Everything flashed through his mind. When he got into the car. When he faced down the leopard. When he took all of Dona’s punishments and yet still desired her.

When he turned as he did now, to face that red glow and all the terrible things it represented.

You’re not weak… I have faith in you…

“I’ll know her anywhere, in any form. I won’t lose her again. I won’t lose myself again. She found me. She’s my compass.”

Lucifer inclined His head. “Noble sentiments. Are you strong enough to live up to them?”

Nathan began to move, the agony growing in his chest as he moved forward, as if the chasm returned all pains past and present. The pain of the piercings was suddenly there too, a gift. He didn’t know if it came from Lucifer, the Lady, or Dona herself, but he held that particular pain to him like a promise. Not giving himself time to think, he broke into a run, moving toward that red glow, toward the promise of Dona that would wait on the other side. Toward his choice.

Dona…

He gave a fierce yell, defiant, let it echo out over the chasm and come back to him, blast him with heat. Gathering himself for the charge, he leaped out over the void.

Gravity snatched him, spinning him downward toward flames. As he fell, he could see the shadows upon shadows in the fire, waiting for him.

He had survived the abandonment of his mother, the cold hatred and indifference of his foster mothers. He’d killed a woman with his cruelty and taken away the hopes and dreams of countless others. Through some miracle, he’d gotten Dona as his soul mate. He’d found his only hope for salvation in Hell. The irony was not lost on him.

There was someone out there whose soul was connected to his. That meant he would never be alone, that someone needed him as much as he needed her. He could survive this. He would. He’d remember her. Or be damned to Hell forever, no matter where he ended up. His mouth opened on a scream as the fire swallowed him up, the shadows taking him eagerly.

* * * * *

Show mercy, love.

“Did he show mercy to the women in his life, those he used to exorcise his own pain, futilely? How about Eliza? He must pay for his crimes, my lady. You would show mercy to all of them.”

“I would.” She looked fondly down at the image of the blue planet She held in Her palm, but there was sadness in Her gaze as well. They make things so difficult for themselves.

He reached out, for He couldn’t bear Her sadness, and touched Her spirit. “It will all be well, my lady. He is strong, stronger than I first believed. The soul chooses its own justice, knows what it must pay to earn what it most desires. He will be all right.”

“Perhaps we could choose a different way this time. Something that would be best for them both… After all, he is right. We can fold time, go back, change the way the world turns, rearrange the chess pieces…if it be for the highest good.”

“You are a plague to me, my Lady.”

“I love you, my dearest and only Lord.”

Chapter Twelve

“Clear!”

Fire through his body, jerking him, his heart pumping irregularly, faltering, stopping again. Oblivion. All I want is oblivion.

“Again!”

Heart yelping in protest. Don’t make me feel… For one moment, don’t make me feel…

Air, painful, dragging into the lungs. Heart feeling like a jagged rock pounding on the inside of his chest. Fire in his midsection.

Light… Shattering agony, so bad that sound was coming from him… How could he hear his own screams when his vocal cords had been burned away an eternity ago along with all vestiges of a physical body? But yes, that was his voice. He was screaming, screaming the way a banshee screams. His eyes were squinting at the light, streaming with tears as he stared wildly around the room of people, things that he couldn’t see clearly but fumbled to understand. Medical equipment, lights. He spoke words, he didn’t know what, a wild stream of gibberish that turned the faces around him as white as their clothing. There was actually a moment they all stood back and he felt the weight of their wide-eyed stares even if he could not clearly see the features of their faces. Then he collapsed back on the gurney and the moment passed. They pounced back on him.

A haze as time churned forward. Lying somewhere, somewhere soft. Voices.

“You should have seen this guy in the ER…it was like we were transported to the set of The Exorcist. Scariest shit I’ve ever heard coming out of his mouth. His eyes…” Nathan felt a shudder run through the hand resting on the blood pressure cuff wrapped around his arm. “Colleen even fainted, if you can believe that. Man, nothing fazes that woman. We’ve had homeless people in here that acted way less crazy.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it… To be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what he said. It was just…it sounds stupid, but it was like the room got cold as Alaska when he started screaming. For a minute we were all just frozen. I felt like I’d just found out my whole life was over, the worst feeling of despair and rage you’ve ever felt. You know how sometimes when you get so crazed by everything around you and you want to break out and you don’t know how? You think up some crazy shit like shooting everyone? That was what this feeling was like.”

“James, I think you’ve been on too many back-to-back shifts.” Trembling, shuddering, speaking words that he didn’t remember… The worst feeling of despair and rage you’ve ever felt. That was probably as close to the truth as anything.

Consigned to Hell, denied the ability to scream until he’d woken in a mortal body again.

He lost consciousness again, leaving the invisible James and his cohort behind.

Moved through a thick fog where he had no sense of anything except he wasn’t being hurt, tormented, burning or freezing. But he did ache. Deep inside him something ached, wanting to call out a name. He couldn’t remember that name. That was the most horrible thing of all. He had to remember that name. Had to remember it…

For several days they kept him under heavy sedation, for he was so disoriented that everything frightened him. They told him his name and it meant nothing. He forgot it a moment later and had to ask again, mumble for it. They treated him with some impatience, which, compared to what he’d known, was akin to being given every consideration. As some cognizance returned, he noted one of his hands always remained handcuffed to the bedrail. He had a vague sense of a guard walking in and out at times, sitting outside the door. A prisoner. He’d always been a prisoner. The thought stretched his face in a grim smile. Having skin and a body…was strange.

Perhaps he was free now, despite the handcuffs? He didn’t want to be free. Needed that name. Need the name.

Then he’d doze and the nightmares would come back, nightmares even more powerful because he knew they weren’t nightmares at all.

Fire…monsters…every fear that a person could imagine having. Those that lived in the darkest part of the psyche, things he hadn’t even known he feared above all the other, more mundane fears, such as falling, being buried alive, spiders crawling across the skin to bite the most tender areas of the body, high-pitched shrieking laughter while being tortured, cold, darkness… No, there were worse fears. Shut in a small, dark place deep under the earth, being forgotten, unimportant for all eternity, tortured for amusement until the mind had shattered at the weight of all of it. Knowing that it was all deserved, so not even a sense of injustice provided a haven. There would be no escape from it, not ever.

He’d surrendered. Just surrendered, with no other choice. Standing free of all bonds, no longer even trying to draw away as everything was done to him and more. In the end, rationality fled, the mind, soul and body broken, nothing left. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought of anything, a macabre meditative state based on torment instead of peace. His soul had floated, no longer weighed down by anything.

Then, lying on cold, wet stone, he’d felt a touch, a brief flash of eyes too powerful to be met, wings so pure white the beauty of them choked him.

Goodbye, my child. You have paid for your sins. Now forgive yourself and love her as she deserves.

Don’t fuck up. That from a different presence, male. A brush of gray wings along his brow that offered encouragement with the warning.

A few days later, he remembered a conversation. Dr. Adams.

“Mr. Powell…can you understand me? You were stabbed in a fight at the prison.

…died for nine minutes before we restarted your heart. We think…Mr. Powell? Still with us? We think that may explain some of your disorientation and your memory problems…”

It was an understatement. At first, his vision was cloudy and he could only see blurry outlines of people or things. Everything startled him. Noise was too much. All of it could be the fire, monsters…

With his physical body, the attempt at rational thought returned. As he gained in strength, his mind tried to tell him that he’d had some weird hallucination when he was gutted in the knife fight, that none of it had been real.

No, it wasn’t his mind trying to convince him of that. Not exactly. Jonathan. The part of him that would always be afraid of truth. But sometime during those minutes when he’d stood on the other side of the threshold between life and death, Nathan had taken the reins and Jonathan wasn’t getting them back, no matter what he tried.

Nathan. That was what someone had called him, long ago when he was young and more possibilities had been open to him. Then later… Nathan and Jonathan. Two parts of the same whole. Made whole by someone… Someone…

It hurt so badly, the not knowing, that as he lay in bed on the tenth day he curled into himself and made the agony worse by putting the pressure of the position on the largest stab wound across his belly. He cupped his hand over it, held it as he rocked.

I have to remember, I have to remember… It’s not real. You’re losing your fucking mind.

There’s no one. No one…