That Last Onset Read online

  The picture in the pool changed, and now Azazel and I were fleeing the scene in Bramford in a stolen car. Azazel shot looks over her shoulder. I glared at the road, grim. “The two of you may have straddled the lines of Light and Dark for a while, but nearly as soon as you were together, you made your choice,” said Graham. “You rebelled against everything you knew. You fought every aspect of order you could manage. You were Darkness.”

  “We’re Dark,” Azazel said. “Somehow, I’ve always known, but I’ve never wanted to believe it.”

  I sat down heavily next to her on the grass, reaching for her hand. “I always wanted it to be me who was the Dark one. I wanted you to be free of it.”

  “Dark doesn’t mean evil, you know,” said Graham. “That’s not what I’m trying to say here. You embodied the spirit of the Darkness here in the Spiritus Mundi. I don’t mean to say that you’re bad people. Remember it’s all coming from humanity. They’re the ones making these powers even exist.”

  “But the Light was right,” said Azazel, “we are destructive. We hurt things. We kill people. We’re selfish.”

  “And so is the Light,” said Graham. “They favor Kieran and Eve because they are the epitome of Order, effectively stealing everything from individual humans and making them dance like puppets on a string.”

  “Like I did in Jasontown,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Graham. “But the Light is just as destructive and selfish. It isn’t the answer, Azazel, and don’t let it fool you into thinking it is. Let me show you what the Light has done to get you into this position, shall I?” Graham waved his hands over the pool, and it cleared. “The two of you destroyed a very powerful institution of order, the Sons of the Rising Sun. You were a threat to the Light, and it knew it. I’ve already mentioned that your powers were infiltrated almost entirely by Darkness, and they were growing, weren’t they, with every establishment you destroyed, with every mass of people you killed?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, we did have more powers by the time we were in Italy, but they weren’t strong, and we couldn’t figure them out. Azazel had more than me, then.”

  “Because Azazel’s powers were created specifically to serve Darkness,” said Graham. “And yours were created to serve the Light. Azazel’s powers were strong. Yours were weak.”

  “Right,” I said. “I didn’t really start to feel any kind of power until after Azazel and I broke up. After the solar flare, it intensified.”

  Graham nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Why should that matter?” said Azazel.

  Graham pointed to the pool. There was an image there of a guy in a t-shirt and jeans. His hair was cut short against his head. I didn’t think I recognized him, but there was something familiar about him. He was sitting across from a desk in an office. There was a house plant in one corner. A file cabinet in the other.

  “Mitch?” said Azazel, clearly recognizing him.

  “Mitch?” I repeated, confused.

  “The guy you killed when you shot Chance,” said Azazel. “You thought I was cheating on you with him.”

  Oh, yeah. I scrutinized the guy. He looked so young now, like a little boy. Why had I worried? “He hardly looks like competition anymore. Even though he did send me those notes you wrote to him.”

  “What notes?” said Azazel.

  “Watch,” said Graham.

  Mitch slouched in the chair. “Wait, you’re paying me not to actually have sex with this girl?”

  A disembodied voice replied, “That’s right. We want it to appear as if there is an affair going on, but we don’t want there actually to be an affair.”

  ”That’s not what I do, usually,” said Mitch. “Usually, old guys who want a divorce hire me to seduce their wives so they can get them for infidelity. That’s what I’m good at.”

  ”We’re aware of your usual practices,” said the voice. “If you’d like to decline the offer, we’ll try someone else.”

  ”That’s okay,” said Mitch. “I’ll do it. But it’s going to be complicated. The chick needs to think we’re just friends, but her man needs to think I’m doing her? How the hell…?”

  ”Can you do it?”

  ”Yeah,” he said.

  ”The Order of the Fly thanks you,” said the voice.

  Azazel gasped.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “He was working for the OF, trying to break us up?” said Azazel. “But why?”

  “You’d landed a great blow against the Light, and they used the Order of the Fly—an organization with the word order in the title—to fight back. They thought that if they separated the two of you, they could get Jason’s power to return to the side it ‘belonged’ on, to where it had originated,” said Graham.

  “So they made Jason jealous?” said Azazel. She put a hand on my cheek. “And to think, all this time, it wasn’t even your fault. What were you saying about notes?”

  “Yeah, I got these letters you’d written to him,” I said, remembering. “They seemed pretty intimate at the time, but after you told me there was nothing going on between the two of you, I reread them. I told myself I must have been imagining it. But I guess he was actually trying to make me feel as though I was losing my mind.”

  “Poor Jason!” said Azazel. “No wonder you went nuts.”

  Gently, I moved her hand from my face. “Just because I was being manipulated doesn’t make me guilt free. I did kill him. No matter what I thought he was doing, he didn’t deserve that.”

  “You were manipulated, however,” said Graham. “And knowing your weakness the way they did, I’d say they played the two of you like violins.”

  “So, they managed to make me break up with Jason,” said Azazel, “and hate him. I didn’t see you after that for years, I was so angry.”

  “I know,” I said, thinking back on that period of time right after I’d lost her the first time. I’d been so confused. So hurt. So adrift.

  “And then,” said Graham, “just as the forces of Light had hoped, Jason’s powers began to grow stronger.” He moved his hand over the pool, and it showed a picture of me fighting a man twice my size in the street. It switched to me fighting another man, and then another. It panned out to show the crowd watching me. They were cheering. And the pool showed more fights, the crowds seemed to double in size.

  “I could make them follow me,” I remembered. “I’d never felt anything like it before, not exactly. Sure, the Sons had followed me around like lapdogs, and we’d even had that weird experience at the Sol Solis School. But these people were strangers, and they loved me for no reason. They did what I asked. I couldn’t help but enjoy it.”

  “Which is what they wanted you to do,” said Graham. “They wanted your powers to grow. They wanted all the power to grow. They wanted more power than they could possibly imagine. They had hatched a plan.” The pool showed a gathering of members of the Order of the Fly. They were discussing something passionately. “The Light, you remember, wants to impose order and structure on everyone. And they began to realize that the only way they would easily get the whole world under the thumb of one man—of Jason, the emissary of the Light—would be to first plunge the world into Darkness.

  “It was clever of them, I suppose,” chuckled Graham. “Solar flare. Rising Sun. The Light.”

  “Wait,” said Azazel. “The Light caused the solar flare?”

  “Jason caused the solar flare,” said Graham.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  Graham waved his hand over the pool. A huge, ancient clay vase appeared. There was something bright inside it, its brilliance streaming out above the brim and through the cracks that held the vase together. “The vessel contained the sun,” he said. The clay vase began to wobble until it tipped over and the brilliant thing inside of it spilled out. “And the sun got out. It was so bright…”

  “It burned everything,” said Azazel. “Nancy had a vision like that. Back in Columbus. She told me about it.”

  “When you and
Azazel broke up,” said Graham, “you were so hurt. It took a while to build up, but Jason, you sort of…exploded.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I caused the solar flare? I caused the apocalypse? All of this is my fault?”

  “Your power may have caused it,” said Graham, “but the fault lies with the Light. They are the ones who caused the misery. And they got what they wanted. With the world falling apart, people were desperately searching for someone to follow.” Graham plucked a spear of grass from the ground. He surveyed it. “People do that, you know. They’re sheep. They relinquish their individual power to other people, because they’re lazy and afraid. They seek out strength and surrender all their sparks to it. That was what they did to you, Jason, in Jasontown.”

  I shook my head. “I stole their freedom from them. They didn’t give it up.”

  “The Light only exists because they’ve given it up,” said Graham. “All people, all the time, surrender themselves. And the Light becomes more powerful and more domineering.”

  No. I was solely responsible for my actions. Wasn’t I?

  “Each person needs to take individual responsibility for the effect he or she has on the whole world,” said Graham quietly. “People are part of a collective, and that collective is not pure and innocent.”

  “So what happened?” said Azazel. “Why did Jason move back to the Dark?”

  “Well,” said Graham, “the Light hadn’t counted on how deep the connection the two of you shared was. So even though you were apart, you were still interacting and fighting. Constantly. You two couldn’t stop thinking about each other. The Light tried all kinds of things, including taking Azazel’s powers. That might have worked if the Dark hadn’t fought back with Cameron. Overall, the Light is pleased with the way Kieran and Eve rule things, because they are structured and ordered, and they erase the individual—the source of all Darkness.” Graham paused. “So as you can see, there is nothing particularly pure and perfect about the Light either. The Light is just as responsible as the Dark for all that’s gone wrong. The two of you are responsible for your actions as individuals, but you are also victims of powers larger than you.”

  “I do see,” I said. “But right now, we’ve been imbued with the powers of the Dark, right? And if we bust back through that doorway back there, we’ll use the Darkness to fight Kieran and Eve. So, what will happen?”

  Graham let out a breath. “That will be up to the two of you.”

  “Will it?” said Azazel. “Or will we be influenced by the Dark? Will we cause massive destruction?”

  “The last test that we went through was pretty intense,” I said. “I don’t want to end up there, ever. Is there a chance that the Dark will force us towards that, or was the Light lying?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” said Graham. “I can’t predict the future, and unlike representatives from either the Dark or the Light, I won’t pretend that I know what to do any better than the two of you do.”

  “So why’d you show us this, then?” I asked. “If you don’t have any suggestions, what’s the point of us knowing all about where we came from?”

  “For you to be informed,” said Graham. “For you to know the truth.”

  “But it’s hopeless,” said Azazel. “Without using the powers of the Dark, we’ll die. Kieran and Eve and the Light win. But if we use the powers of the Dark, we’ll kill everyone. There’s no way to win. There’s no way to do the right thing. What do we do?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I stole a glance down at the pool, which was dark and still now. Azazel was staring off into the distance. She looked defeated. Graham shoved his hands into his pockets again. I walked away from the grassy hill, back to the place where the doorway stood. I peered through it. I could see our bodies, still motionless except for the rise and fall of our breath. We could burst through right now. We could take over the world, spread the Darkness.

  I remembered that earlier, when the first pangs of the Darkness had started to ride me, I’d felt excited at the prospect of killing Kieran and Eve. But now, after hearing what Graham had said, and after everything we’d been through, I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. My heart still raced at the thought, and a part of me felt a twinge of giddiness. But I recognized now that was just the Darkness inside me. What I really wanted was to stop the killing. I’d never wanted to rule the world. I’d only ever wanted to be normal.

  But the Light and the Dark had decided for me, before I was even born, that I was never going to get to be normal. If only I’d had nothing more to contend with than myself, instead of bearing the weight of everything humanity had given up. If it had only been me, maybe I’d never have made the choices I’d made. Maybe I’d never have hurt so many people.

  Azazel was running up behind me. “Jason, what are you doing?”

  She thought I’d decided to charge back through the doorway. “Nothing,” I told her. “Just thinking.”

  Graham brought up the rear. “It’s not as if having the power of Darkness robs you two of all of your own decisions, you know.”

  “No, I know,” I said. “But you don’t understand how seductive it is for me.” I looked at Azazel. “For us. When they pumped us full of it in the test we went through earlier, we were out of control. I killed my son. And I didn’t even feel bad about it. It took all my guilt.” I scuffed one of my shoes against the ground. “I have a lot of guilt. The idea of getting rid of it...”

  “Graham, when we have powers, we’re like vengeful gods,” said Azazel. “We don’t care one bit about anyone except ourselves. And we get so jealous. I don’t know if we can fight it off. We couldn’t last time.”

  “The only way I ever saw that what I was doing was wrong was when Cameron started sucking off my powers,” I said. “If I’d kept them, I would have kept killing.”

  “We should stand down,” said Azazel.

  “But if you do that,” said Graham, “the Light wins.”

  “But if we go through that doorway,” I said, “the Dark wins.” I shook my head. “There should be some way to fight them both. If we could only take all that power that people have given up over the centuries and give it back to them. Shatter the Darkness and the Light.”

  “The problem is that Light and Dark are fighting with each other,” said Azazel. “The badness all lies in the conflict. If we could break it up and give it back to everyone, that would be the best option.”

  Graham scratched the back of his head. “There might be a way to do that. But it would be really dangerous. It could easily destroy you.”

  Azazel laughed. “Well, if it’s dangerous, you can count us out. I mean, we never do anything dangerous, do we, Jason?”

  “Never,” I agreed, grinning.

  “You don’t understand,” said Graham. “You’d have to get the power of the Light away from Kieran and Eve. You’d have to absorb the Light and the Dark. And then to give it back... I’m not exactly sure how you’d go about doing it, but I don’t know if you could. The strain it would put on the two of you would be extreme.”

  I was about to speak up and say we didn’t care what the cost would be, we’d do it. But then I looked through the doorway at Azazel’s body. So much of her life had been taken because of things that I’d done. How could I speak for her?

  Through the doorway, in the real world, Hallam and Marlena were talking. I stepped closer to the doorway to see if I could hear. Their voice floated through, faint, but understandable. I motioned Azazel over so that she could listen too.

  “The baby is going to be fine,” Marlena was saying. “I know he’s okay.”

  “The way he punched your stomach,” said Hallam, fury still in his voice. “And I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything.”

  “I don’t blame you, Hallam,” Marlena said. “I’ve spent my life taking care of myself. I’m strong. I thought you loved that about me.”

  “I do,” said Hallam. “Of course I do. But to watch someone hurting you and not be able to stop it
was too much for me. I felt as if something inside me broke.”

  “The baby is fine,” said Marlena.

  “I hope so.” But his voice was agonized.

  “Fine,” she said again. “And when he’s born, we are going to spoil him rotten. We’ll give him everything we ever dreamed of. He’ll...” She trailed off. “Oh, why am I saying this? We’re not going to be able to do any of that, are we? He’s going to live in this screwed-up world, and you and I will always be on the run. And he’ll never be safe.”

  Hallam didn’t answer. When he finally did speak, his voice broke. “I wish I could promise you differently. I’d do anything to keep you both safe. But in this world, I’m simply not strong enough. There are powers that are too big for me. I’m worthless to you.”

  Azazel turned sharply away from the doorway. “We’ll do it,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “We have to, Jason,” she said. “Hallam’s right. The dice are stacked against him in the world right now. If we could dismantle that power and redistribute it, it would give him a fighting chance. It would give everyone a fighting chance. And after all the suffering we’ve inflicted on the world, we owe them.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t agree more. “What do we have to do?” I asked Graham. Maybe we were going to have to kill Kieran and Eve after all. I tried not to get happy about that. “Do we go back through this doorway?”