There was smoke and dust, but no Leviathan. I stood, hunched over, hands on my knees, in the middle of my family's dining room. I was coughing so violently that I could not catch my breath. I would force the soot and grime from my throat only to inhale another mouthful after each episode. I had to get out but I could not even stand. I was paralyzed. 

I looked up at the faint sound of footsteps, expecting to see Leviathan, come to take me from this house; instead, I was met by my own haggard face—or not mine, exactly, just one that resembled my own.

Lora. My sister.

Seeing her, letting my eyes drink in her patchy mane of hair, her blackened and flaking skin, and her wide unseeing eyes, spurred me to action. I scrambled backward, desperate to get as far from the apparition as possible. 

She was missing most of the skin and hair on the left side of her body, that was where she'd fallen and the heat of the floor had burnt her. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, glassy like bloodshot marbles. Her mouth was agape, a silent scream or perhaps a strangled last breath. Her hair, so much like my own, hug like a curtain across her face. Strands of it stuck to the bare, bloody patches of muscle and sinew that lay beneath sagging, blackened skin. Her skin was melted in places, seeming to almost drip from her body. 

Those unseeing eyes were looking at me.

I reached out a hand, as if such a feeble attempt could stop her from approaching. "Please—"

I stumbled and fell backward—

I awoke, abruptly, with a gasp. I drank air in lung fulls, sputtering and seizing as I blinked into the darkness of the attic. My throat was dry like I'd been screaming in my sleep again.

It was a dream—I was only imagining the fire. I'm fine. I'm fine.

My entire body was shaking, lingering feelings and sensations attacking me as I tried to calm myself down. There is no smoke. Lora is dead. You are safe.

I wished desperately that I had not allowed Gabriel to leave me. I needed someone to hold me; I needed to feel present in the real world because everything was slipping from me. I could feel Lora's fingernails scrapping at my arms, a pressure that I knew should be pain. 

No. Not Lora's nails, mine. 

I was scratching my own arms, running my nails down my own arms. 

My eyes watered and I sat up in bed, clutching the quilt to my chest. "Adonai, please take it from me." It was the first time that I'd spoken a prayer aloud in years, most certainly the first time I'd said a prayer aloud since I remembered who I was. It was as if all the pressure in my body released and I was left an empty shell of myself, wanting only to be filled by His presence.

I felt as if I might be sick.

I leaned forward and pressed the balls of my hands against my eyes. There was something very wrong. The feelings from the dream, the panic and the suffocating feeling of thickening air had not disappeared. I forced myself from the bed and walked to the only window in the attic—the building itself was three stories tall and I was in a small loft above the highest level. The window, which was small and circular, looked out over the front steps of the church, where a lone person stood looking up at me. I stepped back from the window; perhaps it was Leviathan or Gabriel. But Leviathan would have alerted me to his visit and Gabriel would have no reason to linger on the steps.

I didn't have the time or the soundness of mind to change clothes so I remained in my nightgown and bare feet. I went to my bag, retrieving the sword. I had meant what I'd said to Leviathan, if this were Lucifer come to harm me then I would fight him. His reign on earth would end here. I took the first set of stairs quickly, all the while drilling myself on what Michael and Gabriel had taught me. It will only take one cut—the sword will do the rest. Stay on your toes; don't let him catch you off guard. If he is close to you, position the sword lower than his ribcage and aim it up, try to get it through his rib cage.

I hurried past the Sunday school rooms, the empty preacher's office and down the second flight of stairs. By the time I'd reached the second landing, I could hear it—the crackling of timbers. I froze and that was all the time my body needed to snap out of its determined haze.

Fire—the building was on fire.

Although the floor on which I stood was untouched, I was close enough to the blaze to taste the tang of burning wood and chemicals. I moved slowly, almost in a daze, towards the top of the last set of stairs. I couldn't feel the heat from the fire, but now I could clearly see the glow of it through the floorboards at my feet. The closer to the stairs I became, the more asphyxiating the smoke became. I began to lose my sight, my vision flickering in and out of focus as the smoke rose higher into the building, weaving its way through the floor and up to where I was.

I was thirteen and scared awake by a fire. I was so very young. I could not feel the fire as it spread across one side of my bedroom to the other. If it weren't for the smoke I might have never woken up—the smoke would have taken me the way it did Lora, the way it was taking me now.

I reached the top of the last staircase and gripped the railing for dear life. The building seemed to be swaying, back and forth like the pendulum on an ancient clock. My hand on the railing and my hand wrapped around the sword—these things were what kept me present. 

Last time I'd had enough adrenaline and enough determination to push through the dizzying effects of smoke. I had no such feelings now. I knew what a house fire looked like, I remembered what it did to the bodies of my parents, the small delicate body of my sister. I remembered, through a haze of rough hands and interrogations, what the fire had done to me. 

I was sluggish, every breath felt like tar seeping into my lungs, heavy and intoxicating.

I needed to move—to get out of the building. Parts of the stairs were on fire and it would take more skill than I possessed to navigate them unsinged. I am not sure if it was bravery or senselessness, but I walked directly through the fire. This proved to be the latter when my nightgown caught flame. I panicked and fell to the ground in an effort to smother the flames between the floor and myself. I managed it, almost losing the blade in the process. Once I was on my hands and knees, I found that I could see better, even if the air quality was still poor.

I crawled until I could not go any farther. The fire had spread to the roof and beams from the ceiling above were falling, one particularly large beam had fallen directly into my path, I would need to stand and climb over it. Climb through the flames. I stopped and leaned forward on my hands and knees, my throat and lungs felt raw as I tried to clear my airways. My chest was tight, like a weight had been thrust against my ribcage. 

There was fire in every direction and I was not even sure which way I was going, my judgment on direction had been skewed as soon as I'd fallen to the floor. I didn't know where the door was. 

I had once asked Lucius what might have happened to me if I had not gotten out of my family's burning estate. "You might have succumbed to injury, collapsed, lost consciousness, been burnt alive yourself. I suppose we won't ever know." 

As I knelt, spitting and coughing up black ash, I wondered if I might be about to find out. Tears streamed down my face, further blurring my vision. Although he'd told me that my inability to feel pain might have been what saved me, so very long ago, I doubted that it would save me now. I did not have the strength to stand.

My arms shook as I tried and failed to push myself upright. The sword lay abandoned next to me. I'd been prepared to slay the dragon, foolishly prepared to fight Satan—had I forgotten that he was The Adversary? He was roaming the earth seeking someone to devour and he had found me. Had I been entirely delusional? Had Gabriel been humoring me? Was this just some wicked dream born of my own horrid past?

Perhaps I would wake to find myself thirteen years old again, abandoned and strapped to a gurney—as if I were some monster who might lash out at any given moment. Even the doctors had been reluctant to tend to my burns lest I truly be contaminated with demons. 

"She can't even feel them," a nurse had said upon seeing me. "Let the wounds fester, we can look after them later. Maybe she will lose a leg, that would be justice."

"What if it is contagious?" Another whispered.

"It would be a mercy to have her put down," a doctor had said. "Whatever is wrong with her, it cannot be helped. She is not fit for civilization."

"She should be put in a cage, viewed in a museum."

"Her poor parents. What must it have been like to raise such a beast."

"She deserves to rot in hell."

Over and over again, doctors, nurses, lawyers, and police officers had done the sign of the cross upon seeing me. They had prayed for my damned soul. They had refused to tell me of my parents. They had refused to tell me if anyone had survived. They had spat in my face, refused to give me clean clothes. Left me strapped to a gurney, dressed in a torn and crumbling nightgown, for passersby to gawk at. I was a child. I was humiliated. 

Look at Ruth Merritt Holbrook, the demon, the murderess, the damned. Keep your distance lest your soul be condemned as well. Don't touch her or you might be cast into hell. She deserves to have died in the flames she set. She should be dead too.

Oh, how I had wished to be dead too.

My eyelids felt heavy, every blink a small taste of eternal darkness. It was peaceful, I liked the innate pleasure that lowering myself to the floor and closing my eyes gave me. The pressure building behind my eyes and in my head seemed to lessen when I did that. The muscles in my arms relaxed and curled up, content to sleep—for I was so desperately tired of fighting. 

My breathing was slow and partial, my lungs refusing to open fully. I found myself smiling; I was going back to Adonai. Things would be different; for I was human now, but He was still my father.  He loved me. 

This is not so bad of an end, I thought, for suffocating feels quite a bit like falling asleep.