Death, and the Girl He Loves

  I should have warned her, I thought as I shivered in the cold. It bit into my bones, clamping on, locking its jaws like a pit bull the moment I stepped out into the frigid night air. A thick fog circled around me, the haze creating a halo effect that I could see only in the low light of the lamps that lit the pathways from the academic buildings to the dorms, through the maintenance buildings, and across to the guardhouse.

  That would be the real trick, getting past that house.

  The aloneness I suddenly felt weighed heavily. I wrapped my fingers tighter around the strap of my bag, and it occurred to me that I’d never lifted a knife from the kitchen. I had nothing with which to defend myself should it come to that. What if Wade was watching? What if he stabbed me before I even saw him coming? Then again, maybe he had other plans. The picture he’d drawn showed a knife, but he could have anything. A gun. An axe. A hammer.

  I quickened my footsteps. Every dark machination I could think of came to mind. My plan, if one could even call it that, seemed less and less favorable by the second. I would have to pass through some pretty dark nooks and crannies to get off grounds, but Wade hadn’t come after me yet. Surely he didn’t suspect I’d do something like this.

  The gates to the grounds loomed near, as did the guardhouse. Thirty feet ahead. On one hand, I had to somehow sneak past it. On the other, if Wade came after me now, I could call out to the guard.

  Twenty feet.

  I thought about the fact that I would soon be on a plane headed home. The feeling gave me that extra push I needed to plod onward. I could do this.

  Ten feet.

  I patted my jacket pocket, where I’d stashed my money. It would be enough for a ticket. It had to be. I didn’t have time to take a bus. I needed to get back fast. The world was about to end.

  I began to tiptoe as I got closer to the guardhouse. The gate beyond it was closed, but I was not above climbing over the fence and hurling my body into the darkness on the other side. With infinite care, I inched up to the lit guardhouse and peeked in. No one was in it. All that worry for nothing.

  The night guard was probably making rounds or something. I had no idea, really, but it sounded logical that part of his job would be to make rounds. With fate smiling upon me, I hurried to the shadows of the fence beside the gate. I could never have climbed up the gate itself. It was a massive iron thing with long, menacing bars. Much like a jail cell. There was nothing to grab on to, and the tops of the bars were sharp and pointy. I would impale myself if I even attempted it. They would find my lifeless body the next morning, dangling from a spike.

  Why I had to think such things at a time like this was beyond me. Crystal told me she’d heard about kids climbing over the fence using the hinges for leverage. I tried to throw my bag over first, but I couldn’t quite get the distance I needed. That fence was at least fifteen feet high. I managed about three. Possibly four. And it hurt when it came back down. So I threw it back over my shoulder and proceeded to climb. Or, I thought about climbing until I heard a snicker in the dark beside me.

  My foot slipped and I almost fell before I turned around and saw a male figure standing off to the side, his silhouette actually a little lighter than the shadow he was in. This was not happening. Surely Wade didn’t follow me. But when the boy slid from the shadows, I realized that trying to outrun fate was a lot harder than it sounded.

  Wade did indeed stand before me, his arms crossed over his chest, a smug grin tainting his face. He was suddenly ugly. I didn’t remember him being ugly before, but he seemed that way to me now.

  A healthy dose of adrenaline dumped into my central nervous system and swept through my body. The first expression to rush across my face, the one that escaped before I could catch it, was fear. Panic. I immediately reined that in and let a look of mild disinterest settle in its place.

  Time to make a new friend.

  “Do you mind?” I asked, gesturing toward the guardhouse. I went to step around him, but he matched my step, staying locked between me and safety. I prayed he didn’t know the guard wasn’t there and forced my poker face to stay put. No sense in letting him see how scared I was. How my insides were churning with terror. If I knew anything about people who preyed on what they saw as a weaker specimen of the species, it was that they liked to see the fear on their victims’ faces. They liked to hear it in their thundering heartbeats and their quivering voices.

  So I schooled my expression to stay neutral, stopped, and offered him my best look of bored annoyance, the one I’d most recently learned from Kenya.

  “Are we going to do this all day?” I asked. “Because I have places to be.”

  “Looks like it.” He surveyed the fence I was just about to climb. Or attempt to climb. No idea if I would have succeeded, and now I’d never know.

  I sighed to emphasize how boring I found him. “Are you going to turn me in or what? If so, let’s get on with it. Like I said, I have places to be.”

  I sidestepped again before spotting the glint of light off a blade in his hands.

  “This won’t take long,” he assured me.

  Fear gripped me so hard, my lungs struggled under the weight of it. If I died, would everyone die? Was it really that cut and dried? That ridiculously simple? Surely God wouldn’t let that happen. Surely the fate of the world didn’t rest on the condition of my heart. But I’d seen it with my own eyes. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Possibly millions. It was like a switch had been flipped and I didn’t know how to unflip it.

  He took a menacing step closer.

  “The guard is right there,” I said, gesturing with a nod.

  Wade laughed softly. “Don’t worry. He won’t be bothering anyone for a very long time.”

  I gasped and dropped my bag with every intention of running toward the guardhouse to check on the man. Was he in it? Did Wade hurt him? After reading his emotions in my vision, I wouldn’t put it past him.

  But Wade stepped in my path once again. And getting closer to him would put me that much closer to the knife.

  “You are all I’ve heard about my whole life,” he said, his tone suddenly angry, his words taut. Forced. “Growing up, my parents didn’t brag about me, but you. The last prophet. Hallelujah, the last prophet had been born at last!” He raised his hands in the air and waved them, mocking churchgoers everywhere. “The girl who’s going to save the world.” He leveled his cold stare on me again. “They thought I wasn’t listening,” he said, tapping the knife against his leg. “I was.”

  “Prophet?” I said, projecting the best look of absurdity in my arsenal. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He lowered his head and glared at me from underneath his lashes. “If you lie to me again, I’ll draw this out as long as I can.”

  “You have the wrong perso—”

  He held up a finger. “Before you go there, I just want you to know, I only want what’s inside you. You I don’t care about in the least. You can either die quick and painlessly, or slow and, well, with lots and lots of pain.”

  His words caused my throat to cinch shut. My pulse raced, barreling toward the finish line, apparently. “Just because you’re disillusioned doesn’t mean you have to kill me.”

  “Disillusioned?” He acted insulted. “Do you have any idea what it’s been like growing up in the shadow of a girl you’ve never even met? Who your parents had never even met?”

  His parents? How did his parents know about me? “Let’s say I am who you think I am. I am this prophet. How did you know?”

  “I told you.” He kicked the dirt at his feet in anger. “My parents have been raving about you since I was a kid.”

  “Who are your parents? Are they members of the Order?”

  “Members?” he scoffed. “More like worshippers of the great Lorelei McAlister. You should have seen them when they got the call.” He spit into the darkness at his side, his features twisted into a fanatical rage. “They were going to get to drive you here. To keep watch over y
ou while you were here.”

  My jaw fell open in surprise. “The Hamptons? Your parents are the nice couple who drove me here?”

  “Nice? Did you get a sense of how much they worship you when they picked you up?”

  I did, actually, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “You’re Paul?”

  He spread his arms wide, the knife in his right hand gleaming in the moonlight. “The one and only. What’d they tell you? To search me out? That I’d keep an eye on you?” He laughed softly. “Trust me, I did. I never took my eyes off you.”

  How did such a nice couple have such a psychotic son?

  He was so angry. I had to get through to him somehow. Perhaps a little honesty would go a long way. “Okay, you’re right. I am who you think I am, and I have no idea what you’ve gone through, but let me explain something.” I showed my palms in an act of surrender. “There is a war on the horizon. It is going to happen and it’s going to happen soon. I’ve seen it. And it started the moment you put that note in my pocket.”

  He tilted his head, listening.

  “Something changed when you did that. I have no idea why or what, but something changed.”

  “So, if you die,” he said, filling in the pieces, “the world will end?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure what the catalyst will be, but it’s going to happen soon. I have to get back home. I have to figure this out.”

  “If you aren’t the most arrogant thing. Won’t my parents be disappointed.”

  “I’m not saying that. I have no idea what set the wheels in motion. I’m just saying that they are in motion. Now. As we speak.”

  “But if the demon inside you is inside me, then I can live through anything.”

  “Wade, it doesn’t work like that. Humans can’t survive a demon possession.”

  “Pfft, you did,” he said as though I’d insulted him.

  “Yes, and I don’t know how. If you do this, Malak will kill you.”

  “Malak?” he said, his eyes glittering hungrily. “Its name is Malak?”

  “Malak-Tuke, Lucifer’s second-in-command. Or at least he used to be. And trust me, he is not something you want traipsing about your insides. He’ll rip you apart.”

  “Then why didn’t he rip you apart?”

  Fair question. If only I knew. “We became fast friends,” I said, having no idea what else to say. “But he’s already made it clear to me he doesn’t like you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And how did he do that?”

  “We have a connection. A bond. We think very much alike, and since I’d like to rip you apart right now, I’m pretty sure he would, too.”

  “Unfortunately,” he said, stepping closer, “that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  There was going to be no reasoning with him. I was hoping that if we stood in the cold long enough, another guard would come or a student would pass by, but hope was dwindling by the second. He was getting impatient. My talk of Malak only whetted his appetite for the raw power the demon possessed. He was a fool, but most psychopaths were.

  I decided to play off it, to keep him wanting more, keep him talking. I was shaking uncontrollably now, from both fear and the cold. “He’s tall,” I said as though reminiscing with a friend over ice cream. “As tall as the trees. His shoulders as wide as a building. And his claws are razor sharp. I’ve seen them slice open a chest in the blink of an eye.”

  Admittedly the one I’d seen slice open a chest was not the demon inside me. That happened in a vision I’d had before I’d actually met Jared, when he brushed up against me in a dark hallway. It was my only vision, in fact, involving the Angel of Death. In it, he fought a towering demon with a sword in a strange land with a desolate landscape, scorched clouds, and a roiling, violet sky.

  I’d heard the clanging of metal after our arms touched in that narrow passageway and turned to watch in horror when the vision crashed into me. A boy no more than sixteen or seventeen, fierce and somehow not quite human, struggled with a dark, monstrous beast. The boy’s arms corded as tendon and muscle strained against the weight of the sword he wielded. He slashed again and again, but the monster was fast, with razorlike talons and sharp, shimmering teeth, and the boy knew what those teeth felt like when they sank into flesh, knew the blinding pain that accompanied defeat. But he also knew the power he himself wielded, the raw strength that saturated every molecule of his body.

  Another herculean effort landed in the monster’s shoulder and continued through its thick chest. The monster sank under the boy’s sword with a guttural scream. He looked on while the beast writhed in pain, watched it grow still as the life drained out of it, and somewhere in the back of the boy’s mind, he allowed himself to register the burning of his lungs as he struggled to fill them with air.

  Blood trickled between his fingers, down the length of his blade, and dripped to the powdery earth beneath his feet. I followed the trail of blood up to three huge gashes across his chest. Clearly the monster’s claws had met their mark, laying the flesh of its enemy open. I gasped and covered my mouth with both hands as the boy spun toward me, sword at the ready. Squinting against the low sun, I could almost make out his features, but the vision evaporated before I got the chance. A heartbeat later, I was back in the dark hallway, gasping for air, one palm pressed against my temple, the other against the wall for balance.

  And that had been my introduction to angels and demons. I met Jared later and recognized him from that vision, but it was so surreal, so impossible, I had a hard time believing what I’d seen. I thought it was a metaphor for something, like when one dreams and it really means something else. I found out later the vision did happen. It was as real as I was. As Wade was. As the knife was that he grasped so palpably close to me.

  Wade stared, mesmerized. “How do you feel with it inside you?”

  I shrugged. No need to start lying now. “I don’t even know he’s there. I feel a ripple every once in a while, but that’s about it.”

  Surprised, he asked, “Doesn’t he make you feel more powerful? Able to do anything?”

  “Wade, I can’t do anything. With or without him, I’m just a human. He doesn’t give me superpowers.”

  He sneered at me. “That’s because you’ve never used what you have at your fingertips. I knew you were stupid, but come on. You have one of the most powerful beings in the universe inside you and he does nothing? Are you for real?”

  “I’m for real, Wade. I’m no different with him than I was without.”

  “Then that makes you an idiot.”

  I wanted to scream at him. Perhaps I was going about this the wrong way. If he thought so highly of Malak-Tuke, then maybe I needed to let him believe his own words.

  “Fine,” I said, my shoulders deflating. “I’m trying to save your life here, Wade. You’re right. You’ve been right all along. He’ll protect me.”

  He stilled. Narrowed his eyes as though trying to decide if I was lying or not. No time like the present to see how my poker face measured up.

  “If you try to hurt me in any way,” I said, inching back, insulating myself with as much distance as I could get, “he’ll rip out your jugular. You know, in case you were wondering.”

  He wanted to believe me in a way. He wanted to believe Malak was that powerful, that protective, but that would mean he couldn’t kill me to get at him.

  “It’s a lose–lose proposition,” I said, putting a few more inches between us. “If he won’t protect me, then what makes you think he’ll do that for you? If he will protect me, then you’ll die trying to find out. Either way, you don’t get to win this one, Wade. You just don’t.”

  Anger shot through him visibly. He was torn. Neither scenario appealed to him, but one had to be true. There was no other option, and he knew it. He clenched his teeth and let a shout of frustration slip through them, punching his knees with his own fists. Unfortunately, he did not stab himself in the p
rocess.

  “I guess I have to choose, then,” he said after reining in his temper. He brought up the knife, swung it back and forth in a Z shape as though demonstrating how he was going to cut me. Showing me the pattern he planned to use. “And I gotta tell ya, McAlister, I’ve wanted you dead for a really long time.”

  How did I inspire such hatred in people I’d never even met?

  We were far enough away from each other that I might manage a clean getaway. But I wasn’t exactly a track star. My freedom wouldn’t last long. Still, it would give me precious seconds to scream. Surely someone would hear.

  I poised myself to run, bent my knees just enough to give me some leverage, when a girl stepped from the same shadows Wade had been hiding in. Dizzy with hope, I looked at him, trying not to let him know we had company just yet. Then I saw who it was and my heart sank.

  No way. Kenya was with him? I closed my eyes against the disappointment. I was going to die so painfully.

  No.

  No, no, no.

  I opened my eyes. If I was going to die, I was going to make them work for it.

  A sudden surge of adrenaline catapulted me forward. I attacked Wade, caught him off guard, but he quickly recovered, using my own momentum to bring me to the ground and straddle me.

  “You have spunk!” he shouted, his own adrenaline kicking in. “I like that.”

  He raised the knife, and our situation mimicked his picture. Him straddling me. Stabbing me. And Kenya would stand back and enjoy the show.

  Or so I thought.

  I heard a sharp thud, then felt Wade go limp. He was toppling toward me when Kenya grabbed his wrist and kept the knife back protectively as he fell forward. I looked over his shoulder and realized she was holding a tree branch. She’d hit him.

  We heard a male voice penetrate the darkness. “What’s going on?”

  Why would she do that?

  “Over here!” Kenya shouted. “A student has been attacked.”

  A security guard ran up to us. “What happened?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer before calling for backup and telling the dispatcher on the other end to get the police.