Terminus (34 page)

The wolf staggered, its jaws snapping.

Lena sent another blast of destructive energy into the wolf’s body.  It began to tremble as though it were being electrocuted.

Chest heaving, Nick sat up and called to Hope, who was crawling over to him.

“The suitcase!”  She picked it up and tossed it to him.

The wolf rolled over onto Lena, then got up and clamped its jaws around her midsection. 

“Why are you doing this, Serena!”  Lena cried.

Again she sent another jolt of energy at the wolf.  It snarled and dropped her.

Right in front of Nick.

Nick set the suitcase down, picked up the knife that had fallen from Lena’s hand, knelt and held the blade to her throat.  On the ground, gasping for air, barely moving, she was too weak or stunned to teleport away, or she’d have done it by now. 

“Do it, Nikolia!”  Snarling, the wolf loomed so close he could feel the heat, smell the blood emanating from her canine breath.  “You’re finished, Lena.”

Lena strained.  “It’s just a matter of minutes before that nuke—”

“Do you think Morloch
cares
about the bodies, the carnage?  He wants their souls.”

Lena’s eyes widened with fear.  “
You’re
the auditor?”

“Don’t move,” Nick said.

“Lena, you’ve failed to stop Hope Matheson,” the wolf said.  “The accounts must be reconciled.” 

One hand on the knife, the other on the suitcase, Nick had to try and get the retina scan over to Serena, though he wasn’t sure it would work on a wolf’s eye.

“Slash her throat open, Nikolai.” Serena said. “Before her strength regenerates.  Kill her and I’ll disarm the nuke.”

A quick glance at the clock.

2:20...

2:19...

2:18...

94

NICK PRESSED THE KNIFE AGAINST LENA’S NECK.  Its handle felt warm in his hands.

“Do it, now!” Serena growled.  “You know she wouldn’t spare
you
.”

True, but could he trust this wolf in human clothing?

Before him, just above his eyes…the dark vapor.  The wolf stood over him.

“Nick...” Lena’s voice sounded faint.  Her eyes sought no sympathy.  They did, however, bare the look of someone lost and resigned to her fate.

With just over two minutes to go, he had to act. 

Now.

In one swift move he spun around and plunged the blade into the mass of fur standing over them.  He wasn’t sure where he’d stabbed the wolf, but it backed away, snapping its jaws at his face.  For reasons he couldn’t quite understand, he grabbed Lena’s hand, pulled her up, and pushed her away.

“Get out of here.”

The vortex swelled.  A thunderous crack of lightning made the wolf back away further, still eyeing Nick and Lena.  It stopped baring its fangs and used its teeth to pull the knife out of its shoulder.

Lena was staring at Nick. “Why—”

“Never mind why.  Go!”

With a perplexed look, Lena said, “May you live to regret this.”  Then she vanished.

The timer!

A minute and ten seconds...

If only he could get close enough to Serena.

The wolf wasn’t there.

Dammit, where is she?

The answer came from behind—tearing through his shirt with blunt claws.  Glaring at him with Serena’s terrifying eyes, the wolf snarled, its fangs red with blood.

Then something astonishing happened.

Using its fur as handholds, Hope scaled the wolf’s back, the hunting knife’s handle between her teeth.  She then proceeded to stab at its neck, over and over.  The wolf spun around and tried to snap at her but couldn’t reach.  It started writhing violently.  Any minute now, Hope would be thrown off.

But before that could happen, a pale vapor appeared and instantly resolved into the form of a tall, dark-haired man. 

Harold from Angel Resources.

He did not look pleased.

Serena, though more than twice his size as a wolf, backed away, oblivious to the vortex raging behind her. 

“Morloch...” 

“Where is she?” he said.

“Forget Lena, she was never—”

“I will determine how the accounts are settled!”  The Serena-wolf backed even further away.  “You were supposed to apprehend her if she failed.  Now it is
you
that has failed.”

Serena stopped just a few steps from the vortex, which began pulling at the fur on her back.

Hope held on but was starting to rise up in the wind.  Nick called out to her.   “Get down!”

She rolled off the wolf’s back and pointed to the suitcase, then to her eye.

The retina scan.

59...

58...

57...

Morloch lifted a finger—pulsing with a crimson glow—and pointed it at the wolf. 

“The accounts must be reconciled.”

“Morloch, please—” Serena said as he disappeared.  The vortex expanded, charged lightning spider-webbed into the air.  The wolf dug its claws into the ground, forelegs trembling with exertion, snapped at Hope, and clamped its fangs on her midsection.  As she lifted her off the ground, Hope let out an agonizing scream.

“Hope!”  Nick shouted.

She stabbed wildly with the knife.  The wolf thrashed about with Hope impaled on its teeth.  But the vortex began to pull its physical body backwards into the blazing aperture.  Just as its hind legs entered, Hope stabbed the knife into the wolf’s left eye socket, and dug furiously. 

It opened its mouth, dropping Hope to the ground.

A howl filled the stadium, then died as the vortex swallowed the wolf completely.  All around, cries of pain and terror rang out.  All throughout the stadium, spirit forms were being sucked out of the Hernandez and Suarez gunmen, and into the vortex.

But Hope, lying on the ground, held out Serena’s bloody eye to Nick in her right hand. 

 He knelt down with the retina scanner.

15...

14...

13...

“Oh, God. Hope!”

“Hurry...”

He took the eyeball from Hope, pointed it at the retina scanner.

10...

9...

8...

“It’s not working…the lens is cracked!”

Hope’s eyes fell shut.  With a sigh, she dropped her head.

And then Nick remembered something he’d learned from Lena.  A long shot, but his only chance.

“Hang on!”  He backed up a couple of steps.

06...

05...

Please, just one last surge. 
He focused every bit of remaining energy into what he was about to do.

02...

01...

00...

95

THE NUKE DETONATED.  Searing heat blasted through Nick’s entire being. With every bit of strength remaining, he contained the explosion within a globe of his own destructive red energy.  He had never experienced such intense pain and burning before, but he would not release it. Not unless his own body turned to ash.

Limbs shuddering, Nick fell to his knees.

Outside the red energy dome, Hope lay on the ground, bleeding, dying.

He started to feel himself lose containment of the nuclear energy.

No! Not yet!

Then he felt it.

The sharp pain in the eyes.

The nausea…

The final surge.

Nick looked up at the stadium roof. Envisioned the stars above.

Focused on a spot about 100 miles from the Earth’s atmosphere.

But the strain was overpowering him.

Just keep it together...a few more seconds!

He found that familiar spot, the one between the layers, between the realms. It wasn’t as simple as transporting water, or solid objects like a rifle or bullets, this was infinitely more difficult. But he had to do this before he became fully mortal.

Even if it killed him.

The nuclear energy was about to burst out of his containment field.

Nick started to lose all sensation.

Oh God, he was going to die.

First, the blinding light overwhelmed him.

Then it all went black…

96

FALLING...IT SEEMED TO GO ON FOREVER.  Blindly hurtling downward.

Nick’s shoulder, arm, and entire right side struck something hard.

The stadium floor.

His vision cleared.

Just in time to behold a wide column of red light blasting through the glass dome of the stadium.  Through the gaping breach, he saw a fiery ball launch into space.  A second later the night sky lit up, bright as noon. 

It worked!

He rolled over, struggled to his knees, and let out a triumphant grunt, despite the pain and nausea nearly overwhelming him. 

“Hope!”  Fighting the pain, he crawled to her and knelt over her.  Shards from the dome lay around her.  Terrible wounds from the wolf bled all over the grass.   He touched her face gently.

She was alive, but just barely. 

“You did it, Nick...”

“Shhhh.  Don’t talk right now.”

She smiled, her eyelids fluttering.  “It’s...okay…”

“No, don’t let go.”  If he could muster the last remnants of his abilities to divert a nuclear explosion, surely he could do this, in his last moments as a supernatural being. 

“Nick…”  Her breaths grew shorter, quicker.

“Hang on, Hope.”  He placed his glowing hand on Hope’s wounds. 

As expected, the dark vapor appeared.  So did Lito and Maria, who watched but held back while Nick brazenly broke angel law for the last time.

“Come on, come on, come on...”

The wounds started to take on the healing glow.

“That’s it, love!  Just—” His voice broke.  “It’s going to work!”

But the wounds weren’t closing properly.  The glow was fading from his hands.

“No!”  Nick lifted his hands, willed them to work.  “I can do this!” 

The glow was gone.

The dark vapor descended.

Nick flexed his fingers, trying desperately to conjure up the healing, but he knew—this time absolutely. 

All his powers were gone.

He became aware of skin peeling from his hands, of radiation burns searing his body.

He had become fully human.

Still on his knees, he fought the agony of his burnt flesh and reached into his pocket. 

“Look.”  He placed the jade pendant into her hand. 

Hope’s struggled to keep her eyes open. “You found it…”

“You see?  You
have
to stay.”  He grabbed her hand, which was disturbingly cold, and kissed it.  “I know it’s not an engagement ring, but...Hope Matheson, I love you.  Will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”

She tried to keep her eyes on his, and managed to say, “Yes, oh yes,” then her gaze went a million miles away and she smiled as if she’d just seen something unutterably beautiful.  Her eyes closed, but the smile on her face didn’t fade. “Nick…don’t be afraid…It’s just a dream, it’s all just been like a dream.  We’re going to wake up one day and…”

“Hope…don’t.”

A look of perfect peace fell over her.

Nick kissed her, and wept softly.

He’d failed as an angel.

And on his first day as a mortal, he’d failed the woman he loved.

The dark vapor fell over him.

Enveloped him.

97

IN THE ABSOLUTE BLACKNESSS, Nick felt neither cold nor warm.  He felt no pain.  In fact, he felt nothing at all. 
So this is what death is like for a mortal.

How long before the dark reapers came for him?

An eternity—at least that’s what it seemed like.  He’d lost all sense of time. 

Whatever happens
,
face it with dignity. Like a guardian.  Like the warrior you once were.

The darkness began to lighten, gradually turning from dark to pale grey to bright white.  Nick rubbed his eyes and looked around, but with no discernible point of reference he couldn’t tell where he was.

A thin strand of black smoke wove through the air, growing longer and wider before him.  He soon recognized it as the dark vapor, yet he didn’t fear it.  The thought of its constant presence at pivotal moments in his existence comforted him.  And then, for the first time in all the thousands of years it had followed him, it transformed into something.

Or someone.

“Johann?”

As usual, the tall angel didn’t speak.  His dark glasses concealed his eyes—no way to tell if he came as friend or foe.  Or otherwise.  He stretched out his hand and gestured to the side, where a dark portal opened.

“I see.”  With Johann at his side, Nick approached the portal.  “You’re a dark reaper, aren’t you?”

Johann didn’t respond.  He didn’t even look at Nick.  He just accompanied him into the tunnel through which Nick had taken countless human souls to the Terminus.  Only this time, he was the one getting on the train. 

With a dark reaper. 

“Right. Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

A moment later—it could have been centuries, hard to tell in this realm, now that he’d experienced life and death as a mortal—they arrived at the Terminus.  Only it wasn’t quite the construct he’d created every time he escorted a soul.  No, this was an amorphous sea of light and consciousness.  Rather unnerving, actually.

“Would you mind?” Nick said.  “A construct, please?”

Johann turned his head to face the expanse and there it was, the construct.

Nick’s construct.

Victoria Station, 1907.

Johann motioned for him to go through the open doors of the train waiting on the platform.

For the entire ride, he sat across from Nick without word or expression.  No one else was in the car they occupied, so it was quiet.  Nick could not stop thinking of Hope, though a multitude of thoughts crowded his mind.

“You know, for as long as I can remember,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to take one of these rides, see what was on the other side.”  He shook his head. 

The corner of Johann’s mouth twitched ever so slightly. 

At last, the train stopped.

The doors hissed open.

Face it with dignity.
  Nick took a deep breath, stood up, and left the train with Johann.