“But that was different,” Alex argued.
“The only difference is that this time,
Lisa’s dead
!” Daniel thundered, face red and eyes bulging. “We’re all going to die anyway—what difference would it make if Devlin went a little early? Not a soul here could argue that he doesn’t deserve it!” Daniel said, facing Devlin. “You might just deserve it more than any single individual in recorded history. If the full extent of your crimes were known, any jury in the world wouldn’t just convict you, they would personally tear you limb from limb! And no one would feel bad about it after! Just like
I
won’t.”
He pressed the gun so hard into Devlin’s temple, the weapon nearly broke the old man’s skin. Devlin never flinched or even closed his eyes; he simply watched and waited.
Daniel’s damaged body was taut, a coiled spring. He gripped the gun viciously, as if pouring all of his sorrow into its gleaming black form. He gazed into Devlin’s unconcerned face with malice, anger, pain, and grief . . .
Slowly, as everyone watched with breath caught, Daniel pulled back the gun and released the magazine, allowing the bullets to fall out of it. There was a single bullet still in the chamber, and Daniel held stiffly to the weapon as if unable to separate his hand from it.
At last he released his grip on the gun, but flipped it in the air so that he was holding the barrel. With a move so fast it made even Payton blink, he reared back with the same hand that held the gun and swung it horizontally so that the butt of the handle collided with Devlin’s head. He released the gun as he ended his follow-through. It clanked and rattled as it settled on the floor several feet away.
“That was for her,” Daniel whispered.
A purple egg rose instantly on Devlin’s forehead. His neck bowed and he struggled to maintain consciousness.
“Why . . . why didn’t you kill me?” Devlin slurred.
“Because the choice was mine to make,” Daniel replied. “And I made it. I don’t expect you to understand.”
As everyone watched, uncertain of what Daniel might do next but unwilling to stop him, he put a hand in his inner jacket pocket and withdrew a small baggie, inside of which waited sixteen Rings of Dominion. He retrieved one from the bag and tossed the rest to Ethan. Out of another pocket, he dug a piece of the Dominion Stone and pressed it into a gash on the neck he’d suffered at Devlin’s hands.
It was eerily quiet inside the tiny house, all alone in this deserted neighborhood. There were no sounds of life, traffic, or nature outside. Inside, all that could be heard were the sounds of breathing.
As everyone watched, Daniel clung tightly to the Stone that touched his own blood while sliding the Ring onto the middle finger of his right hand.
Daniel stared at the Ring as it slid into place and said aloud his answer to the unspoken question on everyone’s lips. “I think . . . she wanted me to.”
Here in the infinite quiet, every detail stood out as he slipped the Ring on. The same blinding white light, shining from the Ring’s burgundy gemstone. A light so complete that it enveloped Daniel until he himself was glowing. Faint and distant, there was a sound of tearing and rending, as if reality itself were confused and revolting against such an unnatural act.
When the glow subsided, Daniel touched the Ring to find that it had bonded to his skin and would not come off.
And then he vanished where he stood.
Daniel reappeared standing next to Alex, at almost the same moment he’d disappeared.
“Whoa . . .” he said, placing a hand to his head and shaking out the cobwebs.
“Did—did you just teleport?” Ethan asked.
Daniel didn’t reply. He was leaning over, holding one knee for support.
A wave of nausea and discomfort washed over Alex. She glanced at Daniel, who was still doubled over. Whatever he was feeling, she was feeling it too.
But she wasn’t using her powers on him . . .
“I think he’s using my empathic powers, spreading his anxiety to me,” Alex said.
“I feel it too,” Nora added, moving to the far end of the couch as if to get out of range of the effect.
Hector raised his hand in agreement, then reached around to touch Daniel on the hand, alleviating his queasiness. Testing a theory, Alex placed her own hand on Daniel’s shoulder after Hector had turned loose of him. The anxiety she felt vanished as well.
“How could he be using your powers?” Ethan asked.
“Before that, was that Payton’s speed, when he disappeared and reappeared?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, maybe . . .” Ethan replied. “It looked just like Payton when he enters superspeed.”
“Daniel,” Alex said, “I think your power is to mimic what other Ringwearers can do.”
Daniel nodded, seemingly having already arrived at the same conclusion. “Proximity seems to trigger it. Fascinating . . .”
“Indeed it is fascinating. And pointless. You act as if your deaths are not foregone conclusions,” Devlin said. “You are fools. We are all going to die, just as it was meant to be. Oblivion is nearing the city limits of Jerusalem as we speak. He will walk to the Old City, and once he’s there, he will put into action his endgame. And everything will end, once and for all.”
“What will he do in Jerusalem, exactly?” Payton asked.
“You are familiar with the Bringer’s ability to send out a blast wave of pure energy, yes?” Devlin replied. “According to the prophecy, Oblivion will use this final stopgap to let loose a blast of extraordinary energy, a wave so powerful it will envelope the earth and obliterate everything—and everyone—in its path. The skies will open and fire will pour out and cleanse the land, wiping away anything that remains.”
No one knew what to say. What could anyone say or do in the face of such awesome primordial power?
“So what do we do?” Ethan asked.
“What would Grant do?” Alex asked, though it wasn’t really a question.
“Grant is gone, my dear,” Devlin said with sincerity. “There is nothing left of him. You should try to remember that.”
“You’re wrong,” Alex replied, even though she felt no deceit in him.
“Alex . . .” Ethan began. “We’re at the end of the world here.
Maybe it’s time to finally let Grant go.”
Alex looked around, and everyone was watching her in a similar fashion to Ethan, as if she were a starry-eyed idealist clinging to some romantic notion.
“I don’t believe that,” Alex replied without hesitation. “Julie wouldn’t believe it. And neither would Morgan.”
“Oblivion has total control over his body,” Ethan went on. “
If
Grant is somehow still in there—and that’s a huge ‘if’—none of us knows how to draw him out again.”
Alex looked to Daniel, who merely nodded his head in agreement.
“Then we won’t try,” Payton said.
The others turned to him and waited.
“Oblivion is a threat. Our job is to eliminate that threat. If one must die so billions can live, then that one will die.”
“No!” Alex cried, jumping to her feet as well. “Grant has saved your life a dozen times over, and this is how you’ll repay him?”
The edge in Payton’s voice grew harder and more savage by the moment. “Yes, it is. I have known from the first time we met that the Bringer and I would end this—
all
of this—in a confrontation between the two of us. And only us.”
“Don’t you even think about it,” Alex nearly whispered.
“You were there!” Payton roared, a terrible sound that was louder than anyone thought the British man could speak. “You saw what I did to those people! You saw what Oblivion
made
me do!”
Alex’s mind filled with images of a possessed Payton cutting, hacking, stabbing, and slicing his way through countless people while on Oblivion’s march.
Counting the coalition soldiers he’d taken out . . . there were
hundreds
of them. Possibly thousands.
“You’re an assassin!” she yelled. “You kill people for a
living
! How is what Oblivion made you do any different?”
“I DON’T KILL THE INNOCENT!!” he thundered. “I have
never
killed the innocent! I knock off serial murderers, rapists, career criminals . . . the ones who have no intention of changing. But
never
do I take a job that endangers an innocent!”
Silence filled the space as each person digested this in turn.
Payton spoke up again. “You don’t want to hear it, but this final confrontation is the reason he and I are both mentioned on the Dominion Stone. We know now why the Bringer was created. And now I know why the Thresher was created. I am here to keep him in check. If anything should go wrong, I am the only person alive capable of taking him down. It was meant to happen this way. It’s the
only
way.”
Alex’s eyes flared, and the menace she felt pulsing through her veins overflowed from her and filled everyone in the room.
“You will not touch him.”
“I
will
,” Payton said, stepping toe-to-toe with her. “I swore in an oath of blood long ago that I would be the one to kill him. I have the weapon forged millennia ago of purest silver. I was meant to do this, it is my purpose, it is the reason I died in that cave ten years ago and was revived. In killing the Bringer, I am fulfilling the function for which I was born.”
“Try it and I swear I’ll stop you.”
“Don’t embarrass yourself, love.”
“I’ve stopped you before. I could reduce you to a quivering blob of infantile hysterics right here and now! And maybe I will! Ask me, it’s long overdue that someone took you down a peg,
Thresher
!”
“Why so much emotion over one man?” Payton said, shaking his head, incredulous. “Grant of all people would approve of my intentions. He would do everything in his
own
power to take down Oblivion, if he were here.”
“Why am I trying to explain myself to some
machine
, like he’s a normal person with normal feelings? What makes you think you could ever understand anything about real human emotions?” Alex rebutted.
Payton spat upon the ground where Alex stood, and she jumped back an inch. “Whereas your life experience is summed up entirely in selfishness and need. What do you know of pain and misery and loss? Have you ever lost someone you loved more than you love yourself?”
“YES!!” she screamed.
“WHO?” he shouted.
“Who do you
think
!” she said, and now she was crying with very real tears while shouting at the top of her lungs. “I love
him,
all right! I was—I
am
—I’m in love with Grant!”
Everyone but Devlin looked at one another nervously, and no one dared make a sound.
Alex caught her breath and then spoke again, deflated. “I love him. I can’t let him go. I won’t.”
Even Payton was looking down now, examining his own feet. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “If what you say is true . . . then you, above all,
must
let him go.”
“The way you let go of Morgan?”
From a distant corner of the room, someone gasped.
The rest dared not make a sound. Every eye was on Payton, because Alex had just crossed the uncrossable line.
Payton was lethal, and Alex could feel it. It was taking everything within him not to strike Alex where she stood.
“Wait—Morgan’s Ring!” Ethan exclaimed, breaking the moment. “We have to have all 299 Rings, according to what Morgan said in that video, and without hers, we’re still one short. We need to find it before we can go to Jerusalem—”
“No need,” Payton said, still staring down Alex. Without facing Devlin or moving from his position at all, he whipped out his sword and cut a sideways gash into the older man’s shirt. Hanging there over his heart was the last Ring of Dominion, dangling from a thin gold chain. “Saw the bulge when I grabbed him.”
“Of course,” Daniel said, nodding. “He would already know everything Morgan told us. And that only proves that it’s true—that all 299 of us stand some real chance of stopping Oblivion! He’d want to keep the last Ring close to himself, so he didn’t run the risk of someone else finding it. If he had it on him, he knew
we
didn’t have it. But we have to hurry . . .”
Daniel stepped forward and tugged hard on the gold chain so that it snapped. He tossed the Ring to Ethan, who put it in the bag with the others.
“Where in the Old City is he going?” Ethan asked Devlin.
“Where would
you
go, if you were Oblivion?” Devlin replied.
“The Temple Mount,” Alex and Payton both said at the same time.
“Of course,” Ethan remarked. “The Dome of the Rock, original site of Solomon’s Temple. The most significant spiritual location in the world. Where better to defile—”
“Wait, I don’t buy it,” Alex chimed in, her brows knitted together in furious thought and her tone completely changed from just a moment before.
The others stared at her with curiosity, with the sole exception of Daniel, who caught on at once. His eyes lit up with a newfound energy, and he nodded at her.
“If Oblivion is so all-powerful,” Alex went on, “then desecrating a sacred site is not a very compelling reason to wait this long to finish us off. He could’ve wiped every living creature from the face of the earth any time he wanted. What difference does it
really
make where he’s located when he works his big whammy?”
No one responded.
“It’s not Oblivion showing restraint or patience. It’s Grant,” she concluded.
“But Grant didn’t survive the transformation,” Daniel argued, even though his voice betrayed the fact that he wanted to believe it.
Devlin turned to face Alex. “Oblivion waited to enact his plan according to the specific series of events that the prophecy—”
“Forget the
prophecy
!” Alex shouted. “You said that even the Creator swore not to get involved in matters of human free will. So what else is there that’s powerful enough to hold Oblivion back? It’s got to be Grant! Wherever he is,
what
ever he is—he still has some influence over Oblivion’s actions, and it’s
him
that’s kept Oblivion from ending this until now. Grant is still in this, and he’s bought us some time. So we’re not going to waste it—we’re going to finish this thing.”