Downfall

  ****

  Later in my own bed, my body still tingling from those naked hours with Cain when we pushed everything else but each other out of our heads, I was able to think it all through. Insomnia was the perfect place to have an epiphany. An idea formulated itself. I tried to go through it all in order but couldn’t force my logic to kick in. Maybe I was too tired, or too freaked out. My thoughts careered and smashed against each other inside my head. This ability Cain had described―the visions―in combination with other things I’d observed, added up to something huge. Something that made me shiver uncontrollably in my warm blankets, then jump up and check some facts online, and finally drop to my knees at three in the morning to fearfully and fervently pray.

  I’d seen firsthand Cain’s profound strength, as well as the feeling of comfort and warmth he gave people when he touched them. And then there were the words engraved on the wall―not engraved by Cain―but already there when he found the chamber under Gaunt House. Adsero nos. Protect us. He, as well as the other three, saw visions that showed things happening in real life, sometimes from the past but also from the future. They were being sent information on how to save innocent people from harm. This information had to come from some source and I had a pretty good idea what that source was. In fact, I knew more about spiritual matters than any of these four people. Yes, I’d been baptized and confirmed, and I’d attended Mass, but it wasn’t just my Catholic upbringing. It was much more than that. My father was a preacher and spiritual author. He’d used the Bible and other religious teachings to formulate his ideas about saints, including holy texts from other religions. I’d helped him research that information; helped him read for certain topics or themes he could use in his books. The information Dad found all supported the thing he had become famous for writing about: the idea that people could be unrecognized saints.

  Saints were people with holy powers to heal, save, and protect. Servants of God who performed miracles. People petitioned these holy beings―the known ones―to be named and beatified as saints after death. My father claimed there were many more saints than we thought and we should access their untapped powers to change the world while they lived. His teachings had amassed an enormous following of people who believed they were undiscovered saints. Mostly I thought they were full of crap ... overweight, over-enthused followers―typically dissatisfied women―heavy-breathing with the excitement of their own self-aggrandizement. Throwing money at my father to teach them how to access their inner holy light. But now it looked like I’d stumbled across the real deal.

  Perhaps Cain and the other three were one step ahead of me and had already worked it out ... but I didn’t think so. They didn’t know how extraordinary they were. They were glad they’d found each other and wanted to use their abilities to do some good, and that was about the limit of their understanding. But if there was one thing I was good at, it was unravelling puzzles. I hadn’t been a famous author’s personal assistant from the age of fifteen through to eighteen without learning a thing or two about problem solving. And I hadn’t been his research assistant without learning a thing or two about identifying saints. It was no coincidence that I’d been led to these people. Wasn’t it plain that my job was now to help them understand what they were?

  I remembered the sight of Cain’s luminous halo and the holy fire that surrounded me when he first kissed me, and knew with deep, immutable certainty that I was right. I just wasn’t sure how to explain to four apparently normal, average human beings that they were, in fact, saints walking among us.