Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(4)

“I’m not doing anything,” said the angel. “It’s you who offered this gift to me. It’s you who are helping to bring about the dawn of the Red Age.”

“N-no!” she barked.

“The arms of paradise are open wide to embrace you, to thank you, to accept such a wonderful gift so freely given.”

“Please…,” she said, and then she realized that her legs were bending, that her traitor knees had buckled. She sank down before him as he approached. Behind him, through the cracked window glass, she could see the glare of headlights. Fixed. Parked. Her mom’s car? Had he brought the car here or had she driven here? The girl wasn’t sure. All she knew was that if the car was here, then she was in so much trouble. It was too late.

Not by the clock, though it was late enough there, too, she had no doubt.

No. It was too late for anything.

The angel squatted down in front of her, reached out, took her hands. He pressed her palms together and held them in front of her chest as if she were praying. Then he bent and kissed her fingertips. Very lightly, his eyelids fluttering closed.

“Thank you,” he said in the softest of voices.

“Please,” she begged.

It was her last word.

Then all she could do was scream.





CHAPTER 5

Scully Residence April 2, 12:01 A.M.

Dana woke with a scream.

Small, strangled, painful. It punched its way out of her chest and past the stricture in her throat and then died in the dark, still air of her room.

It had not been a random, meaningless scream.

It had been a word.

“Please!”

Cried out with all the need and horror and desperation that any single word could bear to carry.

She sat up, panting, bathed in sweat, watching fireworks burst like magic in the shadows around her as the sound of her own cry faded, faded, faded …

… and was gone.

It took the memory of the dream with it.

Most of it. Not all.

She saw a flash of light on metal. She felt a burn in her own skin. Not one, but several, but when she dug and probed at her wrists and side and head, there was nothing. No cut, no lingering bruise, no trace of the warm wetness of blood.

Nothing.

Except the memory of the knife.

Except the feeling of dying.

Except the feeling of being dead.

And something else. A face. A teenager or young man. Tall, she thought, though he was squatting down. Broad-shouldered. Strong. But his face was unclear. Not hidden by shadows, not exactly. It was more that it was shadows. That he had no real face. That there was only darkness where a face should have been.

Please …

She tried to recapture the word and listen to it again, because she was absolutely certain it had not been spoken in her own voice, even though it had come from her own mouth.

The night grew quiet. The flashing lights faded, taking with them the shapes and sounds and strangeness, leaving only her room. She swung her feet out of bed and studied the darkness, trying to feel it, but it was like trying to coax a spark from a dead battery.

As the dream faded, so did her belief that it had ever happened.

Dana sat on the edge of her bed for a long time, wondering if it was a dream or a nightmare. Wondering if it was a vision.

Wondering if maybe she was just a little bit crazy.





CHAPTER 6

Scully Residence

6:29 A.M.

“Jeez,” said Melissa as she shrugged into her denim book bag, “what’s with you this bright and sunny Monday morning?”

Dana stuffed her math and science textbooks into her backpack, which was pink with blue piping, and avoided her sister’s eyes. “Nothing. Why?”

“Um … have you looked in a mirror lately? You don’t just have bags under your eyes; you have matching luggage. Didn’t you get any sleep at all?”

Dana zipped the bag shut and pulled it on. The backpack was heavy, filled with schoolbooks, the white gi she used in jujutsu class, and some stuff she knew she probably did not need. She adjusted the straps, but it still weighed a ton. Melissa’s looked like it was nearly empty, because she almost never brought her textbooks home unless she had to cram for a test the next day. Dana liked to read ahead and get ready for whatever the teachers were going to throw at her. One of her greatest fears was being unprepared for a pop quiz. The thought of it gave her actual cold sweats. Not that the teachers here in Craiger bothered much with them, not like the nuns back in San Diego.

That hadn’t been what kept her tossing and turning all night, but she didn’t want to talk about her dreams.

“The thunder kept waking me up,” Dana lied. She flicked a glance at her sister out of the corner of her eye, saw the skepticism.

“Uh-huh. Thunder.”

“It was loud.”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a sound like a motorboat revving in high gear, and a blur came shooting past them. Dana had a quick glimpse of the reddest hair in the family, freckled cheeks, a striped shirt, and well-worn sneakers as the youngest Scully blew past her, burst through the door, jumped off the porch, and vanished. Ten-year-old Charlie was like that. He was almost a ghost in the family, rarely interacting with anyone, constantly in his own head and lost in whatever solo fantasy he was playing out. He added sound effects and even occasionally hummed a music score to his internal adventures. Dad disapproved of Charlie’s daydreaming and deep devotion to comics and science fiction movies. Mom tolerated him with loving exasperation but no real understanding. Melissa and Dana loved him, but almost never actually had conversations with him. And their older brother, Bill Jr., treated Charlie like a frisky pet puppy.