Armageddon (22 page)

Authors: James Patterson,Chris Grabenstein

BOOK: Armageddon

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I bounded back up.

Abbadon kept smirking at me.

“You know, Daniel, it’s a good thing your mother and father have already departed this realm. They would be absolutely appalled to see how unimaginative you actually are.”

I tumbled down the mountainside as Mel groaned and gasped on her way up.

I could hear what was left of our unbroken bones crunching. I could hear her whimpers as the boulder’s flames licked her skin.

Abbadon kept mocking me: “This is why your mommy and daddy left you all on your own, Daniel.”

I hit rock bottom and immediately started my return up the harsh slope.

“They could no longer endure the prolonged embarrassment of having
you
as their only son. Ha! They’re better off dead!”

I neared the top of the cliff.

Number 2’s taunts should’ve stung worse than bashing my bones against the boulders below.

But they didn’t.

Because he had just told me how to beat him.

Chapter
85

THE ANSWER WAS right there in Number 2’s barbs and jeers.

My mother and father.

Yes, they were brave and fearless, incredibly talented, loving, and strong.

But in the end, they died anyway.
Because they were not immortal.

My mother had practically spelled it out to me over our last breakfast together:
Death is always with us, Daniel. None of us is immortal. Eventually, we must all depart this realm and move on to the next.

Chordata, up on Alpar Nok, had given me the answer, too:
The one known as the Fallen Soul was granted not immortality but a vastly extended life by an evil god known as The Prayer.

Even Xanthos had been dropping hints back at the stables:
We are all mortal. Otherwise, we would be gods, no?

As a last gasp—and I mean that literally, because I didn’t
know how much longer I could keep drawing breath after all that unfathomable pain—I
imagined
Number 2 dead.

I saw his soul being reduced to stardust and blown away on the wind.

I saw it and felt it and grokked it with every cell, every molecule of my being.

I had never focused so intently or so fiercely on any of the transformations I had pulled off in all my years as the Alien Hunter. I was giving this single vision every ounce of energy I had left.

If the metamorphosis didn’t kill Abbadon, it would surely kill me.

But why wasn’t he fighting me back? He said he could feel my meager imaginings and stop them easily. Was it because he couldn’t imagine himself dying? Did he think it was so impossible that even I couldn’t imagine it?

Big mistake.

I reached the top of the cliff just in time to see Abbadon roar as he burst into oily flames.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he screamed. “NOOOO NOOO
NOOOO!
” And suddenly he was in my head, fighting back with everything he had. But it was too late. My imagination had captured him, and his long life of destruction was finally over.

Instead of sparkling gold particles, his soul exploded into gleaming black specks of soot. At first he looked like a swarm of angry black flies clustered in the shape of a body. But then a stiff wind blew across the abyss and shot his inky essence skyward.

Fanned by the oxygen-rich gust, the cinders of Abbadon’s soul began to glow and then burn, turning as fiery red as his eyes.

In an instant, what was left of Number 2 became the flaming tail of a comet streaking up through the dome of the abyss, which, when Number 2’s mind faded into oblivion, became what it really was: the black, starlit sky.

The same thing happened to me and Mel.

Released from the grip of Number 2’s evil imaginings, we were two teenagers again, standing in a grassy meadow, watching a shooting star racing away from Earth.

Abbadon lit up the night sky like a sizzling fuse stretched across the heavens until the instant the thin line of his essence burned out and the sky went black.

“You finally found his weakness,” Mel said as we held hands and stared up at the twinkling stars.

“Yes,” I said.

“What was it?”

“He wasn’t a god. He was like us. He was mortal.”

Chapter
86

I SUDDENLY REALIZED where we were: Kentucky. At the Judges’ horse farm.

“So, Daniel, has anyone ever told you that you’re amazing?” said Mel. Then she rocked up on her toes and kissed me on the cheek. “A very impressive first date.”

“Um, this was a date?”

“Well, we got to see that cheesy movie about our happy future. So, is your chest really that buff, or were those special effects?”

I was about to answer when I heard a voice in my head.

Welcome back, brudda.

“Xanthos!” I cried out loud.

“What?” Mel said as we both started running toward the barn. “He’s back from the dead?”

“I don’t think he ever died.”

“Yes, he did. They made me watch them kill him when they kidnapped me.”

“I don’t think that ever happened, either.”

“Uh, yes it did. I was there.”

“I know, but, well… I think Abbadon put all this in our heads, the way I do sometimes.”

We tore into the barn, and there he was—shaking out his snowy mane, pawing at the hay, giving us a happy whinny.

So, Daniel, you did not give sway to the negative way. Yah, mon?

I laughed and said, “Yah, mon,” right back at him.

I noticed a paint-spackled portable radio perched on a shelf outside Xanthos’s stall and switched it on, hoping to get confirmation that my theory was correct.

A newsreader came on: “And down in Washington they’re getting set for a spectacular fireworks extravaganza. With all of D.C.’s monuments and the U.S. Capitol in the background…”

I turned the radio off.

“Washington wasn’t destroyed?” Mel said, sounding confused.

“Well, it was—as long as Number 2 imagined it was.”

“And now that he’s gone…”

“Washington isn’t.”

“So you just basically saved Washington, New York, London, Beijing, Moscow… okay, the whole planet?”

“Yeah.”

“Incredible!” And she hopped up to give me another kiss.

Now Agent Judge strode into the barn, followed by Lieutenant Russell. They cleared their throats to announce their arrival.

“Um, hi, Daddy,” Mel said, blushing a little.

“You’re both safe?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “And as far as I can tell, everything on Earth has gone back to normal.”

“I’ll say,” said Lieutenant Russell, shooting me a wink.

“Daniel?” said Agent Judge.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m mighty impressed, son. Your parents would be proud.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When he said that, I remembered that my father and mother were gone. Forever.

Abbadon didn’t imagine them away. They had left on their own.

Life was really going to be different from here on out.

Chapter
87

ABOUT AN HOUR later I sat down in the meadow and stared up at the blanket of stars.

Number 2 was gone, erased from this realm for all time.

But if a fellow traveler from Alpar Nok could truly become the devil, what was I meant to become?

I had so wanted to slay that Russian gangster for what he had done to Dana. Did the rage and hatred that fueled Abbadon burn inside me, too?

I needed to talk to my parents.

Maybe they didn’t mean it when they said they were going away, never to come back.

“Dad?” I whispered. “Mom? I still need you.”

I closed my eyes and focused on their presence.

When I opened my eyes, I was still alone. In a field. Under the stars.

So, it was true. I couldn’t summon my parents.

Fine. I’d hash this all out with my friends. I summoned Willy and Dana, Joe and Emma.

They didn’t come.

“Look, you guys, I don’t even care if Dana and Willy are dating now or whatever. I need to talk.”

Still, they didn’t come.

A lump formed in my throat as I realized I was completely and utterly alone on Earth. A stranger stranded in a strange land. Being the Alien Hunter had taken a heavy toll on me. I had given up everything I ever had. My family. My friends. My shot at a normal life.

For a moment I wondered if I had also given up my incredible superpowers by forcing Number 2 to surrender his. Were we so linked, like the two sides of a coin, that what happened to him happened to me?

No, mon
, said a friendly voice in my head.
Otherwise, you would be stardust instead of staring at the stars, yah?

Okay, I wasn’t completely alone. I still had Xanthos, my spiritual advisor.

“Are you okay, Daniel?”

And, yes, I had Mel.

She sat down next to me.

“I was kind of worried when you disappeared from the dining room.”

“Guess I’m just not in the mood for ice cream tonight.”

“How about we go out for a malted?” Mel cracked, remembering Abbadon’s corny idea for a hot date.

“I’ll take a rain check,” I said with a smile.

“Thought you might want this.” She held up the slim computer that had been my main alien-hunting tool. “You left it inside.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t really need to look at it. Number 1 is next. Number 1 has always been next.”

I hoped Number 1, The Prayer, had enjoyed watching Number 2 and me battle each other in our Armageddon death match. I figured Number 1 should stay tuned, because his own personal Armageddon was coming up… right after the break, as they say on
American Idol
.

For some odd and insane reason, that made me smile.

So in my next battle, I’d be going up against some kind of alien god, right?

Fine. I’d brush up on my Greek and Norse mythology. Read a few more Percy Jackson books.

Feeling better than I had in a long time, I draped my arm around Mel’s shoulder.

We gazed into each other’s eyes.

And I noticed something I had never seen before.

“Did Abbadon do that to you?”

“This?” She pointed at a long scar on her cheek. “No, Daniel—it’s always been there.”

And that’s when I finally realized what I should’ve known all along: the reason Mel reminded me so much of Dana was because she
was
Dana.

It’s pretty amazing where souls can journey when they leave one realm and enter the next.

And how true soul mates can never stay separated for long.

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