Dalton, surveying the closed portal with calm satisfaction, said, “I’d forgotten how impressive that was.”
Hollis looked at Olivia as she slumped slightly, then looked up at her partner. “Looking fragile does not mean being fragile,” she said in a tone of realization.
“I figured that out a while back,” DeMarco said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Before Hollis could comment further, there was a groan and a curse from beneath the rock, followed by Galen’s voice. “Little help here?”
Olivia whirled with a gasp, her hands lifted again, and the boulder rose off Galen’s fallen self and rolled away.
“Damn, that hurt.” He didn’t sit up immediately but did lift a hand to rather gingerly work his jaw. There was blood on his face, on as much of him as was visible, and under the fascinated eyes of the observers, it seemed to soak back into his skin, disappearing within moments.
Olivia dropped to her knees beside him. “I thought you were dead,” she said unsteadily.
“That was why,” Hollis realized suddenly. “Why you had to be here.”
“That was why.” He moved a bit gingerly, telling Olivia, “It’s not so easy to kill me.” He sat up finally with no more than a wince. “People are always trying to kill him,” Hollis told Olivia. “Even Reese did once.”
Olivia stared up rather uncertainly at the tall blond man standing beside Hollis.
“It’s a long story,” DeMarco told her.
“No, it isn’t,” Galen said. “You shot me. Twice.”
“There were extenuating circumstances,” DeMarco said, then added almost immediately, “Let’s not get into war stories, all right, Galen? We’re not quite finished here.”
“I didn’t think so.” Galen got to his feet and stretched briefly, then extended a hand to help Olivia up.
“You’re going to give them all the wrong idea,” Hollis told him severely. “Not everybody can come back from death.”
Galen eyed her. “No?”
“There were extenuating circumstances,” she said after a brief pause.
“Uh-huh. I think I heard somebody say this portal needed to be sealed?”
“Right. Yes. The portal may be sealed with rocks, but it needs energy to seal it for good. And then there’s all the energy contained in this valley. Until that’s transformed or allowed to disperse harmlessly, some other citizen could pick up a few guns and decide to hold a turkey shoot.”
A sudden rumble of thunder made Hollis wince. “Damn. I don’t know if that’s going to help, or just get in the way.”
Dalton, frowning at her, said, “You don’t need to channel the lightning?”
“God, I hope not. That’s—very disconcerting. And unpleasant. No, I think there’s enough energy left here in the valley.”
“Energy that came through the portal? Sure you want to do that?”
“I think it’s the only thing that will truly seal the portal,” she told him. “At least, that’s what my instincts are finally telling me. The energy was created there. It’s where it belongs. And now’s the time; the energy is still tied in a way to the portal, but the longer we wait to put it back where it belongs, the harder it’s going to be. This is where it needs to go.”
“What about the consciousness?”
“It’s still in there,” Hollis said, nodding toward the blocked doorway. “Underground, where it came from. I think. I still have that sense of familiarity, but it’s . . . tenuous. I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out what that was about. Not sure I can, either, as long as it stays buried the way it belongs. Anyway, if we ever figure it out, I’ll bet we find some human-shaped monster behind it.” She frowned at her partner. “We’ll need to check all the old wells and any other openings we can find in the valley for energy. I think once this main energy field has been redirected to seal the portal, any other opening should be easy to block. May take some time, though.”
“It’s still early,” DeMarco noted. “And we can easily stay another day or two.”
“That sounds good,” his partner told him. She opened her mouth to say something else, then stared past DeMarco, her eyes widening.
They all turned, instinctively to see what Hollis was staring at with such pleasure, and Hollis was heard to say much later that it was the sort of thing that made psychic rookies either sign on for life—or take to their heels.
Nobody ran.
“Ruby,” she said with more than a little awe. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
She had been young in life—her most recent life, at any rate— but there was something very wise and very ancient in her eyes. She touched down lightly only a few feet from Hollis, smiling, her wings folding neatly so they were very nearly invisible.
“I had to visit you here,” she said, her voice sweet without being at all childlike. “This was where Samuel began, you know.”
“What? The Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel? How many times do we have to kill that son of a bitch before he stays dead?”
“Who is—or was—Samuel?” Reno asked, her fascinated gaze on the angel.
“I think he was Satan,” Hollis told her. “Some might disagree. He didn’t have any charm at all.”
Ruby was smiling. “His flesh died long ago, you know that. Even the vessels he borrowed. But even evil has its beginning somewhere, sometime. This place was the nexus of his beginning. You’ve known for a long time, Hollis. That there hadn’t yet been an end to him—and that there had to be. Which is why you—all of you—were summoned here. To finish it.”
Logan spoke slowly. “Are you a spirit?”
“That depends,” she replied gravely. “Are you glad you can see me?”
He drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I really think I am.”
“Then I’m a spirit. And we’ll see each other again, Logan. But first a few of us are going to help you and Hollis and Victoria make a few doorways in that energy dome. And then they, with Reese’s help, will bring the energy needed here to seal this portal once and for all.”
Suddenly finding her voice, Victoria said, “Me? That’s impossible. I don’t . . . I’m not . . . Energy isn’t my thing.”
Hollis laughed suddenly. “I think you’re all going to find that impossible is a word we don’t use in the SCU. There really isn’t a place for it there.”
“But—”
“Come on, Victoria. Why don’t you help us?”
Victoria shook her head. “What? I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can,” Hollis told her.
“I don’t know how.”
“Of course you do.”
“Hollis—”
“Come on, we’ll show you.”
“Oh, damn.” Victoria glared halfheartedly around at her team members, then moved toward Hollis. “Everybody better stand back. Angels can’t be killed, can’t they? Ruby—”
“I’ll be fine, Victoria. And so will you.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing.”
But in the end, of course, Hollis and the others were right.
Victoria did know what she was doing.
* * *
? ? ?
THE REALLY PECULIAR thing, Archer told them later, was that he had managed to trace the nearly ancient belt and gloves they’d found not far from the sealed portal. The items had belonged to a man who, though unnoticed by the history books, had quite likely been one of the first serial killers to ever visit evil on the young colonies of America.
Hunted by a group of men from an eastern territory, accused of murdering at least three young women, Adam Deacon had been run to ground in the valley near what had been a small mining camp where Prosperity now stood. Caught with blood literally on his hands and the body of the favorite daughter of a wealthy family at his feet, he had been chased up into the mountains by a mob howling for his blood.
There hadn’t been much law and order in those days, and when miners had thrown his mostly dead body into an abandoned shaft and collapsed it behind him, no one had thought it anything other than justice.
Archer hadn’t been able to find out much more about Deacon, but Bishop had more resources, and he soon found out all they were ever likely to about Adam Deacon. He’d been accused of at least another dozen murders, all of them bloody.
But the most peculiar thing was that, as a young man before his rampage began, Deacon had been struck by lightning.
Twice.
CHARACTER BIOS