by G. P. Ching
Chapter 44
Battle
Mordechai rolled one hand over the other and formed a ball of orange flame. He hurled it toward Dr. Silva with a hissing sound that made the hair on Jacob’s arms stand on end. Gideon crossed his forearms and a purple shield glowed to life in front of him, absorbing the impact of the flames inches from Dr. Silva’s face. In response, Dr. Silva circled one hand over the other behind Gideon. She nodded to him to lower the shield and hurled the blue orb that formed between her hands at Mordechai. It hit him in the shoulder and howl escaped his mouth.
Lillian lunged at Turel, her blade sinking into his stomach. The Watcher grabbed the staff and yanked it from his gut, tossing it and her aside like she weighed nothing. She flipped gracefully to the top of a pew, spinning her staff back to fighting position. Gideon’s shield just barely stopped Turel’s fireball from taking off Lillian’s head. Black goop oozed from Turel’s stomach but the wound didn’t stop him from retaliating. Lillian spun through the air, dodging another ball of energy. She sliced into Turel’s collarbone on the way down, landing and jumping again to deliver a tornado kick to his head as she yanked her staff from his flesh.
A red ball whizzed toward Dr. Silva, this one exploding into a swarm of locusts. Gideon blew them away with a gust of his breath.
Turel struck back. The fireball skimmed Lillian’s calf and she screamed louder than Jacob had ever heard a human scream. He smelled burning flesh.
The magic the Watchers wielded was more than natural fire. Through the purple flames, he watched the smoky blackness eat the flesh off his mother’s calf. This was dark magic.
Gideon held the shield in a dome over Dr. Silva and Lillian as they endured a storm of fire from Mordechai and Turel. The angel reached out and touched Lillian’s calf. Her screaming stopped and the open wound healed.
As Jacob saw it, Gideon was the only one who could shield and heal, which left Dr. Silva and Lillian to fight. Only they were smaller and weaker than the Watchers that attacked them. The battle was unbalanced and not in their favor. Auriel was still watching lazily from her perch. In typical Watcher style, she was too self-serving to join the battle until she absolutely had to, but if she changed her mind they were all doomed.
Turel turned toward Jacob and aimed a ball of flame at his head. Jacob ducked but he didn’t need to. The purple flames shot up and ate the fireball out of the air. Turel cursed and his yellow eyes searched the boundary of the salt star.
“Pray with me, Jacob,” Malini whispered into his ear. Tears streamed down her face. “Please pray with me. I’m so scared.”
“Why? What good would it do? We can’t waste time, Malini. We have to think of a way to help.”
“Please, Jacob, please pray with me.”
“I don’t … I can’t, Malini. We need a plan. Help me figure out what to do.”
“Jacob, listen to me.” She grabbed his shoulders and shook. “Look around you. We are going to die unless we get a miracle. I am here, in this hell, because of you. I believe there is a God and I need that comfort right now. The least you can do is give it to me.”
Jacob shook his head and grabbed a bottle of water. “The only one here to save us is me, Malini. Stay here. I’m going to try to help.”
He stepped through the flames.
Pouring enough water into his hand to form a sharp, jagged star, he hurled the weapon into the side of Mordechai’s head. Black ooze drained from the Watcher’s temple. The beast turned on him, howling. He poured more water into his hand, willing it sharper and faster than the last.
“You want to play too, maggot?” Turel yelled. Now outside the circle, Jacob could tell Turel was the Watcher from the train.
He released a barrage of sharp discs toward Turel’s neck. The distraction allowed Dr. Silva to come out from behind the shield. She hurled blue energy, a storm of electric light, at Mordechai. The Watcher drew a shield, a circle of fire, around himself, absorbing Dr. Silva’s sorcery and turning Jacob’s weapons to steam.
Jacob dove out of the way as a fireball from Auriel bulleted toward his head. The smell of his own hair burning filled his nostrils. Somersaulting across the floor, he motioned for Malini to throw him another bottle. She rolled it to him from within the circle.
“Who do we have here?” screeched Auriel, who had jumped down next to Mordechai to join the fight. It was as if she was noticing Malini for the very first time. “This one is hard to see. What are you, my dear?”
Malini didn’t answer.
“Why, Nod is teeming with humans today, Mordechai.” She sent a golden ring toward Malini, like a lasso, but the purple flames swallowed it before it could reach her.
Meanwhile, Lillian speared Turel, sinking the blade into his back. He struggled to reach it, to pull it out, buying Dr. Silva time to send a barrage of blue energy toward Mordechai and Auriel. With Turel’s defeat eminent, Mordechai abandoned him where he fell and swallowed Auriel into his flaming safeguard. Jacob hurled knives of ice toward him. It was useless. The fire easily turned his weapons into puffs of steam.
Lillian and Dr. Silva took down Turel, ripping him apart and binding the pieces to the floor with glowing blue rope. Auriel and Gideon battled behind them. Lightning flowed from Auriel’s fingers, through Mordechai’s shield, but Gideon reflected the power back at her with a mirror of energy. The trick worked. Where Auriel’s power rained down on the ring, the fire weakened.
There was no one left to battle Mordechai but Jacob. With everything he had, he attacked.
Mordechai reached through his dwindling shield and caught one of Jacob’s razor-sharp icicles in his bare hand. He watched it melt in his snakeskin palm. The grin on his face was triumphant as water dripped through his fingers.
“Normal water?” he dropped the remaining shield. “You don’t believe in God!” He laughed, sauntering closer to Jacob and swatting off his attack as if the razor sharp weapons were merely an annoyance. “Good choice, boy. You’ve never seen God after all. But you’ve seen me. Why don’t you just believe in me?” And, with that he hurled a fireball that plowed through Jacob’s shield of ice and landed in his lower abdomen.
Jacob fell, screaming. The spot where Mordechai’s power hit him burned like acid. He beat his body with his hands but succeeded only in splattering his own blood. This type of fire had no flames. Blood covered his hands and splashed his face. It pooled under him. There was something coming out of the hole in his gut, something his mind couldn’t process through the pain, something that should’ve been under his skin.
Jacob looked toward Gideon for help. The angel was across the room, shielding his mom, whose weapon lay kicked aside. Dr. Silva was also behind the shield, staring at Jacob with pity and launching a barrage of power at Mordechai and Auriel in a last attempt to save him. She was losing. There was no way Gideon could reach Jacob in time to heal him. Tasting blood in his mouth, Jacob came to the icy realization he would die in Nod. His body shook uncontrollably and the light dimmed around the edges. He was falling. He was dying.
“Oh, Jacob, there’s so much blood!” Malini was over him, pressing her hands against the open wound.
“Malini, you’ve got to hide. I’m dead anyway. Get out of here.”
“No,” she said through her teeth. “You’ve got to believe, Jacob. Miracles happen every day. I’m not letting you go. No way.”
With his last ounce of strength, he lifted his hand and placed it over hers.
“Pressure. You’re supposed to put pressure on an open wound to stop the bleeding.” Malini’s eyes were wild with panic.
Death came for Jacob for the second time in his short life. Again, he walked the obsidian tunnel beckoned forward by the light. This time he moved toward it without fear or anger. He’d let that stuff go the moment he saw his mother in the Watcher’s cage. He’d forgiven himself, he’d forgiven her, and he’d buried what blame he’d placed on God, if there was one. Maybe it was less buried than forgiven. His trip to Nod had made him realize that e
ven though he’d done bad things, he wasn’t a bad person, and he supposed that way of thinking extended to the Laudners and to Paris. He let it all go.
Deep within the darkness of the tunnel, he thought about his life. He’d convinced himself there was no God because of the evil in the world and certainly that evil was real; it filled the Watcher church around his body. But as he thought of Gideon, Dr. Silva, and his mother, it was just as clear that every force, every action, had an equal and opposite reaction. If evil existed, then an equal degree of good existed somewhere, too. It existed in them, in the fact that they were willing to die to protect him. It existed in their willingness to fight, to die, rather than become part of the evil.
What if believing was not about the good in the world? What if people had faith not because of what some superior being could do for them, but what they could do when the light of something bigger than any one individual awakened within them—for the sake of others? If evil had been here since the dawn of time, maybe goodness was also here. Maybe, his mistake was thinking it was about him, his own future, his own soul, and not about this: the world needed the good that was in him.
He reached the end of the tunnel. Jacob could make out a pair of boy’s feet and the hem of a rag sack just like he was wearing. He looked down at himself and wondered if the light was some sort of reflection, like a giant mirror. What he could see looked just like him. But the white radiance burned his eyes and he struggled to tip his head up to see the boy’s face. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he reached out his other and stepped forward. Before he could touch the image, a voice rang out, “Not yet, Jacob.”
In a rush of wind, power, and will, he fell back into his body. The pain was gone. All he could feel was the pressure of Malini’s touch. He looked down at the tops of her bloody hands, and then pushed them aside. Through the burnt hole in his rag clothing, he could see fresh pink skin. The wound was completely healed.
He needed to save Malini. It was his job, his purpose. He knew it at that moment as surely as he knew his name was Jacob Lau. This was war and it was time for him to choose a side. For all the pain his name had caused him, for all the agony over his mixed blood, every experience he’d ever had brought him to this place.
“Oh my God, Jacob … Jacob you’re healed,” Malini said, staring at the blood on her hands.
But he wasn’t listening. He was watching Mordechai turn toward them, another fireball forming in his palm. Jacob crawled in front of Malini, blocking her body with his. On his knees in front of her, he knew what she’d said was true. He did get her into this mess and he would get her out of it.
He kneeled before Mordechai knowing he was a Horseman. He was a protector, connected to the universe with a unique purpose, and he would not fail. The quickening came without warning or the hum of water that had always accompanied it in the past. His thoughts moved so fast that everything else seemed to slow down. The strings inside his body tightened.
Jacob’s reasons were not the same as Malini’s, or John’s, or even Dr. Silva’s, but he made his peace with God in that moment. It had nothing to do with religion or church or a specific name for who He was. He didn’t sign his name to anything or chant a special prayer. In his head, he sent a yes into the universe, an invitation to whatever force for good existed. For the first time, he wanted to be a part of it. He was willing and he was there.
In that moment, he believed.
There was no water left. The bottle lay empty at his feet. He had no idea what the strings inside of him were connected to, but as the fireball moved from Mordechai’s hand, and the sound of Malini praying behind him reached his ears, he prepared to release.
He circled his arms and let go. The push that came was not from his own strength but from beyond. It was a push from a place of deep realization that he was a warrior, a Horseman, for everything good. The ground shook, the walls shook, and as the fireball exploded above his ducked head, water poured in from all directions. It was as if every pipe in the church had burst simultaneously, only there was no water in Nod. This water came from somewhere else.
“It will kill me, Jacob!” he heard Dr. Silva scream. He willed the deluge to flow around her. It washed forward, sweeping Mordechai through the door. His melting form thrashed wildly against the water until he dissolved into a puddle of black ooze. Auriel had taken to the air. She flew out the window, screaming for help, the drops of water burning her like acid. The pieces of Turel dissolved with the blue bindings and washed away.
When they were gone Jacob willed the water back. It went out the way it came in, flowing around Dr. Silva as if she were in a bubble.
“There will be more,” she yelled, grabbing her backpack and the extinguished candle from the circle.
Gideon headed out the door first, the light from his body all they needed to run full speed down the twisting path toward the garden. It was also enough to catch the attention of a host of Watchers who had emerged from the city of Nod. Unearthly howls and beating wings bit at their heels.
They reached the tree just in time. Gideon grabbed Lillian’s hand and disappeared through the bark. Dr. Silva clasped Malini with one hand and Jacob with the other and followed. The transport was slower this time, because of the weight of the three of them being pulled up through the ground by her magic. But in minutes, Jacob was in the sand in front of Oswald, panting. He had never been so grateful for the nausea that wrenched his stomach. The nausea meant they were free. They had escaped Nod.