The Crossing Point
Page 67
“The same as I told you before,” answered Jacob. “It was nothing...just a stupid reaction from a hysterical kid. I’m sure a lot of people in the same situation would yell out the same thing.”
“No…they wouldn’t!” said Gotham emphatically with a dismissive shake of his head. “Not unless they truly knew they could. And you knew, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?” Jacob all but screamed in his growing agitation.
“Knew you could save him, just as you had cried out you could.”
“I’m telling you I didn’t. It’s just...”
There was suddenly a wavering uncertainty in Jacob’s unwavering defiance.
“Just what?” inquired Gotham.
“Forget it, you won’t believe me anyway.”
“Try me.”
At first Jacob was hesitant to speak.
“There was a time when I was young—maybe eight or nine. I could…” began Jacob.
“Could what?”
“Make bugs come back to life,” Jacob finally offered with noticeable reluctance.
“Bugs?”
“I was out in the garden with my mother and came across a butterfly on the ground, a really beautiful butterfly,” said Jacob. “I had never seen one quite like it before. It was deep blue and black with touches of bright yellow. I found it dead on the ground among the flowers...at least I thought it was dead. It had already started to wither, and holes had begun to eat their way through its delicate wings. But I sat there and just gently stroked it wishing it would somehow come back to life and fly away. Then, to my amazement, I saw the holes in the wings slowly begin to close and before I knew it, it was perched in the palm of my hand full of life again.”
Jacob looked to the angel with the same unsettling expression staring back at him.
“After that, I found whenever I came across a dead bee out in the yard or a fly lying shriveled on a window sill, I could stir it back to life by just touching it with my finger and concentrating on it to move.”
“Was that the only time?” asked Gotham in a quiet tone as though what they were speaking was secret in nature.
“Yes,” answered Jacob. “I mean no...that is, I’m not really sure now that I think about it.”
“Tell me,” instructed the angel.
“A few days before coming here I was riding with my friend Wray.”
“Go on.”
“We hit this dog by accident…or rather Wray hit it,” said Jacob. “I was sure we had killed it...I dunno, it wasn’t moving. But then as I was petting it while Wray went to grab a blanket from her Jeep, I noticed the veins in my hands and arms—”
He stopped suddenly, as if suddenly afraid to say another word, especially when he noticed Gotham’s expression growing more severe.
“I felt the dog stir...its eyes opened. Suddenly it got up and went on its way like nothing had happened...”
His voice trailed off as he stood thinking back to that day in the roadway before his thoughts shifted to the image of Balantine writhing on the ground in agony. It was almost exactly the same; two living things seriously injured one minute, and then perfectly fine the next after he.... It was then his gaze turned ever so slowly—almost fearfully—downward to look at his hands.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself, as though to quiet his own uneasy suspicions he felt beginning to awaken. “Nephilim don’t have the power to heal. Zuriel told us so the first day we went to the Crescent Scar. It’s the one Grace we can’t possess.”
“Zuriel would be right. Yet here you are recounting to me the extraordinary feat of awaking butterflies and dogs from death’s slumber,” said Gotham.
The angel began briskly pacing back and forth, his heavy steps wearing into the grass-covered plain the makings of a faint path from which his feet left when he suddenly veered to stand looming over the boy once more.
“What made you not think to inform me of any of this when you had the opportunity?” The angel’s voice once more roared making Jacob shrink back before mustering a courage to lean forward into it.
“Inform you of what? I didn’t even think much of it. I just thought it was all...I dunno...a weird coincidence,” answered Jacob.
“Bringing forth life where it had been snuffed out, and you shrug it off as a weird coincidence? Is it possible your mortal mind can really be that dense?” Gotham bellowed incredulously.
Jacob was now feeling his own anger rising up. He had more than put up with being physically dragged by the neck across Lions Bite and interrogated like some defendant squirming on a witness stand, but to be made to feel as though he had committed some grave, unforgivable sin, especially one he did not consciously know he had committed—and worse, one he obviously didn’t even have control over—had pushed him to his limit.
“Maybe it is,” Jacob hollered back. “Maybe I thought it was all part of this mysterious package called a Nephilim that suddenly out of the blue was dumped on my shoulders—literally—with no instruction manual. Maybe, if it was such an important thing, you should have asked me instead of leaving me to try and figure it out blindly on my own as I have everything else for the last sixteen years of my life.”
Gotham was stunned into silence, whether by the words the boy spoke or the ferocious veracity with which he spit them forth, it was unknown. Whichever it was, it made the angel lower his head with weighted remorse close to Jacob’s until their temples were pressed together.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Gotham with a soothing tongue. Jacob felt the angel’s hand once again clasping the back of his neck, only this time in a gentle manner.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and the anger that had taken hold of Jacob slowly began to recede by both the comforting nature of the apology and the tender stroking across the back of his head.
“You have no idea what any of this means,” Jacob heard Gotham say to him before the angel pulled back from his embrace and gazed down at him. “Do you?”
“Not the slightest,” answered Jacob. “And seeing how it’s made you react I’m thinking I want to keep it that way.”
Gotham straightened himself and smiled knowingly while giving an affectionate tousle to the boy’s hair.
“Come!” he suddenly instructed.
“Where are we going?” Jacob asked.
“To see the one person who must not only be informed with what’s happened,” said Gotham, “but who can hopefully help shed light on the bountiful questions to which we need definite answers.”
~~~
The person of whom Gotham spoke, of course, was Anahel.
For many hours they remained in quiet counsel with him inside his chambers before the other four Guides—Zuriel, Damiel, Eksel and Thaniel—were summoned. There they remained in seclusion until the last remnants of day gave way to night, and the light seen shining from his balcony held steady its fiery glow long past the deepest hour of the night. And even when the sky began to lighten to make way for a new day and send the darkness into retreat, the movement of shadows could still be seen stirring about and mingling inside. More than once did the bellowing of arguing voices disturb the peaceful calm that had settled itself upon the Garden.
Only when the sun finally breached the crest of mountains extending like an outstretched arm in the east did Anahel step alone outside onto his balcony. Looking to the direction of the approaching dawn, his face, illuminated by the soft golden rays of the waking sun, appeared worn and weary as rarely seen amongst angels. A piercing shriek echoed in the distance and almost immediately five falcons came into sight gliding majestically against the lavender-colored skies. They swooped down one by one to land on the rail of the balcony where Anahel stood.
It was there they received their instructions from the angel, coming to them like a whispering breeze whipping its way along a mountain pass. Then, when he had finished, Anahel gave a wave of his hand and the birds once more took reign of the sky, and with the gravest of looks etched in his visage he watched as the falcons de
parted in five separate directions to deliver the most urgent of messages.
Coming soon
Tales of the Nephilim Brotherhood: Book Two
The Seventh Grace