Mr. Lusk popped up from underneath the desk and nodded a h.e.l.lo. "Cameron, how are you?"
Cameron ma.s.saged his throat. "I might need a beer, but I"m okay."
Mr. Lusk cast him a dubious frown.
I frowned at him too. "I thought beer didn"t do anything for you."
"Okay, an aspirin, then."
I looked closely at the monitor, at the green glow of a night-vision camera projected onto the screen. It was Jared. I sank into a chair and watched as he paced like a caged animal, his shoulders hunched, his movements sharp and calculating.
Glitch reached over and turned a k.n.o.b on a speaker. "It would be better if I"d had more time, but it should work."
That"s when I heard Jared"s breaths, his whispery curses, his soft footsteps.
"We can hear him, but he can"t hear us. I didn"t have enough-"
"Are you sure?" Brooke asked, interrupting. She"d come in behind me and noticed the same thing I did. "Because the minute you said that, he turned."
Jared had spun around when Glitch spoke, looking up at the camera in the corner, his eyes bright, his stare hard and intentional.
I decided to test it. I leaned forward and asked, "Can you hear me, Jared?"
A slow, purposeful smile spread across his face, one that I was getting used to. One that held no humor whatsoever, no warmth, nothing but scorn and indifference.
"What happened to you?" I asked him.
He took a step forward. "Open the door and I"ll tell you."
"I can"t do that."
"I"ll take you quick, Lorelei, painlessly, if you open it now."
Grandma gasped and put a hand to her mouth. Granddad draped an arm over her shoulders.
"Why do you want me dead?" I asked.
His head tilted to one side. "It"s what I do."
My chest squeezed painfully around my heart, hitching my breath, stinging my eyes. Was it all just a game? From the beginning to the times that we"d kissed, was he just playing with me?
"Come on, pix," Granddad said as he took my arm to lift me out of the seat. "No good can come of this."
"Stay," Jared said, his voice calm, threatening. I stood to leave the room and he stepped closer to the camera. "Stay or they all die."
I hesitated, then sank back down into the seat. Grandma kneeled next to me. "If he gets out of there, hon, we"re all dead anyway. He"s just taunting you, baiting you." I suddenly understood why everyone was so afraid of Jared when they had found out what he was. I could now empathize on a level I didn"t want to.
"No," Cameron said, bending to the monitor. "He probably does want her to stay, so he"s making empty threats."
"And the hybrid speaks," Jared said.
"How is he hearing us?" Glitch asked, checking wire after wire. "That room is encased in steel ten inches thick. And there is no audio in. I guarantee it."
Cameron reproached him with a baleful look. "He"s an archangel, Glitch-head. He can do things like that."
Glitch flipped him off, but Cameron paid no attention.
"Why would he want her to stay?" Grandma asked, and Cameron offered her a much softer version of his reproach.
"Because he really is in love with her."
My grandparents bristled, but I didn"t believe him. This wasn"t love. This was hatred. Contempt. Blind rage.
"Then, then I don"t understand," she said.
"He"s an archangel, a messenger. He doesn"t kill for the sake of killing. He kills because he"s been ordered to. But there"s a balance." Cameron sat beside me. "You remember what I told you? About how he is made of light and darkness, right?"
I nodded, trying to understand, but sinking deeper and deeper into a state of despair.
"Something has shifted, has caused the darkness to overtake the light."
"What?" I asked in helplessness. "What could do that?"
Before Cameron could answer, Jared took another run at the door. He was still strong, still ridiculously fast, but he apparently couldn"t dematerialize. Granddad was right.
When he failed again, Jared gazed into the camera. His expression was filled with so much hatred, so much apathy, I took a mental step back. Then he turned away, and the strangest thing happened. When he spun back around, he became a blur. He did dematerialize, became a ma.s.s of smoke and fog that spun and swirled like a whirlwind.
As though proving he still could.
As though he"d heard my thoughts.
The camera shook, vibrating until the room went completely black and only sound was left. And the sound we heard was like the fluttering of a thousand birds. It grew louder and louder, feathers brushing against the speakers, wings rustling against one another in a chaotic frenzy until, in an instant, it stopped. Silence, abrupt and surreal, settled in the room like a blanket.
I gazed into the monitor, searching the blackness. "Jared?" I whispered. When I received no answer, I asked, "Is he still in there?"
Granddad looked worried too, but Cameron nodded and said, "Parlor tricks. He can"t get past those walls. I guarantee it."
After another minute of waiting and watching, Granddad took me by the shoulders and lifted me out of the chair. He set guards on the vault and one at the monitor while the rest of us went back to the house to regroup. I just wanted an explanation. Something to help me understand what was happening. Before Jared escaped and killed us all.
My grandparents had been right all along.
"How did this happen?" I asked as we sat around our kitchen table. Betty Jo was making coffee and Glitch was setting out sandwich meat and bread at the behest of my grandmother. She sat in the chair beside me, so tired and so scared, she seemed to have aged right before my eyes. A sadness had consumed me as well, along with a genuine desire to die. I"d never been particularly suicidal, but would death be so bad? On the plus side, the pressure to save the world would end.
"I don"t know how they did it," Cameron said, "but somehow, when the descendants got a hold of Jared, they branded him with some kind of symbol."
"They branded him?" I asked, appalled. "Do you mean they burned him?"
"Yes. I saw the scar on his back when we were restraining him."
I closed my eyes. Starving for answers, I asked, "What kind of symbol? What does it do?"
"I don"t know. I"m not into that voodoo-hoodoo stuff. But, for lack of a better phrase, it seems to be blocking the light. All I see when I look at him now is darkness. And not a normal darkness. Comparing the color black to what he is encased in is like comparing a picture of the Grand Canyon to actually standing on its edge and looking down. It"s so deep, it"s disorienting. That"s what looking at Jared is like. An endless darkness that is just as frightening as it is deep."
"Can you draw it?" Grandma asked. "The symbol. Do you remember what it looks like?"
He shrugged. "I can try."
She stood to scrounge up a pen and a piece of paper and handed them to Cameron.
"So, it"s a symbol, right? It"s sending a signal," Glitch said. "Then why don"t we just disrupt the signal?"
Glitch, ever the techie, but he did seem to have a point.
Cameron sat with head bowed in thought. "There"s something even more strange about this."
How could this get any stranger?
"It"ll heal," he continued. "They"re descendants of nephilim. They had to know that. They have to know how fast he heals. And when he heals, whatever power that binding spell had over him will cease to exist. Or are they too stupid to realize that once that scar heals and the light resurfaces, he"ll kill them all?"
"You"re right," Granddad said. "Branding Jared was like putting duct tape on a collapsing dam. It might hold for a little while, but when that dam breaks, nothing will stop it."
"Absolutely nothing," Cameron agreed.
"I think they are very aware of that fact," Granddad continued. "But it was obviously a risk they were willing to take."
"So why now? Binding Jared can"t last more than a few days."
Grandma looked at him. "He could kill us all in the flash of a moment. Can you imagine what he could do in a few days?"
"That"s true," Brooke said. "But maybe they know something we don"t. You guys keep talking about a war. Maybe it"s coming now and they wanted him out of the way."
"But why?" I asked, no closer to understanding. "What would they have to gain? This a war that has nothing to do with them."
"It has everything to do with every human being on Earth," Cameron said, "so that"s a definite possibility. Whatever the case, we need to reverse the spell. We need him on our side." He glanced at Granddad, a worried expression drawing his brows together. "We can"t fight what"s coming alone. If we"re going to have even the slightest chance, we need him."
"But what if that"s not it?" the sheriff asked. "What other motive could they possibly have?"
"A pretty simple one, actually." Cameron stopped drawing the symbol. "They needed him out of the way for another reason." He nodded toward me. "Just long enough to take out the prophet."
I straightened when the focus shifted my way. "You still think they"re after me?"
Granddad put a hand over mine. I saw for the first time the sadness that pressed on his shoulders. They didn"t seem quite so broad as usual. Quite so strong. "Either way, this needs to be dealt with now."
Cameron placed a hard gaze on Granddad. "I have an idea, but you aren"t going to like it."
"There"s nothing about this I do like. What are you thinking?"
"I"m thinking Glitch-head is right."
"Can you not call me that?"
Cameron ignored him. "We need to disrupt the signal. We need to distort the symbol somehow."
"Of course," Grandma said. "We need to break the lines, to make it not mean what it means."
"And how do we do that?" the sheriff asked. "It took three tranquilizer darts and a nephilim just to get him to the ground."
"Then we"ll use four this time," Cameron said.
The sheriff seemed doubtful. "He"ll see that coming."
Cameron looked at me, his eyes suddenly glistening with hope. "Maybe not."
BARGAINING CHIP.
I tiptoed into the room where the monitor was set up. The screen was still black, no signal whatsoever, but the audio was on. I heard a sound here and there. A tap. A sc.r.a.pe.
Filtering as much hope as I could into my voice, I whispered, "Jared?" The sounds stopped. I waited a full minute, gathering my courage, before asking, "Can you hear me?"
After a long moment, he said, "Yes."
My eyes slammed shut. I turned up the audio so I could hear from a distance, then walked to the vault door. "If I let you out, will you take only me and spare my family and friends?"
He waited again before asking, "Bargaining now?"
I looked over at Cameron. His mouth formed a grim line as he beckoned me to continue with a nod. I took a steadying breath, looked behind me into the dark anteroom of the bunker, knowing an army stood behind me, and said, "I"m going to open the door now."
After another long pause, he said, "I wouldn"t."
With a hard swallow, I ignored him. vzyl "The door is heavy. You"ll have to push from your side."
Never taking Cameron for the Catholic type, I was surprised when he did the sign of the cross. He bowed his head, took a deep breath of his own, then turned the huge locking mechanism.
I hurried forward and helped him pull. It opened far easier than it had closed. When the breadth spanned about three feet, I stepped around and expected to see Jared there helping, but he was standing back, his arms folded over his chest. I had also expected to see wings, huge and black and all consuming, but he was in his torn T-shirt and jeans, both bloodied from the fight.
"You"re taking a huge chance," he said.
"We made a deal, though, right?" My body shook so uncontrollably, I felt like I was having a seizure, but I couldn"t stop it. No matter how much I tried to force myself to calm, I couldn"t stop the shaking. I stepped close to him. "Just me, and you leave Riley"s Switch."