Exile (The Oneness Cycle) (2 page)

Chris appeared at her side with a blue tarp, which he nailed over the windowsill with a few expert whacks of a hammer. With that little bit of a rain barrier in place, he stood back, regarded Reese with his arms folded over his chest, and said, “Who are you?”

She was still repositioning stacks of books, studiously avoiding looking at either of them. But she couldn’t just ignore the question. “My name is Reese,” she said.

“You have a last name?”

“No, we—I—we don’t use them,” she stammered. Why wouldn’t the words come out? His gaze was boring into her, and she dropped what she was doing and sat on the couch again, shoulders hunched, bone weary. Of course she needed a last name.

“Danby,” she let out in a whimper. “You can … Danby.”

She ventured a glance up. Chris was still staring at her, but although his gaze was stern, she could see now that it wasn’t angry. It was … protective, maybe.

The lump in her throat suddenly grew until all she wanted to do was curl up on the couch, cover herself with the flannel blanket, and give vent to all she felt until she had exhausted every tear and more, until every muscle ached and her skin burned with the emptiness inside.

His anger would have been hard to take. But protectiveness was a memory, too fresh and far, far too potent.

“A bat couldn’t have broken that window—and I could have sworn it was something else, something way bigger when I walked in here. So what was that?”

Tyler wasn’t paying attention to the exchange, and his question, to her relief, deflected the force of her grief. She considered lying, but she was too tired for that. She leaned back against the scratchy plaid upholstery.

“A renegade,” she said. “Just one … so you don’t need to worry that others will come.”

Outside, headlight beams came around a curve in the road just below the cottage, disappearing behind the tarp after only a brief flash.

“That’ll be Mum,” Chris said. He frowned. “I think I hung up on her.”

“A renegade?” Tyler pressed.

“Do you believe in demons?” Reese asked.

Chris shook his head. His forehead was creased with worry. “I’ll put tea on,” he said. “Wait this conversation. Until Mum’s in here.”

Tyler looked apologetically at Reese. “Diane is good for this kind of thing.”

Reese felt the slightest glimmer of humour. “For discerning crazy?”

Tyler gave her a wry smile. “For helping us know what to do.” He stood, leaving the bat he had been examining on the floor. “I don’t think it’s going to get any warmer and drier in here tonight. We’d better go to the living room.”

He escorted Reese through a cluttered laundry room and a small kitchen, equally cluttered but surprisingly clean, where Chris was putting another kettle on. On the other side of the kitchen counter was a tiny room almost entirely occupied by a couch and an easy chair. One wall was swallowed up by a fireplace, over which hung a massive sword—a claymore, Reese thought. A small fire was going, and the room was warm.

She closed her eyes for a second. That only two hours ago she had thrown herself off a cliff in a vain attempt to drown herself seemed about as far away and unreal as hope. Strange how life could hang on and continue even when she didn’t want it to—stranger that it could bring her somewhere like this, now.

And the sword. Why had the sword come to hand?

The rain nearly masked the sound of a car pulling up outside the cottage, and in a moment the front door pushed open and a woman stumbled in, wrapped in a sleek rain slicker and wearing a kerchief which she promptly pulled off and wrung out. She was short and comfortably built, and her pale hair was twisted in a French knot at the back of her head. Her sharp eyes fixed on Reese immediately.

“So you’re the girl,” she said. “I’m Diane. How are my boys treating you?”

Reese stammered something … even she wasn’t sure what words she was trying to say. Mercifully, Tyler and Chris both began to talk, telling this woman—Chris’s mother, Diane—what had happened, from the rescue right down to the demon that had turned into a bat and the sword that had appeared and then dematerialized in Reese’s hand. Getting out of her rain slicker and boots, Diane listened intently and nodded, without interrupting or appearing surprised at any point.

Finally she crossed the tiny room and took Reese’s arm. Her hands were weathered and heavy veined, older than the rest of her, and cold from the drive through the rain.

“Sit,” she said. “I think we should all sit.”

They did. Chris and Tyler looked uncomfortable, and after about half a second Chris stood up again and positioned himself in front of the fireplace. His mother didn’t chastise him.

“I saw it,” she said without any more preamble. “The demon. I see things sometimes—the boys know. That’s how I knew to get up here fast.”

She peered along her nose at Reese. Her eyes were blue. “And you,” she said. “You are a part of the Oneness.”

For an instant Reese thought she would not find her voice, or even the breath to say it. But she did—somehow she did.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m an exile.”

Chapter 2

“A what?” Chris said. “A … from what?”

Diane ignored her son, instead keeping her eyes fixed on Reese. Compassion, crushing with the weight of the girl’s words, flooded her. The haunted eyes, the obvious grief, the plunge into the sea—it all made sense now. But there was more to this than one young woman’s grief, and Diane found that deep within, she quivered.

How was it even possible? The Oneness couldn’t separate—couldn’t break.

Could it?

But surely if it wasn’t true, this girl would know it. And she wouldn’t be a living icon of loss.

Diane’s practicality and her heartache on the girl’s behalf crowded out her other dominant emotion—resentful unhappiness that somehow, she was mixed up in this.

The boys, of course, had no idea what this was all about. Best friends who had bought the old cliff cottage together and determined to waste their best years fishing in the bay, they were good-hearted and as purely earthy as the fishing nets, woven of hemp and smelling forever of seaweed, that they spent their days up to their knees in. The Oneness was not part of any world they had ever brushed against.

Chris was the image of his father: all brawn and sea and seriousness. He was too young when Douglas died to remember him but had grown into his likeness all the same. Tyler, now—Tyler knew what grief was. Something about Reese must have brought it back, because Diane had spotted it in his eyes when she arrived—that look he’d worn on his face for two years, his tenth to twelfth, after his parents died in the accident.

But no, the boys knew nothing about the world to which Reese belonged—or had belonged. It was her unspoken agreement with Chris: when the supernatural came knocking, she dealt with it and left him out of it as much as possible.

He couldn’t be happy about this.

Not that he would make the girl leave. Not her son. She knew Chris—he was just like his father. Now that Reese had been under his care for even a few hours, he would put himself in death’s way before he would leave her defenceless.

If she had truly been exiled from the Oneness, who knew what that natural bent would cost Douglas Sawyer’s son?

Diane covered her face with her hands and stifled a groan.

Tyler, thankfully, wasn’t done with his questions. “You said demons,” he said, looking at Reese. “You asked if I believe in demons.”

“Yes,” Reese said. She sounded weary. Clearly he wanted her to go on, but she didn’t—so he cleared his throat and continued.

“I don’t know. Maybe I do. Now. I saw that thing before it … turned into a bat. Right? Is that what happened?”

“Yes,” Chris said, his voice tight. “That’s what happened. After she stabbed it.”

“Are you an angel?” Tyler asked.

Diane started to interject, to cut off Tyler’s unfortunately ignorant questions, but to her surprise, Reese answered.

“No.”

“What
is
the Oneness?” Chris asked.

This time Reese didn’t answer. More than likely she couldn’t. Diane wrestled with the combination of compassion, anger, and fear that had been assailing her since Chris’s phone call, and which heightened with every moment she spent in this lost child’s presence.

“They are a force,” Diane said. “One of three spiritual forces in this world. We’ve already named the first two.”

“Angels and demons,” Tyler said. “Everyone knows about those. Why haven’t I ever heard of this … this …”

“Because the Oneness is the most important of the three,” Diane answered. “And thus the most hidden.”

“Come on,” Tyler said, leaning back, his eyes widening. “More than angels?”

Reese found her voice. “Angels are just messengers,” she said. “And servants. Who do you think they serve?”

“God,” Tyler promptly answered.

Reese ventured a faint smile. “Well, yes. Everything does. But more … specifically, angels are servants to us.”

She caught herself, and the smile vanished completely. “To them.”

Tyler opened his mouth to ask another question, but Diane jumped in. This conversation could go on all night, and she wasn’t sure they had the time. She was sure Reese didn’t have the desire, or likely the stamina, for it either. She thought of trying to soften her questions but decided that quick was merciful.

“What was that demon doing here if you’re not part of the Oneness anymore?”

“I’m not … it was a renegade. Not part of an organized force. Most likely it was just going for a joy kill.”

“Stupid,” Chris said. Diane raised her eyebrows. He was quick, her kid—too quick for his own good. He clarified: “To act as a renegade—to work against the best interests of the whole force like that.”

“They are a house divided. That’s why they will lose,” Reese said.

“But you had a sword,” Diane continued. “Chris said he saw one in your hand.”

Reese looked at the floor between her hands. “I don’t know why that happened. Apparently I haven’t … haven’t lost everything yet.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before there were tears tracking down her face. Diane sighed and stood, putting a motherly hand to Reese’s hair. “So you’re sure there’s no more threat? Nothing is coming after you tonight?”

Reese’s voice was misery itself. “It’s not likely, but I can’t make promises. I don’t know what another renegade might do.”

Chris stepped forward, the claymore above the fireplace a suitable backdrop to his big-shouldered frame. “Good, then,” he said. “You can take my bed for the night—I’ll sleep out here.”

“I—all right.”

Diane saw the raw gratitude that flashed in the girl’s eyes. Her son had better watch his step. He was a fine, good-looking, strong young man, and this girl was vulnerable.

And dangerous.

* * *

“Well?” Chris asked.

Tyler and Reese had retired to opposite corners of the house. Diane stayed by the flickering fire, warming her feet. They hadn’t warmed since she entered the cottage. Chris had disappeared for a little while, rummaging around in his room for blankets and a pillow, which he dumped on the couch before crossing his arms and regarding his mother with an air of expectation.

So much like Douglas.

“Well what?” Diane asked.

“All that stuff she said about the Oneness being a force and like angels … servants of God.”

“All true. There are more things in heaven and earth, my boy, than most of us have ever dreamt of.”

“But what
is
it … this Oneness thing? That girl in my room—is she some kind of angel or ghost or …”

“No, no,” Diane said, shaking her head. “She’s as human as we are. The Oneness is people. But more than people, too.”

“Why haven’t I ever heard of them?”

Diane shrugged. “They’re hidden.”

“Because they’re treacherous?”

“Because they’re plain.” Diane reflected a moment. “I have never met one who was trying to hide. Hidden in plain sight—you’ve heard that saying? The Oneness is like that. Angels and demons are mysterious, terrifying, beautiful—supernatural. So we talk about them. But the Oneness are just there. They’re hidden because no one thinks they’re worth paying attention to, except once in a while when they …”

Her eyes clouded over for a moment at a memory—a family huddled in her kitchen, fleeing the rancour of men. It had been Douglas who brought them home. Douglas, the unbeliever, who insisted they hide them. Douglas who turned their pursuers away.

And Douglas who was undone by them. By their love for each other.

Their oneness.

“… when they get in the way,” she finished lamely.

“So they’re just people,” Chris said. “Then why are they any different from you or me?”

Diane gazed into her son’s face and saw her husband there again. “Do you know the story of Babel?” she asked.

He frowned and scratched his nose. “Rings a bell.”

“The Tower of Babel,” Diane prompted. “Old story … one of the oldest. It’s in the Bible.”

He shook his head. “Don’t think I know it.”

“Thousands of years ago, near the beginning of time, all mankind got together to build a tower to heaven,” Diane said. “It was to be a monument to them and lift them into the very presence of God. But it was an affront to him too, because their hearts were rebellious and evil. Nevertheless, they started their building. And God looked down and said, ‘The people are one, and behold, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them.’”

Chris looked confused. “Go on.”

“So God took it upon himself to stop them. He came down to the Tower of Babel disguised as a man, and he cursed the people so their tongues became confused. Where before they had all spoken the same language, now their speech became gibberish in one another’s ears. Without the ability to understand one another, the people were forced to separate, and they scattered themselves across the face of the whole earth.”

“Interesting story,” Chris said.

Diane managed a thin smile. “There is another story. Not so many people know this one.”

He smiled back—a big, generous smile. “But you do.”

“Mankind never did build his tower to heaven. Many years—thousands of years—later, a man from heaven built a ladder to earth. He promised to send the Spirit to earth, to work a miracle in all who wait to receive it. His followers gathered together in a room and waited for that Spirit to descend. Suddenly, they all began to speak in languages they had never known before, and every one of them understood every other.”