword in his left hand morphed into a shield of light, the Sheid fire absorbed within it. The Sheid torched. Useless. Avadan looked at his other arm, gritted his teeth, and then fled. Ghostpackers ran out of the plaza in all directions.

  Helo dropped the hallow for moment, pulsing Glorious Presence with the force of a hundred suns, trying to get Sparks to snap out of it. The gritty Brit groaned, curling up to his knees. The
Sheid didn’t like the Glorious Presence either, and it turned and Sped away after Avadan.

  Good riddance, but the storm still raged. Helo let the sword and shield he’d created dissipate, then dragged himself arm over arm until he touched Sparks, letting Inspire flow into him. In a few moments, Sparks sat up and wiped his face.

  “I quit,” he joked. Or maybe he wasn’t joking. Losing Finn had hit him hard.

  “I need my legs,” Helo said.

  “Where’s Melody?” Sparks asked as he reached over.

  Helo swallowed hard. “Gone.”

  “Damn. Sorry.” Sparks healed him, Helo’s legs snapping back into place. “You got his arms off?”

  “Yeah,” Helo said, kicking the remaining one into the water. “I’ll explain on the way. We just gotta find him now. I’ll Hallow. Heal me if you notice my body burning away.”

  He had to Hallow far and wide to keep Avadan and the Sheid from escaping using their powers. This had to end here, in Kansas City, in the rain and thunder and lightning. He Hallowed, the well within him powering it outward with Speed.

  Helo explained what had happened to Sparks while they followed Avadan’s path out of KC Live!. When they got to the street, Helo closed his eyes. Avadan was somewhere to the east, so they sloshed in that direction.

  Walking through the waist-deep water was frustratingly slow. Bodies and garbage flowed by, lit up white by the lightning banging through the sky. They turned a corner, the huge circular building with reflective panels he had noticed earlier reflecting the flashes of lightning along the side. A line of Ghostpackers caught in the hallow milled about in the water outside.

  “I think he’s in there,” Helo said, body warming from the hallow. “I think it’s a sports arena or a concert hall.”

  “Makes sense,” Sparks agreed. “He does love an audience. One sec.” Sparks reached over and healed him. “Your hands were starting to disappear.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So how do we win this?” Sparks said. “You could chop him to pieces, but I think he’s still going to show up when dusk comes around.”