“Wylie and Nick would love this.”
“You like them. Their macho and their guns and all.”
“They’re winners, Dad. This whole universe—it works better than ours, it’s more dynamic.”
“It’s been at war with itself for a hundred years.”
“And we live in a world of kingdoms and empires where nobody’s really free.”
“We’re free.”
“We are and the French are and the English are, at least at home. But look at the rest of it, Dad, it’s a vast system of slavery—orderly, easy to live in, but—”
The Hummer roared to life. Al watched, no longer trying to stop them. He knew that he couldn’t. The dead did not communicate with the living. Just didn’t.
So when you finally understand and you can tell them everything they need to know, this happens.
They closed the doors and drove the Hummer down toward the bank of the Saunders—here, flowing gently. There were places where you could jump across it, even, but certainly not into another universe.
They needed to know about the seraph headquarters, deep underground and just a few miles from here, had to be told what he had remembered about being in there.
If they could enter it, they could free millions of trapped souls, they could wreck the power systems, maybe even stop the lenses from functioning. They could cause core damage to Abaddon’s plans, maybe kill Mazle and Samson, even.
He raced down to the Hummer, shot into it right through one of the windows. “Hear me! HEAR ME!”
“There’s the gateway,” Martin told Trevor.
“Is it big enough for this thing?”
“They got it through.”
Maybe this was good, maybe the gateway was too small, maybe the Hummer wouldn’t fit and they wouldn’t kill themselves, the damn fools.
“Do we just aim at it or what? I’m not sure I know how to go about this.”
“I’m not sure, either, Dad.”
Don’t try, please.
“We have to try.”
Please.
As Martin backed the Hummer up, Al did everything he could think of, attempting to project his thoughts into Martin’s mind, actually going inside his body where his organs were sloshing and his blood was surging. He went directly into the brain, but even that didn’t help. He could perceive the gray matter like a pulsating, sparking fog all around him, but he couldn’t do anything to affect thought from in here, either.
The Hummer went roaring toward the gateway. Al saw the diamond-shaped crystalline object much more clearly than he’d been able to in life, and saw it expand smoothly, almost obediently, to accommodate the Hummer. So it was going to go through, they were going to be in it, and they were going to be drowned.
He saw black water, roiling, churning, and in it what looked like people, swimming hard. Then the Hummer hit with a huge splash, and the gateway closed and was gone.
He was moving fast, and sailed right across the stream and into the woods beyond. But he was still in this universe.
He rushed back across the river, looked for the gateway, could not find it. But he didn’t belong here, this wasn’t right.
He rushed up and down the river bank, trying to find a flicker of the gateway.
Even when he’d seen the president die and known—known—that Samson had somehow done it, he had not acted. Instead, he’d gone to Cheyenne Mountain to take a new job, because he’d wanted the promotion.
What had he been thinking? How could he have so blinded himself?
In this state, he was finding that he was becoming naked to himself, seeing past the self-deception that had defined his life.
He was seeing how loveless, how empty it had been. A useless, silly journey, his wife dead early and no further attempt to find love, and love all that mattered.
In this state, he was revealed to himself, and he saw clearly that his willful blindness had led to a great catastrophe, and there was no way for him to justify himself.
He found himself back a very long time ago, sitting on the side porch at home on a night in July, with music drifting across the evening air. He saw a girl he had known then, a girl called Nellie, who had been full of love for him.
Had he let himself accept her, had he chosen the humble life that being with her offered, he would be soaring now, flying above all these cares instead of sinking into this pit of regret.
He wasn’t just sinking into despair, either, he was becoming involved with the actual ground. He was sinking into the earth itself. Above him, he could sense realms past imagining, where things like the walls between universes had no meaning and time itself was only a memory.
He was falling, but he wanted to rise.
He had to rise, it was heaven, he was seeing heaven and he had to rise!
Then he thought of the souls Samson had trapped. They belonged there, they were part of heaven, but they had literally been stolen from God to be bought and sold, their memories and emotions stripped from them like ripe fruit and consumed into the darkness of demon hearts.
It was the greatest of all evils, to kidnap the good into hell, but that’s what they were doing—or rather, trying.
He would fight. He would do battle with Samson.
But he was already lower, sinking into the grass, and below him he could see black halls and hear desolate cries.
He strove, he struggled, he fought. Above him, love and forgiveness shimmered, above him freedom beckoned. He tasted the greatest agony there is, that of being unable to rise to heaven.
But then, he thought, perhaps he could save himself. There was something he could do, perhaps. One thing. Wouldn’t work, probably. But he could try.
TWENTY-ONE
DECEMBER 21, DAWN
THE DEPTHS
AS SOON AS MARTIN AND Trevor had left, Wylie had found himself able to write again. He and Brooke read over what he had just completed.
“Did they drown?” she asked.
“God forbid. The key thing here is that Al North knows something that can help them but his soul is here, still on this side, so if he thinks about it clearly enough, I’m going to pick up on it, I think.”
She sat reading the screen, scrolling, then reading more. “Is he…what’s happening to him? What’s he sinking into?”
“My best guess is the core of the planet. Maybe the way you live makes your soul weigh more or less. If you weigh too much—have too little love and too much greed, essentially—you sink. And then I guess you just stay there, trapped. Cooking, given that the core is hot.”
“But the universe has an end. What then?”
“I think the evil are forgotten.”
“But we need him. We need him now!”
Outside, dawn was breaking. The last phoebes were calling, the last tanagers chirping. Winter, such as it was, would drive them south any day now. They were very late to leave this year. But there was not much winter now, so they would return by February.
She came closer to him. He closed the laptop.
“Nick?” she called softly.
