That Last Onset Read online

  “Thank you,” I breathed. I could not believe he’d acknowledged us by name and that he’d wished us welcome. We were nothing to him. Insects. Less than insects.

  He moved his hands. He smiled at us. His smile was not comforting, nor reassuring. It was frightening in some ways but it was also so savagely exquisite that it was too compelling to look away from. “You have been planning to betray me. You have been planning to break up my essence, fracture me into tiny little pieces.”

  I hung my head, ashamed. Would he kill us now? We deserved to die. We didn’t deserve to serve him anymore. He demanded absolute obedience. How could we have been so arrogant?

  “But now that we have spoken,” he said, “you will not betray me, will you, my children?”

  I shook my head furiously. “No. No, never.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now why have you come?”

  “We...” I trailed off. “We don’t need it anymore.” All of this had been a strategy to hurt him, and I never wanted to do that.

  “A baby,” said Azazel. “We need to create a baby.”

  What? She was still going to ask for this? But why? Didn’t she realize what having it would do to him?

  He chuckled. “Ah, yes. That is what you want. And I will give it to you. But first, you must give me something in return.” He waved his hand in the air, and an image appeared in the flames surrounding him, much like the images in the pool that Graham had shown us. It was a boy with red hair. He was so grown up, but I recognized him. I felt a twinge in my chest. My Chance. “A trade, then. Give me Chance, and I will make a baby for Kieran and Eve.”

  What? I recoiled. “What would happen to Chance?”

  “I would consume him,” he said. He grinned, showing us all his teeth.

  I shook my head slowly, backing away from him. “No. No, I can’t.”

  Azazel took a step towards him. “Why not, Jason?”

  “Because he’s Chance!” I said, horrified. “We’re doing this for him.”

  “Jason is weak,” he said to Azazel. “Take his power. Use it.”

  Azazel reached for me. “Yes. I realize that now. I am the vessel of Darkness. He has always contained too much Light. Too much oppression.”

  I felt as if something were being sucked out of my body, and it hurt. I crumpled to the ground, clutching my chest.

  Azazel laughed. She was pulling my power away from me! Why?

  “Azazel?” I whispered, feeling the last of it leave my body.

  She turned back to him, reaching out her hand to him. As if drawn to her, he reached his hand out as well. Their fingers touched. Azazel gripped his fingers with her own. She smiled a fierce grin. “I can take you as well, can’t I? I can swallow all the Darkness.”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “Yes.”

  “Azazel?” I said. What was she doing?

  He put his arms around her. She hugged him back, and as she did, he simply disappeared into her. When I looked at her again, she was still Azazel, but she was dazzling with the same beauty he’d had. She stroked my cheek, but the look in her eyes mocked me. “My Jason. You’ve always found the Darkness so alluring, haven’t you?”

  “You’re so beautiful,” I murmured. “But I don’t understand. Where is he?”

  “In me,” she said. “I am the Darkness now. I always have been, and you’ve always followed me blindly. But now I am the whole Darkness.”

  I was shaking in her presence. She was so stunning. She drew me like a magnet, but I was too awed to touch her. “Are you going to hurt Chance?” My mouth was dry. I felt sick and weak.

  “Hurting,” she said, “is what I do. And that is why you have always wanted me. You’ve always sought me out because you can’t help but be drawn to Darkness. You want me?” She laughed. “Come find me.” And she disappeared in a swirl of flames, leaving me alone in the black, black emptiness.

  The darkness frightened me. I felt so weak. I curled up in a ball on the ground, ducking my head under my arms. I couldn’t see anything. If I hadn’t been able to feel the ground under my body, I would have thought I was in a void. It could have been death. It could have been the end of everything. I lay there, too scared to make a noise, and I felt as though all had been lost.

  Graham had warned us that the Darkness would throw us off our purpose. But I’d never expected this. I’d lost Azazel. Without Azazel... I wasn’t even sure who I was. And whatever she’d taken from me had been what had enabled me to have the small shreds of strength I’d had.

  I was lost and confused. I didn’t know what to do.

  Perhaps I could get back out of this tunnel. But I didn’t think I could get to my feet. Slowly, I rolled over onto my stomach and began to drag myself in the direction I thought was out.

  Shivers erupted all over my flesh. Goosebumps puckered on my bare skin. My teeth started to chatter.

  I stopped moving. I was trapped here. And for all I knew, Azazel, now filled entirely with Darkness, had gone off to murder my son.

  After everything we’d been through together, we’d ended up here. I alone and terrified in the ebony blankness. She consumed with a desire to inflict pain. We were both alone.

  I wanted to cry, but I didn’t dare. I was too frightened to form tears. I could hardly breathe. I tried to move again, and the terror shot through my body like lightning.

  Better not to move.

  Better to give up. To stay here. To rot away in the dark. Alone.

  I didn’t move for quite a while, but the passage of time in the blackness was something I couldn’t measure. It felt like weeks. It felt like decades. I didn’t know how long it was, but it was agony. During that time, I only felt fear, and it crippled my movement and my thoughts. I knew that I wanted to get out of the dark tunnel, but I couldn’t think of ways to do it.

  Eventually, I began only to wish for it. I recalled what it was like to be able to see and move. I remembered what it was like not to feel staggering terror every second. If only I could find my way back to that. If only someone could show me the way. I began to whisper the names of anyone who had a snowball’s chance of helping me. “Agnes,” I breathed, since she had been our guide through most of this experience. And the only other guide we’d had was, “Graham.”

  “Jason?”

  I lifted my head, but, of course, I couldn’t see. “Hello?”

  “How dare you summon me into this?” It was Graham’s voice, and I could hear by the way that it quavered that the fear had gotten to him too.

  Summon him? How had I...? Then I remembered that before, when Azazel and I had yelled for Graham, that he’d appeared. All I’d had to do was say his name, apparently. “Can you get us out of here?” My own voice was shaking as well.

  He touched me in the darkness. The feel of someone else was so comforting, I almost started sobbing in relief.

  “Can you walk?” Graham asked.

  “I...” I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t tried to stand up yet. That seemed far too daring. I attempted it then. I tried to position my feet to push myself up but I was assaulted by a wave of fear. My teeth chattered. “I don’t think so.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  I tried to explain as best I could.

  “Azazel absorbed all of the Darkness?” Graham said. “But if she did that, that means you don’t have any powers at all.”

  “I know that,” I said. Maybe I sounded a little annoyed.

  “Well, you’ve got to stop her,” said Graham. “And there’s only one way to stop Darkness. You’ll have to use Light.”

  “How do I do that?” I asked.

  “If we can get out of this pit,” said Graham, “I can take you to the center of Light. It’s an equal and opposite incarnation of this place. But you’re going to have to stand up first. And we’re going to have to walk.”

  Okay. I needed to do this. I gulped. Maybe it was like jumping into a cold pool. If you did it all at once, it wasn’t so bad. I gritted my teeth...and vaulted upright.

&nbs
p; I shrieked. Fear dug its claws into my stomach. I hugged myself to try to calm the shaking.

  I felt Graham next to me. “Now we walk.”

  It seemed as though we walked for another several millennia. I clutched Graham as we moved, and we didn’t move quickly. The darkness, which had seemed so thick going in, was twice as dense on the way out. Several times, we had to pause to catch our breaths because it was practically suffocating us.

  The sensation of it crawling inside me was worse. It felt like thousands of tiny insects burrowing into every one of my exposed cavities and then skittering about under my skin. Once or twice, I screamed again.

  Then we encountered a wall of icy blackness. It sliced into our skin and stung the back of our throats. Despair ripped through me. I stumbled, went sprawling on the ground. And lying there, unable to move again, I started to cry.

  “Jason,” said Graham, tugging at my arm to try to help me up. But he sounded completely terrified. “You have to get up.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “It’s hopeless, Graham.”

  “No,” said Graham. “It’s not.” I could tell he didn’t really believe himself.

  “She was all I ever had,” I told him. “And now I’ve lost Azazel. There’s no reason to go on. Let me die here.”

  “Get up,” Graham growled. “You have to get up.”

  “Why? What’s the point?”

  Graham didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, I felt him collapse to his knees next to me. “I don’t know.” He sounded defeated.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I rested my head against the frigid ground. It wouldn’t be much longer now. I was numb all over. My breathing had slowed. My heart was barely pumping. I’d fall asleep here, and that would be the end. “I’m...glad...you’re...here...Graham.” Talking was difficult. I hadn’t done it in a long time. It had been a long time since I’d been able to feel the place where our arms touched. I couldn’t feel much of anything anymore. “I...don’t want...to...die...alone.”

  There wasn’t a response for quite some time. Finally, Graham murmured, “Die? I can’t...die. I’m already...dead.”

  I tried to formulate a response, but my thoughts were sluggish.

  “Wait,” said Graham, sounding more alert. “I’m dead. And all of this is an illusion. We don’t have bodies. We can’t freeze. We’re in the spirit world.” He shook me. “Jason, you have to concentrate. We have to will ourselves out of this place. Come on, help me. Picture the sky, and the grass, and the trees. Picture us out of here.”

  “There’s no point,” I said.

  “Jason! Do it.”

  To humor him, I formed a mental image of the lush forest we’d been inside before we came here. I remembered how soft the grass had been. That had been nice. I’d like to be lying on that soft grass now, instead of freezing to death in the dark. I sighed.

  Beside me, Graham whooped.

  I hadn’t realized my eyes were closed until I opened them. All around us was a carpet of soft, green grass. The sun was blazing down on us. We weren’t inside the black tunnel anymore. Slowly, I got to my feet and looked around. “That was it? That was all it took?”

  “I admit it would have been better if I’d had my idea before things got so desperate,” said Graham. “But the Darkness is unknown. By its very nature, it is fear. Fear makes it nearly impossible to think.”

  I closed my eyes and let the rays of sun warm my face.

  “We have to get you to the center of Light,” said Graham. “It’s in the Spiritus Mundi, and also inside Kieran and Eve. Concentrate on getting there. You’ve got to stop Azazel.”

  * * *

  The center of Light was a tall building with gleaming spires. Two guards stood in front of its severe white gate, each in crisp white uniforms. “You,” they sneered when they saw me. “Come to grovel, have you?”

  They had British accents. Go figure.

  “Let me in,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Who knows how much time had been wasted inside the tunnel. Azazel could have gotten to Chance by now.

  “You’ve done nothing but spit in our faces, you know?” said a guard. “I don’t really think you’re in a position to give demands.”

  “Let me in,” I said again.

  “Yes, well,” said the other guard, “there is the matter of the password. Do you know the password?”

  Were they kidding me? I sighed. “No, I don’t know any password.”

  “No one enters the gates without the password,” said the first guard.

  “Do I get a hint?”

  The guards didn’t say anything. Fine. I’d play. “Order,” I said.

  They shook their heads.

  “Structure,” I said.

  More head shaking.

  “Light?”

  “No,” said the second guard. He was starting to smile, as if he were enjoying this.

  “Manipulation,” I said. “Frustration. Idiocy.”

  Now the guards were both glaring at me.

  “Fine,” I said. “How am I supposed to figure out this password?”

  “Well, there is a procedure for being put on the list of those who know the password and can enter,” said the first guard. “You’ll need to pop round the side of the building and visit the Password Acquisition Office. There’s a form that needs to be filled out in triplicate and then notarized. Afterwards, you’ll need the signatures of—”

  I punched the guard in the nose. “I really don’t have time for that.”

  “Ow,” said the guard, clutching his face.

  I felt guilty. Apparently, I really had lost all my Darkness. “I’m really sorry,” I said. And I was. “But I don’t have time for this. I need to get inside. Now.”

  “ I’m sorry,” said the guard behind his hand. His voice was nasally because he was holding his wounded nose. “We can’t let you in without the password.”

  “My son is in danger,” I said. “Do you have a son? Oh, of course, you don’t. You’re nothing more than an aspect of the Light, and you people deal only in guilt and shame and ordering people around. I don’t even see how you can help me.” I ran my hands through my hair and turned away from the gate. I was going to have to find another way in.

  “Excuse me,” said the guard. “Did you say your son is in danger?”

  I turned back around. “Yes.” Were they going to help me? ”You don’t think it’s him, do you?” asked one guard of the other.

  “I have no idea. I suppose it could be.”

  “You see,” the first guard said to me, “there was a memo that was distributed about ten minutes ago. It said if a man who was trying to save his son came seeking entrance, then we should let him in without any hassle.”

  “That’s me, obviously,” I said. I’d been expected? How weird was this?

  “Well, of course you’d say it was you now,” said the second guard. “Any idiot can agree that he’s the person from a memo.”

  I could feel rage building within me. No wonder the Light made so many people turn to Darkness.

  “I think we’d better let him in,” said the first guard.

  “If you’re sure,” said the second guard.

  “Let me in,” I rumbled.

  The guards opened the gates.

  A brilliant beam of white light burst out of them, blinding me. Covering my eyes, I staggered inside.

  “The Rising Sun,” said an ethereal female voice from somewhere inside the brightness. “It’s about time you realized you needed us.”

  I squinted. “Where are you?”

  “Open your eyes,” said the voice. “Open them wide.”

  I struggled to do as I was told. The light was so bright. As I lifted my eyelids, it seared into me. I couldn’t see. It was painful, the way looking directly into the sun is. But as my eyes opened wider, I realized the light was burning into my body, filling me up with bright warmth.

  “Yes,” sighed the voice. “Take it all.”

  It all streaked by me
, centuries of civilization. Temples, roads, armies, city walls, castles. I felt it as each spark of humanity flew up while they were constructed. I felt the sparks flow into me, making me stronger and more luminous. I felt my power grow. I saw the people like ants, roaming to and fro, working so hard to give me more and more of themselves. I felt myself balloon full of their sparks, their life. I was imperious and strong, stern and commanding. And I always knew best. Knew better than the little things who begged for me to make things easier for them. Easier. Certainly. I would take the difficulty from them. I would make the world safe and sterile and ordered. I was the Light. Civilization. I rallied the armies of Rome, and they trooped all over Europe, spreading the Light where they could. They erected roads. They built baths. They brought currency and trade. There was slaughter too. The Darkness. I saw it, and it called to me, whispered to me in its seductive voice. I sent ships to Africa, to that hub of Darkness and savagery. I whispered in their ears that they had the Light inside them, the burden of bringing their ways to the primitives there. There was slaughter. There was disease. And the Darkness whispered to me that no matter what I did, destruction would reign. I could not eradicate it. The Darkness wove its inky fingers into all my best plans. A unified Germany with gorgeously efficient roads became an oven that spit the smoke of burning human flesh into the sky. A system of communication that crossed all boundaries became the vehicle of predators who wanted to hurt children. And the Darkness whispered to me that it was inside everything, that the more I fought it, the more it became part of everything I did. And the more unified I became, the more it seemed that Darkness seeped into everything.

  I shrieked at the agony of it, of all the best laid plans being destroyed. How had it begun? How had all of this become so full of strife and conflict?

  And then suddenly, I remembered.

  I had to go to her.

  I found her standing at the edge of the Spiritus Mundi, her fingers sticking through the thin membrane that separated us from reality. She was stroking the hair of a small boy with red hair. It took a moment, because there was so much inside me now—the history of the world from inception to the present, in addition to everything I’d been as Jason Wodden.