Ascension (Book 4, The Watcher Chronicles) (33 page)

But after I learned how to weave more than one tune at a time and figured out how to direct each melody to specific targets, I think I regained some of my cool points within the group.

I watch Gabe lift his invisibility and place his crown on Amon’s head. Mason immediately appears and phases Gabe away from danger. That’s our cue to rematerialize.

As soon as Lucifer’s men see us, they make a B-line for our asses. I lift my pipe to my lips and play two tunes at once. They’re completely separate pieces of music meant to tap into different emotions from both groups. The one I aim at Lucifer’s group makes them feel hopeless, and the one I play for us makes my friends feel invincible.

  Zack flings his daggers through the air, hitting his marks with dead on precision to prevent Lucifer’s men from being able to phase or use any other powers they might have, like Levi and his whip. Knowing I finally get to put that dude in his place makes me all kinds of happy.

Jess leads the charge of the others while I hang back and watch things. I add in a third melody to my playing and watch as it hits my target dead on, Levi.

I watch as the prince of envy turns his eyes to me realizing it’s me who’s affecting him. He comes to a dead stop. I know I have him trapped inside my song, reliving his worst nightmares like they’re happening all at once. He lifts the heels of his hands to his temples and squeezes his head. When he falls to his knees from the pain of his memories, I can’t say I feel a bit of pity for him. Dude must have some wickedly bad nightmares though. But considering who he is, it doesn’t surprise me one bit. I walk over to him and just stand there, watching him suffer. A part of me doesn’t want to end his pain too soon. It’s not like he cared about my pain while he was torturing me with his whip. It’s only when he looks up at me, pleading with his eyes that I finally take my crown and place it on his head, trapping him in the pink light of Chamuel’s aura.

I look up into the sky and see Jess flying in the air, leading Lucifer away from the rest of us.

I feel the warmth of Leah’s massive fireball zoom past my head and hear the scream as it hits her intended target, Mammon.

Man, remind me never to piss Lucifer off. Being made into a living corpse is all kinds of wrong. Mammon stops, drops and rolls from Leah’s fireball but it doesn’t help. Leah’s increased powers makes any fire she lets fly stay lit until she mentally tells it to go out. Wicked cool if you ask me. When Mammon stops twisting and wailing on the ground, becoming almost still, Leah makes the fire extinguish over his head so she can place her crown there, trapping the prince of greed in a pillar of red light.

A geyser of water shoots up from the ice drenching the prince who just came through the Tear. He doesn’t seem too concerned about it until the water takes on the form of a leviathan and heads straight towards him. With eyes wide, the dude finally starts running but it isn’t fast enough. Rafe’s water monster wraps itself around the prince, trapping him in a watery vise. Rafe walks up to the prince and places his crown on his head, trapping him in a pillar of green light.

“Chandler.”

I stop playing my music to look behind me because I hear a voice I haven’t heard in ages.

She looks just as beautiful as I remember from my childhood. Her long dark hair flows around her in the artic wind. She’s wearing a long white dress and looks like she just stepped out of a movie where she was playing the part of a kick ass Grecian goddess.

“Simone?” I ask because I’m not sure if I’m hallucinating or what.

She smiles and holds out her arms to me. “Hey, little man.”

I run up to her, feeling like I’m seven years old again and wrap my arms around her waist. She smells just like I remember, apples and cinnamon. I lean away from Simone and look into her sparkling emerald green eyes. I hold onto her for a long time just happy to see my guardian again.

“Chandler,” Simone says pulling away from me, “we need to go.”

“Go where?” I ask.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a pillar of blue light appear at the highest point of the mountain range surrounding us.

“Jess needs you,” Simone tells me.

These words act like cold water splashed in my face.

“Then let’s go.”

Simone phases me to the top of the mountain. I turn around and see Lucifer trapped inside the pillar of blue light. Jess is in his arms and JoJo is trying to pull her out but can’t. One by one my other four friends phase in with their own guardians by their sides.

Jess’ father and Mason seem to phase in at the exact same time.

They both run over and tell JoJo to move out of the way. It seems to take all of their combined strengths to remove Jess from Lucifer’s grasp but they finally do. I run over to them.

Mason sits on the ground and cradles Jess in his lap while Jess’ father places his hands over the wound on her stomach.

“Can you heal her?” Masons asks desperately.

I look at his face and can tell he’s barely holding it all together.

“Yes, I can heal her body” Zeruel says, his face looks troubled by something. “But…”

“But what?” Mason demands.

“Her soul,” Jess’ dad says. “I can’t feel it.”

“What do you mean you can’t feel it?” Mason demands again.

Zeruel sits back. I can see Jess’ wound is healed but she isn’t moving, isn’t breathing.

Zeruel shakes his head. His eyes well up with tears.

“Her soul has moved on,” Zeruel says lifting his eyes to Mason’s. “She’s dead.”

Mason shakes his head slowly.

“No,” he says firmly. “She can’t be. She promised me she would stay alive. Jess doesn’t break promises to me.”

Tears spill from Zeruel’s eyes. “She’s gone, Mason.”

Mason’s jaw tenses and he continues to shake his head. “No.”

“Mason,” JoJo says, “she knew she had to die.”

“No,” Mason says, almost yelling at JoJo, “if she knew, she wouldn’t have promised me that she would stay alive!”

“She didn’t know until the very last moment,” JoJo tells him, tears streaming down her face. “God came to let us see what needed to happen to trap Lucifer. Her grief over dying, over leaving you was the only thing strong enough to bring that devil to his knees. I’m sorry, mon amie. It was her destiny.”

Mason continues to shake his head in denial, but I can tell when the truth of what’s happened slowly starts to sink in because the light in Mason’s eyes dies.

He cradles Jess closer to his body and begins to rock her back and forth.

“I can’t live without you,” I hear him say. “I just can’t.”

JoJo and Leah are both crying. Remy and JoJo’s guardian try to comfort them but their sobs seem inconsolable.

I just stare down at Jess as Mason holds her, telling her how much he loves her.

“Chandler,” Simone says to me.

I drag my eyes away from the scene to look at her.

“Before I was allowed to come, God told me to remind you about something He said to you once.”

I look at her in confusion. “What He told me?”

I think back to the one time I had a conversation with God. It was right after Jess and Mason went through the Tear to the alternate Earth.

“He just told me that we were all permanently connected,” I tell her.

“Oui,” I hear JoJo say.

I look over at her.

“When He left me here to wait for Jess and Lucifer,” JoJo says through her tears, “He reminded me of that too.”

“Why would He do that?” I ask.

I admit. I’m no rocket scientist so it takes me a while to figure things out.

“We’re connected,” I say, looking at the others to see if they understand what I’m saying. “We’re connected. Our souls will always be connected to one another. We were able to call Gabe to us because of that connection.”

I see dawning appear in their eyes.

“Maybe that’s why we’ve all always felt closer to Jess than anyone else,” I say to them. “Maybe this moment is why we needed to.”

“You think we can call her soul back to us?  How?” Rafe asks.

“When we grabbed Gabe,” I say, “Jess just told him to come to us. Maybe that’s all we have to do now.”

I turn to Simone. “Do you think it will work?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, Chandler. But you need to hurry if you are going to try.”

The six of us gather around Mason and Jess. I kneel down in front of them.

“Mason,” I say, trying to get his attention.

Reluctantly, Mason lifts his head. I’m not even sure he’s going to understand what I need to say to him. There’s a vacant look behind his eyes now, like he’s emotionally shut himself off to everything happening around him. And maybe that’s what he’s done. Maybe it’s the only way he can deal with his grief.

“We need Jess,” I say to him. “We might be able to pull her soul back to us.”

Mason grabs my arm with a strength I forgot he had.

“Promise me something, Chandler,” Mason says fiercely, his eyes suddenly looking mad with grief. “Promise me if you can’t bring her back that you will kill me.”

“Dude, I can’t…”

Mason’s grip on my arm tightens. I grimace.

“I can’t live without her,” Mason says, his voice hoarse. “And only the power of an archangel can kill me. Promise you’ll do that for me so I can join her in Heaven.”

“She wouldn’t want that.”

“She wouldn’t want me to live in my own living Hell either,” Mason insists. “Please, Chandler. Promise me you’ll kill me.”

“I don’t need to make a promise like that to you,” I tell him. “You’re not the only one who needs her. Now give Jess to me. I need my best friend back.”

Mason lets me take Jess out of his lap, and I lay her in the middle of our circle of archangels as we all kneel around her body. We join hands.

“How do we do it?” Leah asks, her tears forgotten. Her face holds a grim determination now. We have a small glimmer of hope and sometimes that’s all you need.

“We call her to us,” I say, “just like we did with Gabe.”

“But Jess called him to us,” Zack reminds me.

“Then we all do it,” I say. “We all call her.”

“What should we say?” Rafe asks.

“Jess just said ‘come to us’,” I reply. “I think that should be all we need to say. Let’s just keep it simple. On the count of three we say it together.”

Everyone nods.

“One….two…three…”

“Come to us,” we say in unison.

Nothing happens.

“Let’s try again,” I say.

“One…two…three…”

“Come to us,” we all say again.

Still no movement.

“It’s not working,” JoJo sobs.

“Maybe,” I hear Zeruel say behind me, “you need more power to reach her.”

“How do we get more power?” I ask.

Zeruel looks around at his fellow guardians.

“We can share our powers with you. We can give you the power of the guardians.”

“But Zeruel,” Remy says, “you know what that will do to us.”

“Maybe it’s what we were always meant to do Remy.”  Zeruel looks at his fellow guardians. “If some of you don’t want to do it, I understand. It might be possible to pull her back without all of us having to sacrifice our powers.”

“What will that do to you?” I ask, looking at Simone.

“If we give you our power,” Simone says, “we will not be able to go back to Heaven. We will have to live out a human life.”

“Being human wouldn’t be so bad,” Remy says with a shrug. “I lived like one for a long time. Plus, I’d get to watch Leah grow up and not just come visit her every once in a while.”

It doesn’t take long for all the guardians make their decision.

Zeruel walks into the circle and kneels by Jess, laying his hands on her right arm.