He opened his eyes, unaware that he had even closed them.
Red had come back into focus.
The butt of the gun slammed down into Matt’s stomach, bending him double.
He cried out in agony, his naked body rolling from the couch on to the floor.
‘You sick bastard.
You’re all in this together. You and those witches. I should have fucking known, I should have fucking done for you while I had the chance . . .’
The gun swung down across Matt’s shoulders, and he tried to roll out of the way, but it caught him a glancing blow across
his upper back. Again he cried out in pain.
‘You knew about him .
. . you knew about
him
!’ Red’s foot struck Matt’s chest. ‘You knew about
my
baby
!’
‘I didn’t know . . . anything . . . I didn’t . . .
huh
?’
Matt couldn’t talk anymore.
His eyes fell on the space where Elaina’s broken body should have been.
Elaina’s body had gone.
In the space she should have been was just . . .
nothing,
as though she had vanished into the air. Matt stared, disbelieving. But no, perhaps she hadn’t vanished completely after all. Was that still a
residue
of her, a glowing, ephemeral
essence,
which still seemed to drift in her place, or just the stars wavering in his vision?
Another kick ripped his thoughts out of him
.
Oh my god, where’s my focus, where’s my fucking mind?
‘You’re done, Matthew. You’re done.’
The butt of the shotgun slammed down again, striking Matt across the back.
He heard a rubbery squelching sound and imagined his muscles being compressed like a sponge, followed by a sharp crack and a jolt of pain up his left side. He tried to crawl away, but another kick to the ribs forced him into a roll across the floor that brought him up in a crouch with the room’s end wall at his back. He felt a hot stickiness on his shoulders, and knew he was hurt badly there. His back screamed at him, a choking pain around his left kidney so strong he felt faint. Glancing down, he saw the front of his naked body was slick with a composite of sweat and blood, his stomach a horrifying assortment of cuts and grazes.
He looked up.
Red, for the first time, seemed to have noticed Elaina’s disappearance. He stared down at the empty space on the floor that began by Matt’s feet, the gun held loosely by the barrel in his right hand, the other rubbing his head.
‘Not even blood,’ he said, head shaking from side to side.
‘Witches. I always knew. I always fucking knew.’
Suddenly Red slumped to his knees as though punched in the stomach.
He cried out, and the gun clattered to the floor. Matt eyed it, tensed himself to make a grab for it, but it was no use, his back screamed at him and he leaned back, feeling the pain swim through his body. Was he bleeding inside? Had Red’s blows done something worse than bruise his skin? He felt too numb to know how hard he had been hit.
Red rolled backwards across the floor, face contorted in agony, hands clutching at his stomach.
‘You fucking . . .
bitch
, no, no,
no
!’
Matt, his own insides churning, tried to understand.
Bethany’s words came back to him, haunting, echoing whispers in the dark caverns of his mind.
She is an angel
.
He felt a cramping pain knife through him, saw a light suddenly grow behind him, and the beginning wind of what felt like forming whispers in his memory.
I can go where she goes. I am pure blood
.
He stared at Red as words began to take shape in his mind, as bodies began to take shape in the light.
Mortal corruption. Men handle it in different ways. Women corrode. Men . . . destroy
.
He shook his head in disbelief, understanding.
‘You’re one of them. You’re one of them, like my mother!’
‘This isn’t over, Cassidy!’ Red screamed, his gravelly voice pained, stricken.
Matthew. He is one of us. You must save him too
.
He saw them now, taking shape out of the blinding light that lit up the world behind Red’s writhing body.
His mother, and beside her: his sister.
Gabrielle and Bethany.
Angels.
We have to go soon.
The door is closing
.
His mother seemed to glance down to where Elaina had fallen, her form wavering like an unsteady projection.
Hurry, Matthew, save him
.
‘What . . . what the hell do you want me to do?’
Red screamed violently, clutching first at his stomach and then his throat, clawing himself, leaving bloody scratches on his skin.
The cord that holds him here is faltering.
You must save him. His mortality means it is not strong enough to pull him back. You must give him back to us, otherwise it will tear his soul in two.
‘What the hell do you
mean
?’
Save him.
Please.
What did they mean,
save
him? How?
Movement caught his eye.
He looked towards the door, saw it flung open, a figure, at first silhouetted, rushing in. Holding something in his arms.
‘Red!’ Ian Cassidy’s eyes fell on the writhing figure of his fallen friend
, then rose to his bloodied, naked son. ‘Matthew, oh my god.’ In his arms he held a tiny, moving bundle.
‘Dad!’
‘Matthew, what happened? What’s going on? I found the baby on the passenger seat of the truck. The engine was still running! How did you get here –’
Matthew hadn’t realised his father could see them, but as he watched Ian seemed to move in slow motion, turning back toward the end of the room, where the two women stood in the blinding brightness of what Matt could only describe as the light of Heaven itself.
‘Oh . . . my. My Gabrielle, and . . . and . . . my Bethany.’
There is not much time.
Save him. The doorway is closing
.
The words had been meant for Ian, Matthew knew
, but they both heard. Ian turned toward his former friend, lying almost rigid on the floor between himself and Matthew. Red’s back was horribly arched, his eyes bulging, one hand reaching out, the fingers straining for something only he could see.
Realisation
dawned in Ian’s eyes. ‘I don’t believe it. All these years, I never realised.’ Ian looked back toward the two women. ‘He’s one of you, isn’t he?’
You must save him
.
Ian ignored her, face wistful.
‘Why, Gabrielle? Why did you come to me? Of all people?’
The wavering form of Matthew’s mother seemed to smile.
Because I watched you. From
up
there
. I loved you. So pure of heart. I will watch you still. I will watch you always, my angel.
Ian’s eyes filled with tears.
He fell to his knees, his face cracking up. ‘Don’t leave me!’
I’ll always be with you
.
‘I miss you so much!’ His eyes slipped from hers for a second.
‘And you, my Bethany . . .’
Matthew was sure her eyes filled with tears, but in the glittering light they looked like di
amonds cascading down her face.
I love you
. My
Daddy.
‘Huh . . . I love you too, my beautiful, beautiful girl.’
My baby. Please give him to me. He will be safe with us, always. He will grow up to be a wonderful man. Like you are. Please, Father.
Ian looked from his daughter to the bundle in his hands.
His eyes lingered a moment, then slowly he rose to his feet.
‘Here.
If you can, take him.’ He held the bundle out.
The room seemed to explode with light, causing Matt to squeeze his eyes shut against it, one weak hand rising to shield him.
When he opened them his father no longer held the baby. He squinted, the light hurting his eyes.
There it was, in her arms.
One of them now.
He is beautiful.
He will always be beautiful now.
Red screamed, rolling over, face pressed into the floor, hands gripping chunks of his matted hair.
Please save him. There is little time. He killed one of them, and now the doorway is closing. We must go back, and we cannot leave him here.
Matt stared, still dumbstruck, but something in Ian’s face changed.
He nodded, almost unnoticeably, with understanding.
Ian turned away from them, walked calmly across the floor to where Red lay, face contorted out of shape, too stretched, too elongated, as though a thousand invisible hands were pulling him apart.
Ian pulled Red into a sitting position and crouched down beside him. He pulled his friend into a hug, their faces close.
‘None of this was ever your fault,’ he said.
‘Just like her, you were given no choice. There were good days, Red. More than the bad, many, many more. I’ll always remember those days, I swear to you.’
Red let out a low moan.
At first Matt couldn’t hear, then Red’s words came again, almost too faint to be audible, but containing all the meaning of the world: ‘
I’m sorry.
’
Ian reached into an inner pocket of his jacket, pulled out something too small for Matt to identify.
He took the gun up off the floor. Flipped it open, slid the bullet inside.
‘What are you doing?’ Matt’s words were barely a whisper.
Beyond his father’s shoulder, the two women watched impassively from within their wavering glow.
Ian hoisted Red into a sitting position
and pulled his face close. He lifted the gun.
‘Forgive me . . . forgive me . . .’
The words came from Red. His eyes lingered on Ian for a second, then lifted, peering into the glow.
Matt could do nothing but watch as his father pushed the barrel of the gun into Red’s mouth.
‘Goodbye, Red. My friend, my dearest friend.’ He leaned close, their foreheads touching.
Matt shut his eyes as the gun went off.
Nothing could have made him watch.
When he opened them, the room was filled with a blinding light, brighter than any he had seen before, brighter than anything he could ever hope to stare into and keep his eyes
, as though the sun had fallen from the heavens to nestle in the little cottage’s living room. He cried out, wanting to close his eyes but unable to close them, unable even to squint against the brightness.
He saw their forms, three now, just blurs within the light, like streetlights beyond a window in the rain.
And another, darker form, on one knee in the centre of the room, like a knight waiting for permission to rise. One of the figures stepped forward and reached out, and tender fingertips lifted the figure’s head towards her own. She crouched to meet him, and briefly the lips of light met the lips of man and the heavens and the mortal world were united as one.
I will see you soon.
Then the world exploded as darkness and light combined; somewhere a door slammed shut, while in another world, another door was flung open.
Epilogue
Memories
November 18th, 1999
At first: d
arkness. Then, an echo from somewhere out there, the sound of a name, a familiar sound, a word he recognised.
‘Matthew? Matthew, wake up
! Won’t you please?’
‘Rachel?’
Like gravel on his tongue, speech. As though it had been a while since the last time.
He opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to the glare.
Rachel, his wife, his beautiful wife, leaned over him, the hospital lights behind her, framing her head like a halo.
‘Are the children here?’
She smiled, her eyes glittering with tears of joy, relief. He gathered he had been asleep for some time.
‘They’re here, Matt.
They’re outside in the hallway, waiting for you. Shall I bring them in?’
Without waiting for his instruction she started to move back, but his hand closed over hers.
‘Wait . . .’
He paused, clos
ing his eyes. Even breathing took an effort. Later she would tell him about the puncture to his left lung; a rib broken by Red’s boot had become razor sharp. He would find out about the fractured collar bone, and the hemorrhaging around his stomach which could have killed him, but for now it was time for joy, for relief, for the comfort of each other’s arms and the slowly healing ruins of their love.