That Last Onset Read online

  Kieran and Eve were huddled together against a wall.

  “Are we dead?” said Eve. “Is this Hell?”

  I sauntered over to them. “You know,” I said, taking Kieran by the arm and leading him towards the door, “I think it’s really interesting that we all keep assuming we’re in Hell and not Heaven.”

  Azazel grabbed Eve. “This isn’t Hell,” she told her, “and you’re not dead.”

  Towing Kieran along with me, I thrust through the door out of the processing center and into a corridor lined with gray concrete blocks. But the minute we stepped into the corridor, a group of police officers appeared at the end. “Back up!” I called.

  We hurried back into the processing room and shut and locked the door behind us. Now we were stuck. There were two ways out of the room. One led to the interrogation rooms, and one was the way we’d tried to leave. What now?

  There was a groan from one of the bodies on the floor. It was the woman who’d looked at me like I was crazy when I’d been talking about women and vampire books. I couldn’t believe our good luck. I let go of Kieran and went to fetch her from the floor. She was wounded, but still alive. “Very nice,” I said. “We got ourselves a hostage.”

  I dragged the lady with me over to the door where the other police officers were advancing. I pushed her out of the door for a moment and shoved my gun up under her chin.

  “One more step, and I blow her head off,” I told the police officers.

  They stopped in their tracks.

  “Um, baby?” said Azazel. “Balance?”

  I glared at her. “I haven’t shot her yet, have I?” To the police officers, “But I totally will if you move one muscle.”

  The hostage was starting to cry. She gazed at me with tear-filled eyes. “Please don’t. I have a baby at home. I’m a single mother.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re no such thing. You’re an aspect of the Light. You’re only trying to screw with me.” After all, that was the Light was all about doing. Trying to make us feel guilty and give up.

  Wait a second. I turned back to Azazel. “This whole thing is the Light trying to make things tough for us. Think about it. Of course they’d want to protect Kieran and Eve.”

  “Maybe,” said Azazel. “So?”

  “So,” I said, grasping it more firmly as I spoke, “balance isn’t going to get us out of here. We have to use Darkness to shatter this whole environment.”

  “But if we get lost in the Darkness again—”

  I interrupted her by putting a bullet in the hostage’s head. Then I leveled my gun at the approaching police officers and blew them away too. I grinned at Azazel. “Darkness, baby.”

  “Jason—” she started again.

  But I pulled her against me, ran my fingers through her hair and kissed her hard. At first, I could feel the resistance in her body. She was tense against me. But as our lips moved against each other, I felt her soften and open to me. We connected, like before. We weren’t separate beings anymore. We were part of each other, part of something bigger.

  When we opened our eyes, we weren’t in the police station anymore. We weren’t even inside one of the strange rooms of the Light’s testing maze. Instead, we were under a canopy of green leaves, our feet on a carpet of soft grass, birds chirping as they flittered through the trees of a lush forest. Kieran and Eve were both sitting on the ground near us, looking around warily.

  “It worked,” I said. “We got the hell out of there.”

  Azazel smiled at me. “I guess it did. Good idea.”

  Kieran got to his feet. “Hold on a second. Someone needs to do some major explaining here. What the heck is going on? Am I having some kind of screwed up dream or what?”

  “You’re inside the Spiritus Mundi,” I said. “Now hand over your powers so we can fix the world.”

  “What?” said Eve, getting to her feet beside Kieran.

  Azazel gave me a look. “This is why I was worried about too much Darkness. We can’t approach them like this, and you know it, Jason.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “It’s not Darkness. I’ve just never liked Kieran.”

  Kieran snorted. “Well, the feeling’s mutual.”

  “Stop it,” said Azazel.

  “You know,” said Kieran to Azazel, “I still can’t believe you ended up with this psychopath. Do you have any actual respect for yourself?”

  “He’s different,” said Azazel.

  “Oh sure,” said Kieran. “He seems different. It’s not as though he recently shot a ton of people.”

  “They weren’t real people,” I said. “This isn’t real. You’d think you’d figure that out after you’re immediately transferred out of a police station to the woods.”

  “Trying to figure out what’s going on here is exactly what I’m doing,” said Kieran.

  “I said to stop it,” said Azazel. She thrust herself between the two of us. “You two are forbidden to speak to each other. Got it?”

  Kieran sighed. “I’m sorry. I know things didn’t end up working out between the two of us. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still want you to be happy.”

  “Really?” I said. “Because you could have fooled me when you had us locked in that room surrounded by armed men.”

  “That was necessary,” said Kieran.

  “We had to find out where Chance was,” said Eve. “It’s the only way we’ll ever have anything like a child of our own.”

  “We were desperate,” said Kieran. “I’m sorry we took extreme measures. But you two understand the way the power works. Once you’ve had it for long enough, you start acting differently. We thought that if we joined together, we’d eliminate all the evil from it, but it’s hard to determine what’s evil anymore.”

  “People are happy,” said Eve. “That’s what matters.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’re happy right up until the moment you kill them.”

  “Jason!” said Azazel. “Don’t talk anymore.”

  Okay, so maybe I was provoking them unnecessarily. I folded my arms over my chest, but I stopped talking.

  Azazel took a deep breath and turned back to Kieran. “I’m really okay, Kieran, but thanks for your concern. I have to be with Jason. I can’t really conceive of anything different. We understand each other. You must know this. You had my memories. You know how I feel about him.”

  “I do,” said Kieran. “I guess I sometimes wish you and I could have ended things on a better note. It felt as though we sort of grew apart, but there was never any closure.”

  “Watching you and Eve steal my powers was closure enough,” said Azazel.

  “You’re pissed,” said Kieran. “Is that what this is about? Are you trying to get revenge on me and Eve?”

  “They’re trying to take our powers away,” said Eve. “You heard what Jason said when we first got into the forest.”

  “Actually,” said Azazel, “we’re hoping to convince you to give them up.”

  “Because you want them back, I guess,” said Eve. “Did you really think you’d just ask nicely, and we’d roll over like dogs?”

  Azazel sighed. “I hadn’t actually thought this far ahead. We’re playing it a lot by ear, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Can I talk?” I said.

  “Can you be nice?” said Azazel.

  I glared at her and didn’t answer. “The truth is that our powers came from people giving up their own individual power. Over the centuries, it’s been stored here in the Spiritus Mundi.” I waved a hand around us. “Azazel and I want to give the power back to individuals. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Kieran laughed. “Did you just say ‘right thing?’ You’re going to make an argument that I should do something based on morality? Oh, that’s rich.”

  Part of me wanted to throttle him. I reined it back. “You’re right. I haven’t been the poster child for doing the right thing. But that’s why it’s all the more important that I do it now. While I have the chance. And so help me, if
you do not give us those powers, I will find a way to take them from you. I don’t care what I have to do.”

  Azazel let out a noisy breath. “Now you’re threatening them? I thought you were going to be nice.”

  “This is as nice as I get,” I said.

  “We’re not giving up the powers,” said Kieran. “Certainly not to you. The two of you have no business with that much power. The things you’ve done to the world...”

  “We’re not going to keep it,” said Azazel. “We’re going to give it back.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, but I don’t believe it,” said Kieran. He glared up at the canopy of leaves overhead. “Can we wake up now?”

  “This isn’t a dream,” I said. “You aren’t waking up. Come on, Kieran. You got Azazel’s powers by accident, didn’t you? You didn’t even want them. You’re not cut out for this. Can you truly tell me you like it, being surrounded by sycophants whose every move you control?”

  “They’re happy,” said Eve. “We keep them happy. It’s the responsibility we have to bear for creating paradise on earth.”

  “You’ve taken away their choice,” said Azazel.

  “And if you give it back?” asked Eve. “Won’t things go back to being awful? Won’t people kill and steal and hurt each other?”

  “Probably,” I said. “But things are awful now. I lived in your world. I watched people sleepwalk through their days and nights. Living isn’t worth it if it isn’t on your own terms. Would you consent to it, if you had the choice? Would you let someone turn off all your pain if it meant turning off what made you human?”

  Neither Kieran nor Eve said anything.

  “The point is,” said Azazel, “the power shouldn’t be this concentrated. Funneled into one or two people, the way it has been with us, it destroys everything. If we break it up and put it back, things will be better.”

  “But they won’t,” said Kieran. “They’ll be worse. And besides, once you have our powers, you’ll take over the world anyway, just like we did.”

  I shook my head. “Trust me, I’ve been down that path. I don’t want to go back. Nothing was emptier than being worshipped.”

  “Maybe it is empty,” said Eve. “But emptiness is all there is anyway.”

  “I guess that’s why it’s so important to get a baby,” I said, “to share all the emptiness.”

  “No,” said Eve. “Of course not. Having a baby would make things mean something.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I get that. It took me years to realize it, because I was drowning in my own guilt. But when you two threatened Chance, that was the only thing that made me want to fight again.”

  “And don’t you see?” said Azazel. “Having a child, passing on your genes, passing on your love, passing on your beliefs? All of that is the simple kind of individual power that we crave deep down. It’s all we really want. We don’t really want to be gods. Do you really want that? If you could pick between the powers or a baby, what would you pick?”

  Kieran and Eve looked at each other and then both looked at the ground.

  “The baby,” said Eve. Then she smirked. “But you don’t have anything to bargain with there, if that’s your scheme. I already have Chance. You can’t offer him to me.”

  “Look,” I said, “we didn’t have to do it this way. We’ve absorbed enough power here that we could have burst back into your lives and killed you both. We almost did. But we didn’t want to turn into you.”

  “We weren’t trying to bargain,” said Azazel. “We only wanted to help you to see.”

  But wait. The ideas of bargaining and the statement I’d made about how much power we had rumbled around in my brain. There was something... Yes! “Graham said that Michaela Weem created you by petitioning the Darkness, didn’t he?” I said to Azazel.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I remember that. It upset me because I thought it meant I was evil, but Graham said that Dark and Light were equally evil. So what?”

  “We’re imbued with the power of Darkness, darling. What’s to say we couldn’t create a child for Kieran and Eve.” I looked at Eve. “Your own child. How’s that for a bargaining chip?”

  Eve swallowed. “You can’t do that. We took your powers.”

  “You did,” I said. “And after you did, you imposed so much order and structure that the Darkness forsook you and curled up here in the Spiritus Mundi. It used Agnes to get all of us in the right position—me back with Azazel, Chance in danger—so that it could give all of the Dark power to Azazel and me. So that we could obliterate you. And obliterate the Light. But Azazel and I want to obliterate all of it. We’ve been slaves to this fight for far too long.”

  “We do have power,” said Azazel. “How do you think we got you here?”

  “How could you possibly have enough power to make a baby?” said Kieran.

  “Graham explained to us that the power is all energy and that matter is all energy and that with enough power you could turn energy into matter,” I said. “Scientists have sort of done it. With light and particles and photons and things. I remember reading this article about it once.”

  “But how would you do it?” asked Kieran.

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “But if we could do it, would you take the deal?”

  “Yes,” said Eve.

  “What?” said Kieran. “They’re bullshitting us.”

  “What if they’re not?” said Eve.

  Kieran shrugged. “If that’s what Eve wants.”

  She reached over and took his hand. Their eyes met, and I thought I saw a little of the same kind of togetherness that Azazel and I had. As much as I didn’t care for Kieran, I was glad he’d found someone.

  “All right.” I rubbed my hands together. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to be nearly as much fun as the normal way of making babies?”

  * * *

  “You promised them what?” Graham’s face was red. We’d been pleased to discover that he just popped into existence next to us when we yelled his name. Now he was pacing in front of Kieran and Eve, who were sitting on the forest floor. Azazel and I were standing on the other side of Graham.

  “Uh, a baby,” said Azazel. “You said Michael Weem summoned the Darkness to create me, so we figured that we could do it too.”

  Graham stopped pacing. He wagged his head side to side slowly. “You have no idea how deep into the Darkness you’re going to have to go to do this.”

  “Into the Darkness?” I said. “I thought we had the power of Darkness in us now. Can’t we do it ourselves?”

  “As you might have noticed from your little kissing debacle earlier, you don’t really control the power. It’s independent of you, even if it’s within you. You have to all the way into the Darkness, let it consume you entirely.”

  “And that’s doable,” I said.

  “Yes,” Graham sighed. “But you realize what the Darkness wants from the two of you, don’t you? If you go into the Darkness, summon this power and do this thing, then it will try to steer you off your purpose. You could very easily come out raging killers who mow down Kieran and Eve and their unborn child. And everyone else on earth for that matter. Everyone you care about. Hallam, Marlena, Chance, Palomino. No one would be safe.”

  That was bad. After all, succumbing to Darkness was our Achilles’ heel.

  Azazel took my hand. “We can do it. We’ll stay focused. Tell us what to do, Graham.”

  Graham rubbed his face with his hand. “If you’re sure.”

  Azazel squeezed my fingers with her own. “We’re sure.”

  “You’ll need to will your bodies to the center of Darkness in the Spiritus Mundi and yourselves. If you concentrate, you should be able to get there easily. There will be a dark tunnel. You descend into it and make your petition of whatever you find there.” Graham shuddered. “I’ve seen the tunnel once. Going into it... I can’t even imagine.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I’d never been inside something so black. I couldn’t see anyt
hing. It wasn’t the way it is when you close your eyes and patterns swim in your vision. It wasn’t the way it is when you lock yourself in a room with no windows. It was thick blackness. It felt as if it was sticking to my skin, staining me. Azazel and I clutched each other’s hands as we fought through it. My eyes were wide, and I felt as if the blackness was seeping into them, as if it were crawling up into my nostrils instead of air.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the fear. It ripped at me as if it had claws. The fear raked its way down my neck, tore at my spine. It was crippling. If it hadn’t been for Azazel’s hand, I would have fallen to my knees and wrapped my arms around myself. I would have curled into a ball and whimpered.

  But we pushed through it. In retrospect, I don’t think it took that long to walk down that black, black tunnel. But as we walked, I felt as if I’d lost all sense of time. There was darkness in the past, darkness in the future. And fear. Always fear.

  When we finally saw the red glow of firelight in the distance, I wanted to scream in relief. We would have sprinted for it if the darkness hadn’t been so hard to move through, like wading against the tide.

  He was waiting for us there. Fire danced around him in a circle.

  The beautiful man from the pool. The one Graham had called Satan. The one Azazel had reached for, whispering her own name. He didn’t wear a shirt. The flames made patterns on his skin. His eyes pierced me. His smile mesmerized me.

  Azazel and I approached him. I dropped to my knees in awe. He was so beautiful. Azazel stayed on her feet, gazing into his eyes as if they were equals. I couldn’t comprehend doing something so brazen.

  “My children,” he said. His voice was music, a lilting melody with a sharp edge. I could have listened to it for all eternity, glorying in it.

  I lifted up my face to him.

  He rested a hand on Azazel’s shoulder. “You are my creature, my daughter, born of me.” He put his other hand under my chin, caressed my jaw. “You were not my creature, but you have become so. You have accepted me, proved yourself in my service. Welcome, Jason and Azazel.”