“I don’t know if I want to live. I look at the future, and I see nothing. It’s all black. I have no dreams, no visions, no hope. And you don’t even want me anymore like you used to.”
“If that beautiful, proud Kingsley Boissonneault who chased me down the hall and watched me sleep and confessed he thought of me all the time and yelled at me for breaking the rules of a game without rules… If he walked into this room right now, then I would be tempted to break my vows. That boy was a king, which is why I took so much pleasure in making him kneel. But this self-pitying, self-loathing, selfdestructive Kingsley Edge in front of me? There’s no honor in breaking someone already broken. There’s no fun in it, either.”
“I want to be him again. But I can’t. He’s gone, he’s dead. I’ve done too much. I’ve seen too much.” He closed his eyes and raised his hands, wanting to push away the visions in his mind—the crimes, the corpses, the missions into war zones. He’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and found himself wandering the back alleys of hell.
“You can be a new man, Kingsley. If he’s dead, then he’s dead. But you don’t have to live the rest of your life walking around inside his corpse. You can have a new life.”
“It’s so easy for you to say and so hard for me to do.”
“It’s not hard at all. You only have to want it. You have to want the life where you’re doing what God created you to do. If the one time you felt like you were fulfilling your destiny was by helping me, then go find the others like us and help them, too.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. You’re one of the most intelligent men on this earth. You can figure it out.”
“I don’t even know where to start on a new life.”
“Do you truly want one? Do you want to give up all this selfdestructive foolishness and do something worthwhile? Do you want to be a new man?”
Kingsley paused and thought about the question. It seemed too good to be true. It sounded like a magic trick. Voila. New man. New life. But he wanted that magic even if it was an illusion. What he wouldn’t give to feel that way again, feel the way he felt when he and S?ren had been lovers, when his mere existence gave S?ren reason for hope. When S?ren’s existence gave him hope.
“Oui.” Kingsley met S?ren’s eyes. “I want it. What do I do?”
“You die and then you’re reborn. New life.”
Kingsley rolled his eyes.
“I die? That’s going to take some doing. I’ve been trying to die for ten years now. No luck.”
“With this I can help.”
“How? Are you going to kill me?”
“Yes.” S?ren grasped Kingsley by the front of his shirt and dragged him to his feet.
“Life.” S?ren looked straight and deep into Kingsley’s eyes.
“What?”
“Death.” S?ren pushed him underwater.
Immediately Kingsley thrashed and jerked, trying to fight off S?ren’s iron grip that held him under the surface of the water. He was drowning, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get back up. He knew how drowning worked. He knew he would be dead in a minute. The water covered his head and face, and he couldn’t get traction, couldn’t get air. He looked death in the face and clawed at its eyes. He’d kill death before he’d let death kill him.
He fought back, fought hard.
He would not die tonight. He would live even if he had to kill S?ren to survive.
S?ren pulled him back up, and Kingsley spit out water, his throat and lungs burning.
“Resurrection.”
The water settled. Kingsley panted. The word resurrection echoed around the room, reverberating into the innermost chamber of his heart.
S?ren took a step back.
“I did my part by coming back to you,” he said. “God did His part to keep you alive long enough for me to get here. Now you do your part and make yourself worthy of the second chance you’ve been given.”
“You tried to drown me.”
S?ren smiled.
“It’s called baptism, Kingsley. Welcome to the Kingdom.”