Cat must have thrown it away before she left Lumina. I could hardly blame her. She had every right to be furious with me.
But then I wondered why Cindy had taken so long to return Alia’s pendant.
I handed the little unicorn back to her. “Keep it,” I said quietly. “I think she would’ve wanted you to have it.”
And with that, I returned to my silence.
Late the following night, when I stepped out of my room to get a glass of water, I found Cindy in the dining room, sitting at the table and quietly weeping into her hands. Alia’s unicorn was lying in front of her. Without a word, I passed her, got my water, and returned to my room.
The next evening, I saw her crying again, and I suspected that she was doing it a lot more when I wasn’t there. Perhaps when I first told Cindy that Alia was dead, the weight of my message hadn’t fully registered in Cindy’s mind. It had taken me more than a month to come to terms with it, after all. As the days passed, I still stuck mostly to my room, but I began to notice that Cindy’s eyes were always red when she delivered my meals.
I welcomed it. I wanted her to suffer. It made her a little more real in my mind. Even converted, the Cindy I had known was incapable of not caring. The Cindy I had known wouldn’t have just cried for Alia. Like me, she would have died for her.
I even considered talking to Cindy again, but I had a feeling that if I did that, she would deem me ready for conversion.
But then again, why not? How many others had already given in and joined the flock? Why was I being so stubborn when I had nothing left to lose?
Except my pain.
“Addy, wake up.”
“I don’t want to wake up, Alia,” I told her. “I never want to wake up again.”
“But if you don’t open your eyes, how will you know what happens next?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to know what happens next. I’ve seen enough.”
“I know,” Alia said sadly. “But it’s still time to wake up.”
“No, Alia,” I told her firmly. “I’m tired of the shadows.”
“Don’t be afraid of the darkness, Addy.” Alia touched my hand. “See? I’m right here.”
I woke on my bed.
The room was dark, but I wasn’t alone.
I saw Cindy’s wide, frantic eyes looking down at me. “Get up,” she said hoarsely.
Cautiously, I pulled off my blanket and got to my feet.
“The guards are asleep,” said Cindy.
“What’s going on?” I asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
Panting slightly, she said, “It’s time for you to leave, Adrian.”
She pulled out a key and unlocked my anklet.
As soon as I felt my power return in full force, I telekinetically grabbed Cindy by the throat and growled, “What is this?! What are you doing?!”
“Betraying my master,” she croaked, beads of sweat trickling down her face.
“Why?!”
“For… for everything…”
I released her. Breathing heavily, Cindy passed me an envelope stuffed with money, and then we made our way out of my bedroom.
In the living room, I saw two dark figures lying on the floor, fast asleep. I suspected that Cindy, who used to be a nurse, had given them something non-lethal but nevertheless completely incapacitating.
Cindy stopped me before I could open the front door. Reaching around my body, she pressed her palms onto my chest and back to give me personal hiding protection. But then she quickly pulled her hands back again.
“No,” she breathed, shaking her head. “I can’t. This is wrong.”
“It’s right,” I told her. “Please, Cindy. You know it’s right.”
Cindy gulped hard, and then put her hands on me again. She looked like she was in considerable pain, and she probably was. I noticed Alia’s unicorn pendant, leather cord restored, around Cindy’s neck.
“No more,” said Cindy. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s enough,” I said. I suspected that my hiding bubble would last at least a day or two.
“The cameras outside…” said Cindy, whimpering pitifully. “The security room will know as soon as you open the door. Get up onto the roof and fly, Adrian. Fly straight up into the clouds before going anywhere else.”
“You have the key to the roof.”
Cindy shut her eyes tightly and nodded.
“Give it to me,” I said.
Cindy reached into her pocket, pulling out a silver key, but she didn’t hand it to me. She couldn’t. I snatched it out of her trembling hand and pocketed it.
I wanted to tell her to come with me, to tell her that we could jump over the side together and escape on foot. But I knew she couldn’t leave. What she was doing now was already more than she could bear.
“There’s something else,” said Cindy, shaking her head furiously. “But I can’t. I just can’t!”
She couldn’t tell me, but I already knew. I prepared a focused blast in my right index finger. Then, in one fluid move, I telekinetically opened the front door, stepped through and blasted a hole between the eyes of the Seraph standing guard outside.
As the guard crumpled to the floor, the panic alarm went off inside our penthouse and the elevator immediately shut down. The security cameras had seen me.
I rushed toward the stairs. All I had to do was climb one flight, unlock one door, and I would be free.
“Stop!” shouted Cindy.
I turned around and faced her. Cindy had taken the pistol from the Seraph I had killed. She was pointing it at me. Her hands were shaking so badly that I feared the gun could go off at any moment, but the bullet would probably miss by a mile.
“You’re not going to kill me, Cindy,” I said, and turned my back to her again.
Cindy followed me as I climbed the stairs, unlocked the rooftop door, and stepped out.
“Don’t, Adrian!” Cindy shouted hysterically, hands still shaking but nevertheless leveling the pistol more carefully on my chest. “If you fly, I swear I’ll shoot you!”
At this point I really didn’t care.
But as we faced each other on the roof of Lumina Primus, Cindy holding me at gunpoint as the Seraphim rushed up the building toward us, I realized that I couldn’t just fly away.
“Tell me where they are!” I shouted over the wind.
“No!” cried Cindy. “I can’t.”
“You’ve come this far, Cindy! You can tell me!”
She lowered the gun slightly. “Go, Adrian! Go now! Please!”
“No! Tell me where they are! Tell me!”
“I can’t!” she wailed.
“You can’t have it both ways, Cindy!” I touched the tip of my index finger to the bottom of my chin. “Tell me or watch me die! Choose now! Your master or me!”
Cindy screamed. The pistol went off in her hands. The bullet ricocheted off the roof. Dropping the gun, Cindy fell to her knees, clutching her head in both hands. She screamed louder, her expression as tortured as if she was being roasted alive in an open flame.
“Your master or me!” I shouted again.
“I can’t, Adrian! Oh, God, I can’t!”
“Tell me!” I hollered at the top of my lungs. “Your master or me! Tell me now!”
Cindy stopped screaming, but her mouth remained wide open.
She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. And slowly, silently, she mouthed, “Where would you be, Adrian? Where would you be if you had the choice?”
I stared back at her.
And I knew.
And Cindy knew that I knew.
Slowly, her hands found the pistol lying beside her. She picked it up and touched the barrel to her head.
As she pulled the trigger, I telekinetically yanked the pistol from her hand.
The bullet grazed the side of her head. She was bleeding, but alive. I tossed the pistol over the edge of the roof.
“No, Cindy,” I said quietly, shaking my head. “Too many good people have died already.”
Cindy looked up at me. Still kneeling, her eyes wide in horror, she started wailing again. She couldn’t stop. It got louder and louder as she screamed at the top of her lungs. She just kept on screaming.
Focusing my telekinesis around my body, I jumped into the air. I flew straight up, higher and higher into the night sky. But still I could hear Cindy’s tortured screams.
In a way, I never stopped hearing them.
Chapter 20: Equilibrium
Even today, the tombstone of Queen Catherine “Cat” Howell-Divine stands next to her adoptive father’s, in the very same graveyard as her birth parents’, and mine. But I’ve never been out there. Not since I put her there.
The Historian had once told me that I would find Cat’s whereabouts in the hands of those closer to this war. Though he claimed to be no oracle, his words had nevertheless turned out to be truly prophetic. For who was closer to this war than I?
Leaving Cindy behind on the rooftop of Lumina Primus, I immediately returned to my hometown, to the familiar two-story house that I had grown up in with my parents and my sister before any of this had ever happened.
And there they were: Catherine and Randal Divine, living quietly together with just two dedicated bodyguards, confident in their clever concealment. I watched them from afar, through binoculars as they visited my parents’ graves.
Later that night, I dropped quietly down out of the sky, made a few telekinetic adjustments from outside of their kitchen window, and flew away.
When I heard the massive explosion in the distance behind me, I felt almost nothing. No remorse. No shame. Not even relief. It was like the very first time I had killed, when I shot Riles in the towboat. These were people that I had to end, and so I ended them. Call me a coward for doing it from a distance, but I did it myself, the way I knew from the start that it had to be. But there was no satisfaction to be had in what I did. It was no victory. There was no one left for me to save.
Being assigned to the High Seraphim at the Royal Gate might have been honor enough for Terry, but it turned out that, during the weeks I spent in Cindy’s penthouse, my combat instructor had been promoted to an even higher station. Randal Divine had handpicked her to be one of his two personal live-in bodyguards, so Terry also died in the blast. To this day, I feel very little guilt in this matter. Terry was a casualty of war, just like everyone else. But I do miss her dearly. Sometimes I spend hours upon hours just missing her. As Terry had once said about Laila Brown, I miss her fire.
Randal Divine, though horribly burned and mutilated, survived the explosion. But when the Angels’ conversions began to fade shortly thereafter and they discovered the truth about him, King Divine was put on a show trial for his deceit and then executed by his own High Seraphim. He never stopped mourning Cat’s death, and welcomed his own. It was his dying wish to be buried next to his adopted daughter. Or so I heard.
In the chaos that followed, the Guardian Angels splintered into seven large factions and hundreds of smaller ones, and even as they fought over their petty differences, most of them insisted on calling themselves the “true Guardian Angels.” But as time went by, some of these factions combined while others broke further apart, and they eventually adopted their own, more appropriate names. The Guardians and the Angels were reborn, as were the Meridian and other psionic factions both large and small. A number of the lesser factions continued to call themselves the Guardian Angels, but no one took them seriously. Over the course of the next ten years, the balance of power, as envisioned by the Historian, was slowly restored.
Soon after Cat’s death, the Guardians regained control of their city and officially changed its name back to New Haven. This was perhaps inevitable since the majority of the psionic population there was comprised of former Guardians anyway. Many of the Angels fled the city, but those who wished to stay were allowed to join the Guardians. Even some of the Seraphim remained and swore allegiance to the restored Guardian Council, and the term “Seraph Knights” is still sometimes used to describe New Haven’s combined forces.
Meanwhile, the Angels re-established themselves across many small to medium-size settlements, as was more common for psionics. With the loss of their last master, they too were forced to quickly form a new governing body, a council of sorts made up of their two ruling families, the Divines and the Harrows, as well as members of their High Seraphim. But just like the Guardians back when they lost their last queen, there was plenty of dissention in the Angels’ ranks as their top members fought each other for control. Thus, even though the Angels would remain the largest single psionic faction for many years to come, they had little real power.
Though the psionic war was far from over, inter-faction conflicts subsided considerably for a time as each group focused on dealing with the consequences of living in a brave, new, and comparatively free world. For many of us, it was a small touch of peace.
But I never returned to the Guardians.
Instead, I first took refuge in a psionic settlement loosely associated with the restored Meridian. I lived alone, quietly watching the world change. I rarely met anyone from the Guardians or from Wood-claw.
But I kept in touch.
Scott and Rachael had returned to Wood-claw, and from them I learned that Marion had been reunited with her mother in New Haven. Though Marion’s mother had come to New Haven as a converted Angel, she had originally been a Guardian who had unwittingly married the Seraph spy, Raider. Now, free of her conversion and of her deceased husband, she kept her condominium in NH-4. But she was still a frequently traveling hardcore businesswoman with little interest in taking care of a young, traumatized daughter. Marion was passed around several homes belonging to increasingly distant relatives, spending very little time in New Haven. Later, when one of her temporary families joined the Angels, Marion went away with them.
I tried to locate James’s parents to tell them how their son died, but I learned that both had been killed during the Angel takeover of New Haven. James Turner was posthumously awarded the title of Honorary Guardian Knight for his services in Nonus Twenty Point Five. His name, along with his parents’ and Willow’s and the many others’ who had died in the defense of New Haven, is carved into a stone memorial that stands in the entrance hall of the gathering place under NH-1.
Mr. Travis Baker, who had served Randal Divine as his personal healer and chief political advisor, never returned to the Guardian Council. Fearing that he too would be executed by the High Seraphim, Mr. Baker fled back to the Guardians, where he was granted asylum in New Haven. But the new Council wouldn’t allow him back into politics. When he pushed his case too far, he was banished from the psionic city. Mr. Baker was later found dead in the river that runs along the edge of New Haven. It was deemed a suicide.
Mark Parnell returned to his church in New Haven. There he preached about peace and understanding for several more years until he died of heart failure at the age of fifty-four. Far too young, I know, but I have no reason to suspect that he was murdered. Mark never found, nor ever found out what happened to, his twin brother. Mark was a good man. I wish I had known him better.
Meanwhile, Cynthia Gifford was committed to the psychiatric ward of the psionic hospital in New Haven Three. Betraying her master had broken Cindy’s mind, and she spent much of her days pacing aimlessly around the hospital ward or sitting in her room and drooling onto her bib. At night, the doctors often had to sedate her to keep her from screaming herself hoarse in the darkness.
I visited Cindy in New Haven every few months. I sat with her, calling her name, telling her mine. Just occasionally, her vacant eyes would flicker with a hint of recognition, but soon she would tilt her head to one side and mumble something incomprehensible, her expression blank and uncaring.
But I knew that Cindy was still in there somewhere. She always wore Alia’s unicorn pendant. Her hiding bubble still covered the city. So I continued to pray for her recovery with all the faith an agnostic could muster, but Cindy died twenty-two yea
rs later, having never spoken another coherent word in her life. Not a day goes by that I don’t mourn her loss or remember the heartless act that destroyed her.
But not even the psionic war could claim everyone.
Soon after the Guardians retook New Haven, Mr. Koontz, the dreamweaver Alia and I had first met at the PRC, turned up alive and well in a neighboring psionic settlement. Mr. Koontz had been one of the few who had escaped New Haven in time to avoid being forced to join the Angels. Having no family in the Guardian city to compel him to return, he remained at his new home. He is still very much a night owl.
Ed Regis found permanent work with the Guardians in New Haven, running an advanced training program for Knights selected by the Council for special operations. The former Wolf also commanded the primary security team for Council members and other VIPs, but even this job was considerably less hazardous than his previous assignments. At least he was never shot again.
Heather, Walter, Daniel and Susan all returned to New Haven safely, where they were reunited with their families after almost two years apart. Not everyone found both of their parents still alive, but it was the start of a new and hopefully happier life for them. Later, all but Daniel joined the Lancer Knights. Daniel turned out to have more brains than we gave him credit for, and after attending medical school abroad, he worked as a surgeon at the Guardian hospital in New Haven Three.
Scott and Rachael were married two years after the dissolution of the Guardian Angels. Mark, who had known Scott’s family back in New Haven, handled the ceremony, and I attended it too, serving as Scott’s best man. After the wedding, though they both had found their families alive in New Haven, Scott and Rachael continued to live in Wood-claw which, under new leadership, now had much stronger ties to the New Haven Guardians. A year and a half later, Rachael had her first baby: a healthy, beautiful girl who carried both her mother’s hider bloodline and her father’s finder bloodline. They named her Cynthia.
But my single greatest piece of news came from Candace long before Scott and Rachael’s marriage. Near the end of the very first summer, after more than six months in a coma, Alia Gifford had briefly opened her eyes.
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