Armageddon's Children (54 page)

She came back to her feet, fully awake now. The demon was already turning, a huge, sleek gray shape in the mix of shadows and half-light, its limbs impossibly long and disjointed, its head hunched down between its massive shoulders like a wolf’s. She searched for a hint of the features that had identified the demon as female only days before, but everything recognizable was gone. No spiky blond hair, no human face or body, no skin, nothing. This creature was covered with scales, its fingers and toes were claws, its face was a muzzle split wide to reveal gleaming teeth, and its eyes were yellow lanterns. Yet it was
her
nevertheless, Angel knew. It was the demon from the compound, come to finish her off.

“¡Diablo!”
Angel muttered as she braced herself for the next attack.

The demon screamed suddenly, a bone-jarring, frenzied wail that reverberated through the trees and froze Angel where she stood.

Then the monster rushed her, so swift it was on top of her almost before she could respond. But respond she did, sending the white fire of the staff surging into her attacker in a rippling, jagged-edged strike that burned the other’s scaly hide despite its obvious toughness, knocking the demon backward and aside. It screamed again, as if the sound gave it special strength, and renewed its assault. Again it charged Angel and again she used the fire to throw it back.

It’s too strong,
she thought as she watched it bound up anew, its hide smoking, but its madness undiminished.
I can’t win this.

This time the demon got through her defenses far enough to backhand her so hard that she flew off her feet and halfway across the clearing. Her ears were ringing as she scrambled up, her head swimming with the blow. She fought off another attack, and then another.

“Ailie!” she shouted.

She didn’t expect help from the tatterdemalion, but she needed to know where Ailie was. She was already eyeing the ATV, thinking that her only chance was to get away, to put enough distance between herself and the demon that it couldn’t get at her. It felt like a coward’s choice, not the right choice for a Knight of the Word, but it might keep her alive to fight another day.

She caught a glimpse of Ailie as the other peeked out from behind the Mercury. The tatterdemalion was thinking the same thing, but there was little she could do to help make it happen. Tatterdemalions were Faerie creatures, lacking sufficient substance to engage in physical combat. They were mostly air and light. She might reason and counsel, but she was not going to do much to fight off a demon.

Which right now was back on top of Angel, slamming her backward, striking at her as though the staff’s terrible fire were thin paper. It was as if the pain was making it stronger, giving it fresh energy, while Angel’s strength continued to diminish. Angel blocked the follow-up attack, sidestepping the other’s shredding claws, trying not to look into the terrible yellow eyes. There was a hypnotic quality to the demon’s gaze, the kind that predatory creatures used to freeze their prey in place while they ripped out their throats. Look too closely into that gaze and there was no escape. Angel concentrated on the elongated arms with their razor-sharp claws, still reaching for her, slashing. She was aware that she was wounded anew, fresh blood running down one shoulder and arm. Somehow the demon had gotten through her defenses. It would continue to find ways to do so, she realized. It would continue until she collapsed.

Until it was over.

She took a chance. She attacked. Mustering all the strength she could, she launched a fiery strike at the sleek form, hammering into it with everything she had, sending it flying backward into the trees. Even as it was tumbling out of view, she was racing to gain the Mercury. She leapt astride and slammed down the ignition button. The engine caught and roared to life.

Already the demon was bounding out of the trees, coming for her anew, shrieking in fury.

“Ailie!” she cried, and felt the tatterdemalion’s arms come around her waist.

She turned the black staff on the demon once more and sent the Word’s white fire lancing into it. But this time the demon kept coming, arms raised protectively, taking the brunt of the attack, the scaly hide smoking and burning as it fought its way through Angel’s defenses. Angel held it off as long as she could, maintaining the fire in a steady stream. Then, as she felt the fire begin to collapse, her strength exhausted, she wrenched the Mercury’s throttle forward and launched the ATV directly at the demon.

It was a bold move. The demon was too big and strong for her to simply drive over it. But she reacted to the situation, and it probably saved her. The demon could have stood its ground, but the maneuver surprised it. It saw the big machine tearing toward it and instinctively leapt out of the way. Before it realized that it had made a mistake, Angel was past it and tearing down the highway at full speed.

The demon gave chase at once. It came bounding out of the trees after the Mercury, enraged. Angel opened the throttle a notch further. But she could not risk going any faster because this highway, like all the others in the world, was littered with debris. If she hit a big enough obstacle, she would flip the bike and go over and that would be the end of her.

“Faster, Angel!” Ailie cried in her ear, pressing close.

She gritted her teeth, bent low over the handlebars, and ratcheted the throttle up another notch, eyes on the road. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she glanced back at their pursuer. It was farther away now and fading, unable to keep up the pace.

But still coming, still giving chase.

The last she saw of it before it receded into the distance was the gleam of its yellow eyes in the mix of woodland shadows and light.

H
AWK DIDN
’
T KNOW
what he was supposed to do.

Even after Logan Tom was gone and he was alone in his prison and could think about it at length, he still didn’t know. Oh, he understood the nature of his reaction to the finger bones; that much of it was clear. Taking the bones from Logan Tom, closing them into his fist, and, most especially, feeling the press of them against the flesh of his palm had triggered a very unexpected awakening inside him. Where before he had not believed himself to be anything of what Logan Tom thought him, suddenly he discovered that he was all of it and much more.

His awakening came in the form of visions so sharp and hard-edged that he did not even think to question that they were real. They exploded in his mind like fireworks; they came to life in starbursts.

The first was of a woman, tall and slender and athletic, her face instantly familiar. She had his green eyes, his build and angular features. He knew her instinctively, without having to be told, without a word having been spoken.

Nest Freemark. His mother.

The knowledge of it, the certainty, ripped through his doubts and left him breathless with realization. In his vision, she spoke to him of their shared relationship, of who he was and how he had come to be. He saw himself a boy in the company of another Knight of the Word, a man called John Ross. He was still the gypsy morph then, still transitioning out of the magic that had birthed him, still searching for his identity.

Then he was inside her, her unborn child, his magic mingling with hers to begin the forming of a new life.

And after he was born, he lived with her until he was old enough to leave, and then…

Then everything grew very vague and uncertain. She was there and then she wasn’t, alive and then gone back into the earth, the ether, and the shadows. He was alone again, perhaps for a long time, and the world in which he existed was another form of shadows…

You were made safe,
she said to him.
You were kept in a place where your enemies couldn’t reach you.

He didn’t understand, and perhaps he wasn’t meant to. He looked into his mother’s eyes as she spoke to him, explaining, revealing, and investing him with the knowledge of his identity.

Then he saw himself coming into the city of Seattle and into the lives of the Ghosts, and all the connections were made clear to him. His mother smiled and leaned down and touched him gently on his cheek. He could feel how she loved him. He understood that his memories of his parents were vague and uncertain because they had never truly existed. Perhaps he had manufactured them to give himself a sense of belonging. Perhaps they had been manufactured for him. But Nest Freemark was his true mother, and his memory of her, now recovered, was the only one that mattered.

A disembodied voice spoke next, one he did not recognize. There was no face attached to this voice, no presence to identify its source. The voice sounded very old. It told him the story of the boy and his children, the one Owl had told the Ghosts piecemeal. Only this version, while essentially the same, was different, too. It was more complicated and larger in scope. He was still the boy and the Ghosts were still his children, but there were others, too. Together, they traveled a long way to find a place where the walls were built of light and the colors were no longer muted but bright and pure. In this place, there was a sense of peace, a promise of safety and a reassurance that the bad things in the world couldn’t reach them. He heard his name spoken over and over.
Hawk. Hawk.
He didn’t know what it meant, and he couldn’t see who was doing the speaking. But the sound of it made him feel wanted.

Further images appeared. He saw monsters and dark things rising up to confront him. He saw himself running from them and saw them giving chase. The Ghosts ran with him, and with them a scattering of others. The pursuit went on, a long and arduous race against a death that rode on the back of a fiery wind that followed in the wake of his pursuers.

There were other visions, as well—other voices—coming together out of the awakening that the finger bones had generated, out of the resurfacing of his memories and the foretelling of his future. Some of them stayed with him; some of them were lost. He understood that this was necessary, that it was all part of restoring his identity. Revelations came in the form of small touchings, in the form of fingerprints of his life’s passing. But where the past was fixed, the future was fluid and could not yet be fully defined. He understood why this was so and was not troubled by it.

When it was done, his mother was there again, bending close to kiss him on the cheek, to reassure him anew, to let him feel her presence, which she would not deprive him of again.

Trust in me,
she whispered to him as she faded.

Mother,
he called after her.

Yes, the nature of his awakening was perfectly clear to him afterward—the visions and voices, the story of his birth and parentage, and the arduous nature of the journey that lay ahead. He even understood for the first time what it was that had happened between Cheney and himself when the dying animal’s wounds had mysteriously healed in his presence. As the gypsy morph, as a creature of magical origins, he apparently possessed some innate ability to heal. Although why that ability had never manifested itself before still confused him.

But what wasn’t made clear to him, what he didn’t understand, was what was expected of him. He was trapped in this cell with only a few hours of life left. Logan Tom had told him on leaving that he would be back for him, that he would not let him die. But Hawk wasn’t sure about this. Logan Tom did not seem strong enough to break down walls and gates of concrete and steel. He did not seem powerful enough to take on the entire population of the compound. He was one man, and however well intentioned or determined he might be, however formidable his skills, it did not seem possible that he could do what was needed.

Yet Hawk’s future was there in the visions, and it did not end with his death at the bottom of the compound walls. For that future to happen, he would have to break free of his prison.

Was he meant to do this on his own?

He tried to make sense of it, to determine if there was something that he could do, but he couldn’t think of anything. If he had magic at his disposal, he didn’t know how to use it. He kept coming back to the image of his mother speaking those three small words—
trust in me.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, they formed a powerful web of faith that was wholly lacking in any concrete source of support but that refused to let him be. How was his mother supposed to help him? How was he, in turn, supposed to help Tessa?

There were no answers. He slipped the finger bones into his pocket and lay back, weary from all he had experienced. Maybe, he thought, Logan Tom would come for him as he had said he would. Maybe he just needed to have the faith his mother’s words suggested.

But he was powerless within this dark room, behind these compound walls and in the hands of people who hated and feared him. He didn’t feel like anything special, whatever his supposed origins. He was just someone who had tried to find a home and a family to belong to.

What more was he supposed to be?

Trust in me,
he heard his mother whisper one last time.