cab and closing me in. Dad’s snoring surrounds me, loud and obnoxious. My hands shake, but I turn the key in the ignition and leave the lake behind. Dad wakes only once on the drive home. His head rolls toward me; his face is impossible to discern in the darkness, but his hand finds my knee.
“You missed the fireworks,” he says.
I rest my hand on top of his, forcing the anger from my voice. “Sorry about that.”
But he’s snoring again.
It’s better that way, actually. I’ve nothing to say. Nothing kind, anyway. And we did miss the fireworks, Jake and I. A stitch of sadness pierces my heart. It’s been two years since I’ve seen fireworks with Dad. Two years since I’ve seen fireworks, period.
Then I think of the Sabres and their wings of blade. I think of their song, twisting bright and fragrant, surrounding me. I think of the mountain shining in the darkness, and the Terrestrial veil hanging like a ravaged curtain, the Celestial bleeding into the night.
I didn’t miss the fireworks after all.
16
Jake
Jake’s window is open. The scent of sweltering evergreens invades his room, clings to the bedsheets. He’s cleared his bed of the books and clothes and sits cross-legged facing the window. The Scriptures lie open on the sill next to a sweating glass of ice water. A secondhand lamp casts an amber glow over the book of Daniel, and Jake’s calloused hand thumbs the thick corner of the leather tome as he reads.
Parts of this great book feel intensely personal. A boy separated from his home, from his family. A boy with gifts and integrity. A boy who has something the powers that ruled wanted. A boy thrown to the lions.
But above all, a boy who is a dreamer. Something he has in common with Brielle, which is why Jake is searching the pages tonight.
He’s started marking things down so he won’t forget, so he can piece this thing together. It’s been six days since the first nightmare, three since Independence Day when the Sabres tore through the veil, and Brielle’s nightmares have done nothing but grow in intensity. It doesn’t matter if she has the halo with her or not, the dream visits every night. The girl in the hallway. Javan and Henry. Three scars marking the girl’s arm.
The more Jake thinks about it, the less probable it seems that the Sabres and Brielle’s dreams are disconnected. The timing is just too close.
He plays July Fourth over and over again in his mind. The Sabres—the gigantic Sabres—and their killer wings. And then the veil. Torn. It’s a thing Jake never thought he’d see, and it was over before he’d had time to really consider the significance.
After the Sabres had broken through, Canaan set him and Brielle down on Bachelor’s summit, and they saw with their very human, very Terrestrial eyes just what anyone else would see if they were watching.
The sky was torn. Like a tattered curtain, the veil did very little to hide the Celestial behind it. They saw jagged patches of orange sky where it should have been night. Wings of sharpened daggers flashed through the tear, widening the gap, as the Sabres’ worship rose to the Throne Room.
“It’s their presence that thins the veil,” Canaan said.
But it was their worship that tore it.
Canaan used to tell him stories about the Sabres. Jake’s favorite was the one about the great rebellion.
When the Prince of Darkness attempted to overthrow the Creator, it was the Sabres who stood staunchest against him. Canaan said it was the first time their instrumental wings were used as weapons. He’d love to have been there—to have seen the twelve of them unfurling their dagger-like feathers, locking blade into blade, keeping the Prince from the throne he so desired. While most of the ranks lost a third of their own that day, of the twelve, not a single Sabre fell.
But the Prince’s rebellion changed their role. Before, their worship of the Creator was a thing never contested, never questioned; now, with thousands and thousands of angels standing in opposition to the light, the Sabres’ song became a weapon against the Fallen, their adoration a swift blade that kept the celestial skies free of the rebels. Free of demonic attack against the angels of light.
Their song tore at anything that stood between the Creator and His creation.
They were the sword of God Himself.
But then mankind rebelled too. Darkness blossomed in the one place the Sabres could not fight—in the hearts of