Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
SHEM
Each corridor, each turn, takes me closer to the surface, toward consciousness. Each moment unfurls my essence from the special hiding place I didn’t know I possessed. I’m almost ready to slip back into my skin. Almost ready to be whole when the corridor ahead of me blazes bright.
“There you are,” the Dominion’s voice booms around me. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Pain lances through my head, taking me to my knees.
“You think you can escape us? Outwit us? There is no escape for you, Shem. Go back to your hidey hole and sleep. There is no place for you in our new world.”
Sleep? Why were they asking me to sleep? Why not just kill me?
Because they can’t. They can’t do anything, Shem. Lucifer’s voice is a whisper in my mind. When have they ever done anything themselves?
And it all suddenly makes perfect sense, and if by magic the pain in my head is gone. I slowly pull myself to my feet.
“No. What are you doing? Get down. Get back on your knees.”
My lips smile for the first time in what feels like an age. “Make me.”
The light blazes brighter and a frisson of fear rushes up my spine, a primal instinct related not to them, but to God. To his divine wrath, to his power. Not the Dominions.
Never the Dominions.
They can’t hurt me. They can’t hurt anyone without someone else to wield their sword.
I duck my head and break into a sprint straight into the light.