Dying Day

by Kory M. Shrum

  Lane.

  Lane. Dark hair tossed in all directions. Blue eyes bright. For a moment, I just stare at him. The only thing my mind can gather and articulate beyond the surprise is, “You got a haircut.”

  He mouths something I don’t understand. Then he casts a glance at Jeremiah who motions for him to put the headset on.

  Lane does, adjusting the microphone in front of his wet lips.

  “What did you say?” he asks. His voice holds that strange metallic echo that I’ve grown used to even after these few short journeys.

  “You got a haircut,” I say again, and I feel a little self-conscious now. Why talk about his hair at all? Who cares about his stupid hair?

  “Yeah,” he says with a nervous smile. He runs a hand over his hair. “I wear it shorter these days. It’s how Audrey likes it.”

  “Audrey?” I arch an eyebrow.

  “My girlfriend,” he says, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s a slight blush rising in his cheeks. Why would that embarrass him? Does he think I’ll tell Jesse? Or does he think Jesse would care?

  Would she? Probably. Not because she wants him, but because she’d be a little offended that he had the audacity to move on.

  I’m not sure what else to say about the girlfriend or the haircut, so I ask, “What are you doing here?”

  Lane looks to Jeremiah, who is tugging at the bottom of his sweater vest beneath his black wool coat and lacing his hands in his lap. Ah, so this is Jeremiah’s doing.

  “We needed someone with NRD who also had contacts with Caldwell’s men. Someone who could infiltrate the Disciples’ headquarters and discover their intentions now that their chain of command has been destroyed. The first three in their chain of command was Caldwell himself, Georgia, and a Lieutenant Perry.”

  I lurch forward as the helicopter lifts then banks right. My hands wrap around the straps securing me. “You’re hoping they’ll recognize him and not be alarmed?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think they’ll just let you in the know right away?” I ask, very skeptical. I’m surprised how easy it is to have a chat with Lane when I know Jesse isn’t sharing his bed.

  “No, especially not when I show up as a confused amnesiac.”

  I frown harder. “I’m not seeing how this will work.”

  Jeremiah turns toward me in his seat, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

  “Caldwell used his mind control on all of his men, not just Mr. Handel.” He presses on, obviously encouraged by my growing skepticism. “Very few members didn’t experience full mind control at least once. I’m certain that Lane will be one of several disciples confused and disoriented in the wake of his death.”

  “But no one has seen Lane in over a year. Won’t it be surprising that he appears now?”

  “Not really. Lane could have been doing any number of things under Caldwell’s instruction for that period of time. And he will not be the only one with this story, which adds an additional layer of credibility.”

  I turn to Nikki, searching her face for clues to how she feels about all of this. But she’s guarded against me, perhaps still angry to learn I’ve been jumping out of helicopters and not telling her.

  “I have it on good authority from our informants in Chicago that numerous men have returned to Caldwell’s headquarters over the last few days. Most have been confused and disoriented, and after short briefings have been given short assignments.”

  “If you already have an insider, why send Lane?”

  “We have people in administration,” Jeremiah counters. “We need someone inside who will be taking orders.”

  “Because you want to know what their next move is.”

  “Hopefully, Mr. Handel will go in and discover that they are only packing up, tying up loose ends and disbanding.”

  “If you thought that, you wouldn’t send him.”

  Nikki and Jeremiah exchange a look. Everyone with their secrets.

  “You’re expecting some kind of retaliation attack against Jesse, because she killed him,” I say. And I know the truth of the words immediately.

  “We just want to be prepared,” Nikki says, with tenderness.

  “Or you want to recruit,” I say, looking straight in Jeremiah’s eyes. I hold his dark gaze, sparkling in the low cabin light. “It must be quite the haul. A whole army and no general? I can only imagine what generous offers you may make from your bottomless pockets.”

  Lane shifts nervously in his seat.

  It isn’t until the words are out of my mouth that I realize I’m still mad at Jeremiah. Furious, actually. He tried to keep Jesse in a coma so he could control and suppress her powers. That isn’t something I can just forgive. And now he has Gloria and Maisie to use against me because I simply don’t have the resources to go against him. If I didn’t have Nikki, the only other person who could probably help me is Gideon, but I don’t know where he is. As soon as Maisie stabilized, he took off.

  I need to find Gideon. If I have any ally beside Nikki, Gloria, and Maisie—it’s him. But after Rachel’s death, he might not want to be found. His excuse about “urgent matters” may have been a front for getting far, far away from us.

  “Al—” Nikki says. It’s meant to deter me, but it also sounds like a warning.

  Wind rushes in from the open doors and blows my hair about my face. Lane and Jeremiah start up the conversation again as if I haven’t just laid accusations against them. They talk schematics. Drop off and pick up points. How and when Lane should make contact.

  Nikki continues to watch my guarded face.

  Maisie continues to rub Gloria’s hand and keep Winston tucked close under her arm. None of us speak, and I start to get furious about this again—something about the women being quiet while the men talk shop—until I realize I’m going too far. I’m riling myself up for nothing. And I will be of no use to anyone, including myself, if I get too upset.

  I need to find my calm in this storm. I need to take this moment to gather my wits so I can bring all of me to this fight.

  And I am doing what I do best: waiting. I am sure someone somewhere would consider this a pathetic plan, waiting around while everyone scurries here and there. But there is a difference between surrender and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

  Chapter 4

  Jesse

  The fur collar is warm against the back of my neck and throat. It’s a comfort, and I bury my chin deeper, feeling it tickle my cheeks. I don’t think it’s just the coat warming me, nor just my shield protecting me from the elements. As I gaze out over the endless tundra, I can feel the fire from inside me. Beneath my skin, it swells and rises, reminding me that my firebombing power is never far away. But if I can do all that, why bother with petty theft?

  “Gabe,” I say, twitching my fingers in deep pockets. “I still don’t get the coat.”

  “Your powers will be intermittent once we begin to shift. I am only taking precautions.”

  Yeah, about that. “Can we talk about them and this shifting you speak of? I’m all for just going on the fly in dangerous situations, but maybe if I understood what was happening with “the gate” and the whole ascending thing, then I would do a better job, you know?”

  “Knowledge is power,” he says, blinking those indifferent feline eyes at me.

  “Yes!” I cry, almost overwhelmed by his simple understanding. “So let’s start with them. Who are they?”

  As if the topic itself has caused the world to shift its focus, the tundra disappears, and I am no longer standing inside a purple shield in Antarctica admiring eternal planes of snow and sunlight.

  I am on a beach, overlooking gray waters that lap at the sandy shore. The army green puffer coat is gone. I’m in jeans, a black hoodie and matching chucks now.

  Oh, now I know I’m dreaming. Matching shoes? I haven’t had those in forever!

  And yet, if this is a dream, how can the sting of salt and wind pull tears from the corners of my eyes?


  I blink against the change in light. The tenth circle of hell, known as the Winter Wonderland, is so bright that now I’m blinking back the spots dancing in my eyes.

  It takes me a moment to realize where I am. At first, I can only note the salt and pepper sand that slopes down into soft blue-gray waves. The stormy clouds above, looking ready to spit out a tornado any minute now. The way the beach rises on an incline, cresting in a forest-capped dune. Nestled on top is an A-frame beach house with black windows and sand-polished wood, its front porch propped up on stilts.

  I look right and see the shore disappear in an ethereal fog. I look left and see the other side of the shore disappear into lush jungle.

  Wait a minute.

  This isn’t just any beach. I’ve been here before. Gabriel brought me here when he first started introducing the idea that I have to make this choice. In this beach house I saw two—what I assume were metaphoric—versions of the future. Future number one: Ally and I married. Future number two: Ally is with Nikki, and they have two kids, Jesse and Natalie. Presumably, she named her firstborn after me, because I’m dead in that scenario.

  Awesome.

  This is also the place where my dead handler Brinkley visited me. It was either one of Gabriel’s tricks at opening my mind to some larger spiritual understanding, or my dead handler really did meet me in this place somehow and asked me to help Rachel.

  Well I sure as hell didn’t manage that, did I? Rachel is dead. Hell, they’re all dead.

  No, Gabriel counters. You saved Maisie.

  True. But for what? What did I save any of them for if it all comes down to this choice: use my shield to protect Earth, or let them keep going and watch them tear each other apart?

  I think about Brinkley’s visit again, and seeing him even in my mind’s eye, with that crooked smirk and James Dean jacket, makes my heart clench.

  “So what is this place? Where are we?”

  “The gate is your mind. But your physical body remains at the convergence point.”

  “The South Pole?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel says. “Every world and every universe overlap. They converge in a single point without time or distance. If something were to cross from one world or universe to another, to invade or infect or enrich or inspire another place—it enters through the gate. And you have brought the gate to the convergence point, where all worlds are most closely linked.”

  The waves slam against the shore as the sky continues to darken. Those storm clouds look mighty ominous. I try to understand what I see, to comprehend what terrible enemy is headed my way.

  “What are they?” I ask again, a slight variation on my first question of who. Given how weird Gabriel is, maybe they aren’t who. “I’m guessing they aren’t coming to enrich or inspire. So what do they want? To invade?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they like you?” I ask. “Are they angels—or as Rachel believed—ancient aliens?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart skips a beat. “Yes, angels or yes, aliens.”

  He says nothing to this.

  “So the angel-aliens want to destroy Earth?”

  “Time,” he says. “They would undo this time.”

  A sudden, brilliant memory resurfaces. Monroe, another partis and friend of Gloria’s, used some kind of hoodoo to show me his own beach. Whatever this place is to me—this beach house I see—wasn’t unique. The other partis had a similar “meeting place” in their own minds and dreams. In Monroe’s all the partis were alive and holding hands in a circle around an enormous and terrible power. In his version, we shared the power. We’d learned how to channel it between us to keep the bad angels away. We hadn’t killed each other for it.

  “If the others had survived—Rachel or Monroe—would they be here to fight with me?” I ask, but it isn’t a real question.

  “If you brought them here, yes. But they must be willing to come. They must be willing to see what you see. And often that distance is far too much for others to consider crossing.”

  Loneliness wells inside me like cold water in the back of my throat. It becomes impossible to speak.

  “You are strong enough to face them alone,” Gabriel adds, perhaps mistaking my melancholy for fear or doubt. “I made sure of it.”

  This should comfort me, but it doesn’t. There is something about this place, about the looming beach house, the stormy shore, and about Gabriel’s brooding that makes it impossible for me to shake these feelings.

  I glimpse leathery wings and talons poking out of the black storm clouds. They’re getting that close. And let me just say that leather wings and talons aren’t what I was hoping to see. Bunnies! Why couldn’t my gate be overrun by long-eared, twitchy-nosed, swishy-tailed, little bunnies?

  A gust of wind knocks Gabriel’s black hair into his face and whips it around his head. He’s pretty gorgeous. I want to slap him for it sometimes. There’s something about a boy as pretty as me that just invites a good slapping.

  “You are with me, Jesse, are you not?”

  My heart kicks.

  “Of course,” I say, and cave to my sudden urge to wrap my hand in his. “We’ve come this far, haven’t we?”

  He smiles then. Beautiful. “Further than you can possibly know.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, untangling my fingers from his. “If you’re going to get all sappy and cryptic again, I’m going to have to call a time out.”

  He seems unfazed by this. “We are the Resistance. We hold hope in our hearts when there is none. We are the light that never ends.”

  “That’s pretty. Did you read it on a cereal box? Hmm, cereal. I’m sort of hungry. Aren’t you hungry?” Where’s that pack I stole?

  “You would like her,” he says. “The one who said those words.”

  “Gabe! You have friends?”

  His face shifts back to seriousness just as the sky erupts with a tremulous screech. They’re here. Whatever is in the storm clouds—they’re finally here.

  I brace myself for impact and widen my shield to give me more of a buffer.

  “The shield will hold,” Gabriel assures me in a tone that could be mistaken for benevolent calm, but he isn’t wasting any of his precious, comforting smiles on me now. His eyes remain fixed on the swarm blotting out the sky.

  Talons from both hands and feet sink into the side of my shield. A snarling face hisses at me from above, red hair like fire streaming around its face, black eyes dilated. This first angel is joined by another and another, until my whole shield is covered by snarling faces and scraping claws.

  The shield will hold, Gabriel assures me again.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. My flesh is starting to crawl, and I’m doing this nervous thing where I shift back and forth from foot to foot. “They’re really digging in.”

  He raises only one hand. It’s barely a gesture at all. And yet the attacking angels scatter like pigeons. Black, white, and gray feathers fly in all directions. They swarm and circle, creating a cyclone above our heads. And in some ways, this feels even more menacing than the first attack maneuver.

  I look to Gabriel again, hoping for instructions, information, anything. What do I do what do I do what do I do is playing on a loop in my head.

  “What do I do?” I blurt. It comes out high and tight.

  But Gabriel isn’t saying anything. He isn’t really moving. He’s just standing there with his hands in his pants’ pockets. The only clue I have that the lights are on upstairs and anybody is home is the look in his eyes. His eyes are bright and feral beneath the milky-gray of storm clouds.

  “Great. Good talk,” I mumble. “I feel 100% prepared for… whatever.”

  Without looking at me, he says, “There’s only one we must fear.”

  The cyclone disperses. Their shadows pass over the beach. I keep looking up and behind me, waiting to see if they’ll double back and try again.

  Gabriel stiffens for an instant. It’s such a slight gesture, I can’t be sure he moved at all.
>
  I follow his gaze and see the problem. There’s a man walking across the water toward us. Walking on the water. I consider calling up the water, making it soak him like a dog.

  “It won’t work,” Gabriel warns, plucking the thought from my mind.

  Good point. If a dude can walk on water, he’s probably got a waterproof suit, or something.

  “So this is the one? The last baddy? The one we have to kill before we take the castle and save the princess?” I ask.

  Wannabe Jesus walks casually toward us as feathers from the circling angels rain down like snow. I should be keeping my gaze wide for sneak attacks, but I can’t look away from the guy approaching. There is something very disturbing in the way he walks. It reminds me of someone.

  Caldwell. He moves like Caldwell.

  My heart skips a beat. “I killed you!” I shout, assuming the worst.

  The moment the man’s foot touches the sand, gravity takes hold. We are firmly on the beach now, sand shifting underfoot. The smell of salt is sharp. The wind pulls tears from my eyes and cools my cheeks.

  “No, you killed my host,” he says. His voice is boyish, almost petulant. It invokes the urge to say sorry. Or spank him with a ruler… I’m honestly not sure which.

  I bite down on my lip instead.

  He stops at the edge of my shield. Wild, long, blond hair whips around him. His eyes are so blue that it almost hurts to look. “What a lovely dreamscape you have here.”

  He runs his fingers along the surface of my shield.

  It seems as though he’s trying to initiate small talk. However, I’m obsessing over what he said.

  His host.

  Caldwell. My late father who will never walk Earth again because I shoved a kitchen knife through his throat. But for good reason—I mean he wanted to kill me—again… Before that, he manipulated me, lied to me, and used me to help him off some of the other partis. Even if I’d taken the high road, he would’ve killed Maisie eventually—which I would have never in a million years allowed to happen.

  Talk about daddy issues.

  “You’re Michael,” I say, recalling the name my father used for his angel. At least, I’m pretty sure he said his angel was named Michael.