24. WEN

It’s over. It’s over.

The mantra buzzes in my mind like a beehive gone mad. Quakes in my body and being, like the stomping feet of an uncaring god.

It’s over.

“It’s not over, Wen.”

I realize I whispered it out loud as Lorcan curls one hand around my arm, the other over my jaw.

How dare he lie to me? Or try to stop me from suffering? From shattering?

I wrench away, but it’s like trying to yank out of a steel vise.

It’s him who lets me go, probably afraid I’d tear my own arm off to escape him. Or that I’d crumble in his grip.

But I’ve crumbled inside. And there’s no putting the fragments back together.

The world teeters as I swing around and run, no longer feeling the ground beneath my feet. I feel nothing but the brand in my heart. His brand.

I feel it in the same place where his tattoo is—was. I’ve been feeling it more every day, as if it’s scorching its way up from inside me. It got to the point where I started examining my chest daily, to see if it has etched itself on my skin yet.

Now I wish it would ignite, and burn me to ashes, just so this pain would end. I wish I can just disappear, like he did. Even if Lucifer beams me back to his exile, and keep me prisoner with him for eternity. Or if the void consumes me, make me a part of it, so I could never resurface.

Because Godric is no longer there to pull me back.

A gust of wind rushes in my hair and makes me stumble, then Lorcan is in front of me.

“Listen to me, will you? I?—”

Unable to hear his empty platitudes, I yell, “Get out of my way!”

“Not before you hear what I have to say. You’re jumping to conclusions?—”

“Did you find him?” My hiss interrupts him, the red-hot brand in my heart freezing under a hail of cold finality, setting it into a smoking, charred scar.

“No, but…”

“Did you find any trace of him?”

“No. But let me explain. Look at me, Wen.”

I’ve been avoiding that. Because I know what I’d see.

As the others catch up with us, I raise my eyes. And I do see it. All of it.

Their Life Essences. A conflagration of variety and vitality. And I want to yank it all out, drop them all at my feet, and out of my way.

The one thing that stops me is Sarah. Her pain, for me, cleaves into my heart, and blows away the madness eating at it.

If I lose control, she will be punished. As my friend, as my Unitas. Even if she isn’t, I’d be taken away, or I’d be struck down. Then I’d be leaving her alone in this world. A world that’s far worse than her unsuspecting heart could ever imagine.

I squeeze my eyes against the maddening beauty and temptation of their Life Essence. Especially hers. It’s beyond any of theirs, a universe of necessity and transcendence, and it’s irresistible …

Why did you leave me, Godric? How could you? When you know I can’t do any of this without you?

Gentleness contains me, smothering my inner laments. It’s Sarah. Taking me into her arms, offering me the bottomless well of her unconditional love.

I can’t have her near me right now. It’s no longer just the void I fear. I now fear myself. And her worry and compassion are like accelerants, to the shame and guilt. To the hunger.

I push out of her embrace, turning my back on her, so I don’t see the confusion and hurt in her eyes, or the perfect storm of her being.

“I’ll take it from here,” Lorcan says. “You can all leave.”

“No, we can’t,” Gideon snarls. “You’re the one who gave her a panic attack.”

“I said leave.”

Something in Lorcan’s deep voice forces me to look at him. I can no longer see his Life Essence, making it less painful to look at him. But it’s his eyes that make my thudding heart drop a few beats.

They are like lava gushing out from an ocean floor, roiling with what I once glimpsed when I captured his Angel Essence, and tasted his blood. The fathoms of darkness and danger, the drowning depths within this Mr. Nice Guy of Monsters.

Gideon holds his gaze, his own eyes igniting with equal menace. And for the first time I see the history between them, almost as thorny and bitter as Gideon’s with Godric.

Gideon is the one who looks away first, and exchanges a glance with Tory. She nods, already turning away.

Seems Lorcan was accurate when he said the Nephilim are deadly serious, sometimes literally, about chain of command. Nothing less would have made Gideon relinquish me to him.

Without warning, and certainly without permission, Gideon sweeps Sarah off her feet and into his arms. She barely has a moment to send me a frazzled, pleading glance before the two archangelspawn shoot up in the air. I watch them recede in the distance, vaguely realizing they walked us here only to discuss my Null status.

Lorcan exhales, drawing my focus back to him. “To answer your questions, no, I didn’t find him, or his trace. But that doesn’t mean anything, Wen. This is Godric we’re talking about. Among so many things, some I know, some I suspect, and some I hope to never find out, he’s the realms’ leading assassin. If he wants to disappear, no one can find him.”

“What could have possibly made him want to disappear?” I wail. “Now of all times, when I need him most?”

And after I showed him that I need him for more than his powers and prowess? That I just need him?

Maybe he didn’t understand that. Couldn’t fathom, like his family, that anyone could need or want him for himself. Could feel anything at all for him, beyond base or violent emotions.

He probably doesn’t know what being needed and wanted at all feels like, let alone for what he is, the magnificent and the monstrous.

Could this be the explanation, if he disappeared of his own accord? Because he realized I need and want him that way, and it scared him off?

Ha. As if. Nothing in existence can scare Godric, let alone emotions. Certainly never a woman’s pursuit. Not even mine.

Especially mine. He wouldn’t let my fumbling efforts, to let me in, let me close, compromise his commitment to my training. He sent me on my way with a cruelly dimpled smirk, and homework to keep my hands off him. He certainly wouldn’t run and hide from me, for any reason, let alone at such a critical time in forging me into the weapon he needs. The need he insisted fueled the insane lengths he’d gone to for me.

That was such a flimsy lie. One he hadn’t thought through worth shit. Needing my power meant staying conscious to make use of it, Godawful.

The only answer is that he did all that for me.

Like I would do anything for him.

Instead of soothing me, that conclusion only makes everything worse. It eliminates the possibility of his voluntary disappearance.

But the involuntary kind doesn’t have many possibilities. When it’s Godric, an almost all-powerful entity, that narrows down the list to something of equal clout. I don’t see anything less than a highly-coordinated conspiracy between all his enemies to overpower him.

As for why they’d strike now, I can think of only one reason. Because he’s been distracted. By me.

I’ve been messing with his focus and control since the first night he caught me. He had my training forced on him, then I forced him into monitoring me all the time, and saving me from my reckless interventions. I mired him in conflicts and ignited fires for him to put out. Then I added my pursuit of him, at the worst of times.

He did warn me that it would end in disaster.

This could all be my fault.

“Wen, whatever you’re thinking, stop.”

Lorcan’s command only makes the brand on my heart sizzle with guilt. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“I can almost hear you screaming it in my head. You’re blaming yourself. I don’t know how you managed to twist the situation to that conclusion, but I’m telling you, there’s no way to know why he disappeared.”

“Then how can you know it wasn’t my fault?”

“It wasn’t. Trust me on this. I do have theories, and none are based on some need for self-condemnation, but on the facts. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past week? I now have a detailed inventory of everything that happened in the days leading to his disappearance.”

I sink rabid fingers into his forearm. “Tell me everything.”

“I will, after you’re done with the Congress.”

I throw his arm down. “I’m not going.”

“You have to.”

“I don’t have to do anything without my mentor present. Go tell them that.”

“Godric wouldn’t want you to create more conflicts and enmities.”

“Godric wouldn’t want me to be at those immortal sickos’ non-existent mercy,” I shout, feeling my vocal cords tearing. “He wouldn’t want me to do anything when he isn’t there to look out for my safety and best interest, let alone when they’re writing my fate in stone. What do you think he’d do if they forced me into some whacky ass curriculum that messed up my powers? That made me some kind of walking black hole?”

His lips twist. “He’d make them wish they could die.”

“And I’d grant them their wish.”

His lips spread in that infectious grin of his. It has no effect on me now. “A Null for a couple of weeks, a barely awakened and untrained one, and already planning to massacre some of Heaven and Hell’s most powerful immortals. I did tell you the first time we met, you’re too much bloody fun to die, Wen White.” He sobers abruptly, his grimness jarring after his brief merriment. “But you might, if you don’t start your training at once. No one knows the reason why all Nulls perished, Wen, but it’s suspected it was because their powers got out of control. And whatever Godric is doing, and wherever he is, your death is the one thing he wouldn’t want. The one thing he’d do anything to prevent.”

I stare at him, my fury dissipating, leaving me vacant. Like my whole existence would be, if Godric is dead.

The very idea, the horror and finality of it, has what feels like Essence-laced tears coursing down my face.

Lorcan holds out his hands, asking permission, and I stumble into him. Heat emanates from his palms as they hold my face, evaporating my tears, soothing my swelling tissues and inflamed eyes. But even the gentleness in the large hands I once saw pummeling Godric’s face black and blue, do nothing to stem the hemorrhage of my soul.

Only Godric’s return would do that.

Pulling me into his arms, Lorcan presses my head to his chest, trying to blunt the shredding edge of my upheaval. “We have to perform damage control for now. Your need for training outweighs the dangers of mismanaging your powers. And don’t worry too much about that. Whatever they do, once he returns, Godric will find a way to fix it. He always does.”

“What if he doesn’t come back?” I hiccup, voicing my one dread and obsession.

“I have to believe he will. I can’t imagine what this world would be without him.” I choke on my breath, and he coughs a self-deprecating laugh. “Don’t worry, I don’t mean that like you evidently would. This bloody mess of an Afterworld needs your Godawful, Wen.”

“Not as much as I need him,” I moan, mashing my face into his strength, his resemblance to Godric only intensifying my misery.

His sigh is deep and long. “I’m beginning to suspect the sheer depth of your connection.” He’s silent for a long time, until I think he won’t say anything more. When he does, it’s like he’s talking to himself. “If I’m right, may Heaven have mercy on us all if it is ever sundered.”

“What if it already is?”

He blinks down at me, as if he can’t believe I heard him, or thinks I read his mind. “Do you feel it, in your very being? Still?”

The sob tears my heartstrings wholesale. “Yes.”

“Then it’s still there.”

“What if I’m feeling what’s inside me, not what’s between us? What if there’s never been anything between us?”

“Oh, there is. Of that I’m certain. The one thing I’m uncertain of is what it is. ”

“Or what it was.”

He puts me away, holding me by the shoulders. “Stop it, Wen. Until we know more, we have to be as pragmatic and cunning and ruthless as our absent Angelhole. You have to channel your Death Jr. mentor, and give them Hell.”

“But Godric told me not to do or say anything.”

“And when have you ever listened to him?”

“Maybe if I had, he would still be here.”

“Don’t blame yourself for whatever made him leave, Wen. As for obeying his orders, that was when he was around to act, in both meanings of the word. Now you have to do it, for both of you. You have to hold down the fort, until he returns.”

“If he returns.”

He pulls on one of the corkscrew curls that have escaped my braid, hard.

“Ow,” I cry, hand shooting up to rub the sting from my scalp. “What was that for?”

He tosses a hand at my face, now twisted in a snarl. “For bringing some life back into your animated corpse.” He pulls another curl, harder.

I slap his hand away, harder still, and he guffaws. “That’s it. Access the Wen White who stood up to Godric the Great from the first moment he laid eyes on her, who provoked and challenged him like no one ever did. Now, go do it to that fallen maniac and his underlings. Show them what the premier protege of the Sword of Heaven is made of.”

I stare up into the liquid fire of his eyes, stunned to realize his pep talk is working.

If there’s anything I ever wanted, it’s to prove to Godric that I’m worth the effort and expertise he’s lavished on me, worth the hardships and sacrifices he’s endured for me.

If he still lives, I’ll make him proud.

If not, I’ll do his memory justice.

Even if it’s the last thing I do.