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Chapter 72

The g-forces had leveled out, and Morningstar Rising lifted at a moderate speed. She handled like a dream. Rhea hoped the automatic controls were as good as the manual ones. Even keeping the launch as slow as she could, she didn't have much time, and Jack was bleeding heavily, bright blood pulsing out all over the cockpit with every beat of his heart. The little liquid arcs were getting shallower and shallower.

She closed her eyes and rested her hand on his leg. She could feel the damage—ripped arteries, pulverized muscle, severed nerved, shattered bone. The bullet had left a small hole on impact, but a massive one on exit; most of the front of his right thigh was simply gone. They'd be sensing for her; the Hellawatt expenditure she'd need to heal Jack would bring them to her like sharks to blood. But a lot faster.

"We made it, didn't we?" He shouldn't have been conscious, but he was. His voice was so soft she almost couldn't hear it over the low roar of the engine. "They can't track us here. We'll go underground somehow, Rhea—get new identities and ride this thing out." He shifted slightly and grimaced with pain. "We'll leave the ship to Jan and them—someone will have to fund it now that they can see it works . . . everything's going to be fine. We're going to be fine. Damn, that leg hurts!"

She pulled the oxygen mask over his face; he didn't need it yet, but he would soon. And she wanted to make sure he was taken care of. Safe. Then she pulled in the Hellawatts and ran them through her fingertips into his flesh, focusing on healing him. She reattached the arteries first, and replaced his blood with some of her own. Then she reconnected the nerves. She was replacing the muscle tissue and starting to piece the bone back together when suddenly the cabin was full of devils and fallen angels.

"Hello, Averial," Kellubrae said. She felt their shields bear down on her, stifling any power she could draw. She was glad she'd stopped the bleeding and healed the nerves first. The bones and flesh would take care of themselves if they had to.

Kellubrae looked around. "Pretty little toy you've made. Rather a dangerous one for the humans to have, though, don't you think? You'll have to point it at the ground before we leave."

"Can't," Rhea said. "Mortal on board."

Kellubrae looked at Jack as if seeing him for the first time. "An unfortunate complication. We can't hurt him . . . we can't be the cause of his coming to harm . . ." The dark angel smiled. " . . . But we can certainly port him back to safety. Kind of us, yes?"

Venifar said, "You've led us a long chase, bitch, but you had to know you couldn't get away. Lucifer himself wants to talk to you. It's time to come home now."

She couldn't do anything with Hellawatts, but she could still move normally. She threw herself over the seat into the cockpit and yanked on the vertical thrust.

"Rhea, no!" Jack yelled.

"What? No!" she heard Kellubrae scream, and then pain tore her atom from atom.

As plans went, she wished she'd been able to think of one that didn't entail so much pain. Morningstar Rising tore beyond the upper limit of North Carolina airspace, and the agony rolled over her like sheets of boiling water. The ship disappeared around her—ripped itself through her, in truth, as her body ripped itself into molecules. Aware, frightened, hurting molecules.

Her body re-formed with an audible snap. And then she was suspended in space. Not the normal space above Earth, but the space-time nexus that straddled the infinity between the separated kingdoms of Heaven and Hell. Far below, she could see the Pit, burning like a cyclopean laser-eye in the center of Hell's scarred face, and even from her point thousands of miles above the surface, she could feel the heat of the flames. Kellubrae and Venifar fell past her, screaming. She started falling then, too, and picked up speed, and the heat of the Pit increased. And increased. And increased. First her skin began to blister. Then to peel away in strips. The pain was unbelievable, worse than anything she had ever experienced, worse than the worst that Hell had done to her before. Then her body convulsed and burst into flames, and flaked away into ash, leaving her soul bared to an even more exquisite unraveling.

The pain contracted on the smaller and smaller kernel that was her, burning away thoughts of Celestial, poignant memories of Jack, the joy of once again being with Remmy and Mir. Finally the only thought left to her outside of the pain, the last kernel of her that remained her own, was a single triumphant burst:

I GAVE THEM THE STARS!

 

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