Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(74)

And for a moment Dana wondered if, in fact, she was dreaming. Was all of this real? Was any of it? Had she even gone to Beyond Beyond with Ethan? Or met Angelo at the soccer field? Or been chased? Was any of that likely in her actual life? Maybe all this was nothing more than some kind of extended dream, a nightmare. They said that dreams were actually very short even if they felt real. Was everything about the angel, Maisie, Corinda, all of it just a complex fantasy playing out as she slept through a spring storm in her own bed?

The floor beneath her feet felt too soft, as if she did not stand on it with all her weight. It wasn’t quite the same as when she had astrally projected with Sunlight, but it wasn’t real, either. She almost floated. When she took a breath, the meat-locker stink carried with it the same incense smell of the Chrysalis Room.

Which was when Dana decided that she was not at home dreaming.

This was still part of her spiritual trip with Sunlight.

It jolted her, but at the same time it steadied her. Both in equal measure. All this was part of that same out-of-body experience.

“Sunlight?” she murmured, and her voice echoed as if she’d shouted in a vast, empty stadium. “Help me.”

“He can’t help you,” said a voice. It was a male voice, and it was right behind her. Dana screamed and jumped, twisting around as she landed, dropping her backpack and bringing up her hands, ready to fight.

It was not Angelo who stood behind her. It was an Asian boy, and beside him was a brown-haired girl with hazel eyes. Like Connie, they both wore Oak Valley High jackets.

Like Connie, these were teens who Dana had met only through photographs.

Jeffrey Watanabe and Jennifer Hoffer.

Dead teenagers.

Standing right behind her.

Dana heard the soft scuff of a shoe and she whirled again, and now she saw other ghosts. Connie stood by the far wall, and there were two boys with her. Chuck Riley and Todd Harris.

And then someone walked out of the adjoining room. Another girl.

Maisie.

Dana was surrounded by the dead.





CHAPTER 68





313 Sandpiper Lane


6:09 P.M.

They stood there, staring at her, their eyes filled with shadows, their mouths smiling with sadness.

“No,” said Dana breathlessly. “Please … no…”

Connie raised her hand and touched the pendant she wore. It was a black onyx disk surrounded by twisting red-gold flames. The sign of a total eclipse. Maisie wore the same pendant. Jennifer wore earrings with the same symbol.

Chuck, Jeffrey, and Todd all removed their jackets and pushed up their sleeves to show tattoos on their upper arms.

The eclipse.

Every single one of them.

“I see it,” said Dana. “What … what does it mean?”

“The Red Age is coming.”

Maisie said it. Then everyone else said it at the same time. All of them, speaking in a perfect chorus.

“I don’t know what that means,” cried Dana.

Maisie raised her arms out to her sides the way she had in the locker room. Instantly, bright red blood began to flow from her head, side, wrists, and ankles.

“He will rise,” she said, speaking solo this time. “He will rise and the world will fall.”

“Who?”

“They think they control him,” said Maisie.

“He thinks he controls himself,” said Connie.

“There is a darkness greater even than the angel,” said Jeffrey.

“And it will consume him even as he consumes the world,” said Chuck.

Their voices were those of teenagers, but their words and phrasing were not. It was like some perverse litany in a nightmare church.

Then Connie pointed to Dana. “He is coming for you, Dana.”

Dana stumbled backward and nearly fell. “W-what?”

“He is coming for you,” said Todd, “and we will make you his.”

“His voice,” said Jennifer.

“His accomplice,” said Jeffrey.

“His apostle,” said all of them.

Dana looked around for a way out, but the door seemed to have melted out of sight, becoming nothing more than a door-shaped smear on the wall. The window was fading, too, but there was still some light spilling in from the streetlamp.

“He will take others,” said Connie.

“The boy will die soon,” said Chuck.

“The girl will die first,” said Jeffrey.

“Then you will join us in the world of shadows,” said all the ghosts at once.

There was a narrow opening between Connie and Chuck, and she broke and ran for it, determined to fling herself through the living room window. She dived and crashed through in a spray of glass, but the sound of it breaking was not like glass at all. It broke with a sound like dozens of wind chimes—bars and bells and hollow bamboo—all jangling as if blown by a gust of cold wind. Dana tucked and rolled as she hit the porch, but then she felt her body suddenly lift and fly out over the rail as if someone had caught her and flung her away. She landed in the grass, thumping down with a teeth-rattling jolt, rolling, tumbling, and finally coming to rest in a sprawl of pain and fireworks.

She groaned and tried to get up, needing to run away from this place.

But her body felt broken, and Dana collapsed to the ground.