Somehow, I made it to the rift, or at least to the huge concrete slab where the rift would appear. The gate had been locked again. I did not have time to learn fancy lockpicking magic while I was running for my life, so I just kicked the gate off its hinges and went inside.
“Goddammit,” Veazey shouted at me. “You didn’t tell me this thing was enclosed. I don’t have line of sight!”
“Veazey, you gotta get out of here. All my plans are fucked. This is a street fight now.”
“Oh, fuck that! I came here to shoot a demon and I’m gonna shoot a fucking demon!”
I didn’t have time to answer him, because Lydia’s voice was suddenly in my head. “Timothy, this is not an attack. Please listen to me.”
“Let me guess. You’re making one last run to try and scare me? Maybe beg me to surrender?”
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“Timothy, if I bring him to you, can you kill him? No tricks, no machines. With nothing but the knowledge and the power you have right now, can you kill him?”
I paused, a bit too long, before I answered out loud, in a voice that didn’t sound like me at all. “Yeah, I can kill him.”
And suddenly, she was in my arms again. My beautiful Lydia, kissing me like she had never kissed me before. She wasn’t just healing me, she was pouring magic into my body, giving me back everything she had collected from me in the weeks since I surrendered to her. When she finally broke off, I stepped back and looked down at my hands. My aura was gold.
Lydia looked in my eyes and said, “Whatever happens, I’ll remember you.”
I remember thinking that was the only promise she could make. It was a comfort, I guess, to think that something of me would live on in her memory, that the things I learned might be passed on. And some day, maybe some future Kovak would hear my voice and laugh at my jokes, coming out of Lydia’s mouth.
I had five minutes left when Baalphezar met me on St. James Avenue, a block from the rift, and the ruins of Trinity Church.
The rage came on me when I saw him, scratched and dented from what the tower had done to him. “I owe you eight generations of pain, asshole. Come and get it.”