Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(53)

The lights seemed to throb, to pulse. A slow, heavy rhythm. Flaring and dimming, flaring and dimming, and flaring again. She understood that this was a machine, a ship of some kind, but the rhythm was like a slumbering heart. Then the throbbing changed, quickened, became more urgent.

All of a sudden Dana realized that this thing, this ship, had indeed been sleeping and now that she had flown so close to it, it had begun to awaken.

With a cry of alarm, she turned and ran, racing on solar winds back toward the earth. Back toward her body. She flew faster and faster while behind her the lights throbbed and flared and came closer to being awake.

“No!” cried Dana, because every instinct, every part of her expanded awareness, knew that this was wrong, that she had made a terrible mistake.

A dangerous and deadly mistake.

She flew downward, downward, needing to escape back into the mundane and ordinary world. She thought she heard Sunlight’s voice calling out to her, but she flew past it as she plunged into the atmosphere, down toward Maryland, toward the small town of Craiger, toward the center of town and the rooftop of Beyond Beyond. She smashed through it, actually feeling the tar of the roof, the wood and plaster, metal and brick, electrical wires, and everything of which the building was made.

Then she was in the room and her body was there. So was Sunlight’s. Both bodies looked empty, vulnerable. Dead.

But there was something very wrong here, too.

A figure stood between the two vacant bodies.

Tall, immensely powerful, his body rippling with muscles and crackling with living fire. He was beautiful, too. A face more perfect than any man or woman Dana had ever seen. A thousand times more beautiful than a statue from ancient Egypt or Greece or China. Haughty, imperious, sensual, amused. And yet there was something familiar about him. Almost as if that face was superimposed over another one. Dana tried to see through the beauty to the face beneath, and she caught a glimpse.

Just a glimpse.

And then it was gone. The angel stood there, dressed in rags of light, looking up at her. Through the open V of his white shirt, Dana could see a large tattoo inked directly over his heart. A disk of deep black surrounded by a corona of fire. The sign of the eclipse.

His sign, of that she was certain.

Behind his broad back a pair of magnificent wings unfolded and spread so wide the tips of each wing brushed the walls.

The wings were not set with white feathers.

They were huge and leathery and black.

The angel Lucifer looked up at her and said a single word. It was the most terrifying thing he could say.

He said, “Dana…”





CHAPTER 48

The Chrysalis Room

6:48 P.M.

Dana screamed herself awake.

She fell over, smashing her shoulder against the floor, hitting her head, biting her tongue, flooding herself with pain.

The carpet beneath her was cold and coarse.

But it was only carpet.

She could not see the fibers; it did not whisper its chemical formula to her. The molecules of which it was composed did not reveal themselves. It was a rug and she lay on it. Ordinary candles surrounded her, and the air was filled with smoke from incense of no particular magnificence.

She was back in the world. In the real world.

It was smaller, uglier, less magnificent.

Safer.

A groan drew her focus, and she turned to see Sunlight sitting with his face in his hands, shoulders slumped. He seemed to be as dazed as she was.

“What…?” she began, and failed to construct any question beyond that.

It made Sunlight look up. His face was drawn and haggard, and it took a moment for his eyes to focus on her.

“Dana?”

“What happened?”

He rubbed his eyes and sat up, but it looked painful. “That was … something.”

“Did you see what I saw?”

Sunlight nodded. “I think so.” He paused, considering. “On the moon? A ship?”

“Yes. But that wasn’t what I meant.” She climbed to her feet and stood, swaying. It was as if her body did not quite fit right, like she’d gotten dressed in her skin in the dark and had buttoned it up wrong. “I saw him.”

“Him?”

“I saw the angel,” she said.

Sunlight stiffened. “What?”

“Didn’t you see him? He was right here,” she said, pointing to the area between where they had been sitting.

He got to his feet as well and looked as wobbly as she was. “It was an angel?”

“Not just any angel,” she said. “I think I saw his true face. It was like he was wearing a mask.”

That made Sunlight gasp, and he stepped over and took her by the shoulders and stared hard into her eyes. “You saw him?” he demanded. “You really saw him?”

“I—I think so.”

“Tell me. Every detail,” he cried. “It’s important.”

Dana tried to remember every detail, but the more she was in her body, the further memory drifted from her. She could remember the mask best and she described that, and described the garments of light and the leathery wings. Sunlight released her and walked thoughtfully across the room. He stopped by a small table on which was a bowl of fruit and a knife. He picked up the knife, selected a ripe pear, and peeled it without comment. Then he cut it in half and brought it over to her.