J-J came to inside the baptismal. The water was hot because the flames were superheating everything. She closed her eyes, dizzy now with smoke, as pieces of wall plaster fell into the water. Above her, the crucifix crackled and charred, brass coating beginning to melt and drip on her head. It was the coals of fire falling out of the divine. Judgement day for a crime she had not committed had found her. This was it. This was how she died. Never seeing her family again.
It would have been fine, she thought. It would have been fine if she just knew that Spence would be okay. Her thoughts were a blur. She couldn't remember how she came to be here, but she knew she had only wanted to bring him home. To save him. She would have walked on water and coals of fire. She would have burned like a falling star, an exploding planet. God help her, she'd have gone to the end of the world.
The old bell arch's spine broke. J-J looked up as if all piety drew her eyes to the guillotine that was soon to end her life. Wouldn't be long now. The beam groaned, almost as if the old church was apologizing for the act of mercy it must now commit. To crush her like a grape in the winepress would be better than for her to burn to death. She smiled.
It happened too fast. She felt the shadow pass over her like the holy dove. He darted down into the water with her and took her down in a baptism, as this purest love of her whole life came just in the nick of time. They were face to face under God's water with the bones of the church giving way around them. Flames made it perfectly light, halos casting outer showers of the stars. She could see the relief in his eyes. Spence. He had come for her. They were both still alive.
They came up from under the water with a deep gasp of what little air remained in the room. He stared at her for a second. An anxious second, asking for forgiveness. J-J felt her whole spirit warm to him, as if the winter passed. The church groaned and yawned and whimpered. Pieces of the ceiling, of holy relics, cracked and hissed.
She took his face in her hands. He smiled and took her wrists. He was cut up, little pieces of colored glass stuck in his hands, and he bled. She felt her lungs imploding with the horror and the smoke of it. Yet, in this moment, where the structure of all they knew pitched and reeled about them the holy dove was moving too. She nodded and lifted him out of the water. Then, he laced her arm around him and dragged her out. It was just as the beam that had broken knocked the crucifix downward and it speared into the place they had occupied.
They ran arms laced around each other like a ribbon into the smoke and the smoke betrayed them. Now they were lost in a maze of pews and hard lines of confusing maze-like trails of black powder smoke.
J-J pulled Spencer to a stop. Just as she had done, since she was a little girl. If she stood perfectly still, peace would come.
She closed her eyes.
"Spencer! J-J!"
Their salvation had come in the form of Derek Morgan.