Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight

Chapter Three: The End

London, England | April 2016

The week after the terrifying revelations about the spellbook, an angel in Liam's regiment is found dead.

It's not entirely impossible; angel death is difficult to cause, but not out of the realm of possibility. A well-stocked immortal or a highly motivated human could do it, especially if the angel wasn't conscious to fight back. But this case is different; the angel's chest is burned just like Lugh's had been, the stamp of the cult written out clearly, tauntingly.

Louis wonders if this is what it feels like to stand on a tectonic plate as it moves. 

There's no family dinner at Niall's. Everyone texts to check in, sending quick videos or pictures to prove they're okay. Zayn sends a picture of himself with Liam, promising he'll take care of him. Niall spends the night at Louis and Harry's, and he wastes a good portion of the evening trying to convince himself that calling off dinner was a good idea, then arguing the opposite side against his own judgement.

"It was a good idea," Harry tells him, squeezing him by the wrist.

"We're stronger together," Niall argues weakly.

"We're also easier targets when we're all in one place," Louis reminds him. Niall doesn't say anything else, but he curls closer to them for the rest of the night.

When Niall leaves the next morning, Harry turns to Louis with something heavy written all over his face.

"This isn't a coincidence."

"Maybe not," Louis hedges, because the thought that these attacks have been targeted, and targeted at them, specifically, makes his stomach turn. He shoves away the little thought in his head that says that maybe they're acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy. They noticed the attacks, they grabbed the spellbook, and now the attacks have a sharper focus.

Maybe this is their fault too.

No. No. He shakes his head. "The immortal crowd is pretty small, Haz. There aren't too many degrees of separation between us all. It could just be coincidence."

"It's not," Harry says. "Lou, it's not. It's us, I can feel it tightening like a noose. It's us."

Louis doesn't say anything, because he's not entirely sure Harry is wrong. Instead he pulls him close, and they cling together until the sun is high in the sky, shoving away their worries and pouring their fear into each other, where it flickers and fades for just a little while so they can rest.

Logroño, Spain | 1559

Someone someday will say that being a soldier isn't about learning how to fight. It's about learning how to live in the moments between fights, how to keep from going mad when there isn't a rush of battle to keep you occupied.

Louis has been in a lot of wars. He's not much in it for the glory and heroism, the joy of the kill or whatever masculine nonsense he's supposed to get out of the moment he sinks his sword into someone else — no, that was more Uriel's thing, not Louis'. But sometimes Louis couldn't find himself anywhere else, drawn to battle by righteousness, by anger, by a need to keep someone safe (sometimes Harry, sometimes innocent men and women whose souls glowed bright, who needed Louis' eye on them so that they could live through a war and make the world a better place on the other side. Sometimes protecting those souls was a job assignment, sometimes it was a personal choice to get involved). And so he knew that whoever it was that said being a soldier was learning to survive the waiting was absolutely correct, because he'd lived it, over and over again.