“There is no message from Emma, is there?” he said. “I must say I find it rather disappointing. I expected more from you, Abby.”
The cage stopped. I looked up again. The surface seemed to be thirty feet above me. My lungs were beginning to burn, but I maintained my silence and continued to concentrate on nothing. Still, I was aware that Nathaniel was studying me and waiting, unhurried, with all the time in the world. At some point I realized that he wasn’t waiting for me to make up some story.
He was waiting for me to die.
A shadow passed in front of me then and for a moment I thought it was a shark or Death or my mind shutting down and dying, but then I saw him clear as day.
Samael.
Blue-eyed Samael.
CHAPTER 47
Nathaniel laughed when he saw him.
“What are you doing here, angel? After our little reunion on the beach earlier I should think I would be the last person you would want to see.”
“I’ve come to take you to your rightful place,” Samael said.
Nathaniel smiled and shook his head.
I could feel the strength of Samael’s energy again, but there was something different about it, not like on the beach. It was more like when I had first met him.
He suddenly sprung forward and took Nathaniel in a bear hug. Nathaniel struggled to break free, the smile gone from his lips, something beyond conceit and contempt in his eyes. It took my mind an extra moment to realize what it was.
Fear.
“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice lacking the usual arrogance.
“Understand this, demon.” Samael tightened his grip. “I’m taking you to Hell!”
“You’re bluffing,” Nathaniel said. “Your friend is waiting there for you. If you take me, he takes you.”
“What happens to me is of no consequence.”
“How about this consequence?”
Suddenly Nathaniel began to fade and disappear. He was barely there anymore and in the next moment I knew what he was trying to do. I could feel him.
I could feel him inside me.
“He’s trying to come into me, Samael! He’s here with me!”
“Fight him, Abby. Fight him!”
I could see that Samael was now holding on to nothing more than a watery shadow.
I had never felt such darkness, never had such black thoughts running through my mind. His evil was suddenly alive in me, pouring into my soul like water into a glass. In a split second I saw some of the things he had done through the years like a highlight reel playing in my mind.
The people he had killed, the bodies he had mutilated, the lives he had destroyed.
There were so many and I realized that the suffering he had unleashed upon Ben, Kate, Ty, and me was only a fraction of the pain Nathaniel had inflicted over the centuries.
Samael stared at me, the concern in his expression growing.
“Fight him, Abby.”
I fought him. But he was strong. Too strong. I tried to remember the simulations and different scenarios I had used to prepare for this moment, the things that had worked and those that had not. But this was the real thing and nothing could have prepared me for it, for his power, for the dark and vile depths of his heart.
He was feeding on my weakness.
I felt myself losing, losing everything.
“Help me, God,” I prayed. “Just once. Help me.”
Summoning the last of my strength, I pushed at him with all my might, but to no avail. He wouldn’t budge. But neither would I. Time seemed to stop and we were like two wrestlers stuck in a stalemate, each one straining to get the upper hand, waiting for the other’s strength to wane. I could feel his evil coursing through me, but I was still here as well. I was still myself. But for how much longer? He had the ultimate advantage: he didn’t need to breathe.
With the last of my energy exhausted, the oxygen gone from my brain, I began to black out.
But then something happened.
I jolted awake and saw Nathaniel beginning to reappear back inside Samael’s embrace. I could feel him fading from me, the weight lifting, his evil receding.
“No!” Nathaniel screamed. “No!”
“Goodbye, Abby,” Samael said, the determination carved on his face as he wrapped his python-like arms tighter and tighter around Nathaniel.
“We’re going to Hell, Natavius,” he said. “Where we both belong.”
The two of them then shot down into the darkness below, disappearing to the bottom of the sea.
Nathaniel’s screams faded and everything grew deathly quiet.
And then, the last of the sand drained from my hourglass, the darkness took me.
CHAPTER 48
I fell into the blackness, down, down, down, for what felt like forever.
When the light finally returned, I saw that Jesse was carrying me in his arms.
“It’s okay, Craigers. I got you.”
“Jesse, you’re here.”
“Of course I’m here.”
I could feel the water in my eyes as I dropped my head against his chest. He carried me through a snowy forest filled with white trees and white hills and crystal snowflakes that fell gently around us.
“I’m tired, Jesse.”
“I know,” he said. “Just rest now.”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s something I want to show you. It’s not far.”
I could hear the crunching beneath his feet as a raven flew by, its wings slapping at the air above our heads. I closed my eyes and thought about my death. Nathaniel was gone, so my sacrifice had been more than worth it, and yet I couldn’t help but feel that I had left so much behind, so many things unsaid and undone.
Jesse kissed the top of my head.
“We’re here.”
When I opened my eyes, I saw that we had left the woods and were high up on a ridge in front of a tall mountain. It took me a moment but I realized we were standing across from Mt. Bachelor. I slid out of Jesse’s arms and stood next to him, the twilight settling in around us.
He was quiet.
After a time he asked, “You don’t see it?”
“What?”
“The light. Just above the mountain.”
I squinted.
“No, I don’t see anything.”
Tears ran off my face and down into the snow, but Jesse was smiling.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “You’re not dead.”
“What do you mean I’m not dead? Believe me, I know what death feels like.”
“Not this time, you just blacked out from a lack of oxygen. You need to take a few deep breaths and you’ll be fine.”
“I’m really not dead?”
He shook his head, still smiling.
“Wake up,” he whispered. “Wake up, Craigers.”
CHAPTER 49
Somehow, I wasn’t dead.
I was on the surface, gasping frantically for air at first and then gradually drawing in deep breaths as I bobbed in the water, hugging the yacht’s hull.
And Jesse was there with me.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Did you get me out of that cage?”
“Someone had to, Craigers.”
“But how?”
“It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you did it, you killed him, and you survived.”
I heard commotion coming from the yacht and could see long shadows on the water as people moved about the deck.
“The cage is empty,” Phil shouted. “She must have gotten out.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Gruber said. “Weren’t you watching the monitor?”
“There was considerable interference. At times I couldn’t see what was going on.”
“Play it back.”
They were quiet for a minute.
“Shit, where’d she go?” someone said.
“Replay that part,” Gruber said.
“Look, she appears to be unconscious at this point. And then she just floats off camera. She’s dead.”
“The current will take the body out to sea,” one of the others said. “I don’t think we need to trouble ourselves further.”
They all agreed.
“All right,” Gruber said. “Let’s clean up this mess.”
“Fucking Simon,” Phil said. “I’m going to miss his ceviche.”
They didn’t seem concerned about Nathaniel, but then they had no reason to be. He came and went as he pleased and was so powerful that the last thing any of them would suspect was that an angel had just dragged him, kicking and screaming, straight down to Hell.
A few minutes later there was a loud splash off the stern. I saw the gray beard for a second. It was Simon, sinking in the water.
“Best not for you to stay here much longer, Craigers,” Jesse said. “Not with all that blood in the water. Just dive under and swim over to the dinghy, then wait until dark and take off. After what you’ve been through, it should be a piece of cake.”
I looked at the small raft, tethered to the yacht by a long rope, as it moved up and down in the swell and shook my head.
“Not yet.” I pointed up to the yacht. “I’ve got one more thing to take care of.”
CHAPTER 50
When I didn’t hear any more voices or footsteps, I swam over to the small rope ladder that was near the back of the boat. Then I waited, making sure they were gone.
Twilight had fallen.
I climbed aboard quickly and rushed down the spiral staircase that took me below. It didn’t take long to find the room where I had been held. My backpack was still hanging behind the door. I grabbed a flare from one of the pockets before slipping the pack over my shoulder.
I knew where I had to go.
I had seen the gas cap near where they had killed the photographer. Now it was just a question of getting there without being spotted. But as I headed back to the stairs, I heard voices coming my way.
It was Phil and the woman.
I ducked inside a small closet and waited.
“Remove any trace that they were on board,” she said. “The photographer had some cameras. And the girl a pack?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Phil said.
When it was quiet again I took off toward the stairs.
A moment later Phil’s voice rang out.
“Hey, Gruber. It’s gone! Her backpack’s gon—”
“She’s here, you idiot,” the woman said. “Look, there she goes!”
I flew up the steps and ran as fast and hard as I could over to the gas cap. I removed it, lit the flare, and dropped it inside.
Phil screamed.
Flinging my backpack toward the dinghy, I dove down into the water and swam for my life until…
Everything exploded.
The water, the air, the stars and the moon.
Everything.
CHAPTER 51
I wiped my fingerprints off the raft and pushed it back out into the water.
Then I sat on the beach in the dark for a long time, grateful to be alive. I watched the dinghy bob in the surf under the moonlight and a few turtles as they crawled up on shore. My entire body ached and my lungs burned, but all the pain was dwarfed by the fact that Nathaniel Mortimer was finally in Hell.
I felt good down in my soul.
For the first time since leaving home almost a year earlier, I was happy.
In the end Samael had come through and proven himself.
He had sacrificed everything to stop Nathaniel.
I would never know the details of their relationship throughout the centuries, but I didn’t need to. I knew enough about Nathaniel Mortimer. Everything he touched was tainted by darkness and evil. Whatever the specifics, I knew which side he was on. And now I knew where Samael stood.
I would miss Samael.
Most of the time he had either frightened me or I didn’t understand what he was doing. But in the end he had been true. I hoped that someday God would appreciate his sacrifice and forgive him his mistakes.
And that one day he could forgive himself.
I said a prayer.
After a time my mind returned to the fiery explosion, the yacht in flames, that huge blaze glowing like the fires of Hell in the black night.
All that was behind me now.
It was time to go home.
I smiled at the thought, writing the word in the sand.
Home.
CHAPTER 52
But I took the long the way home.
I decided I needed some time.
I rode through the moist heat and haze of the South, passing swamplands full of long-necked birds and magnolia trees and a hundred different types of flowers, their sweet scent heavy in the air. I took it slow, sleeping in and driving no more than a few hours a day. I stayed in places that had cable television and comfortable beds, leaving my room only for food.
As the days went by my cuts and bruises started to heal.
For the first time in a long while no one was chasing me. Not the dark entity that I had known as Nathaniel Mortimer, or his ghouls, or some fallen angel needing help, or the police looking to lock me up for a murder I didn’t commit.
It would take some getting used to.
But I felt free.
And I ate it up.
My route took me back through New Orleans and I decided to stop there for a few days. I wanted to try all those amazing Cajun and Creole dishes that I had missed the last time I was in Louisiana. I treated myself to a hotel room on a top floor overlooking Bourbon Street and watched the city below.
I went to restaurants and stopped at food carts, eating Po’ boys and beignets and bread pudding and banana cream pie. I downed bowlfuls of spicy gumbo that ripped the roof off my mouth and jambalaya with chicken and andouille sausage. I feasted on piles of crawfish laid out on newspapers, sucking out their bellies and slurping up their tails. I ate remoulade with crab, sole meunière, and shrimp etouffee. I drank Sazeracs in the late afternoons.
I wandered around the French Quarter and Jackson Square.
At night as I sat out on my balcony listening to jazz spill out from a nearby bar, I watched the people down below. There were couples and groups of friends flooding the street like a raging, happy river.
I smiled.
They didn’t have to worry about serums or ghouls or any of it.
And neither did I.
We were all safe.
At least from Nathaniel Mortimer.
CHAPTER 53
But something inside me began to change when I crossed into Texas.
My energy began to drain away, replaced by an all-powerful exhaustion, which left me feeling like I was stumbling through a desert with no water, swimming across an ocean without shores.
I had never been so tired in my life.
Rest didn’t help. If anything, it made it worse.
It didn’t take long for it to eat away at my emotions. I became a basket case, crying at the smallest thing. Sunrises and sunsets, sappy lines from the movies I watched, the thought of seeing Kate and David.
All the feelings of loss and pain and horror flooded over me like a rising tide and came pouring out.
I knew it was to be expected. The aftermath of a hard-fought battle, the scars and wounds of war, a case of post-traumatic stress disorder. But knowing this still didn’t make it any easier.
I looked for Jesse, hoping he’d find me on the road or in a diner, that he’d walk up suddenly and sit down across the table and steal my French fries. But he was nowhere. I wondered if I would ever see him again. And the thought of that really made me cry.
“Jesse, are you there?” I whispered late at night when I couldn’t sleep. “Can you hear me?”
But only the silence answered back.
As the summer days wore on, I could no longer feel the sun’s warmth.
Everything inside me turned cold and bleak, like I was trapped in another season
, in some late winter afternoon bleeding out the last of its light.
CHAPTER 54
I stood on the crackling shore of the Great Salt Lake as a hot, dry wind whipped through my hair. I had always wanted to see this lake, but like most everything lately, I was disappointed.
Just more salt water.
And then I saw him.
A silhouette in the distance, making its way toward me through the rising heat like an answered prayer.
Even from a football field away I knew it was him. Those skinny arms, that baseball cap pushed up on his forehead.
I ran to him.
“Jesse,” I whispered.
He fell into me as I wrapped my arms around him.
“Let’s go home, Craigers. Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER 55
But Jesse wasn’t well. His eyes were dull, his speech slow, his body translucent, coming and going like a faraway radio station. He seemed to barely be holding on.
“You don’t look so good,” I said, when we got back to my motel room.
I helped him over to the bed, where he stretched out and propped his head on a stack of pillows.
“Stand down, Nurse Craigers,” he said softly. “I’m fine. I just got a little tossed around in the explosion. Anyway, have you looked in a mirror lately? Pot has no business calling the kettle black. No business.”
I tried to smile.
“Can I get you anything?”
“How about a burger and some garlic fries,” he said. “And some…”
But as the last of his words drifted away, so did he.
Over the course of the next few days Jesse would show up and then vanish like a mist.
When I got to Idaho I rented a small cabin on a lake with a deck that hung over the water. The place came with a couple of ancient fishing rods and as the sun went down I sat in an equally old lawn chair and cast my line.
Jesse appeared in the chair next to me.
Forty-Four Book Thirteen (44 13) Page 11