Forty-Four Book Thirteen: 44, #13

By Jools Sinclair

A fallen angel by her side, Abby Craig is going straight to Hell.

But not without a fight.

Trapped between the evil that is Nathaniel Mortimer and the mysterious Samael, whose terrible secret she has finally unearthed, Abby doesn't stand a ghost of a chance.

Is there any way she can overcome impossible odds and make it out alive? Or will she eternally be trapped by the darkness, with home forever being just a dream, a mirage, a wisp of a ghost always disappearing in the wind?

Read the unforgettable last chapter in the Forty-Four series and find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: You Come Too Publishing
• Release date: Dec 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533744067

Jools Sinclair

Jools Sinclair is the author of the bestselling thirteen-part FORTY-FOUR saga as well as the Rose City Thriller series. She has a house in Bend, Oregon, but is currently on an extended stay in Colorado.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The blow hit me like a great wave, throwing me backward into the sand.

As I gasped for breath, the fallen angel stood above me, watching.

Why, Samael? I said, pushing the words past the edges of my lips. Why?

But he stayed quiet, as always.

I heard the rasp of my lungs, the erratic thump of my heart beating through the pain in my chest, and the sound of my soul splintering. But then suddenly everything pulled away, leaving me stranded in a long, gray silence.

I reached for images to steady myself.

Jesse’s smile. Ty on the river with sunlight spilling around him like a waterfall. Kate handing me a steaming mug of tea. The look on David’s face right before he broke into a wheezing session. The willow tree hanging over the pond back home.

The thoughts fluttered around me like fireflies, bits of light shining through the fog, coming and going, coming and going. But they soon burned away into ghostly wisps.

Above me, Samael’s silhouette was flat against the sky.

And then everything went black.

CHAPTER 1

I rode my motorcycle under a sweltering summer sun with Samael’s arms hooked around my waist, my mind replaying that chilling vision of him standing at the top of a hill high above an ancient city.

He was younger, his hair cropped close to his scalp, but he had those same eyes. Ice cold and fierce. He was staring out with death in those eyes, ready to destroy anything and everything that dared cross his path.

But it wasn’t Samael that made me shiver even as I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. It was the thing that walked up the hill to meet him that filled me with terror. Although Samael’s face was brimming with disdain as they spoke, he didn’t turn the demon away. And when the creature began speaking of revenge, the angel’s eyes flickered hot with interest.

The demon pushed harder then, his voice soft and rhythmic, almost like a prayer. Whatever he was offering, Samael wanted it. Needed it. And as the snow began to fall, the disgust in Samael’s expression fell away too.

He looked out at the city once more, dropped to his knees, and kissed the hand of Evil.

The smile that crept across those inky lips spoke of a great victory, as if the demon had just acquired something very special.

I touched the St. Christopher dangling from my neck and said a prayer over the rumble of the engine. I thought of the old woman in the chile fields who had given me the medal, remembering how afraid she was of Samael when she saw him that first time. Her eyes had grown three times their normal size as she stared, shaking her head. She had called him diablo.

I wondered now if she had been right.

When Samael had met me at the bottom of the lake at my death, I had assumed he was an angel. I never questioned his motives. I never thought for one moment that he was aligned with Lucifer.

If Samael sensed my suspicions, he didn’t let on. But something was different. In all my other travels, across the deserts of the Southwest, Texas, up to Colorado, and down to St. Mark’s Abbey, he would always come and go. But now he never left my side, he rode with me all day.

Was he worried that I would leave him? He didn’t have to be. Regardless of his own motivation or alliances or why he needed my help, there was no way I was walking away. Not now. I was finishing this.

Too much had happened, too many lives had been lost and ruined. Nathaniel Mortimer needed to be stopped. Somehow, he had come back from the dead. And now he was trying to bring an army of dark souls with him. These souls would possess the living and signal the end of life as we knew it.

I was going all the way with this, until I threw Nathaniel into a black void so deep that he could never again crawl out. There was nowhere else for me to go now except straight into that darkness.

I pulled into a rest area and cut the engine.

Getting off my bike, I fought through a river of running children and shuffling old men walking little white dogs. Normally with this kind of crowd I would have kept going, but my body was still adjusting to life on the road after all those months at the monastery. I had knots in my back and legs and felt like a tin man. I needed a break.

I wandered over to the row of vending machines, shot in some quarters, grabbed a cold bottle of water, and took it over to the large travel display in front of the restrooms. I gulped as I studied the map on the wooden board.

It was dotted with cartoonish renderings of parrots, flowers, palm trees, pelicans, and smiling alligators. I saw that I was still far from Marathon, a small town in the Florida Keys.

But even without looking at a map I knew that I was heading in the right direction. I sensed him up ahead like a storm, waiting. When I closed my eyes, I could see those tall thunderheads piling high on the horizon, smell the rain, feel the tug of a dark watery riptide pulling at me. Even if I wanted to, there was no escape.

The battle had already begun.

When the crowds parted for a moment, I stepped in the restroom and splashed handfuls of water on my face, dousing my head. As I toweled off, I caught my reflection in the mirror and stared at it for a time. 

Something was different, changed.

I no longer looked like that scared, pale-faced girl with Ben Mortimer’s blood soaked in her hands, running from the law. The one with the hollow eyes drowning in a bottomless pool of fear and sadness. 

Those emotions had been replaced by something else. Now when I looked in my eyes, I could see something I hadn’t seen in them since I started this journey.

Belief.

A belief that I could win. A belief that I could somehow end Nathaniel Mortimer once and for all.

Outside, the sky filled with dark clouds rolling in fast from the east. I saw Samael lying back on the seat of the bike, relaxed with his arms folded across his chest like he was napping. As always, he was wearing jeans, motorcycle boots, and his leather jacket. And now with the new sunglasses wrapped around his blue eyes, he looked like a middle-aged James Dean.

I let out a sharp breath.

I couldn’t trust him. I had to rely on my own strength to get me through the storm.

I had to be my own hero.

CHAPTER 2

Hard drops hit the top of my helmet as jagged flashes streaked across the fields in front of me. Samael tapped my shoulder and pointed ahead at the exit.

Turn left at the light, he said. Then two point three four miles down the road.

I wished we could have just stopped at McDonald’s or even KFC because I really could have done with some food and coffee. I reluctantly rode by gas stations and fast food joints, following a deserted road that snaked deeper into the swamplands. So far Florida looked a lot like Louisiana.

Here, he said after the two point three four miles.

I should have known.

It was a small church.

I parked in the corner of the lot, away from the other cars.

I was hoping for something other than a communion wafer, I said. You know, some real food. Can’t live on bread alone and all that.

Exactly, Samael said, walking toward the church.

I breathed in the sweet scent of magnolias and sighed.

I followed him, wishing I had parked closer as the drops began pummeling down, turning into carwash-thick sheets of rain. I ran across the lot with my backpack banging into my kidneys.

In the small anteroom I took off my helmet and surveyed my clothes. The leather jacket had kept the water off my shoulders and back, but the rain had soaked through the front of my shirt. At least the clothes in my backpack were dry. I had gotten into the habit of wrapping them in trash bags each morning before I left because if there was one thing I had learned from living in Louisiana it was that Southern storms usually came on fast and mean.

While Samael went ahead, I lingered for a moment looking around. A loud clap of thunder shook the building and I was glad to be inside. I stored my helmet on the floor next to a bin of umbrellas beneath a large bulletin board with flyers about Bible studies, canned food drives, and bingo.

Jesus sure does love him a good rainstorm, a woman said as she darted inside.

I dipped my fingers in the small dish of holy water, blessed myself, and headed into the church.

It was dark and musty inside, with rows of wooden pews, large marble statues, and plenty of stained glass. The strong scent of incense and burning candles filled the humid air. The rain pounded on the roof, sounding like rocks from Heaven, and the flames danced and cast shadows on the walls.

I walked by Mary, smiling down from above, her arms wide open, offering hope and love and shelter. I knelt and crossed myself again like I had when I was young and then took a seat.

There were more people inside than I would have thought for a Friday afternoon. A group of gray-haired women sat up in the second row behind a young couple with two toddlers between them. Other small groups sat together, whispering. A man in his late fifties by the confessional booth looked at his watch before sliding out the back like a teenager cutting class. 

Samael was up near the front, off in a darkened corner.

Watching him there I wondered if anyone, or anything, was welcomed in a church. If this was simply just another structure that evil could enter.

As my stomach grumbled I sighed again and bowed my head, my soul searching for signs of a loving God. It seemed like a lot of people didn’t need much. Their proof could be as simple as a touchdown. But that seemed wrong. I’d rather there was no God than believe in a deity that was more concerned with the fortunes of a football team than the suffering and death of so many innocent people.

When I lifted my head I saw an altar boy walk by and place some items up front, only a breath away from Samael but oblivious to his presence.

As I caught those blue eyes in the darkness, I noticed that he wasn’t alone. A figure was standing near him, hidden in the shadows. It might have frightened me except that I had grown to expect this sort of thing from Samael. He seemed to know people in churches everywhere we went.

As more and more people came in, most dressed in black, many wiping at their eyes, I realized that Samael had brought me to a funeral.

I thought back to Jesse’s funeral and wondered what it must have been like. Sometimes I wished I had been there instead of in that hospital bed believing that he was still alive. But over the years I had come to realize that I wouldn’t have been able to survive it. The shock would have been too great. My mom’s death had been horrible, but there had been time to prepare. With Jesse it was different. It all happened in a flash. He was sitting next to me one second and—

Did you know Jimmy? a woman’s voice whispered in my ear.

I hesitated for a moment and then nodded, figuring it was easier. Another altar boy came up from the back followed by a priest. The priest walked over to the couple with the two small children and patted the woman’s shoulder.

God is... I heard him say before the rest of his words were drowned out by a deafening crack of thunder.

A moment later the back doors swung open and the temperature immediately dropped twenty degrees. I heard a lot of footsteps coming down the aisle and turned around. Six men were carrying a shiny wooden coffin. A blanket of quiet fell over the church as they slowly made their way to the front before carefully setting the box down.

The young man sitting with the little kids turned back and stared straight at me, his face sad and pale. I closed my eyes and began to say a Hail Mary, but the hairs on the back of my neck shot up before I was halfway through.

The ghost was now sitting next to me.

He didn’t say anything, but he kept his eyes on mine.

I inhaled slowly, trying not to stare at the terrible way his head leaned to one side.

Car accident, he said.

The pallbearers took their places among the other mourners, one of the children let out a cry, and the priest cleared his throat. I looked over at Samael, hoping he was ready to go. What were we doing here anyway? Who was he talking to that was so important we had to take this detour?

I turned back to the ghost, who was now looking at Samael.

Do you need my help? I said.

No, it’s not like that. I’m here to warn you.

My blood ran cold.

What?

You’re not safe here, he said, his eyes growing large as he stared at the fallen angel in the shadows. Leave. Leave before it’s too late. You’re in grave danger.

The saliva in my mouth evaporated as another clap of thunder rumbled overhead.

Now! the ghost yelled, shooting up out of the pew. Run!

I jumped up too and flew down the aisle without thinking.

My heart in my throat, I grabbed my