A Book of Dust and Breath

Chapter Fifty Two

The two teenagers ran through the street, unseen by the weeping, frightened masses all around them. Every building burned, filling the air with the toxic stench of melting plastic, causing debris to rain down around them. Glass crunched under their heavy boots. The humans staggered toward perceived safety, unable to grasp the reality that no sanctuary existed. Blood dripped from their faces, their hands. A woman sat, holding her eyes, screaming that she'd been blinded. A man knelt next to her. A piece of glass, nine inches long and sparkling in the firelight protruded from his shoulder.

He looked up at them with yellow eyes and smiled. Neither knowing nor caring that he was slicing his hand open he reached up, wrenched the glass from his shoulder and jammed it into the woman's throat.

Her body fell to the ground.

"Max! No! You can't..." Lily began to shout, but he paid her no heed.

Max launched herself toward the frightened soul left standing, knocking her out of the path of the long, dark shadows that slithered toward her.

In a flash of light, they were in the void. The woman was in Azrael's arms and Max was back on the earth, a shadow wrapped around his ankle. Lily wrenched it away, screaming as the torment of Hell burned her hands.

The man holding the glass pointed it toward his stomach, but Max kicked it out of his hand, wrapped his arms around him and held his shuddering body. "Leave us!" a dozen voices hissed through his chattering teeth.

"I will not. His soul is not yours. Be gone!" He held on with all her strength as the creatures left him, tearing through his form, filling him with the misery of Godless existence.

The warriors descended, a shining silver blur of flashing swords and extraordinary music and Max's tormentors released him to escape this new threat.

Two Companions ran by, a young family between them and, in their wake, a young girl staggered into the street. She screamed, pulling her hair, tearing at her clothes. "It's eating me!" she cried, blood bubbling up out of her mouth.

"Max!" Lily shouted again, but he staggered out of the battle and fell, latching on to the girl's leg. "Fight someone your own size, beast!"

The demon burst out of the child roaring fire. Max's clothes caught and he rolled away just as Daniel landed on the street and expediently removed the creature's head from it's shoulders.

Lily grabbed him by the shoulders. "We have to keep moving, Max. We have to get to the center. We can't fight them one at a time."

He nodded and took her hand, led her on into gloom so thick she choked on the stench of despair hanging in the air. Why are we fighting? What hope can we have against such evil? Against so many? We're so alone. Her heart swelled with sadness and loss and loneliness. Tears poured from her eyes.

"It's not real," he said, pulling her forward. "It's their separation you feel, not your own. It's not real."

He stopped and kissed her. His lips, pressed against her forehead were real. The love in his eyes was real. She latched onto that scrap of truth. "Come on?" He asked gently.

A little boy with sat on the curb screaming obscenities at him. A woman in her underpants lifted the gun from a dead soldier's hands with a cackling laugh.

"Yes. Go," she told him.

He clutched her hand and led her onward toward the wide lawn that separated the church from the cemetery. She staggered behind him, each step a monumental effort.

They ran past Aspectus and Similus, leading a row of souls from a burning building and a half dozen Companions standing in a circle around a group of children, demons pacing before them like tigers in a cage. Delwyn caught her eye. There was no mistaking the strength in her gaze. Or the fear. Only in the past few days had she been fit enough to fight again. The horror of Hell still shown in her gaze.

Everything was destruction and death. Hopelessness reigned. This wasn't just because of the demons. Humans were perfectly happy to put one another through these atrocities on their own. The demons thrived on the energy of their hatred, they did not cause it. Hatred, fear, despair, they were created by the horror of life. Why would God send a piece of Himself to exist apart from the whole? It was too awful.

The thick blackness, a preternatural presence, alive beneath the withered leaves of the tree, beckoned to her.

Max's voice was a murmur, drowned beneath the sea of her grief.

War and death. That's all humans would ever know. For a hundred thousand years they had repeated the same pattern. They promised peace and murdered to get it. Then they oppressed the conquered until another, greater enemy came and brought more war. More empty promises.

Mothers lost their sons every day. Husbands watched their wives die.

Why give man a helpmeet that could waste away and disappear before his eyes, leaving him alone in the world?

The crowd thinned and, before them, the wide gash in the earth belched evil into the night.

Lily fell to her knees twenty feet from the edge, sobbing for the pain of all mankind.

Max stood next to her, holding her hand limply in his own.

Azrael landed on the other side of the pit, his own eyes filled with tears. They stared up at him, begging assurance.

"You are the bridge," he said. "If you can't do it, there is no one who can."

"Why should we?" Max asked, echoing Lily's own thoughts.

Lily looked at their clasped hands.

Why did they still cling to one another?

Her eyes sought his. "I love you," she whispered.

The ground beneath them shuddered.

"I love you, too," he answered.

"I am glad I held my son in my arms," the horror of his death sent daggers into her heart. She pushed them aside. "I am grateful for the time I knew him."

"He is safe now, but our friends need us."

"There are so many," she said, choking on a sob.

"Demons? This is only a fraction. We can never fight them all." Max shook his head, his grip on her hand growing weak once more.

"Friends," she said. "So many friends fighting here. Not one of them left us in our hour of need." On legs no stronger than water, she pushed herself up.

Max nodded. He understood the gesture. They moved closer to the pit, trembling, determined, terrified and strong.

Azrael backed away.

Max pulled Lily into his arms and they fell forward into the black despair and crushing loneliness of the breech. The grief of billions of souls, separated from the Source of all love shattered their bodies. Matter exploded away from them in an agony of exquisite torment until they were nothing but light.

Light that obliterated the darkness. Light that shown so bright not a single shadow could exist.

Unholy screaming wrapped around them, but it was drowned out and washed away in the purity of Love and Wisdom, Mercy and Justice.

An infinite rushing wind of evil moved downward through them, unable to touch them in any meaningful way.

Above them, the jagged crack of the breech closed and the earth breathed a sigh of relief.