Point Pleasant (56 page)

“
I summon he who is most like our Father
,” Marietta said, which struck Ben as surreal considering that she was now under the steady blade’s concentration. “
I summon your wisdom and fortitude and ask for your sword most of all, brother
.”

Anguish flashed in Raziel’s eyes. Ben had no idea which brother Raziel was imploring, but the archangel spoke with the same fervor that Ben recognized from his own conversations with his big sister. Ben ached, and Raziel turned to him. The smile returned to his thin lips, and he placed his right hand on Ben’s left shoulder. Unnatural warmth seeped into Ben’s skin, inspiring thoughts of endless cups of his father’s coffee and slices of his mother’s cherry pie.

“
As the keeper of the secrets of the universe, I summon you so that I might remove the taint that stands before me
.”

Raziel fixed the tip of his sword upon his brother. He raised it high, pointed it skyward, and rotated the blade clockwise in the air. The fire in the pit extinguished, and Azazel kept his eyes on Raziel as if afraid to turn his back on the archangel.

Afraid
, Ben realized with a start.
Azazel was afraid.

“
Eloah, Elohim, Adonai
,” Marietta said, repeating the names from earlier. “
Malakhi Elohim, B’nai Elohim, Haqodeshim, Haelyonim. Ra shim, ko shim, ma shim, ra
.”

The words seemed to
wound
Azazel in the same manner that the fallen angel’s screeches had on Ben. Azazel hissed while Raziel edged around the trap once again. Ben understood that the actual spell had begun.

“
Yetir inad, chen mal’ach, chanan malakhi
,” Marietta said when Raziel dropped his hand from Ben’s shoulder.

He stalked counterclockwise around the inner circle. His wings trailed the floor as he settled the point of his sword on Tucker once more, and the incandescent blade grew brighter. Raziel moved on, aiming the tip at Stewart, then Daniel, then Astrid and Nicholas until he traveled the full length of the circle once more.

The light of the sword radiated like it had caught fire. Raziel paused at Marietta, and a quizzical expression passed over his face when he directed the sword toward her. Its sheen remained the same, and Ben had the fleeting impression that the archangel had expected something more to happen. Undeterred, Raziel kept the blade raised as he halted and gripped Ben’s right shoulder.

“
Nefesh, ruach, neshamah
,” Marietta said. “
Yetir inad, chen mal’ach, chanan malakhi.
”

Azazel’s wings wilted, but he remained suspended over the flames. He let out a shrieking wail that made Ben clutch at his ears once more.

Raziel trained his sword on Azazel.

“
Ah ma sta ra sta ma
,” Marietta yelled. “
Eloah, Elohim, Adonai. Malakhi Elohim, B’nai Elohim, Haqodeshim, Haelyonim
.”

An eerie stillness swept through the factory. The red paint that marked the outlines of the hexagram, hexagon, and nonagon began to shine as if lit by the same energy that continued to crackle outside of the factory, though Ben noted that the glow of the
things
outside had abated significantly.

Raziel stared at his brother and tightened his fist around the grip of the sword. With a powerful flick of his wrist, the archangel threw the blade. The sword pierced Azazel’s chest with all the precision of a dart in the center of a bullseye.

Azazel tore at his torso, but the light of the sword seemed to scald his clawed, misshapen fingers. He screamed with such ferocity that Ben let out a cry of his own when he felt the sickly warmth of another rush of blood from his ears.

Everything went quiet. There were no muffled sounds, or fuzzy words, or even a ringing hum. Ben was deaf.

Panic flooded through him, but Raziel tightened his hold on Ben’s shoulder and shoved him down until he was on his knees at the edge of the pit. Raziel raised his right hand before him so that his palm faced upwards. His arm lifted toward the ceiling until it stretched like a limb on one of the old oaks outside the factory.

Marietta’s lips moved at a rapid pace. She continued to chant strange words that Ben could not hear and would never be able to hear again. The searing pain in his head sent bursts of white across his vision, and he keeled forward toward the red flames. Raziel’s long fingers dug into Ben’s skin to hold him upright. Ben opened his mouth to scream, but he choked on the effort.

Azazel writhed in his own kind of agony, and Ben was aware enough to know that whatever was happening had little to do with the fallen angel’s aversion to the words that Marietta spoke on Raziel’s behalf and more to do with a physical—or perhaps
metaphysical
—reaction to the ritual.

The first glimmer of
something
radiated from the sword that was still wedged in Azazel’s chest. A fierce luminosity broke through his dark skin and grew brighter with every new word that crossed Marietta’s lips.

It’s the grace
, Ben realized. Azazel had the grace
inside
of him.

The air in Ben’s lungs seemed to disappear when he glanced up at Raziel. The archangel’s eyes were no longer red. They burned with a white light that reflected the blinding glow that emanated from Azazel’s torso.

The fallen angel threw his head back as if to howl. Heat far greater than the fire before them coursed from Raziel’s left hand to Ben’s right shoulder. Raziel’s grip intensified, and Ben squeezed his eyelids shut when the grace light erupted and swallowed Ben as wholly as a pyroclastic cloud destroyed every living thing in its wake.

Ben finally screamed.

A cacophony of sound and sensation flooded his senses when
something
rushed through him as if he had stepped on a live wire. A high, unearthly keening rose like the swell of an orchestra practicing before an opening night. The din was musical and harmonious in its tenor but frightening in its ferocity, and Ben could not understand how he could
hear
it without functioning eardrums just as he could not understand how he could still
see
the light even with his eyes closed tight.

The merciless yet melodious clamor seemed to sink inside his skin and pulsate through every atom of his body. Ben curled into himself. He clutched his ears with both hands and sank forward. His forehead dropped to the floor as the swell of violent light and sound engulfed him.

Ben wished for death.

The
light
was intolerable even as he kneeled prostrate with his face to the ground and his eyelids squeezed closed. The grace shone so unendurably that Ben
felt
it in his core. It was like something deep inside himself was connecting with the
light
while also shrinking from its terrible beauty.

What
felt
like an explosion of electricity whipped and cracked around Ben’s prone, cowering form. There was a sensation of
something
folding, unfolding, and then extending itself out and around him. For a brief though delirious moment, Ben saw without his eyes and heard without his ears. Wings made of light and glory spread out from the back of an ancient, ageless form forged by the vast and unknowable.

Stars like a supernova exploded in Ben’s mind, and everything stopped.

Silence.

Ben was certain he had been consumed.

It was not until he felt hands—
human hands
—pulling at his shoulders that he realized the light had vanished, though he could still
see
it somehow as it continued to pulse through him.

Ben was rolled over and pulled upright. The hands clutched at the back of his neck and head. There was a voice, but the sound seemed far away and was lost in the echo of the wrathful symphony that continued to vibrate through his ears.

“Ben!” someone yelled, and the hands gripped tighter. “Open your eyes, Ben! Say something!”

“Benjamin!” another voice urged. “Look up, Benjamin!”

There was a sharp slap across his left cheek, and Ben finally blinked at Nicholas and Marietta as they crouched before him.

Desolation crept into him like a burglar slipping in through a back alley window. The light was gone. He did not have to check the circle to know that Raziel and Azazel were gone too.

Ben gazed at Nicholas, but he did not really
see
him.

“What the fuck happened?” Nicholas screamed at Marietta, who slumped with exhaustion and dropped to her knees.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, regarding Ben like a jigsaw puzzle she could not quite piece together.

An exasperated growl rumbled in Nicholas’ throat. He faced Ben and shook him by his shoulders.

“Ben, say something!”

“I think you need to give him a few minutes,” Marietta said. “Maybe more.”

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Nicholas said, rising to his feet.

“There’s nothing they can do,” Marietta said.

Nicholas let out another vexed snarl and seemed ready to turn on Marietta as if to tell her exactly what he thought of her advice, but she held a hand up to silence him.

“Give him time, Nicholas. I told you before.” Marietta seemed almost curious as she kept her eyes narrowed on Ben. “He felt an
angel
. There’s no doctor for that.”

Ben tilted his head toward the psychic, and she reached out to cup his face in the palms of her hands.

“You did so well, Benjamin,” she said. “I think I understand what happened now.”

“Share with the whole class, then,” Tucker demanded, appearing behind Nicholas’ back.

“Raziel had to channel enough energy to pull his grace from the Fallen One. We were the conduit, if you will. And Benjamin was the lightning rod. That’s why it had to be him all along,”

“What’s wrong with him?” Nicholas asked, his tone humming with horror as if Marietta just informed him that Ben had grown a tail. “Did it hurt him?”

“Probably,” Marietta replied, and she finally drew her hands into her lap. “You have a mighty special soul, Benjamin Wisehart.”

Nicholas glared at the psychic with a fury to match that of the archangel who had just squared off with his fallen brother.

Ben watched all this transpire, feeling trapped outside of his own body. Everything appeared distant and dislocated. Nicholas’ voice became clearer and more distinct while he argued with Marietta. Ben realized his ears no longer ached. Nothing hurt anymore—not his head, not his sore muscles, and a glance at his hands showed that the blood was gone. He felt
new
.

Stewart lingered a few feet away from Tucker as if he could not bring himself to stand closer to Ben or Marietta but was too afraid to wander from the relative safety of the group. Astrid and Daniel approached from the north wall where they had been scouting the tree line.

Astrid knelt at Marietta’s side. She placed a hand on the psychic’s shoulder and leaned close to whisper words of concern that Ben could not decipher. Marietta shook her head and offered a weary smile to the deputy.

“Everything’s clear,” Daniel said to Nicholas, gesturing to one of the windows. “There’s nothing out there.”

The howling wind had ceased. Ben knew without looking that the murky crimson darkness was gone. Raziel, fully restored, had seen to that.

An exaltation that was not wholly Ben’s danced through him like afternoon sunlight filtered through branches covered in green foliage. The feeling of Raziel seemed to echo through Ben even now. He curled up, put his face to the floor once more, and wept.

Ben wept for the reverberations of the archangel’s grace that still clouded his consciousness; for the fact that Azazel was gone and the other fallen angels with him; for Raziel’s freedom and return to the place he belonged after so very long. Ben wept for the terror and agony of the experience; for the noise, the blinding light, and the sensation of being swallowed whole by something far outside of his comprehension. Ben wept for his dead father, who he would never see again despite Azazel’s end. Ben wept, hoping Raziel had ‘vanquished’ the asshole just as he had promised. Ben wept, most poignantly, for the feeling of loss that crept through his veins, which no longer ran with fire and fury, just blood and grief.

Raziel was home; Raziel was where he belonged; Raziel was full of joy as he was greeted with adulation from his brothers and sisters, though Ben had no idea
how
he knew this with such certainty.

Ben, however, sat weeping on a dirty factory floor as the cold settled into his bones.

He had gone home too, but there had been no joyous celebration. His homecoming had been a painful one despite the happy, confusing nights with Nicholas. In that moment, Ben felt
alone
.

Marietta patted his back soothingly while he continued to weep. “You all go on, now,” she told the others. “It’s over, you go on home.”

Stewart had not uttered a word since Raziel’s departure. Nicholas spoke up from a few feet away, sounding distressed. He told Astrid and Daniel to drive the mayor home. Tucker refused to leave.

Marietta continued to pet Ben’s shoulders. Her touch was comforting and gentle, but she did not attempt to pacify him. Ben was thankful. He stayed there on the floor and was aware of Nicholas and Tucker’s steady presence, though they seemed to be keeping their distance as if fearful of Marietta’s threatening gaze. Ben’s tears ceased finally, and she leaned in toward him.

“Better?”

Ben shook his head.

“I can’t imagine,” Marietta said. “It’s a strange thing having the voice he wants you to hear in your head, but I can’t even begin to think about what you just went through.”

Ben sat up and wiped at his face, but he felt too empty and exhausted to be embarrassed by the wet streaks on his cheeks.

“Do you want to go?” Marietta asked.

Ben nodded.

The factory was darker than before. Nicholas and Tucker had returned all of the floodlights—save the one that Tucker was holding—to the trunk of Nicholas’ cruiser. The shotguns, pokers, and Marietta’s duffel bag of oddities had been packed away as well.