Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
TOM
“Gabe!” I grab his toppling body and lower him to lie flat on the ground, then fumble for his pulse. It’s there, and surprisingly strong, given he’s unconscious and shaking. “What’s wrong with him?” I demand.
Connor’s looking at Gabe with a faraway expression, and then he shakes his head. “I don’t know. He’s still there. His soul is still strongly tethered to his body.” He shrugs, the gesture one of helplessness that’s at odds with the frustration on his face.
“The barrier’s back, right? That’s what you said, that he’s finished?”
“It’s back,” Ian says, and Connor nods.
“Then let’s get him inside where it’s warm.” We were afraid to move him while he was working, but just a few minutes ago, the last of the awful bone ache I’ve been feeling for hours eased, and all the paranormally abled people here sighed with relief. It was kind of disturbing.
The whole night’s been disturbing and horrific. I expected it would be, but not like this. Nobody thought we’d be sitting around for hours.
Because while Gabe was doing his thing, the wave of demons… stopped. The ones that were already here kept up their attack, but no new ones joined the fray.
When the barrier had come down, it was instantly noticeable, even to me.
It was like the world was overlaid on top of itself—same but different.
Two demons were suddenly standing beside me, midsentence, and more demons were flooding the area.
It made fighting difficult—was I supposed to strike at demons who looked like they were midway through their breakfast?
If I didn’t, would they come at me from behind?
I found out the hard way that some wouldn’t, but others would. And seeing the way Jill died… I wasn’t willing to take any chances after that.
Then it was all gone, the double-world vanished, and my bones ached like the worst kind of storm was coming. The only demons here were the ones that came through when Cato opened that first gateway.
I’ve never fought a demon before, and I never want to again. I’m covered in bruises and cuts that Connor and the boys made me wash with some kind of salt and herbal solution. Washing cuts with salt water is not fun, but at least they stopped burning after that.
The tide really turned in our favor when Marc killed Cato.
I don’t know how, but I was holding off a demon when there was this…
I want to call it a boom, but there was no sound.
It just felt loud. When I looked, Marc was standing there, ripped up and bloody and panting amid a fall of black ash, and Cato—and half his demons—was gone.
The demons that were left seemed confused and demoralized, and it took less than an hour to get rid of them. One escaped, racing toward town, but Randy and Mart, desperate to avenge Jill, went after it.
After that, we called the others out of the basement, tended our wounds, and sat with Gabe. Connor and the boys made about a million phone calls, checking how things are around the world.
Now, Kieran leads us upstairs to one of the empty guest rooms, and we lay Gabe on the bed and cover him. “You should all get some sleep,” I murmur, curling up on the bed beside him.
“I’ll stay,” Connor insists, moving toward the chair in the corner.
The others take turns coming over to pat Gabe’s shoulder or stroke his hair, but then they go… except for Matt and Ian.
“Dylan messaged,” Ian says softly. He has a black eye and a nasty scrape on his cheekbone. “He says that almost as soon as the barrier was finished, all the volunteers got their energy back. Some of them passed out for a minute—when they woke up, they said it was just a shock, but they were fine.”
“Could that be what happened to Gabe?” Matt asks anxiously, standing at the foot of the bed with his hand on his brother’s ankle.
I look to Connor for the answer.
“Maybe,” he says slowly. “Like a massive blood sugar drop, but for his etheric power levels instead. If that’s the case, he’ll be fine when his body adjusts back to his normal power.”
Matt hesitates. “Can we stay?”
Con looks at me this time.
“For a little while.”
It’s midmorning the next day when Gabe’s eyes open. He stirred a few times during the night, which was vastly reassuring to us all and was what finally convinced the boys and Connor to go to bed. But now, as he blinks up at me, I realize that a huge part of me was afraid he’d never wake up.
“Hey.” My voice cracks as I smile at him and touch his cheek.
“Hey.” He’s hoarse, and I reach for the bottle of water on the nightstand, helping him sit up and take a few sips. “What happened?”
I put the water back. “We’re not completely sure, but Con thinks that when you let go of all the shared power, your body went into a kind of shock.”
He nods, then shakes his head. “No, I meant… obviously we didn’t all die.” He pauses. “Did we? Were we wrong all along about heaven existing?”
I chuckle. It seems like his brain is back in perfect working order. “Not as far as I know.” A quiet knock interrupts just as I’m wondering where to start the retelling. Connor sticks his head around the door.
“Oh—you’re up. Thank fuck.” He comes in and sits on the side of the bed. “Gabe, never, ever do that to me again.”
Are his eyes wet?
Gabe grasps his best friend’s hand. “I’m okay.”
For a few minutes, we just sit there in silence, appreciating every breath we take. Then Connor clears his throat.
“Has Tom caught you up?”
“I was just getting to that, but maybe it’ll be better if you do it. I still don’t really understand.”
Con turns to Gabe. “How much do you remember?”
“The barrier came down,” he replies. “There was this double-world. Jill…” His voice breaks, and I take his hand. Clearing his throat, he continues, “I started working on the new barrier and… I was so focused. I don’t really know what happened until I was done, and you were all there, watching me.”
“Don’t make it sound creepy,” Connor protests. “Okay, so I’ve talked to a lot of people about this in the last fifteen hours. As far as we can tell, when you started building the new barrier, the etheric energy imposed a temporary one between the worlds.”
Gabe blinks slowly. “What?”
“Yeah, it’s weird. But the whole double-world you mentioned, which was just the two worlds merging?
They stopped being merged while you were working.
There’s some theorists working on it right now at the Collective, and their best preliminary guess is that the etheric energy does not want the worlds to merge.
It’s all a bit out there, but the way they explained it was that the energy itself started swirling and moving in a way that blocked the two worlds from each other. ”
Gabe lets out a little breath. “Like an ocean separating them?”
“Maybe?” Connor shrugs. “They’ve already said they want to talk to you about how it was from your perspective.”
Nodding slowly, Gabe says, “And… everyone… Did anyone else… I mean…”
I grab his other hand. This isn’t going to be easy.
Connor swallows hard. “Our parents… they were all tethered to Cato.” His voice shakes. “When Marc killed him, they… were gone.”
Gabe’s eyes well up, and he looks away. “It’s so stupid,” he says impatiently. “They betrayed us. We could have all died because of them. And it’s not like they’ve really been in our lives since we were teenagers.” He sniffles.
“That doesn’t mean they weren’t your parents,” I remind him gently. I went through this last night with Connor and the boys. Some losses are hard, even when they’re toxic.
He takes a deep, trembling breath. “Yeah. But everyone else is okay?”
Con and I both hesitate, and his face falls.
“The ghosts,” Connor whispers. “Uncle Norval and the others… I didn’t see it all. Marc was struggling, and it seemed like Cato might get the upper hand. They came out of nowhere and threw themselves into it… all of them. And when Cato died, they were… gone.”
A tear rolls down my face. I’ll always be so grateful for the extra time I had with Nonna, but I wish I’d been able to tell her goodbye.
“Gone? But… what about Marc? Did he die too?”
“He left immediately, without a word. Back to the otherworld, as far as we know.” I try to hide my bitterness that he survived and my nonna didn’t. None of us know what’s happening in the otherworld right now. Maybe Marc and his friends are the only thing preventing another incursion.
Gabe closes his eyes, and when they open again, they’re filled with resolve. “We’ll have a memorial. What about the trainees?”
“Better than it could have been,” Connor assures him.
“Three deaths, another few dozen seriously wounded but stable. Minor wounds coming out our asses. But the trainees and the temporary barrier saved the day, Gabe. When Cato gave the signal and the traitors started opening gateways, our people were ready, and they took those bitches down hard. Then the initial wave of demons came through, and while enough of them managed to open gateways to destroy the barrier, our trainees were on them like white on rice. You started your thing, and the influx of demons stopped. By then every hunter worth the name had stepped up, and the demons that were left didn’t stand a chance.
” He shakes his head. “We were lucky that more higher demons didn’t come through, but other than that, it couldn’t have gone better if we planned it. Those kids were incredible.”
Gabe’s smile is proud. “We underestimated them all.”
“And they’ll never let you forget it,” I joke, managing to get a laugh out of him.
When he sobers again, he asks, “What about the rest of the world? How are people reacting to everything?”
“People are stupid,” Connor tells him. “Like… so stupid.”
I snort. “Be fair, Connor.”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s still early, but at this stage, humanity seems to be writing it off as a natural phenomenon.
It helps that while you were working, barometric pressure and other science-y shit was going demented.
Scientists around the world have a massive hard-on right now and are investigating.
But aside from a few people that no one’s listening to, nobody’s saying anything about demons. ”
“The Collective will need to watch out for the conspiracy theorists.”
“And the religious nuts,” I add. “But most of the world will forget about this in a couple days. Everything’s going to go back to normal.” I don’t say “for them,” but we’re all thinking it.
After a little silence, Gabe says, “So… the Collective.”
“The traitors are dead. They died when their demons were destroyed. I told the remaining council members nearly everything. And then I told everyone else I know. And I had the boys tell the trainee network to tell everyone they know. The word is out, and the Collective has to answer for what’s happened.
There’s no way any of this should have been allowed to get this far. ”
“Agreed. We take on the Collective.”