A/N: I'm not asking too much from you readers, I hope, when I insist that on this final chapter of 'Revelations,' you realize and appreciate the symbolism. Please?

And yes, it's almost over. D: But because of how nice the reviews I got were, (To vReader- yeah, I probably do need help. But that's okay! Tortured artist!) I'm even as we speak working on a sequel. And please review, to those who have not already. That is all.

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Chapter Six

***

Midnight came and went with twelve loud gongs from the center clock in the city, three systematic deaths of three vampire assassins within the midnight chimes, and one muffled curse as Nainye received a vicious cut on his left wing. By the time the chiming had finished, and the clock had pronounced the time 12:01, three bodies lay on the ground with no trace of those who had killed them.

Three blocks away, a mangy-looking dog faced off the vampire and the angel as they continued to run through the alleys and ghettos, its lips drawn back into a snarl. It was a huge dog, its shoulder higher than Syx's waist, its lank fur a deep gray and its eyes bright, piercing green. Hackles higher than its ears, it advanced, growling deeply, and suddenly leapt fiercely at Syx.

Thrown back by the mammoth canid's immense weight, Syx buried his iron knife to the hilt in the dog's chest, but though blood streamed down onto the vampire's clothing and dripped down the dog's fur, it ignored the open wound, opening its impressive maw, then closing it in a yelp. The huge beast collapsed onto its prey, who grunted under its bulk, while the long, narrow head fell onto his chest, the maw splaying open and blood gushing from it's mouth. Nainye put his boot onto the dog's back and pushed on it until it rolled off the vampire, then helped Syx to his feet. "Werewolves are immune to any weapon but silver blades," he whispered, kicking the dead body of the dog.

"Of course," murmured the vampire, looking down at the assassin werewolf. It looked pathetic, its ribs protruding from its flesh, fur sticking out and unable to hide them. Those bright green eyes fogged with death, and its great paws- Syx held one for a moment, shocked by the icy feel of the pads- twitched once then hung from its thin legs.

"Come on," hissed Nainye, beckoning him forward. The alleyways were dark, and for a long period of time, they couldn't see each other at all, but could only hear the other's ragged, frightened breathing in the shadow. Then Syx looked over and saw his lover's pale face illuminated by the light of the huge clocktower in the center of the city.

It towered over the other buildings, pronouncing the hour to any who would look at it, and had stood so proud and tall for generations. Massive hands moved around it's round, numbered face, set on it's tall, thin body, hollow inside, for there used to be humans who would walk up it's massive spine, look at it's gears and joints, and perch in the top of its head, in a little glass-walled room that overlooked the city. There had been no one inside the clocktower for many years, and the lock was rusted shut; Nainye summoned his sword, still slick with the werewolf's blood, and stabbed the door with it until it splintered and Syx was able to kick it the rest of the way in. They pushed inside of it, the vampire cursing as their footsteps awakened a cloud of the dust that lay thickly on the floor and stairs. A rat ran past, another lay dead at the foot of the steps, its legs curled above its shriveled belly. The Holy One and the vampire took to the wooden stairs, some of which buckled, the wood slimy and rotted, and some of which cracked slightly under their weight, the wood brittle and dry. There were hundreds of stairs, hundreds and hundreds, winding around mammoth, slightly rusted iron gears that slowly but steadily turned, turning each other in turn. After a few minutes, the two knew they were not alone; footsteps on the stairs behind them grew closer and more numerous, and lithe figures appeared and disappeared in the forest of spinning gears that worked the clock. Syx watched his kindred draw closer and cursed bitterly, then stopped Nainye and caught his hands, looking into those beautiful ice-colored eyes and holding onto them with his mind and heart and soul.

"It is a void," he whispered to him, desperately, listening to the footsteps drawing closer. "Fill it, fill it completely with magic and energy, fill it until there is nothing left to fill, all at once if you can. Fill it until it burns with magic and fire, beloved." He reached into his shirt and drew the treasure from around his neck, letting it fall into Nainye's waiting hands. "I'll stall them for you."

"Beloved- I will help you..."

"I cannot work magic," replied Syx, pleadingly. "You can, you have to go ahead and destroy the damned thing. I'll stall them for you."

There was one moment in which they stood, completely still, and simply watched each other, stared at each other, each lost in the other's eyes. The footsteps drew closer, until they thundered on the verge of spilling around the next corner, a mob of vampires bristling with knives and claws and teeth. That was when Nainye tore himself away from arm's length away from his lover and ran, away from the charging vampire hoard, away from the spinning gears, higher and higher into the tower.

Syx watched him go, then drew his knife and stood on the steps, growling a soft, inaudible challenge to the vampires who approached him. He took the steps two at a time, charging down them like a rampant creature, and hit the first of his brothers who was following him with full force, bowling him and the one right after him over. One he caught with his knife; the other spun as soon as he regained his footing but, in his shock, was sent falling to his death with a kick, off the edge of the stairs and into the spinning gears. His scream was ear-piercing and warned the others, who were ready and waiting when they were faced with the half-mad renegade.

***

Nainye ran up the steps, ignoring the cracking stairs or the ones slimy with decay. He sometimes saw vampires pursuing him by climbing the gears, but they were tedious things to climb and he could always stay ahead of the assassins. The ex-hitman only paused once, when a scream that did not belong to his lover tore through the still air of the clocktower, and a shiver climbed his spine. The body of the assassin would be crushed by the spinning gears, a painful death for someone who was willing to be martyred for a cause he believed the true and right path.

The Holy One shook his head, forcing himself to concentrate on getting near the top of the stairs. He was already high enough that he couldn't see the floor if he looked down the drop on his right; all he saw was the gears of the inner clock dropping into shadow. The light came from above, where the huge clock face was illuminated by an flourescent glow. It was a huge face, pale and round, a full moon trapped in an immense cage. There was a bit of a platform where Nainye stood, level with the face of the clock, with darker patches of rot scattered across the wooden planks. A door, small and bland, meant not to be noticed, stood to the left of the glowing white face, and Nainye looked at it for a moment, testing its knob. The door was locked, but the angel summoned his sword and mutilated the half-decayed wood, shoving through it onto a narrow but long stone ledge that was laid right before the pale face of the giant clock. It only extended perhaps fifteen inches from the door, but it and four similar stone bars formed a protective square around the entire mammoth clock, the once-smooth stone weathered to a sand-paper texture and with rain-filled holes keeping stagment water from the storm three days before. Nainye took two careful steps onto the stone and looked out across the city, across the glittering lights like a swarm of fireflies, the glowing buildings and glittering seas of metal and rust. Reaching out slightly with the magic he controlled, he could feel the human life pulsing under him, swelling like the waves of a sea. Life that would be pulled into the bottomless pit if he allowed them to be, magic and energy that could, if fed quickly enough to the void, fill it and destroy the darkness and death it carried. He wrapped his fingers tighter around the treasure, feeling it pulse darkly beneath his palm. It felt the life beneath it, too, and greed and hatred and blood-born starvation sparked in its empty depths.

Carefully, he wrapped the chain of the treasure around his wrist and dropped the gem, letting it dangle and sway above the glittering city. He pulled a knife, sparkling silver, from under his shirt where it had bidden its time and hidden away, and let the point bury into his skin in the palm of his hand, between the bone coming off the first and second knuckles. It buried into vein and muscle with fire-like pain, blood welling from the prick along the silver blade and down the curve of his hand. He dropped the knife with a curse at the pain, but forced himself to ignore it and grasp the pulsing treasure, coating the shadowed sapphire in his blood. Dark hunger aroused, it shone blackly through his fingers, and the shaft of the void opened slightly, tasting the life of its bearer and the air of the earth, its smoky tongue lapping the air like a serpent's. Nainye's eyes grew wide, their ice-blue depths glowing in the light from the sparkling city below, as the void reached into him, sucked at him, drew into him with a sickening violation that burned like ice along the inner depths of his soul.

With desperation born of absolute terror, he reached down to the depths of the life and energy and magic of below, grabbing, snatching, taking, stealing, and pushing everything he could touch into the void that threatened to devour him. Life, energy, the forces of fire and water and air and earth that he could find- the metals of the earth that glistened like beetle-shells beneath him, the tamed fire that was trapped within bulbs that sparkled and glittered on the city, the water trapped from long-ago rains and the air taut with silence and the stench of rot and death, all were taken by the frantic angel and pushed into the maw of the void. And it devoured them with hunger, still empty, still reaching, still wrought with starvation and torment. It glittered like a dragon's eye and opened like the depths of a dragon's mouth, completely open, dragging everything it could touch into the darkness of it.

It tore at Nainye, tore at him with greed and lust and hunger, and devoured memories and passion and emotion. If it had been a beast, it would have foamed at the mouth and snarled, as it was, it was a being, if soulless and empty, with a dark sort of intelligence behind the glittering blue-black of its treasure key. Vaguely, while teeth and claws of darkness tore at him, tore at his soul and at his wings, he wondered if he had triggered the Apocalypse, and looked down at the city of humans and artificial light and glittering metal, and realized he didn't want them to die.

He didn't want to pull the last of the hope from a race of beings that so despairingly pushed forward, moving through bleak lives in a bleak universe, living off the core instinct of every being, the impulse and need and desire to survive. He didn't want to cause their demise, the end of their reign, which had once been so glorious and now, when it only barely promised to falter, was being threatened by their own God to be torn away. He mantled the glittering shell of humanity, the metallic city with their lamp-post stars and false fire and fake lives, with his black-tipped wings, protectively standing over them, and, with all of his strength, most borne of a desperate pity and desperate pride, strived to fill the hole in the universe with magic and energy.

A bit of fire, a tongue of life, came out of the shaft of the void, a droplet spilled from the overflow.

"Give that to me." The voice was harsh, demanding, and came from right beneath Nainye. A vampire hung from bleeding fingers and toes on the wall, snarling, one clawed hand wrapped around the handle of a handgun that was pointed at the Holy One's heart. His face glistened with sweat from the long climb, and blood from his claws on his fingers and toes dried on his hands and feet and ankles, and stained the length of the wall beneath him. His hair, tangled with sweat and exertion, hung limply from his head, a tangled mat. "Traitor. Give me that."

Torn into by the starving void, looking at the flashing images of his life that seemed to be playing in the back of the barrel of the gun, Nainye froze, while fire from the city around him and from his own heart and from the four elements that created the world whirled within the vast voracious void.

An animal scream of rebellion shocked him from his stunned stupor, while the unaware emptiness continued to devour everything it could touch. Syx leapt from the doorway, tore from the clocktower, dripping blood from a variety of wounds and dripping blood that was not his own. He leapt from the doorway, flying the fifteen inches until he had passed the edge, and seemed to hang in the air for a moment above the city, hovering for a moment as if buoyed by his anger and passion. Then he was falling, screaming; he reached out with one hand to catch the wall with his claws.

His scream of fear turned into one of agony as his claws caught on the rough cement keeping the dark-colored bricks together and the skin holding them to his fingers ripped as his whole weight was thrown onto them and those narrow claws broke his fall. Blood flowed in excess down that hand, then the other as he used it to propel himself up towards the hitman that clung like a fly to the wall, pointing his gun at the angel who warred with a vast void to save a half-dead world.

Three things in chain reaction happened so swiftly that they appeared simotaneous, a sweep of cause and effect that was faster than a man could breathe. Syx buried his knife into the back of his kinsman, losing the part where the blade met the hilt in the flesh and blood in the soft, tender portion where the hitman's right shoulderblade met his spine. The man cried out and reflexively pulled the trigger of his gun, a chain reaction in itself; a loud crack marking the explosion that happened with the struck spark and a modest amount of gunpowder within its body, a bullet propelled through the barrel and through the silent night air. And Nainye, in his private war with the Apocalypse, stopped suddenly and stared at the blank black sky, his pupils shrinking slightly in the ice-blue pools of his eyes. Blood spread across his shirt, dark and appearing almost violet in the shadow of the night, from a wound directly below his ribcage. His grip on the treasure loosened, and, chained to his wrist, it glittered mockingly as it lay in his limp hand, feeding off his failing life.

For a moment, he stood like a stone sentinel over the glittering beetle of the city, then, a fallen statue, he toppled forward, over the lip of the ledge, blood flying after him as he fell.

Syx cried out in pain as his lover fell past him, the void laughing tauntingly in his mind and heart and soul, then ground his teeth and leapt after him, five hundred feet in the air, falling swiftly through nothingness. It was nothing like anything he had ever felt before- it was terrifying, completely without support or grounding. If he closed his eyes, he would lose track of which direction he was falling in, which way was up and which way was down; his stomach was lodged in his throat and his eyes burned harshly with the sorrow of seeing his lover's eyes glassing over as his life was stolen by the blood that escaped from his side and the void whose key he still clutched.

The Holy One's wings still were stuck back behind him; Syx fell directly behind his lover, each pinion to one side of his body. He reached down, curling his arms around Nainye's body, and held onto him, whispering to him words that made no sense to either of them. Blood from the vampire's hands stained the pale skin of the angel, and the thick white hair obscured the vampire's face as they fell down, down and down towards the empty diamond shell of humanity.

Syx's hands encountered something warm that pulsed with hunger and greed, and his fist curled around the treasure, the key to the void. It felt his blood and pulled on his soul, greedily tasting his anger, his agony, his emotions. Shaking with the effort, Syx pushed himself into the void, released his emotions, his passion, his will and strength and hope and vision into the shadowed sapphire. He force-fed it his love for Nainye and his mourning for the girl Melody, his fury at the two assassins who took both of them away. And he felt motion beneath him as Nainye moved to wrap his hands around the vampire's bleeding ones, and felt the angel's fading strength join his own.

Fires of magic and emotion and passion whirled in the emptiness, came out of the shaft in droplets and sparks, in tongues and splashes, in streams, and, finally, in a massive holocaust that broke through the sapphire and burned the emptiness into growing and burning flames. Syx cried out at the heat, drew his hands away from the treasure, but it caught onto his hair and clothing and burned, burned with magic and emotion, burned and burned and burned. It caught Nainye's wings, caught his clothing and his flesh and his white hair, and both yelled in pain and horror as they felt themselves melting in the intense fire and heat. The chain melted against Nainye's wrist, and the treasure stopped falling, and began to slowly rise with the heat that had become all it was. The fire that covered the two lovers began to recede, slowly, and the warm air of the late August hit them like a sledgehammer, suddenly icy and numbing in contrast to the fire.

Syx felt their descent slow, and looked in shock at his clothing, now bleached pure white, not torn or bloodstained at all, and his body, no longer pinched with three years of near-starvation or scarred or wounded at all, but regained its old perfection, the pale bronze of his skin whole and clean. His jewelry remained the same, and his hair, as well, but his strength had returned in a healing deeper and more complete than anything else he had ever experienced.

And Nainye... the angel had completely changed.

Physically, there wasn't so much different about him, except that the bullet wound had vanished with the fire and his strength returned; his clothing, like Syx's, had been bleached and his eyes seemed clearer, wider, and had become a brilliant silver like the lining of the eastern sky at dawn. Lines in his face Syx hadn't even noticed had vanished, and he looked younger; the vampire realized with a start he wasn't that much older than he, barely beyond adolescent. His hair seemed longer, whiter, and his wrist was covered by a fused-in, three-inch-wide bracelet of silver that had once been the chain and now was as much part of his skin as any other. The physical change wasn't so noticeable as the aura of power that clung to him, dancing with white light.

It was his wings, however, that had truly changed- the black tips had been bleached out so that the huge white pinions glowed against the blank black sheet of a sky, spread to their full, impressive span, and holding the angel and his lover suspended over the city in true flight.

The purified angel touched the earth, landing gracefully on his feet, and Syx lessened his grip around his neck so that he, too, could stand in the fake glitter of the city and survey the gray world they had saved. The treasure glittered in the sky, still burning the void, burning the nothing into something and then burning the something into ash and air and magic. Nainye watched the fire, and Syx watched Nainye, and they both achieved a strange sort of understanding in the following moment.

Syx never wondered if the angel Nainye was the same as his lover had been before; he knew that he wasn't, that he had changed on a level deeper and more holy than anything he could ever understand. But he knew that it didn't matter, that on some level, the angel couldn't change and, despite everything, never had. On some level, he would always remain the same.

Nainye's perfect hand slid beneath the vampire's chin and tilted his head back, kissing Syx as deeply as he could as they stood on the empty road and watched the Apocalypse burn.

***

And across the city, people who had never looked any direction but forward their whole lives without even noticing it glanced upwards at something they had never seen before, and even those who knew everything there was to know about the world couldn't explain the alien light that transcended the heavens, glowing as if to spite their false, electric lamps that swallowed any other celestial glow. Some who had, in their otherwise consistent lives, left the endless glitter of the constant, plentiful cities narrowed their eyes in confusion, as they struggled to place the phenomena the light resembled.

For in the dark obsidian night, it looked like a star.