Away From the Dark (The Light #2)(101)

“Mark,” I replied. “We had words. There was only so much I could do.” I clenched my teeth together. “Fucking Gabriel told me I couldn’t have her, and then I found out he planned on making her one of them—one of his brides.”

“Jesus!” Chloe said, shaking her head, “I’m not questioning Father Gabriel, but I just don’t get it.”

Joel looked to his wife and narrowed his gaze. “Just because we’re in the Shadows . . .”

Chloe continued to move her head slowly from side to side, her brown hair falling over her shoulders as she tended to Stella. The Shadows didn’t follow all the doctrine of The Light. That was part of the reason Joel and Chloe had asked to move into the Shadows. The extent to which each Shadow followed varied, but Father Gabriel’s teachings were still the cement, the binding that held the Shadows to The Light.

“You need to keep the messages going, for those who want it, who need it,” Joel said, talking to me.

I nodded as I watched Chloe set up the medication. “I’ve been thinking about that. Man, you’re my first Commissioner. I was wondering if you . . .” My words trailed away. The Light doctrines and preaching weren’t my thing. I’d spent most of my life avoiding them. Joel knew the lessons backward and forward. He and Chloe had lived it before they were married, and after at the Northern Light.

“If I wanted to preach, I’d have stayed in Alaska.”

I stood taller. “As my first Commissioner, I’m not asking you.” Joel’s lips thinned, but he didn’t respond. “The way I see it,” I went on, “you two know that side better than I do. I can oversee the operations and the money. You’re right. There are Shadows who’ll need to hear Gabriel’s word. I figure you two can give them what they need until the dust settles. We have Shadows everywhere: police, judicial, f*ck, even federal: FBI, CIA, Homeland Security. I could keep going.

“What happened tonight will be big news. I was just watching some coverage on TV. It’ll be like Stella’s disappearance was. Give it some time and then it’ll die down. When that happens we’ll do what we do. It just takes one—Raphael, Michael, Uriel, one of them. Once we get one of them out of custody, the Shadows will eat it up. It’ll be like he was raised from the f*cking dead, and then he can do the preaching.”

Joel nodded. “Fine. We’ll do it. But I don’t know why we should stop there.”

Chloe began putting bandages around Stella’s head.

“What are you doing?”

“The loss of vision,” Chloe answered, “is vital. I remember reading my father’s research. If you want her to believe she’s someone else, it takes time.”

“Father Gabriel,” Joel continued. “He needs to rise again. The Shadows have the power. If they think getting one of the originals out of prison is a miracle, getting Father Gabriel out will be better than walking on water.”

I nodded and smiled as I watched Chloe cover Stella with a blanket.

When she turned my way, she said, “I’ll need to get some more medical supplies if she’s going to be unconscious for a few days.”

“Thank you, Chloe. We all need to bide our time.” I slapped Joel on the back. “But I agree, man. We can’t let Gabriel rot behind bars any longer than necessary. In the meantime—”

“You’re the boss, man,” Joel said, finishing my sentence. “Father Dylan?” he asked with a smirk.

“I’d rather not.”

“You know what you need to do,” Joel said.

Chloe put her arm around my shoulders. “It’ll be like when we were kids.”

I hadn’t used my The Light name since my parents died. At first Gabriel had tried to get me to go by it, but my stubbornness won. “Not Father, though. Gabriel’s coming back. We just don’t know when.”

“Brother David,” Chloe said.

Though my gut twisted with the title, I couldn’t be the leader of the Shadows as just Dylan. I nodded.

Joel shook his head. “All right, Brother David, we need to stop playing nursemaid and get down to business. If you’re sure we’re safe here, this is a great place to get our plan in gear. The computer system in the lower level is stellar. I know how to use it and backdoor us into some sites. It won’t be long until I’ve got us not only on the dark web but authorized to broadcast. I’d say by tomorrow morning, we will be able to get a message out, something short to the Shadows. Not enough to sever Father Gabriel’s orders of radio silence, just enough to let everyone know that you didn’t die in that explosion—that Brother David is alive and ready to keep this going, to move the Shadows to the next level.”

“It’s nearly four in the morning. Do you think that this could wait until morning?” Chloe asked.

They both looked at me.

“I’d say it already did. Let’s keep going and see what we can learn. We can’t call the campuses, but shit, let’s start contacting individual Shadows.”

“From what I’ve learned,” Joel said, “This was an FBI operation. Somehow they coordinated it with all three campuses.”

“Our f*cking Shadows in the FBI have some explaining to do. How the hell did it get this far?”

“I don’t know, but I’d suspect that just like we have people inside the FBI, they had people or a person inside The Light.”