God of Destruction (36 page)

And, as far as they knew, that girl was never
coming back.

Disgusting.

“Oh, hello, Tom,” an old woman addressed a
man of equal, if not greater, age. “It’s so great to see you again,
if only it was under better circumstances.”

Shove your fake condolences up your old,
fat
butt
, lady
, she couldn’t help but muse.

A hand slapped down on her shoulder from
seemingly nowhere.

“Can you handle it?” Janie, the owner of the
hand inquired, practically reading her thoughts.

No matter how much of a lie it was, Alex
nodded, sliding out from under her hand in a gesture of wanting to
be left alone. Janie nodded, understanding completely, stepping
away from her to find a corner to hide in. Alex lingered in the
back of the room, as far away from the empty casket as she could
get. And that was where she stayed until a man strode to the front
of the room.

“Would everyone please take their seats?” the
priest announced from the pulpit. Everyone promptly took a seat
while the ceremony began:

“
There is a time for everything,

And a season for every activity under
heaven:

A time to be born and a time to die

A time to plant and a time to uproot,

A time to kill and a time to heal,

A time to tear down and a time to build,

A time to weep and a time to laugh,

A time to mourn and a time to dance,

A time to scatter stones and a time to
gather them,

A time to embrace and a time to refrain,

A time to search and a time to give up,

A time to keep and a time to throw away,

A time to tear and a time to mend,

A time to be silent and a time to speak,

A time to love and a time to hate,

A time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
.”

He went on through the prayers and speeches,
bringing up Claire’s father, who gave the most heart wrenching
speech Alex had ever heard before their tears forced them to
sit.

With a final, “Amen,” everyone stood to go to
their cars for the drive to the cemetery. Alex searched for Mr.
Strong through the thick crowd but found it nearly impossible. In a
break in the crowd, she caught a glimpse of his head and
impulsively changed course to get to him, but someone stood in her
way, his back facing her. She recognized that back, dressed in the
usual black t-shirt and pants, tucked into combat boots.

Trying to gather her words, she reached out
for the familiar man.

He spun around, with difficulty, when he felt
her fingers on his skin and looked down at the girl who’d become
child-like in comparison, despite his being hunched over crutches.
His storm-cloud grey eyes narrowed at her, angry he’d been spotted
by anyone he’d met in France. Attempting, in vain, to push around
her, the crowd began to close in, and Kierlan had to acknowledge
her. With a sigh, he grunted, “
Excuse
me.”

Alex wasn’t at all surprised by his
hostility, but she wasn’t a fan. “Where have you been,” she
demanded.

He rolled his eyes. “Around.”

“So you’ll attend her funeral, but you won’t
help us find a way to help her,” she challenged. “Makes a lot of
sense, Kierlan, it’s good to know that you
cared
about
her.”

His face darkened. “I’ve had enough of your
magic shit to last a lifetime. She’s dead. And as much as I care
for the rest of you, so are you.”

Alex shoved him as hard as she could, but he
only stumbled back a step. He gasped, leaning more heavily on one
crutch when his stitches pulled.

Growling something unintelligible under his
breath, he, one-handedly, shoved her back. Alex staggered blindly
backwards, flailing her arms as she very nearly fell to the floor.
Someone grabbed her under her arms, but the two of them crumpled to
the floor, as Janie wasn’t nearly strong enough yet to keep them
both standing, especially not with a broken leg. Janie helped her
back up, with some difficulty, before turning to face Kierlan.

Hazel eyes blazing, Janie poked one bony
finger into Kierlan’s chest. “You can’t get away from what
happened, Kierlan. I’ve tried.”

“Is that what this was?” he grumbled. “Trying
to get passed what happened? Believe me, you should try
harder.”

Face growing red, Alex stepped purposefully
in front of her friend. “You’re here, too, dumbass. Or did you
forget?”

“I
can’t
forget! No matter how hard I
try, I can never forget!” he yelled, catching the attention of
nearby mourners. Lowering his voice, he continued, “I can’t sleep.
Every night I have nightmares. I see her face. I hear her voice,
begging for help. She haunts me when I’m asleep, and when I’m
awake, and I just want to
forget
.”

“Don’t even think that you’re the only one
here who
misses
her!” Alex hissed through clenched teeth.
“And don’t think that you’re the only one with nightmares.”

“Because of you,” Janie fumed, poking him
again, “I was left with a maniac for half a year! I’m scared to be
alone. I’m scared she’ll come back to find me. I’m scared that no
one can protect me. I’m scared
all the time
. You wanna talk
about nightmares? Don’t whine to me about your nightmares, you…you
ass
!”

He stared at the two of them, all three
red-faced as the last of the mourners filed from the building. Two
men in black suits holding the doors watched them suspiciously when
they didn’t follow and one approached them cautiously.

“Umm, we’re moving to the cemetery now. If
you would please return to your vehicles…?” he trailed off,
studying each of their faces.

Janie pried her scowl away from Kierlan’s
eyes first, facing the man. Hesitating, she began, “Of course,
sir.” She took Alex’s arm and lightly tugged her toward the exit.
“We were just leaving.” Pausing her limping, she spoke to the only
other in the room, “Goodbye, Kierlan.”

Alex never broke eye contact, promising as
they left the building, “We’ll be seeing
you
, again.”

Epilogue

Andover, New Jersey; April
3
^rd
, 2013

But they didn’t see Kierlan again after that
and he had no intention of allowing them to find him while he
recovered. For months he hid in his hometown, taking up residence
in his parents’ home. It was the most obvious place he could think
of, and, therefore, the last place anyone would think to look for
him, especially Natalia and his mystery employer, whose calls he
tirelessly avoided. After a while, he’d thrown the useless cell
phone in the lake behind his childhood home, having lost all excuse
to use it now.

Each night he slept in vain, tossing and
turning against the nightmares and waking in a cold sweat. His
mother and father dreamed peacefully in the room beside his,
unknowing of all the things he’d experienced last June and the
world they didn’t dare imagine. They hadn’t questioned him when he
begged to stay with them for a while, too glad to see him for the
first time since he graduated high school. He didn’t offer any
answers.

Being with them was the best thing he
could’ve done, all things considered. He even found that, the
longer he stayed in their completely normal world, the more
ridiculous his fuzzy recollection of Claire’s death was beginning
to seem. Sometimes, he questioned her very existence. He’d come a
long way since his first day back to his childhood home.

Now, he only had to worry when he was
asleep.

***

Oh, Kierlan
, her sweet voice whispered
through his deeply unconscious mind.

Why couldn’t you save me?

His eyes snapped open and adjusted easily to
the scarce light filtering through the window pressed against his
forehead. It was hot in the taxi from the hot summer outside, but a
chill ran down his spine, raising goose bumps across his covered
flesh. For the first few seconds following his awakening, he
remained in the blissful state that always follows sleep, where
nothing can bother you because you can’t remember any of it. His
stormy grey eyes were frosted over with a confused glaze.
Recollection suddenly flickered to life in their depths, and his
eyelids slowly slid closed.

All Kierlan could see behind his lids was her
face and hypnotically blue eyes staring back at him. With a
defeated groan, he forced himself to open them again and focus on
anything around the interior of the cab bound for Andover.

It was difficult to keep his mind off of her
and the pain reverberating through his stitched abdomen, it always
was, and there was only so much to stare at. He fished through his
back pocket for the bottle his doctor had issued and popped two
pills dry, but it didn’t soothe the pain his mind was pumping into
every inch of his body.

Why couldn’t you save me?

It was very obvious to him that the driver
was purposely avoiding any conversation with him because of his
obvious emotional trauma, but he couldn’t find it in him to think
badly of the man. The soreness in the back of his throat hinted at
the fact that Kierlan might have been talking in his sleep, or even
screaming. Had their roles been reversed, Kierlan thought he might
just deliver the lunatic in the backseat back to the hospital he’d
picked him up at.

Thankfully, this guy didn’t seem to care much
for Kierlan’s mental health so long as he was paid for his
services. Kierlan wasn’t entirely surprised; he’d recently lost all
hope for human kind when a group of
human
beings attempted
to sacrifice recently graduated
children
to a ‘fictional’
god. Worse yet, he’d been one of them.

He could tell already that healing would be
easier said than done, but at this point his only hope was that he
would someday soon regain the ability to breathe correctly. His
chest burned with the memory of her face, her smile, and her angry
voice when she yelled.

He wanted to scream, but he didn’t think his
throat would manage pushing out any kind of speech at the moment,
let alone a scream. Instead, he slammed his already throbbing head
against the frigid glass and studied the outside world.

It seemed surreal that there’d still be an
outside world after his venture through the catacombs and the
incarceration he’d escaped from his hospital room.

The sky outside was dark with the heavy
purple clouds, spilling buckets of rain down on the world below. It
seemed fitting that the weather would be so dark; how could the sun
shine down on a world that had taken away someone as bright as
Claire? His eyes followed each raindrop as it trailed down the
window, thankful for such an effective distraction, but,
eventually, his mind began to wander.

He’d prided himself all his life on being the
lone wolf, and now he was crawling back to his mother and father
like a frightened pup.

Outside, where no one knew that the end of
the world had nearly been upon them, life was going on. Ordinary
people in the ordinary world were at work now, going about their
daily business like they did every day at noon. For Kierlan and
everyone involved in the incident back in the catacombs, life would
never be the same. It was a secret shared only by them, and no one
would ever believe them if they told it.

It was comical, assuming they pretended it
had ended with a happily ever after.

After he woke, the remainder of the ride was
short, either by distance or because he desperately didn’t want to
answer his mother’s inevitable questions. Nevertheless, the taxi
pulled up before the lazily crafted wooden fence and the driver
demanded payment. He pulled out his wallet to pay and a picture
floated to the ground. It was the picture he’d been given by his
employer to find Claire: she stood among her friends from the
catacombs, dressed in their Catholic School uniforms.

As he handed the money over to the driver, he
bent over to retrieve the photo and froze.

Where James should’ve been standing, one arm
thrown casually over Claire’s shoulders while the other wrapped
around Alex’s waist, his arms were instead holding Alex and thin
air. Any trace of the girl in the photo had vanished, even the bags
that should’ve been at her feet. He flipped the picture over and
caught her name, written there in blue ink, vanish before his
eyes.

He stared, openmouthed at the picture in his
hand and felt his eyes slide shut over the tears building there.
His fist closed around the paper with a quiet
crinkle
and
his fingernails cut into his palms.

“Sir?” the driver demanded.

Kierlan’s eyes shot open and he cleared his
throat with a slight shake of his head. “Umm, yes?”

“Are you alright, sir?” he inquired.

“Yes,” Kierlan replied a bit too hastily.
“Ya, I’m fine.”

“Well, would you mind…?” he trailed off,
nodding his head toward the car door. “I should be getting back to
business.”

“Oh, yeah,” he continued, nodding and
clearing his throat a second time. “Of course. Sorry.” Humiliation
colored his face as he struggled to exit the vehicle with his
crutches in hand. His stitched flesh protested violently to
movement while he staggered toward the trunk of the taxi and
slammed the door behind him. He stared hopelessly at his luggage in
the backseat, knowing there was no possibility he’d be able to
carry it all the way to the house.

“Would you like help with your bags, sir?”
the driver offered, appearing beside him.

He exhaled heavily with relief. “That’d
be…great.”

***

Kierlan spent a week alone in his room,
avoiding his mother, before he allowed himself to leave the house.
He was still in a great deal of pain from the stitches, but it was
such a welcome reprieve to feel fresh air that he didn’t mind much,
as long as he sat for a while between bouts of exertion. Alex and
Janie never searched for him after the funeral; he was grateful to
be rid of the reminder.