2: Attacking God

"This is it," Jack said, slamming the door of his van closed. All of our remaining explosives were inside—the remains of the original supply stolen by Mink Longfellow five years ago, and subsequently rigged up by Sidney Christmas. It would be, in a way, the end of a legacy. And where we would be getting such material in the future—with the world on watch for any sort of suspicious activity—was a mystery, as of yet. But Jack was confident. Jack was eternally confident.

Or perhaps just good at pretending.

We were standing on the edge of something great, now, and we would either move forward, up, and conquer the summit of the mountain, or we would lose our grip completely and fall back down the slope. No one knew if this meant certain death or not. But that possibility seemed quite likely.

Jack was right, though, either way—if we wanted to truly destroy Devas, we had to first uproot the foundations of their belief in peace and lover everlasting. Attacking them outright had not worked. Even attacking their children had affected them very little. The only option left to us was to destroy the very core of their spirit. If this didn't work, what else would?

Still, it frightened me a bit, and Jack noticed.

"We won't get caught," he reassured me, answering a question that had never been asked.

"I… I know. It'll work out just like it did last time. Sneak in in groups, go to the catacombs… You explained it."

"So what's wrong?"

"It's just…" I sighed, and leaned back against his car, trying to figure out what was wrong. "There are so many things we've never gotten answers to, Jack," I said finally. "Who are Sachever and Airial, really? Why is the Temple protecting them?—specifically them? What is Gaudium Gladius, and where did it came from? And Gemma, who is she? What is she? …I just can't help but feel that if we destroy the Temple now, we'll never know at all."

Jack stared at me for a moment in an eerie way—as though he was taking me apart piece by piece and deciding what I was really worth to him, if anything at all.

"Why will it matter?" he asked, finally, and I bit my lip. "If we succeed," he continued, " They'll be dead. We'll get rid of them, Lory. We'll destroy the Temple. Then there will be no more questions." He grinned. "No more problems."

"I don't know," I said.

"Don't know about what?" he asked skeptically, brushing past me and heading toward the house.

"No more problems?" I asked, hurrying across the driveway after him. "I… I don't believe that."

He stopped on the top step of the porch and looked down at me.

"What?" he asked

"Jack, there are so many of them, and so few of us. How can we possibly change things, when so many of our own kind are against us?"

"They're brainwashed," he grunted, turning away again, to the house.

"I know that!" I cried, and he stopped. "But it doesn't change the fact that they exist. What can we do?"

"Lory," he said, turning around and smiling slightly, tone reproachful—like I was a child who had asked some silly question that amused him. "That's one of the things I've never liked about you. …Or been able to break you of, either." He shook his head, and I stared up at him.

"What, Jack?" I asked, disappointed with myself for having let him down in whatever way I had.

He reached out, and put his hand on my shoulder.

"You think too small, my friend," he said. "You're not putting enough faith in us. In me."

"No, I am, Jack," I protested. "I trust you completely—in your plan."

"You never give us enough credit, Lory. Never! You remember what Airial said? She said she can feel where we are because what we're doing twists the Shekinah. Warps it. We're warping the Shekinah, Lory. Us. We're not a rag-tag group of rebels on the margins of society. What we're doing is real. We're twisting the Shekinah. And if we're twisting it, then we can destroy it."

"It's just—"

"Just nothing! Lory if we can destroy the Temple, then why stop there? If we can destroy the Temple, then we'll know that the universe is on our side—that we're restoring world order. And then… We'll get rid of them all!" he cried, suddenly passionate. "Devas and infidels to our cause alike!" His voice rang out through the still winter air with a strange clarity. It was as though he was the only person in the universe saying anything that mattered—or saying anything at all.

"Lory," he said to me. "You've got to believe. There's nothing to be nervous about—can't you see that? Can't you trust me when I tell you that? I know there's nothing to worry about, because we're right. The majority may not side with us—but what does that mean?" he asked feverishly. His eyes shone, danced with the passion of what he was saying, and I was caught in that—a deer in headlights, a moth to a candle. "The majority never believe, until after the revolution has passed. History has proved that, Lory. Proved it! History is on our side. The laws of nature are on our side. They're not creatures of nature, Lory. They're creatures made by man, and they could not exist without us. They could not exist without Animal hands to build their Reproduction Clinics, and they would never have existed at all, was it not for some twisted, human soul who desired perfection so much that he built them up on top of all of man's failures! Lory, the whole universe and all of creation are on our side, because there can be no such thing as complete peace. Haven't you heard? Repressing anger is unhealthy. Living in constant light is unhealthy. If the day lasted twenty-four hours, nothing could grow—we need the night. And it's the same thing with this… this peace we've had for hundreds of years. Nothing can move forward if the world knows only peace. We need strife, and destruction, if only so that we can advance and grow. And love? …Love doesn't even exist," he finished, turning away, toward the house, in disgust. "I know that now."

"You're right, Jack," I mumbled.

"I know I am. …We're going to change the world today, Lory. Get ready. We'll leave in fifteen minutes. Go make sure Arthur and Kit and Holiday are ready."

"Yes, Jack," I said. He went into the house. I looked back at his van, still a bit nervous. I didn't want to be nervous. I didn't want to upset Jack, or seem disloyal. It was just that, talking about this… It gave me such a strange feeling. It was like talking about Gemma—just mentioning her made me feel as though she could know my every thought, made me feel as if she was everywhere, listening. Like she was watching. And laughing. That wasn't the feeling that I got now, though. This felt like being watched, or judged maybe. Everything—the trees, the wind, the snow, the stream—was holding its breath, still, peering at us intently, and waiting to see what the outcome would be this time.

I turned away from the van and went back inside the house. A group of the Newly Dead were clustered around the TV like usual. A few were in the kitchen, still lingering over dinner. …It all looked too normal. Normal for us, anyhow—no one else could have looked at this motley collection of teenagers before me and thought it normal that they lived together, worked together, and were trying to revolutionize the world—or perhaps undo someone else's revolution.

I sighed, and trudged up the stairs to find Arthur, Holiday, and Kit. They were the oldest of the Newly Dead, and based on this fact they were accompanying us to the Temple. I found the three of them sitting on the floor in the girls' room, talking quietly.

"Ready to go?" I asked, and all three looked up at me without saying anything, and I felt sure that whatever it was that I was feeling, they were feeling it, too. For a moment this comforted me—I wasn't alone. I wasn't crazy. But almost immediately this feeling was gone again, replaced by a sudden anger. They didn't trust Jack. They didn't believe that he'd get us through this. It was… almost disloyalty. And if they were going to be like that, then I'd have to be twice as loyal to make up for it. Twice as trusting. Someone had to be.

"What are you waiting for?" I snapped. "Come on." As they started to get up I turned on my heel and went down the hallway to my own bedroom one last time. I closed the door behind myself and leaned against it, looking around at all of the familiar things. Cluttered dresser. The view of the forest behind the house out my window. My open closet doors—doors that I'd once hidden Gaudium Gladius behind. Now it just held faded clothes. …I hadn't bothered to make my bed, either—and in fact, I'd never given Sidney back his sheets. Mine—the ones that Thistle and I had shared—were still down in the laundry room. I didn't want them. It felt wrong, and it wasn't as though Sidney needed his back any time soon. Any time at all. I bit my lip, thinking about him. Would I end up like that by the end of the night? With a silver sword run through my breast? Would my body be reduced to dust by its light? …And what would that feel like, if I wasn't dead yet when it happened? I tried to imagine—tried to remember what it had felt like when Gaudium Gladius bit through my palm, and tried to multiply it a hundred times, a thousand, until it didn't just cut, it disintegrated, it reduced a living organism into tiny grains of sand, it burned, it moved… Like lightning.

After a last moment of contemplation of this and my bedroom, I forced myself to move, to grab my watch off the dresser. I went back downstairs. Jack was waiting with Arthur, Holiday and Kit. He looked up at me and tapped his watch.

"8:24?" he asked.

I looked at my own time-piece.

"8:24," I confirmed.

"Good," he said, turning back to the group. "All of you, in case anything happens… Know that I'm going to detonate at midnight. Even if we get separated for some reason. I'll have to do it, even if I don't know that you're out. So make sure that you are. …At midnight we change the world."

In his eyes, by the set of his face, his jaw, I could tell that he believed it. He wasn't saying it to keep me from being nervous—or to keep himself from being nervous, either. He wasn't saying it to convince me that this wasn't about revenge. It wasn't about revenge. Jack was going to change the world.

And he was letting me go with him.

"All right," I said, smiling and descending the stairs. "Midnight. And then the tide turns."

He smiled back at me.

"Right, Lory," he said. "The tide'll turn, and drag the flotsam back to sea with it. The world will be ours. The world will rejoice."

But the Newly Dead still has some reservations of their own.

Not that they expressed them explicitly—but it was one of those long car rides where no one says a word, and the silence edges into the realm of the awkward. But the conversation is even more uncomfortable.

"Okay," Jack started conversationally, about fifteen minutes into the drive. "What's the deal here? Are you all that scared of the Temple, or are these just normal pre-mission jitters? It sure as hell doesn’t feel to me like they are."

There was another long moment of silence. Nobody answered.

"What?" Jack asked. "Am I invisible now? Come on. Is the Temple that big and scary? Should I just turn around now and take all you pussies home?"

"No," Arthur said vehemently. "It's just that… Jack, it's a Temple."

"So? So what? Are you scared of priests and priestesses? What're they going to do, Artie? They gonna love you to death? We've got knives. Explosives. They have the Shekinah."

"But that's just it!" Arthur exploded. "They have the Shekinah!"

Jack scowled ahead at the road for a moment.

"So what?" he finally asked. "It's… it's just an energy line. You can't touch it. They can't use it against us."

"But they can. That girl—you said she said Gaudium Gladius is the power of the Shekinah made manifest. I've heard all about what it can do. It sounds real enough."

"But it's not complete!" Jack growled. "We have a piece. Don't you think that gives us… some kind of edge?"

"But do you know what it does?"

"No. But neither do Sachever and Airial, I think. And as long as they think we have some kind of power over them… Well, the fight's half mental. We have an edge."

"Right," Arthur said. "An edge. An edge we could cut our own throats with. We're still blowing up a Temple."

"And I repeat… You got a problem with that, I can take you home. You can leave."

"Doesn't it feel dangerously close to attacking God, to you?" Arthur demanded. Something about the way he said it made my breath catch in my throat—like this was the thing that had been haunting me all day.

"Attacking God?" Jack repeated.

"Maybe not the God. But a god," Arthur muttered. "Someone's god. …We don't have any hope of winning against a god, Jack! I've heard fairy tales where people try to attack gods. Myths. Before, I never thought they could have any truth to them. They were just myths, you know? Just stories. But now… I don't know. People who attack gods… They lose. Every time."

For a moment, the car was silent, and I thought about the possibilities of this. Thought about gods—gods who had abandoned me early on, and gods who had perhaps saved my life, in car accidents for example.

"Unless the god is evil," Jack said lowly, after a time.

"Evil?" Arthur repeated.

"Yes, evil," Jack replied more loudly. "People defeat evil gods all the time—you can always outsmart them, when right is on your side."

"But… How do we know that this god is evil?" Arthur asked.

Jack didn't respond—it was as though he hadn't heard Arthur speak.

"Jack—" the boy started again after a moment.

"We're not evil," Jack interrupted.

"O-of course not," Arthur said.

"So? There's your answer, right there! If we're not evil, then they must be. We're good, they're evil. We're right, they're wrong. That's how it is. You can't have it both ways. It's that simple."

"…Is it?"

"Yes," Jack replied without hesitation. "It's that simple."

"We're good, they're not?"

"Exactly. …And someone always defeats evil gods."

"So it might as well be us," Arthur said. He didn't sound convinced.

"You got it," Jack replied smugly.

"And if we don't do it," I added softly, "No one will."

Jack glanced over at me and smiled.

"That's true, too," he said. "We can't let that happen. We're going to succeed. We have to."

"We shouldn't have to worry," Arthur muttered. "If evil gods always lose, it'll happen for us."

"It will, at that," Jack replied, laughing. "But we still have to show up." He looked over at me again, grinning. "Right, Lory?"

"Of course, Jack," I replied.

"There's no going back, now," he said.

"We're following you, Jack," I said. "We know."

"Yeah," Arthur said after a moment. "We know."

Holiday and Kit murmured their agreement.

"But you've always known that," Jack said.

"We have," I agreed.

"But you're still following me," he said.

"Still following," I echoed.

"Until the bitter, bleeding end?"

"Yes."

He laughed.

"I'll thank you later," he said. "After it's over."

And I believed him. Just like always.

The Temple loomed before us like a tombstone jutting out of the ground, more intimidating than I had believed it would be. For Jack's sake I tried not to be nervous. That, and once we were inside I didn't want any priests or priestesses still awake to feel my worry.

"Okay," Jack said, pulling into the parking lot in front of the Temple—the only car there. The only thing moving. The Temple was watching.

"Okay," he repeated. "Getting in the front door shouldn't be a problem. Last time I was here, I looked. There weren't any alarms. The staff live in back. They shouldn't hear us."

He turned to face the back seat and looked at the Newly Dead.

"But still… be quiet. Be careful." He glanced at me. "Lory, you and Arthur take half, and me and Holiday and Kit'll take half. …Be careful. You take the North end of the building, we'll take the South end. Don't put a lot in there. I think we want to concentrate on blowing out the catacombs. Let's meet down there at 11 o'clock—how about at the tomb of the man who found Gaudium Gladius? For irony's sake, of course—right Lory?"

"Yes, of course," I said, privately wondering how he could think of irony when so much was at stake.

"Then we'll leave explosives all over, down there. By columns, in tombs. At midnight, we'll blow the whole thing out. It'll collapse onto itself. Sink into the earth. A fitting end, wouldn't you say? …I'm talking too much. Let's do it." He started to move, then stopped.

"Oh, one last thing," he said. "Sachever? You see him, you kill him. I don't care how. Get the sword. Don't let it scare you. …'Cause, remember—I've got the missing piece." His eyes danced. "I've got what makes it whole. We'll show him love." Jack grinned at us once more, and then jumped out of the van. The rest of us followed, and then stood around the open trunk, hands in pockets or under arms to keep away the cold while he parceled out what remained of our explosives. The amount looked frighteningly small, and I wondered if it would be enough to do any real damage. …I wished Sidney were here. He would know. Also, I wished Thistle were here—for no reason other than that I missed her. Just thinking about it made my arms ache to hold her, and so instead I focused on how sweet it would be to destroy Sachever. Sachever had killed Sidney. I tried to imagine that Sachever had been the one who pulled the trigger that had ended Thistle's life. It didn't work. Scarred onto my mind was Jack pulling the trigger, Jack walking away from it alive, and Jack telling me that she was a traitor. Sachever believed in love. …Mutinous thoughts. Could Devas feel mutinous thoughts? Could Airial feel us even now, twisting the Shekinah?

"Here," Jack said, shoving a paper bag stuffed with explosives at me and grinning.

"Th-thank you," I mumbled. He just looked at me, scrutinized me—could he tell what I was thinking about?

"Well, don't thank me," he said. "Just go! Get in the door!"

The door was not locked.

It was with hesitance that Arthur and I went inside the dark building. It was too easy, too much like some kind of trap. Nonetheless, we did go inside, and once again I was awed by the high arched ceilings, the interior columns, the beauty and energy of it—even if it was built by the hands of my enemy.

"Well?" Jack hissed at us, following us inside with Holiday and Kit at his heels. "What're you waiting for? We haven't got all night. Don't gawk. Destroy." And then he was off, down the hallway, walking quickly.

"Jack," I called after him nervously, hearing my own voice echo off of the ceiling. "The door wasn't locked."

He turned around, face blank, and looked at me. He blinked. After a second, he spoke:

"It's a sign, Lory. I told you—evil gods. We're going to win."

And then the darkness swallowed him.

Arthur and I met eyes, and then turned and went off in the assigned direction without a word. …And, in fact, that was how we spent most of our time upstairs—in silence, placing explosives carefully in beautiful, ornately decorated rooms. It didn't feel right. I couldn't understand. Hoffman's house had felt right—and he had been just as much a Deva, and his house just as beautiful as this. What was the difference?

And there was another key thing missing from our silent tour of the Temple—Sachever. He and Airial never turned up to thwart our plans. I was left wondering where exactly they lived in the Temple. How could they not know what we were doing?—especially this time. This was surely the most ambitious plan we had yet tried to carry out.

"Do you suppose," Arthur wondered as we neared the end of our task, " Jack and the others are all right? And then he added, as if reading my mind, "What if they ran into Sachever and Airial?"

Just as he finished saying it, before I could even begin to formulate a reply, an explosion from the opposite end of the Temple shook the walls around us.

"Shit," Arthur said. I stood staring at him for a moment, unsure of what to do. What had happened? It had been too small of an explosion to indicate that something had happened to detonate one of Jack's half of the explosives—but at the same time, too big to make me think that more than a few had gone off. But what other explanation could there be?

"Let's go find them," I said, finally. Arthur nodded and we took off, running back through the silent building, trying to find Jack or Kit or Holiday or anyone at all, and not succeeding. The high-ceiling halls, the meditation chambers, everything was empty and quiet in the wake of the explosion. We ended up with no choice but to go to the catacombs, and hope that they were there, and whole.

"They've got to be in the catacombs," Arthur panted out behind me.

No damn kidding, I felt like saying back, but I restrained myself—instead pushed through the door that led to the visitor's center, because that was the only way I knew of to get to the catacombs. The annoying tape in the visitor's center, I noticed, was off. No meditations on the beauty of the Shekinah, just dead silence. …But not literally dead, I hoped.

I threw open the door at the end of the visitor's center and flew down the stairs. I heard Arthur behind me. It smelled dank—worse than I remembered, like old standing water and mildew and disuse. For a brief second I thought I could hear running water, and I expected the floor's flagstones to be slippery wet where my feet landed on them, but they were dry as bone. And the tombs were quiet.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, so quickly that Arthur nearly ran into me.

"Jack!" I yelled, not really wanting to go further without some reassurance that my leader was inside. "Jack!"

There was an echo—my own voice reverberating like the bleating of a lost lamb—and then silence, and then:

"Lory? Lory! We're down here!" The voice was Jack's, muffled by distance, but probably unharmed. And most definitely Jack's. Arthur and I immediately took off running once again. I knew where Jack was—at that man's tomb. He was with the man who had found the sword that could yet prove to be our downfall.

Arthur and I followed twists and turns in the path, along the route from my memory, deeper and deeper into the ground, until there were no more tapestries hung on the walls, no more places where new stones had been laid, no warmth from the upstairs heater, and where the sound of water that I'd imagined earlier had become strangely, inexplicably real. Water dripped down the walls. But the tomb I remembered with the wooden door was not there, where I thought it ought to be. Arthur and I met only a dead end.

"Jack!" I yelled again, stopping just in front of that final stone wall before us.

"Down here," came his slightly perturbed reply—from a completely different direction than I had imagined it would come from, and so far away.

"Keep talking, Jack!" I choked out, starting to run again toward the sound. "Where are you?"

"Right here!" Closer now. Closer than was possible, given the short distance that we had covered in those seconds. We took a left, and found ourselves back on one of the catacomb's main arteries.

"Jack!" I yelled again.

"Hurry up, damn you!" He was angry—but scared, too. Scared of what?

Another turn in the hallway, and then a right, and there were Jack, Holiday and Kit, standing before the tomb we'd arranged to meet at. Or, anyway, what was left of it.

"What… what happened?" I gasped, both out of breath and shocked. It appeared that the wall had collapsed, or had been blown out from the inside. The large square stones of the walls littered the floor of the hallway, and Jack and the Newly Dead stood among them now, staring into whatever remained of the tomb. The door—that huge, carved thing that could crush the life out of any man it should happen to fall upon—also lay on the floor of the hall, a fallen guard.

"What happened?" Jack repeated. "Good question. …The door wouldn't open. I was going to blow it open—you know, just light the fuse on an eight—but just as I was about to… Well, that thing we have. That disk. It got really hot, so I took it out of my pocket, and this happened. I was behind the door, so nothing hit me, but then it started to fall…" He trailed off, then looked to me for a second, then back to the tomb. "And now, this."

I approached warily, picking my way around stones, to see what they were looking at. I got to the edge of where the wall had collapsed, and that was when I realized how light it was—far lighter than the meager candles that I remembered being in the tomb before should have allowed. I peered into the room and drew in a sharp breath. There it was. The answer to all of our problems.

Gaudium Gladius.

It was stuck by its hilt into the hands of the engraved man on the sarcophagus's lid, and it was glowing softly, less the harsh, avenging light of the sun—as when Sachever attacked with it—than the healing, quiet silver of the moon.

Suddenly, beside me, Jack laughed.

"So it's been here all along!" he said, moving jerkily forward into the tomb, arms open as if he were going to embrace the sword, or the dead man himself. As if hypnotized, we all followed him into the tomb, out of the drafty hallway.

"I told you, Lory, didn't I?" he asked without turning, without taking his eyes off of the blade. "I told you all our problems would be solved once we came to the Temple."

"You think it's that easy, do you?" asked a voice behind us, a woman's voice—rich, warm, caring, and yet the tone was utterly apathetic.

We turned to face her as one, and I gasped—the woman from my nightmare, my hallucination, and my first instinct, my only instinct, was to run. To get away. And the sweet, sickening smell of gardenias and decay unfurled into the room like a carpet of petals before her feet.

"Who—" Jack started to ask, tone contemptuous, but she interrupted him.

"When Sachever found this sword, it was the beginning of his journey. The start of his questions—not the end."

"How do you know Sachever?" Jack asked.

"Jack—" I started to say, to warn him, but her eyes snapped from him to me. She didn't look angry, but it was enough to shut me up.

"I know a great many people," she said civilly, eyes drifting back over to Jack.

"Don't we all, lady," Jack said. "Look, I want you to tell me who you are, and what the hell you're doin' here, before things get nasty."

"Things are already quite nasty enough, thanks," she said laughingly.

"You a priestess?" he asked. "Did you come to bust this up? To try and save your temple?"

"My temple," she repeated. "Interesting word choice."

"What the—" Jack started, but the woman interrupted him with a wave of her hand. In the other hand she held—suddenly—a chocolate bar. She held it up, and the light caught the foil wrapper and made it glimmer like a jewel.

"You like chocolate, Jack?" she asked. He shot a look at me—like this was somehow my fault. He didn't understand who this was, that much was clear. I tried to communicate it to him—through our eyes. I tried to send it to him mentally. He looked away from me.

"I like chocolate," she continued, unwrapping it. She took a step forward, and then past the ruined door and down the few steps into the tomb. The Newly Dead parted to let her by with a sizable space bubble.

"It's one of my very favorites," she continued. She was in front of Jack, now—nearly in his face, and he looked none too happy about it.

"And that's why I hate it," she said, "When someone steals it from me. When someone steals anything from me."

She reached around Jack, set the chocolate bar on the sarcophagus behind him. His expression remained stony.

"You've stolen two things from me, now," she said. "The chocolate bar you can't give back, obviously." She glanced over at me and smiled before meeting Jack's eyes again. "The second thing you've stolen more from Sachever than myself. It's to him that you'll have to owe up. Or perhaps vice versa. One can never really be sure of the outcome of such things." She laughed, and wandered off to the right, toward the altar to the Shekinah at the end of the room. Dead flowers littered the top, and she fingered them idly. "And there is," she said, "a third thing that you're taking away from me. Perhaps that's not quite right. You're taking away my invention—but from a group of people who are not mine." She looked up, smiled. Smiled directly at me. "A group of people who are," she continued, "yours."

"Who the hell are you?" Jack exploded, apparently no longer able to hold back his frustration.

She ignored him.

"You have taken from me," she said, stepping away from the altar, and trailing her long rosy fingers along the edge of the sarcophagus. "And yet, once upon a time—who isn't fond of that beginning? Once upon a time, you took pity upon an old woman." She was back up the stairs again, now. "You gave me your coat, Jack Dandy," she said, smiling.

His jaw dropped.

"Some of my favorites," she said, "In fact, most of my favorites, believe strongly in good and evil. …But it's just not that easy, my darlings." She laughed again. "And so the stage is set. Remember—give your best performance tonight. I'll be in the audience."

And then she was gone. There were no special effects—no smoke, no feathers in the air. She just stopped being there.

I turned to look at Jack, and he looked back at me, shocked. I tried to think of something to say—something to make sense of all of this, but nothing came. What could make sense of this all? And then, behind Jack, a glimmer caught my eye—the foil of the candy wrapper. It was still there. …She was that real, at least.

And behind that, something else glimmered.

"The sword," Jack murmured, turning to it. "Gaudium Gladius."

He turned toward it like a flower to the sun, reaching for it. Suddenly, from his jacket pocket, a second light began to shine. It was brighter than the sword, and he—still staring at Gaudium Gladius—absently put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the disk that belonged in the hilt of the sword, at its heart.

"It's warm," he said, and I remembered what had happened to me when I'd touched it. …But then again, she'd already been here once, hadn't she?

He looked down at the disk.

"I wonder… Is there a reason this piece wasn't in the sword? Was it taken out intentionally?"

He smiled down at it.

"I wonder why." He laughed, and wrapped his hand back around the disk. Light spilled through his fingers, turned pink from his flesh, his blood.

"I guess," he said, "we'll just have to find out."

He raised his hand so that it was level with Gaudium Gladius's hilt, and he opened his fingers again.

"The Arm of the Shekinah," he said, as the light poured out. The disk's light pulsed, now—a heartbeat—and after a second, Gaudium Gladius's own light pulsed to match.

"You're mine," Jack said.

And then, from down the hall there was the sound of feet hitting the stone floor. Running. Two people. Gaudium Gladius and the disk stopped glowing as Sachever and Airial appeared in front of the ruined door. Sachever looked around, shocked.

"What have you done?" he asked. "Defiling a tomb? Defiling a Temple?"

We didn't do it, I thought—wanted to say. But didn't.

"A tomb?" Jack asked. "Why would you care?" He patted the sarcophagus. "He doesn't care. He's dead. …and the Temple? Why should you care about that, either? You can't feel the Shekinah. How do you even know it exists?"

"That's not the point!" Airial said. "Whether it was a Temple or a hotel or an orphanage—they've been good to us, here! They took us in and cared for us. They showed us love."

"Because they believed you were part of some prophecy," Jack sneered. "There is no other reason. You're fooling yourself, if you think otherwise."

"The only one who's being fooled is you!" Sachever cried.

"Yeah?" Jack laughed. He held up the disk for Sachever to see. "Don't know who'd be fooling me. I make up my own mind about things. And this… I've made up my mind that this is an important little piece of finery. Maybe you'll agree that I'm not fooling myself over that."

"Where… Where did you get that?" Sachever stammered.

"It fell right into my hands," Jack said. "Lucky, isn't it? And with this word," he said, "with this power, I'll take over the world."

"You… you can't do that!" Sachever said.

"Why not?" Jack asked. "You gonna stop me? How you gonna stop me? With your sword? Oh, wait. It's right here." Jack laughed. He turned toward the sarcophagus, and with his free hand he reached out and encircled the hilt of the sword. He pulled, and with a sickening scraping noise, the sword came free.

"No," Sachever said, stunned. He shook his head. "No. That's… that's my sword," he said.

"Guess not, buddy," Jack laughed.

"It called to me."

Jack swung it a few times.

"Maybe it was bored," he said. "I know I'm getting bored. Whaddya say, Lory? Should we see what happens when you make the sword whole, or should we blow this place to smithereens, first?"

"Let's get out of here, Jack," I said.

"No," Sachever said, stepping forward, down the tomb's stairs. "You can't just take it away. It's my sword. It… it won't let you!" He took a few more steps forward, toward Jack. "I won't let you."

"You're defenseless," Jack sneered. "Looks like the sword isn't just yours, after all." He turned to me. "Guess Magdalena was wrong." He laughed. Laughed in Sachever's face. "Looks like you're nothing special after all. You're nothing at all without your little sword. Just some stupid, Deva-loving brat." Before anyone had time to realize what he was doing, Jack had rushed forward and hit Sachever in the temple with the hilt of the sword.

Sachever, surprised, staggered to the side.

"And I hate Deva-loving brats like you," Jack said, and went at him again.

"Sachever!" Airial shrieked, but to no effect. Again Jack nailed him squarely, and again Sachever reeled away—not attacking back, barely even on the defensive. He staggered, fell backwards, and caught himself against the altar, sending the flowers flying.

"Sachever, no!" Airial shrieked again. "You leave him alone!" she cried, running forward, toward Jack.

"Kit, grab her!" he instructed, and Kit and Holiday both were on her immediately, holding her back despite her kicking them and flailing her arms. Arthur took off his belt and did up her hands, and Kit did the same to her feet. By the time they finished, she was completely incapacitated, and they set her on the floor. Jack laughed.

"Sachever!" Airial continued to yell. "Sachever! Fight!"

"You mean…" Sachever asked, finally recovering enough to look up, and ignoring Airial's pleas in favor of Jack's insults, "I'm not anything special? This isn't my destiny? I really am just a normal human boy? Abandoned at birth—not for some higher purpose, but just because my parents didn't want me?"

"That's about it," Jack said cheerfully, turning to the sarcophagus again.

"No…" Sachever muttered.

"Oh, yes," Jack said. He struck Sachever again. The boy's eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped to the ground.

"Jack," I said, sensing that this would be a good time to leave, and get rid of them all—with Sachever unconscious and Airial tied up, how could they get out? "It should be near midnight by now, shouldn't it? Let's go. Before something else happens."

"No, no," Jack said. "Now that Sachever there has finally realized the truth—that he's only human, like his Deva 'friends' keep trying to remind him—I want him to see what the sword does, when it's whole. I want him to see me wield its power. I want it to be me who avenges Sidney. Personally. Dying in an explosion's not good enough."

"You're cruel," Airial said, bursting into tears. "Cruel."

"Don't worry, baby," Jack said. "You'll be the second one to go."

"Jack," I said. "Are you sure about this?"

He glared at me.

"This is what we've been waiting for, Lory. I'm going to do it."

"But Jack," I insisted, taking a step toward him. I wanted to leave—to get out of this tomb. This whole place, this whole Temple was just a giant tomb, built on top of the ruins of another church and another religion, and another human desire to make sense of a world that has none. And the walls were closing in. "What about Gemma? She was here. Let's leave," I pleaded, despite the critical look he gave me, "before she comes back."

He backhanded me.

"J-Jack?" I asked, unsure of what I'd done, and feeling the burn of his knuckles across my cheekbone.

"I'm sick of it, Lory. You never trust me. You never trust that things are gonna happen for us. It's not going to hurt you. I promise. This sword will bring us nothing but joy."

"But Jack," I protested. "Gemma—"

"Shut up!" he yelled. Unconsciously, I felt myself cower a little.

He laughed.

"That's right, Lory. Tremble. At my feet. Be the first."

I've always been the first, I thought deliriously. He was scaring me—the glint in his eye, the way he waved Gaudium Gladius as he spoke. Behind him, behind Kit and Holiday, Sachever twitched, moved a little.

"Before long," Jack laughed, continuing to wave the sword. He held up the disk. "The world will join you."

"You… Jack, you can't do this," Arthur said suddenly, stepping forward.

"Oh, can't I?" he asked. "Why not?"

"Because it is his sword," Arthur said desperately. "You know it is. It's not glowing for you. It wouldn't at the house. You don't know what will happen when it's complete. Listen to Lory—please. Let's go. It could destroy you."

"Are you saying I'm not strong enough for it?" Jack demanded. "Are you saying that I can't handle it?"

"No!" Arthur said—but before he could finish that thought, Jack leapt forward and swung Gaudium Gladius.

It wasn't like Sidney's death. There was no light, only the sickening sound of metal on flesh, and then Arthur's head fell forward at a disgusting, unnatural angle, hanging limply on his partially severed neck, face expressionless. His body pitched forward, and lay there, bleeding. I felt my eyes bug out, and saw Kit and Holiday's do the same, but said nothing. Airial burst into tears anew.

"No dissenters," Jack said. "There are too many of them in the world already." He turned to me and grinned, as if I should appreciate what he'd just done. As if I should agree with it. "Right, Lory?" he asked.

And I nodded. I nodded, even though I was sickened by the sight of Arthur's blood. Behind Jack, Sachever stirred again, sat up moaning. Jack turned.

"Ah," he said. "Just in time to see the show, Sachever."

"The show?" he asked dazedly.

"From what I hear," Jack said, "It will be impressive." He regarded the disk solemnly for a moment, and then the hilt of the sword. He smiled.

"Please," Airial begged. "you could destroy us all. It will channel the full power of the Shekinah. It's too strong for one person—Sachever and I, we do it together, and that's how it works."

"Not this time, little girl," Jack said. And then he put them together—no ceremony, no reverence. He just shoved the disk roughly into the empty space on the hilt of the sword.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the disk slowly turned, making a clicking noise like the sound of a clock being wound. It stopped. For a second, there was silence, and I held my breath, waiting for the end.

Then it came.