9. LUZ Y FER #5
What she could do to help? I had just told her that she was separated at birth for an experiment by a Luciferian cult.
That it seemed that their experiment had been somewhat successful.
That her entire miserable life, horrors of loss and destruction, had been purposefully afflicted upon her as part of some twisted experiment on the human soul.
Her very name wasn’t even her own. And here she was reaching across, holding my hand, and all she seemed to be sorry for was that she couldn’t do more to help me?
Of course. The duality of Lucifer the “light-bringer’s” seal.
The sister who had seen the darkness had within her great white light, wore it around her neck.
Bleary-eyed and on the verge of passing out, I couldn’t even begin to think about where to go next.
All I knew was they had seemingly called off their pursuit.
Fer and I had been in the study room for more than two hours and we still seemed the only ones around.
I couldn’t do much else without getting a few moments of rest. We pushed a chair under the door handle to the room and, slumped against the wall, I closed my eyes for the first time in what felt like weeks.
It didn’t last long.
Fernanda was shaking me awake, eyes wide with panic.
“I’m sorry. I said I would keep watch, but I fell asleep.”
I jumped up. “Are they here?”
“No… I don’t know. But I saw Lucia. In my sleep. I was—she was tied up in a van. They got her, Aurelio!”
I suddenly realized I should’ve figured it out sooner. The moment she told me that she could see Lucia’s memories.
“If you could see Lucia just now and they have her, then…”
Fernanda nodded. “She saw us, too.”
“Do you think she told them?”
“Aurelio?” Fernanda was crying, holding her neck. “They had a knife to my—to Lucia’s throat. I don’t think she had a choice.”
“Shit.”
There was a noise outside the study room door, people moving in the library.
They had used Lucia to find us. There was only one way out of the study room.
I devised a plan to wait for them to be at the door, then we’d have to bash through and make a break.
Fernanda nodded. The door handles jiggled.
Then WHAM! As the first impact came against the door, I grabbed her hand.
She was trembling. WHAM! I gripped her hand tight.
Fernanda shook more and I turned around.
She had begun to convulse, gripping and pulling at her pendant.
“Fer? What’s wrong?”
Her voice was barely able to escape her lips as she stammered, eyes going soft and weak as they gently rolled up into her head, “Lucia… They… cut… She’s… bleeding…”
She shuddered, going stiff as a board. The banging on the door continued behind me as I watched a thick cord of scar tissue trace its way across Fernanda’s throat, bubbling up and marring her smooth skin.
Blood dripped down her nose, leaked from the side of her mouth as her eyes suddenly snapped back into focus. A soft smile played on her lips.
“Oh,” she said, “your dimple’s on the other side. Funny.”
The door to the study room burst open, but there was no sound of the impact as the men flew into the room. I recognized this. The oppressive blanket of silence. The smell of the air itself cooking around me. Then all there was in the world was a great bright flash before a thundering darkness.
I was awoken by the smell of smoldering flesh.
There were no screams. Frigid night air blew in from where the ceiling had once been.
Around me were the dismembered and scorched bodies of the men who had kicked in the door.
My head throbbing, I looked around. Fernanda lay on the ground just paces away, but the blast…
I kept glancing around for Luz. If the two had to be together for the reaction to occur, then she had to be here. But there was nobody.
I slowly stumbled to my feet and walked to Fernanda.
Her eyes were open, that soft smile still on her lips.
I shook her by the shoulder and her head simply fell to the side, exposing the scar on her neck where they’d cut Lucia’s throat.
They really had been two parts of the same whole, separated at birth.
Looking around at the destruction, it seemed they’d also been reunited in death.
I leaned down and closed Fer’s eyes before taking the white pendant from her neck, my only clue or evidence to lead me to Tanita, if she was still alive. “I’m sorry. I’ll keep it safe.”
I draped it around my neck and stumbled away, stepping over the smoldering corpses as I ran out into the night. I had to keep moving. I had to go somewhere. Maybe I could find Jay again. Maybe with the pendant I could…
My phone rang. I stood still, taking out my phone with a shaking hand.
Tanita was trying to FaceTime me. Wind rushed around me as I stared at the screen, listening to the ring.
What else could I do? Every other lead I had was dead.
Perhaps Jay had found her. Maybe she was just at home, having opted not to join on my delusional adventure.
I answered.
“Tanita?”
I was greeted to a dark room on the other end, lit solely by streetlights bleeding through the blinds. Whoever was on the other line didn’t speak, only moved silently through an apartment. I recognized it. It was my apartment.
“Tanita, you shouldn’t be there. You need to leave.”
They kept moving through my apartment into my bedroom. Someone was on the bed. A woman lay on the bed, arm hanging limp off one side. The camera drew closer. Tanita was sprawled on her back, her throat shredded and spilling blood.
“No. No! No! What did you do? She didn’t even know anything! You could have just taken me. She would have thought I had just disappeared! Killed myself! Who the fuck are you?”
Someone finally spoke. A woman.
“Aurelio. Do you know what that name means? It comes from the Latin for ‘gold.’ ”
The camera panned up from Tanita’s bled-out corpse to a man standing in the corner.
Knife in hand. Even in the dark, I recognized him.
I had seen that silhouette many times before, my whole life.
It was my own. I looked down at the white pendant around my neck, then at the black one shining in the dark around the man’s chest. The woman spoke again.
“Come on home now, my sweet golden child.”