Last of the Mighty (22 page)

Phaeus came down on me with every ounce of his six hundred pounds. I was on my belly again with a Watcher on top of me, wailing away.

A hammerfist to my right shoulder dislocated it.

A hook to my ear split the lobe and left it deaf and bloody.

As Phaeus shifted positions, I bucked and almost got free. Clawed my way ahead a yard or two before the Watcher seized my foot. He tweaked it around two hundred degrees, shredded every tendon and ligament in my right ankle and knee.

On my back now, I sent my good foot to his midsection. It wasn't nearly enough.

Phaeus dove on me again. His fist crashed into my sternum like a meteor. My breastbone fractured with a sickening crunch. I could barely breathe.

I was going down. Fast.

He seized me by the throat, looked me in the eyes, and squeezed.

I slipped the iron dagger out of my pocket. It was a last ditch effort and would do nothing but buy me another few seconds of life, as well as cause Phaeus a fair amount of pain. I could live with that. I jammed the knife into his chest all the way to the hilt and left it there.

His eyes burned. He grumbled at the sting of it. He pulled out the blade and kept it in his hand, blood spilling down him like water from a cracked dam.

He cuffed me across the face with a backhand.

“Consult the Lord, Mighty Man,” he snarled, “and tell Him of the mistake He made when banishing me from Heaven. To you, He may listen.”

“You're the mistake, Fallen.”

His gold forearm guard clubbed me just above the ear.

I laughed.

There was no point in fighting back. My right leg was trashed, so combing the woods for a holy weapon was out. Instead, I sprawled on the dirt with my arms spread. Relaxed. Calm. At peace. If dying without resistance was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for me.

An elbow to my eye put sparks in my head. I laughed some more.

It was glorious to see Phaeus so infuriated.

“Pray for me, Augustine, and I will hasten your death.”

“I appreciate the offer, wingless,” I snickered, “but that—”

He struck me in the jaw so hard it rattled loose a molar and broke my jaw.

I chuckled, blood spewing everywhere.

He busted my nose, murdered a few ribs, and shattered my collarbone so badly that the bones jutted out of my flesh like broken tree limbs. He was about to carve a trough in my face with the rusty knife when sirens in the distance pulled his eyes toward them. He squinted and shook his head. “Lawmen.”

He kneed me in the crotch, and even I couldn't laugh at that one.

“They will spare you”—he chopped at my throat—“from the anguish of a lingering death.” He stood over me now. “I shall thank them on your behalf.” He stomped on my broken sternum.

The red swirls of sirens bathed the cemetery in gruesome shades of crimson.

“Death is upon you, Augustine Caffrey.” Phaeus raised the knife in his hand and readied for the kill shot.

“May I…” The words barely escaped me. They were slurred, hoarse, and mixed with blood. “H-have a…last r-request?”

Phaeus grinned. Probably at the fear in my voice.

“Please…” A cough interrupted me. “I—”

“No.” His expression was victorious. Smug. “You may not.” Phaeus seized me by the throat and jerked me to my feet.

The cop cars screeched to a halt in the parking lot on the other side of the church. Car doors opened and slammed shut.

I stood face-to-chest with Phaeus. Without his hand on my throat, I would've folded to the earth. I peered at the gory hole I'd made in him with the dagger. I prayed for Merryn, that God would give her peace, keep her safe. That she would find love again, live a long and happy life.

Phaeus tilted his face to God and said, “Say farewell to the last of Your holy soldiers.”

Yeah. Some holy soldier I was, I—

Hang on.

The Watcher drew the dagger back.

Holy soldier? Michael had referred to me in the same manner in Vero's Court.

Phaeus squeezed my throat harder and readied to thrust the knife forward.

“Holy soldier” was what my father had called me when we were on that cloud with all those candles. It was what he had told me to never forget—that I was a holy soldier. Buy why? How was that going to help me?

Ohhh…

Maybe I...

Hmm…

Finally, it clicked.

Four policemen raced into the cemetery and trained their flashlights and guns at Phaeus.

The Watcher only smiled at them, with his rusted knifepoint leveled at my throat.

“Drop it!” demanded one of the cops.

The dagger came at me.

I jammed my fingers into the hole in Phaeus's chest.

He froze, stunned, eyes wide.

Air pushed out of him, his strength depleting.

I rammed my fingers in deeper and Phaeus jolted with pain, back arching, body twitching, as if shocked by an electric current.

Puzzled, he gawped at the wound in his chest, how my fist was in it. How the gash in his breast was beginning to glow.

The knife fell from his grip, clanged to the earth.

He stammered, “But…but…”

Strings of smoke rose from the slot in his torso.

I balled my fist inside of Phaeus, grabbed onto his insides, and yanked him closer.

My eyes jabbed his. “Hey, Phaeus, riddle me this.”

The sun within him burned with more vigor. The white smoke thickened.

“If all soldiers are weapons, then tell me, what is a holy soldier?”

His jaw dropped, the answer all over his face.

“That's right!” I spat, and jerked him closer. Eye-to-eye with him now, I confirmed it. “A holy weapon!”

With that, I shoved him away, and Phaeus toppled to the dirt.

He squirmed and pitched and writhed as the blaze in his chest flamed brighter, flaring into the night sky like a searchlight.

The dazzling brilliance built and built until...

Phaeus exploded and was no more.

For the next few hours, I faded in and out of consciousness. I recalled the cops in the cemetery catching me as I collapsed into them. There was an ambulance. Fingers up my nose, palms straightening it. Needles in my arm and a mask on my face. Halogens above me speeding by as they whisked me through the hospital on a gurney. X-rays. Voices of concerned doctors...

Then nothing but blackness.

****

I awoke in a dark hospital room, dizzy and out of it. Could have been a dream. It was the middle of the night. The beat of my heart monitor made it seem real. Tubes flowed in and out of me like I was some weird science project. A clear plastic bag of liquid dripped into me through the needle taped to my arm. Murmuring of nurses in the hall. And Merryn curled up into a ball and sleeping on a chair in the corner.

I gazed at her, smiling, until the drugs knocked me out again.

****

A few hours, days or months later, I woke again, in the same dream or same reality.

This time, Merryn was grinning down at me. She kissed me on the forehead, then on my eye, nose, and lips. She squeezed my good hand with both of hers, a wet little crystal leaking from her eye.

It reminded me of something.

My own tears. The ones I'd spent on a big black man lying in the dirt, bloodied and beaten, amongst a sea of gravestones.

“Amos,” I whispered. “Is he really…dead?”

The bend of Merryn's lips and the lines on her brow told me it was true.

A tear slid down my temple and ducked behind my ear. My eyes closed and stayed that way for a night and a day.

“Look who's up.” It was a nurse. “How're you feeling?” She was grinning at me while giving me a sponge bath, cleaning my feet. It was a nice way to wake up.

What was less nice was the silver bolt sticking out of my right ankle, like it had been shot all the way through with a metal rod. Kind of cool. Literally cool. The cold steel, like ice, numbed my whole foot.

I answered, “Um, good, I guess.” My voice sounded weird. Muffled. I sent a hand to inspect my mouth and face.

“Broken jaw,” said the nurse as she finished drying my feet. “It's wired shut. Along with your sternum,” and she peeled down the covers at my neck to show me the long scar down the middle of my chest. “You'll want to keep that area clean.”

Merryn walked in with a Coke, caught me inspecting the latest scratch of my growing collection. She saw my lucid eyes light up and knew I'd made it all the way home.

“‘Bout time.” She grinned, rushed over, and strapped herself to me. Planted a long one on my lips.

My heart monitor doubled its pace.

We shared a good stare. Laughed. Studied each other's faces, a little nervous, not quite believing we were together again. Laughed some more and kissed some more while getting reacquainted after what had seemed like years apart.

She didn't press me for a play-by-play. Knew it was too soon.

After a while, Merryn the reporter turned into Merryn the doctor. Her eyes consulted the clipboard fixed to the bottom of my bed. She read out all the bones I'd broken, organs I'd damaged, pins and plates they'd put in me... Finished with, “In my professional opinion, without your loving girlfriend here to support you, you'd be dead.”

Dead.

Like somebody else.

“Have they buried him yet?”

Merryn shook her head. “Tomorrow. Noon.”

“I'm going.”

“Og, you can't even walk. The doctor said—”

“I'm going.”

****

Some things are too deep to share. Too painful. Too personal.

That's what Amos's death and funeral were for me.

To tell you about it would be like picking off the scab of a wound that was nowhere close to healed.

They laid him a couple of plots from my mother's.

Uncle Will told me they'd found his headstone in the work shed, already carved. Totally completed. By Amos himself. Even his dying date had been carved in.

An angel must have allowed him to witness his own death, prepare for it. Probably even showed him a glimpse of the glories that awaited him in Heaven, like the welcoming banquet that the saints and angels were cooking up for him, and how Lavender was so eagerly awaiting his arrival. Give the old guy something to look forward to. To inspire in him the stout bravery needed to carry him through the graveyard battle that had ultimately killed him.

I wondered if my father was the angel who had stood by Amos when he'd seen that vision.

Wondered why he had yet to visit his only son.

I got out of the hospital a few days before Christmas. Spent a total of eleven days in Saint Jude's—four days sleeping and seven days going through tests and physical therapy. As I said before, speedy healer.

Merryn presented me with an early Christmas gift—a staff-like walking stick to help me get around easier on my Frankenstein ankle with the bolts sticking out. The staff was cool. A gnarled tree branch, sanded smooth and varnished, that came up past my shoulder. I looked like Moses. Sans the long, white beard.

Christmas came. Merryn and I spoiled each other with gifts neither of us could afford. After Mass, Aunt Laurel made a grand feast of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, rolls, pumpkin pie, and a truckload of other foodstuffs. The happy occasion was tempered by the fact that this was the first Yule without my mother. I missed her hug and her kiss on my cheek, the melodic sound of her Merry Christmas. I ended the day with a visit to her grave, then Amos's.

Next day I told Merryn and her family all about what had happened in the cemetery. They listened without many questions, though I could tell Uncle Will was restraining himself from getting into the whole thing about the demotion of angels, holy relics having the ability to Pit, and the strange bear-beast.

Over a month went by without a word from Gadriel, the archangel Michael, Vero, or even any demonic or Fallen creature. The Committee hadn't revealed anything of importance. Whenever I dove in to see what was going on, I only got the shrieks, howls, and terrible sounds of demons doing whatever they did.

Wrestling season ended and I went to see Coach Burns. He wasn't pleased with me. Since I couldn't tell him the truth about how I'd gotten my injuries, I was sure he thought I'd joined a gang or something. Told him I didn't know if I could commit to wrestling next year. Of course he brought up the whole college schaahlarship thing again. But you know, when the opening of the Pit was at hand and you were the last of the Mighty, attending college suddenly lost its luster. Contrary to popular opinion, some things were actually more important than a college education. Faith and love, for example.

And public displays of affection.

Yeah, good ol' PDA.

During my time in the hospital and the weeks of rehab that followed, I'd had lots of time to muse about life.

Remember what I said earlier about Jesus's cross experience being His public display of affection for humanity? His death, the sacrifice of His life to cover our sins, was the main reason He was born. It was the one thing He did better than everything else—though rising from the dead was pretty cool, too.

I hope that we all have a knack for something. I pray that each of us find out what it is and then display it for everyone to see. PDA.

I had a flair for fighting. Just like my forebears. It was what I did best. For me, mixing it up with demons and their like was how I best displayed my affection for God and mankind. That was how I honored my Maker. Weird, huh?

The next day, I went to one of the dojos I used to frequent. I was healing well enough, though still only at about fifty percent. It felt good to hit the bag. Natural. Felt even better to spar with the sensei. Said he noticed an extra sting to my kicks. The steel rod in my right ankle was adding a little extra to each bash.

That same evening, my dad finally showed.