Armageddon - By James Patterson Page 0,53

people, young and old alike, would do anything to have a second chance with their departed fathers and mothers.”

I nodded. She was right.

“Let’s gather up his ashes,” said my mother. I heard a slight catch in her voice.

“Are you okay, Mom?” I asked. It was kind of a dumb question, under the circumstances.

In fact, she was starting to look older, too. Her golden hair seemed thinner. Less shiny. Grayer.

“Help me, Daniel.”

I steadied her by the elbow as she knelt on the ground and lovingly scooped up the feathery ashes, placing them in the crook of a fallen banyan-tree leaf. I knelt beside her and helped.

“I’m so sorry, Mom.”

“Thank you, Daniel. By the way, have I ever told you how much I love you?”

“Only every day. And I love you, too, Mom.”

“I know, dear. Your father knew it, too.”

She folded up the leaf holding my father’s scant ashes.

I stood and once again steadied her as she creaked up from the ground.

“I sensed death was coming,” she said with a sigh. “I just didn’t know for whom.”

“I was hoping it would be Abbadon.”

“One day it will be his turn. None of us are gods, Daniel. We are not immortal.”

“What about Number 1, The Prayer?”

“Yes, you’re correct. That creature is different.”

“He’s probably watching us right now.”

“Then let’s show him how much we loved your father. Let’s cast his ashes to the winds. We all came from stardust, and to stardust we must return.”

My mother opened the folded leaf and blew a breath across the grayish powder that had once been my father. The wind carried it away and, when it hit that single shaft of sunshine, I swear the tiny particles sparkled like a galaxy of stars.

“And now, Daniel, I must ask you to do the same for me.”

My heart sank to my sneakers. “What do you mean?”

“Your father and I were soul mates, eternally linked across all time and all dimensions. When one soul leaves a realm, its soul mate will never be too far behind.”

Now she became translucent, just like my father had; her body was a glowing paper lantern of golden light.

“Wait,” I said. “Don’t leave me all alone.”

“You’re never alone, Daniel. We’ll always be with you.”

She disintegrated into a sparkling cloud and drifted off on the wind. When her dust hit the sunbeam, the sandy particles glittered for an instant, then disappeared.

My mother wouldn’t need me to collect her ashes. She was already on the wind and, like my father, wouldn’t be coming back.

Suddenly I felt the same way I’d felt when I was three years old. Racked with shuddering sobs, I felt the same gut-wrenching agony I had felt when The Prayer stole into our Kansas home and took away every good and happy thing I had ever known.

I had just been orphaned for the second time and, believe me, it hurt just as much as the first time. Maybe more. Because I had been given the chance to know my parents as people.

I heard a rustle in the underbrush. I looked to my right and saw Lieutenant Russell.

He came closer and stood beside me. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

We were two warriors who dealt with death on a daily basis. And yet we both knew that some deaths hurt more than others.

Because the souls closest to our own take some of us with them when they leave.

Chapter 72

UNDER ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, I would have given myself a little more time to mourn my father and mother.

But I was operating in the anything-but-ordinary zone known as the underworld, a parallel landscape lying miles beneath the surface of the Earth. After what felt like days spent climbing ice-capped mountains and crossing a barren desert, I was certain we weren’t under West Virginia any longer. Joe’s best guess, after he consulted his geotracker app, was that we were somewhere under Mexico. Or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Or maybe Canada.

Apparently, the churning movement of the Earth’s liquid core was playing havoc with the magnetic field and throwing off the accuracy of all his compass readings.

Now, two hours after my parents made their final exits, my friends, my remaining troops, and I had trekked through the sweltering jungle and stood at what looked like the vine-covered entrance to a Mayan temple. One slab of the igneous rock basalt—lava that had been heaved up and rapidly cooled—stood supported, Stonehenge style, by two other basalt columns, forming a doorway into the darkness. The gray, oblong blocks had strange hieroglyphics