The Revelation of Gabriel Adam (23 page)

Some thirty yards away, Yuri looked to be in a similar condition. He staggered to his feet and braced himself against a tree by the river’s edge, laughing hysterically as he pulled leaves out of his long blond hair. “Well, I suspected that might happen. Worth a try, I suppose. Spectacular that was, don’t you reckon? Your girlfriend was lucky I missed. Though I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered, since it seems archangels really can’t harm each other with their power.”

Archangels?
Gabe thought. “Who are you?”

“Phanuel to some. Uriel to others. But most everybody else calls me Yuri.”

“Everybody believes you’re dead,” Gabe said.

“Not dead. Just lying low. I don’t play well with Carlyle’s type, so I figured I’d go a different route, know what I mean?”

“Carlyle can help you. He can teach you—”

“Teach me what?” Yuri asked, cutting him off. “How to harness my power? News flash, in case you’re too stupid to see—it’s harnessed. For once, open your eyes and use your head. Quit being his manipulated pawn.”

“And yet here I am by myself.”

“Yes.” Yuri paused. “Quite the enigma you are.”

“So, if we can’t hurt each other, let me pass,” Gabe reasoned.

“I’ll let you pass on one condition: give me the ring.”

How does he know about the ring?
“What ring?”

“Save that bollocks for someone else. You wouldn’t have left without it. Give it to me! We cannot allow her to use it.”

Her?
“You’re wrong. I don’t have it.”

“It’s too dangerous. You’ll lose it to the enemy. Give me the ring, or I’ll kill you where you stand and take it from your corpse, I swear.”

“You can’t. In case
you’re
too stupid to figure it out—you can’t use your power to harm me.”

Yuri reached into his jacket. “There are other more conventional ways to harm you, my friend.” He brandished a formidable-looking knife.

Gabe broke off a thick branch from the fallen tree to defend himself. “I don’t have it,” he repeated and dug a heel into the dirt, ready. “I don’t even know where it is.”

Gabe could see that the lie about the ring’s whereabouts had given him away as concealing something. His face must have twitched. Or his eyes revealed his intent to deceive. Whatever his tell, Yuri had called it. He smiled and raised his arm, the sharp point of the knife aimed accusingly at Gabe.

“Liar, liar,” Yuri hissed. The blade glistened in the moonlight.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

From atop Prebends Bridge, a voice echoed down to the river. “Gabriel!”

Gabe looked up to where his father stood. Two silhouettes moved over the river.

“Who’s that with you?” Carlyle shouted.

“It’s Uriel,” Gabe said.

Yuri stopped his advance and turned to the two men on the bridge above. He raised his hand, and a volley of light crashed against the bridge wall with all the destructive power of dynamite. Thrown rock and debris shattered and fell to the river.

A cloud of dust plumed into the air, swirling vaporised stone about, concealing everything in a fog. Gabe choked on the fumes and watched part of the bridge disintegrate. His heart stopped in his chest as rubble from the wall splashed nearby in the river.

Yuri screamed, “You’re forcing my hand, Gabe. I don’t enjoy this. But I’ll find Micah, and I give you my word, she will see the same fate. All you need to do is give me the damned ring!”

Tears filled Gabe’s eyes. He felt the burn of anger, the overwhelming fear of what this betrayal cost. “No, you will not.” Gabe held up the branch and wielded it in front of him like a sword.

“Think you can take me again, do you? Let’s see about that.” Yuri lowered his hand and started toward Gabe, knife at the ready. He closed the gap between them with astonishing speed, nearly disappearing into a blur.

The knife stabbed through the air, but Gabe moved at the last moment and managed to parry the blow with the branch. Another slash caught his jacket, and the blade nearly drew blood, but a second block with the branch spared injury.

The defensive flailing worked but also threw him off balance. Stumbling backwards, he swung hard at Yuri’s midsection. The branch smashed against ribs with a crack.

Yuri howled and reeled from the blow. Still falling, Gabe tried another swing but couldn’t generate enough momentum. Yuri caught the branch, ripped it out of Gabe’s hands, and kicked him hard with a boot to the chest.

Gabe slammed against the fallen tree, his back bent over its trunk. He rolled off and slumped to the ground, unable to move or breathe, lungs starved for air. There was little doubt in his mind that ribs had been broken.

As he waited for the cutting blow, Micah suddenly appeared behind Yuri on the path and hoisted the incomplete Gethsemane Sword above her head.

She screamed as she rushed toward Yuri. A mistake.

Yuri spun at the sound and splintered the branch against the side of her face. She crumpled to the ground with the sword and curled in the mud, her body still. Quiet.

Gabe watched helplessly, trying to find his breath as Yuri turned toward Micah. He held the knife back for a kill. In the instant before the blade fell upon her came a brutish roar from the path. Carlyle charged at Yuri, his large, muscular hands nearly on the boy’s throat.

For a fraction of a moment, Yuri seemed genuinely surprised by the man’s rage. He let go of the branch and turned his back to Micah, squaring his shoulders to aim at Carlyle.

Gabe tried to move on the ground, but the searing pain in his side stopped him cold. He tried to shout—anything—but there was no breath to give voice.

Once again, rivers of light escaped from Yuri’s hand. Time stood still as the beam traveled over the path, a wide and constant flow barreling toward its intended target.

For the first time since childhood, Gabe prayed.
Please, God. No!

Carlyle seemed to lean into the oncoming attack. Before the energy struck him, Gabe saw the large man’s face, sad and knowing. His eyes glistening with sorrow. The light swallowed him and continued into the side of the hill, slamming into earth and throwing debris into the air. For a moment, Yuri seemed to have lost control of his abilities.

Then a sound. A cry—as if a soul were tearing in two.

The beam stuttered and then ended in silence. Carlyle had simply disappeared.
Gone.

Yuri looked at his hands, like he was trying to understand why his power had failed. He moved his fingers back and forth, as if studying their malfunction.

A cough escaped his throat, followed by a gurgling noise. Blood drooled from his mouth. As his body swayed, Yuri looked down to see the forked tip of the sword protruding from his split sternum.

“Huh,” he managed and collapsed next to the riverbank, dead.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Next to Yuri, Micah sat on the ground, her mouth stained red with her own blood. She breathed in short gasps. Letting go of the sword, she rose and walked like a ghost to where Carlyle last stood.

There was nothing there but burning dirt and leaves. She looked back to the student she’d just killed and dropped to the ground in a fit of sobs.

By now, his father had made his way from the bridge, his forehead bleeding and caked with the dust of pulverized stone. He rushed to Micah’s side and shielded her from Yuri’s corpse with his jacket. He then took her back to the bridge staircase and sat her down.

Gabe felt his own eyes tear up.

His father returned and grabbed him by the arm, hauling him to his feet. But Gabe’s legs wouldn’t respond. He simply couldn’t move and slumped back down to the mud.

“Get up, Gabriel,” he said in a quiet, academic voice. “Help me with the body.”

His father picked up the hilt of the sword and removed it from Yuri’s still form. The blade dripped blood, which splattered onto the ground. He proceeded to wipe it off on Yuri’s clothing, then bent down to brush the blond hair away from the back of the neck. A small circular birthmark was clearly visible. “Damn it. This
is
Uriel.”

Gabe looked at the mark.

He betrayed us.

His father rolled the dead boy onto his back. Yuri’s head turned to face them, eyes fixed in their sockets. His father picked up Yuri’s body and dragged it toward the river. “Gabriel Adam! Quickly! We haven’t time. Authorities will be here any minute now.”

Gabe snapped back to the moment and took in his surroundings. His father was right. The area looked like a war zone. People would be coming to investigate. Gabe got to his feet and seized Yuri’s limp legs.

“Help me roll him into the water,” his dad said.

They placed the body on the bank, and his father shoved it in with his foot. It rolled in with a sickening splash and disappeared under the water, carried away by the River Wear.

Gabe lost control of his nerves and vomited onto the mud.

“Are you hurt? Are you okay?”

“No,” he said, answering both questions.

“We have to get Micah out of here. She looks traumatized. Probably in shock.”

At the top of the hill, a police siren could be heard by the cathedral.

“The dormitory, it seems, is no longer an option.” His father grabbed the sword from the mud. “Get your bag and let’s go.”

He started toward Micah with Gabe following closely behind.

They made their way through the city to Carlyle’s house, managing to arrive unnoticed by the curious townies stumbling out of their homes throughout Durham’s city center to investigate the commotion. It seemed a cruel place to hide out, Gabe thought, but there was nowhere else to go.

His father fumbled with the door lock, trying to work it open. With the deft use of a credit card and a barge of the shoulder, the door gave way. He ushered Gabe through, half carrying Micah as she leaned against him.

Gabe listened to the distant sirens gathering on the hill by Castle College until the door slammed shut.

Inside the dark room, the smell of tobacco pipe lingered. Dying embers smoldered in the fireplace and reminded him of the life that once lived in the house.

Micah slumped onto the couch and stared off into space. Gabe wanted to console her, to help her, but the guilt he felt stole his courage. He knew that if he hadn’t run, Carlyle would still be alive.

More than even the plotting minds of the Vatican, Carlyle had known the protocols for stopping the End of Days. The ultimate authority. Even if the Vatican had a copy of the
Apocalypse of Solomon
, no one would be able to interpret its meaning.

Now they were lost.

After a while of sitting in silence, each of them trying to come to terms with what had just happened by the river, his father walked upstairs with the Gethsemane Sword.

Gabe waited in the dark for a minute, and when being in Micah’s company became unbearable, he followed him to the second floor. At the top of the stairs he stood in the doorway to Carlyle’s office unseen like he had by the entrance to his father’s office so many years ago when he listened to his father’s conversation with Aseneth.

Now his dad was rifling through Carlyle’s belongings, apparently convinced something might help point him in the right direction. For all of Carlyle’s militant insistence to be ready to confront the enemy, he was quite a disorganized man. Stacked books and papers were piled high, wall-to-wall, with little thought of order. There was so much to sift through that Gabe thought it fruitless to even try. None of the materials looked useful.

In the corner his father found several long, rolled documents leaning against a bookcase. They looked like maps or building plans. Near the group was a reinforced travel tube used to hold them. Gabe could see an attached carrying strap, and the case looked to be made of nylon or a similar material. His dad unscrewed the top and slipped the sword inside. It fit perfectly.

After a moment his father set the container aside and began yanking pictures off the walls. Behind one, Gabe noticed a safe. His dad seemed driven, as if finding the small metal box had been thought out before. He spun the dial in several directions until its door opened. From it, he took out a piece of paper. His shoulders slumped, as if he’d expected to find something else. “Where were you planning on going tonight, Son?” His back remained turned toward the door.