We have no choice. We reach the field and I expect the beast to pounce at any moment. But nothing happens. When we are within fifteen feet of it we stop. We stand leaning against each other for support.
The beast is half the size of the other but still big enough to kill us all with no great effort of its own. Pale, almost translucent skin stretched over protruding ribs and knobby joints. Various pinkish scars down its arms and sides. White, sightless eyes. It shifts it weight and lowers itself, then swings its head low over the grass to smell what its eyes fail to see. It can sense us in front of it. It lets out a low groan. I feel none of the rage and malice that the other beasts radiated, no desire for blood and death. There is a sense of fear, a sense of sadness. I open myself to it. I see images of torture and starvation. I see the beast locked up for all its life here on Earth, a damp cave where little light reaches. Shivering through the night to stay warm, always cold and wet. I see the way the Mogadorians pit the beasts against one another, force them to fight in order to train, to toughen them and make them mean.
Henri lets go of me. I can’t hold Bernie Kosar any longer. I gently place him in the grass at my feet. I haven’t felt him move in minutes and I can’t tell if he’s still alive. I take one step forward and drop to my knees. The soldiers yell around us. I don’t understand their language but I can tell by their tones that they are impatient. One swings his sword and a dagger just misses me, a flash of white that flutters and tears the front of my shirt. I stay on my knees and I look up at the beast hovering over me. Some weapon is fired but it sails over our heads. A warning shot, meant to move the beast to action. The beast quivers. A second dagger darts through the air and hits the beast below the elbow of its left arm. It lifts its head and roars in pain.
I try with everything to pass along my own images, the things that I’ve seen and felt. The beast doesn’t look away. My thoughts, on some level, are reaching it. I show it Lorien, the vast ocean and thick forests and verdant hills teeming with life and vitality. Animals drinking from the cold blue waters. A proud people content to pass the days in harmony. I show it the hell that followed, the slaying of men, women, and children. The Mogadorians. Cold- blooded murderers. Draconian killers destroying all that lies within their path due to their own recklessness and pathetic beliefs. Destroying even their own planet. Where does it end? I show it Sarah, show it every emotion that I’ve ever felt with her. Happiness and bliss, this is how I feel with her. And this is the pain I feel in having to leave her, all because of them.
The beast lifts its head to the sky and it roars. A roar both long and deep. The Mogadorians can sense what is happening and have seen enough. Their weapons begin firing. I look over and one of the cannons is aimed right at me. It fires and the white death surges forth, but the beast drops its head in time and absorbs the shot instead. Its face twists in pain, its eyes squeeze tightly shut, but almost immediately they snap back open. This time I see the rage.
I fall face-first in the grass. I’m grazed by something but I don’t see what it is. Henri cries out in pain behind me and he is flung thirty feet away, his body lying in the mud, face up, smoking. I have no idea what has hit him. Something big and deadly. Panic and fear hit me.
The beast throws a hard sweeping blow that takes out several of the soldiers and quiets many of their guns. Another roar. I look up and see the beast’s eyes have turned red, ablaze with fury. Retribution. Mutiny. It looks my way once and swiftly rushes off to follow its captors. Guns blaze but many of them are quick to be silenced.
I lift my head. Bernie Kosar is motionless in the grass. Henri, thirty feet away, is motionless as well. I place a hand in the grass and pull myself forward, across the field, inch by inch, dragging myself to Henri. When I get there his eyes are open slightly; each breath is a fight. Trails of blood run from his mouth and nose. I take him into my arms and I pull him into my lap. His body is frail and weak and I can feel him dying. His eyes flutter open. He looks at me and lifts his hand and presses it to the side of my face. The second he does I begin to cry.
“I’m here,” I say.
He tries to smile.
“I’m so sorry, Henri.” I say. “I’m so sorry. We should have left when you wanted to.”
“Shh,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say between sobs.
“You did great,” he says in a whisper. “You did so great. I always knew you would.”
“We have to get you to the school,” I say. “Sam could be there.”
“Listen to me, John. Everything,” he says. “Everything you need to know, it’s all in the Chest. The letter.”
“It’s not over. We can still make it.”
I can feel him begin to go. I shake him. His eyes reluctantly reopen. A trail of blood runs from his mouth.
“Coming here, to Paradise, it wasn’t by chance.” I don’t know what he means. “Read the letter.”
“Henri,” I say, and reach down and wipe the blood off his chin.
He looks me in the eye.
“You are Lorien’s Legacy, John. You and the others. The only hope the planet has left. The secrets,” he says, and is gripped by a fit of coughs. More blood. His eyes close again. “The Chest, John.”
I pull him more tightly to me, squeezing him. His body is going slack. Breaths so shallow that they are hardly breaths at all.
“We’ll make it back together, Henri. Me and you, I promise,” I say, and close my eyes.
“Be strong,” he says, and is overtaken by slight coughs, though he tries to speak through them. “This war… Can win…Find the others…. Six…. The power of…,” he says, and trails off.
I try to stand with him in my arms but I have nothing left, hardly enough strength to even breathe. Off in the distance I hear the beast roar. Cannons are still being fired, the sounds and lights of which reach out over the stadium bleachers, but as each minute passes less and less of them are being fired until there is only one. I lower Henri in my arms. I place my hand to the side of his face and he opens his eyes and looks at me for what I know will be the final time. He takes a weak breath and exhales and then slowly closes his eyes.
“I wouldn’t have missed a second of it, kiddo. Not for all of Lorien. Not for the whole damn world,” he says, and when that last word leaves his mouth I know that he is gone. I squeeze him in my arms, shaking, crying, despair and hopelessness taking hold. His hand drops lifelessly to the grass. I cup his head in my hand and hold it close to my chest, and I rock him back and forth and I cry like I’ve never cried before. The pendant around my neck glows blue, grows heavy for just a split second, and then dims to normal.
I sit in the grass and I hold Henri while the last cannon falls silent. The pain leaves my own body and with the cold of the night I feel my own self begin to fade. The moon and the stars shine overhead. I hear a cackle of laughter carried on the wind. My ears attune to it. I turn my head. Through the dizziness and blurry vision I see a scout fifteen feet away from me. Long trench coat, hat pulled to its eyes. It drops the coat and takes off the hat to reveal a pale and hairless head. It reaches to the back of its belt and removes a bowie knife, the blade of which is no less than twelve inches long. I close my eyes. I don’t care anymore. The scout’s raspy breathing comes my way, ten feet, then five. And then the footsteps end. The scout grunts in pain, and begins gurgling.
I open my eyes, the scout so close that I can smell it. The bowie knife falls from its hand, and there in its chest, where I assume its heart must be, is the end of a butcher’s knife. The knife is pulled free. The scout drops to its knees, falls to its side, and explodes into a puff of ash. Behind it, holding the knife in her shaky right hand, with tears in her eyes, stands Sarah. She drops the knife and rushes over to me, wrapping her arms around me with my arms around Henri. I hold Henri as my own head falls and the world dims away into nothingness. The aftermath of war, the school destroyed, the trees fallen and heaps of ash piled in the grass of the football field and I still hold Henri. And Sarah holds me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
