Surrender the Dark

by L. A. Banks

  “I can’t...but I can feel the ancient civilizations through them, I can actually sense history, I can smell the old lands!”

  Then he did something that both shocked her and took her breath away. He kissed her hard on the mouth and hugged her up off her feet before she could protest, then dropped her and took off toward the stairs.

  Celeste set down her bags and ran behind him. That fool was going to get himself shot by a night guard or trip an alarm! But she couldn’t keep up with his taking two steps at a time up the huge marble Romanesque staircase, then up the exit. She was huffing by the third landing and he was still loudly urging her onward.

  Only the coded door to the rare-books collection stopped him for a moment, and again she watched in awe as it seemed as if an electrical charge from his body transferred to the door through his hands, popping the substantial combination lock.

  “Dude . . . if you ever decided to go into banking, you would make an awesome vault manager—you could retire in less than a week.”

  He didn’t dignify the comment, but went straight to a large, mahogany cabinet that had brass locks on every drawer, then systematically opened each one. She watched him carefully, reverently slide out the special cases that held what looked to her to be bits of broken pottery. Just as he had touched the vitamins in the market, he closed his eyes, shaking his head, quietly murmuring to himself as he held each piece.

  “I’ve never been in this part of the library,” she said offhandedly, reading the signs. “They’ve got ancient manuscripts from the medieval period . . . like really old Bibles, Qurans, and a Torah. All sorts of stuff.”

  “Please show me,” he said with tears of joy glittering in his eyes. “I am understanding so much. Hayyel, my brother who presides over wisdom, is so pleased.”

  “Okaaaay . . . ,” she said as respectfully as possible. Everyone had the right to his own delusions, she supposed, and she’d given it the old college try to bring him a little dose of gentle reality.

  “Seriously, Celeste,” he said, now holding her gaze with intensity. “So much is coming into my direct consciousness so quickly that it is as though the entire Akashic Records from On High are thrusting themselves into my human mind. Maps, science, literature, history, art...novels, it is as though by being here you have helped me unlock what was already inside my head, but trapped in this new organ I’ve acquired with my new body. Humans use only ten percent or so of their brains, and yet I have enough knowledge from my angel existence to fill two of them to the hilt. This is why my knowledge seems so slow—there was simply too much information crammed into my head until it was stuck. The thick density of the earth plane made my synapses fire slowly . . . but now that I’m absorbing knowledge again down here, I’m remembering, Celeste!”

  “Okay, that’s cool,” she said, beginning to walk. “Soooo . . . like . . . whatever this record is that’s downloading into your brain . . . is that why most people only use like seven to ten percent of their minds—because we don’t have more direct access to this cosmic repository thing you’re talking about?”

  She rubbed her palm down her face. Man, if touching cuneiform had set him off like this, the Internet was gonna blow his mind. They could skip the Franklin Institute; she’d probably have to put a spoon on his tongue as he went into an information-pleasure convulsion.

  “No,” he said, gently closing a drawer and relocking the cabinet. “The Akashic Records are there for all. But if you only have two strands of your original twelve DNA strands turned on, and if our body temple is unclean, then it makes it almost impossible to hear angelic advice or to tap into the truth provided by the Source. That is why, even with all of the misinformation and dogma out there, all of the old religions across all tribes are very, very specific about diet.”

  Azrael let out a frustrated sigh. “But even with all that is against them, and even sometimes with a bad diet or even addictions, somehow the miracle and wonder of our younger siblings, you that are human . . . some of you humans break through . . . inspired artists, musicians, scientists, those they call your geniuses in all areas—they’ve found the flow and tapped in, and what they’ve created cannot be destroyed. It remains a part of the Records for all of eternity.”

  She looked at him like he’d just spoken Greek. “What?” Nothing he’d just said made any sense to her whatsoever. And it annoyed her to no end that he began gesturing more emphatically with his hands and speaking more loudly and with more authority in his tone, as though that alone was supposed to improve her comprehension.

  “Wait, back up,” she said, now walking beside him as they went deeper into the collection. “Twelve strands of DNA? I thought we had the double helix thing they taught us in high school science? What memo did I miss?”

  He drew near to her, then looked around before leaning down to whisper in her ear. Now his proximity in a semidark library wasn’t as unnerving; she wanted to hear what he had to say and found herself hanging on his every crazy word.

  “That’s what the war is about,” he whispered. “The earth is the free-will zone. Originally humans were made just as we were made, in the image of The Source . . . just with less power until you had spiritually matured. You were to acquire wisdom before knowledge, then your power would be available to you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense. We had to learn to be responsible and then we’d get the juice. Sounds like a plan because, believe me, we have plenty of examples of very powerful people who are very stupid.”

  Azrael nodded. “That hasn’t changed since the beginning.”

  “Okay, at least we have the same politics, but what do you mean twelve strands of DNA? I’ll go along with a conspiracy theory in a minute, but, dude, there’s hard science that—”

  “No,” he said, cutting her off. “Angels have twelve strands, and you humans were originally given twelve, just as there are twelve scattered tribes, and the entire cosmos is not some random accident. It is mathematically exact. The grand design is more fantastically beautiful than you can imagine, Celeste. But here, on earth, at the height of the war some twenty-six thousand years ago, a battle we’re still fighting, the darkness won a two-thousand-year period of time within this struggle to sway humankind . . . and the first thing they did was to turn off the extra strands of DNA in your bodies to make you unaware of your spiritual majesty . . . to make you more prone to excess and violence. Only a few brave souls have mastered their double helixes that were left and are able to turn on the dormant helixes in their bodies. You call them masters, yogis, and highly evolved spiritual leaders. Then there are those like you, whose twelve strands could never be turned off. You are rare. You are a member of the Remnant.”

  Again, she just stared at the man. “Maybe I’m in the slow class, but I don’t get it.”

  He released a sigh of frustration. “Like I said before, it’s complicated. These theories of energy and Light are simplified in the old spiritual texts, hence the use of parables and—”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, cutting him off with an impatient wave of her hand. “I get that part. We humans with our ten-percent brain functions aren’t gonna understand all of this, unless we’re Einstein or something. But all I wanted was a simple answer to a very simple question.”

  Azrael just looked at her. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Celeste. Your question wasn’t simple, and neither is the answer.”

  He stood tall and looked around again before leaning back down and continuing in an urgent, warm whisper into her ear. “Only having access to the two strands of DNA encoded in your body, and not even the full strands at that, because much of the coding on even the double helix has been turned off, makes you humans more likely to be ruled by the animal side of your natures. That base nature is nothing to be ashamed of. It is inherent in all natural beings—even us—but it must be transmuted to the higher frequencies. Without anchoring to higher ideals, you spiral into darkness instead of gleaning to the upward spiral flow of energy into
the Light. That is how you are so easily controlled. You are being drugged with the food, mind-numbed by misinformation, and having your worst passions and fears stoked.”

  “Wait,” she said, pulling away from him, her mind reeling. “Turn off some of the pieces of a person’s DNA . . . I don’t—”

  “Your own science now shows that tones, actual sound, can activate certain dip switches on the DNA strands . . . some turned on can create superior healing and superior IQ, some can activate helpful T cells in the body and can create disease barriers and immunity, while others turned on or even turned off can create congenital diseases and birth defects. Human scientists are studying DNA encoding now, and one day they will know how to turn on the best attributes within the double helix. They are experimenting with sound waves as well as medicines and genetic engineering to switch on good genes. The problem is, humanity is running out of time while they struggle to find the clues to healing.”

  “Oh, forget it,” she muttered, blowing a stray wisp of hair up off her forehead.

  “I’m not trying to be evasive or confusing,” he said more gently. “Just honest. You’ll just have to trust me and have faith in what I’ve told you.”

  “Yeah, I figured that at the end of all this circle logic, when I didn’t understand, you’d tell me to have faith.” What else was there for her to say? “Do you know how old a line that is? How sick and tired people are of just being told to believe?” She stared at him hard and then shook her head, defeated when he lifted his chin as though to object. She didn’t want a rebuttal or to argue the point further. “Don’t answer that. It was just a rhetorical question.”

  He leaned down toward her again and spoke low and fast and directly into her ear. She could almost feel the tension crackle in the air between them as he drew a breath and continued with his wild theory.

  “The Unnamed One is the Prince of the Airwaves,” he said, and then cautiously looked around before speaking again. “Sound travels that way, through the air, and that is how the Ultimate Fallen were able to slowly dim the human light—they used sound—oratorical propaganda, rhetoric filled with hate. They began this campaign of turning off the lights within humans eons ago and managed to turn off all but the central double-helix strand of DNA, allowing only the very basic-level coding that would let humans reproduce and function to remain. It was power unchecked at the highest levels of human society and governed by hell. That is why humans use only ten percent of their brains now . . . except for some. And in hate and fear-inspired campaigns, anyone who went against the norm was ousted, stoned, crucified, burned at the stake, tortured, punished, or imprisoned until the human flocks were manageable and docile.”

  Azrael stared at her hard now, his gaze intense and riveting. His unease was making her feel jumpy. If he was scared, then she was thoroughly freaked out.

  “We need those that have access to the full set of twelve strands of their DNA to begin to turn on the lights of the masses,” he said in a low, firm tone. “Someone like you, along with other sensitives, can begin to turn on the lights within your fellow humans through sound—the use of your voice, your message of truth, your resistance to the darkness. When we gather the Remnant together, you will create a powerful movement that will become the tipping point within human nations. And the dark side finds that very dangerous . . . because once people know the truth and they see how they’ve been manipulated for centuries, they will demand worldwide change. My job as an angel is to bring the Remnant together and to protect you as this occurs.”

  Okay, now he was truly scaring her. Not because she feared attack or murder, but because the last thing she wanted to deal with was a religious extremist. Perhaps more scary than that was that everything he was telling her resonated deeply within her as every old parable she’d ever heard zinged through her mind. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Speak no evil. Words have power. Celeste hugged herself and stared up at Azrael.

  “Okay, say for a second I believe you...then how did mine stay on when everybody else’s didn’t?” she whispered, now glancing around nervously the way he had a few moments ago.

  “That is a longer story than time allows us in this building. We must still go to your aunt’s home and rest for a long journey away from this city. Do not be troubled,” he said, monitoring her sobered expression. “This is why I was sent to protect you before the date of no return. I am sure Nemamiah and Gavreel will meet us there, as well as Barbelo and Hayyel, if they are manifest yet. This is also why we have to travel far to seek Bath Kol to better understand the prophecy.”

  Chapter 7

  Celeste walked beside Azrael trying to figure out the best way to make a break for it, as room after room in the library drew his attention. He found levels of floors between floors that had stacks she didn’t even know existed of dusty, manually cataloged periodicals of the most obscure nature.

  But she didn’t give a damn what he said. If he was some jihadist, she would call the feds on his crazy ass in a New York second.

  Plus, there were just some facts she couldn’t ignore—facts that a few laughs in Whole Foods couldn’t make go away. His name sounded foreign, as did the name of every one of his friends. He spoke like somebody from another country. Now he was talking about the two of them going on some long trip to find more foreign-sounding dudes, plus some head honcho named Bath Kol? Who in the heck from Philly named their kid freakin’ Bath Kol? Aw hell to the no.

  And she had to be stone cold out of her mind to even for one minute consider taking this guy to her aunt’s home. To what? Drag her aunt Niecey into a terrorist plot? She’d heard about bull like this on the news.

  Then there was the whole spooky thing with busting locks with blue light...probably some spy shit they’d rigged, and with all the cameras they’d passed, no doubt Homeland Security would swoop down on her any second now.

  Celeste stopped walking, her mind racing a mile a minute as her heart began to beat erratically. Wait a minute . . . how could Azrael have known about all that shit that happened to Brandon? What if Azrael and his terrorist crew had staked her out and picked her because of her unstable record that anyone in the neighborhood would have told them for five bucks . . . murdered Brandon—then showed up like her savior?

  “Celeste, are you all right?” Azrael turned and looked at her, his frown one of concern.

  She spun and bolted. He might be bigger than her, might even have a gun, but this huge building had a lot of places to run to and hide in.

  Zigzagging through the stacks, her goal was to head toward the open door on the first floor. Worst case, she could break into an office and call 911, or just punch it in at the Information Desk at the first floor and pray that somebody at Philly’s Finest was on point and doing his job.

  Half falling, half jumping, she held on to the banister as she stumbled closer and closer to the street level. Panic sweat coated her, making her clothes stick to her skin. She couldn’t hear him behind her, which was just as unnerving as hearing him thunder after her.

  She hit the first-floor panic bar on the stairwell door and raced across the wide marble floor toward the Information Desk and skidded to a halt as he calmly stepped through the folds of nothingness with a placid look on his face.

  “I thoroughly apologize,” he said in a soothing voice. “Celeste, I allowed my own anxiety about this entire situation to transfer to you, and that should have never happened.”

  She held her heart with one hand and clung to the edge of the desk with the other. “How did you do that?” she gasped. “You drugged me—the water. You used a hypodermic needle and tainted the coconut water when I wasn’t looking, that’s why you made me drink it!”

  “On my honor, Celeste—”

  “That is bullshit!” she shrieked, now clutching the telephone receiver and trying to figure out how to place an outbound call on the complicated system. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if you shoot me! You Al Qaeda motherfuckers aren’t the only ones who will die for a cause! Famil
y is my cause! You ain’t gonna go to my aunt’s house to freak out an eightysomething-year-old woman, and I’m not helping you blow up innocent people here for twelve strands of light or whatever you were babbling about! Take that back over to where you come from! It ain’t perfect here, but it’s home!”

  He reached into his Windbreaker and she dropped the telephone and braced herself, knowing she couldn’t outrun him, but she could damned sure play dead if she wasn’t fatally shot. But he did the most outrageous thing—pulled out the weapon, then turned the handle of the gun in her direction and slowly approached her.

  “Here. Take it, if it will help you trust me. Pull the trigger, if you need to. It will hurt but I will not die. It will complicate things when they find me here in the morning bleeding all over their floors . . . but you have already seen that, if they imprison me, I can simply open the locked doors. But the one thing I told you is true: I mean neither you nor your aunt any harm.”

  Azrael set the gun down cautiously on the edge of the Information Desk and backed away with his hands up.

  “These are perilous times, Celeste. You have lived a life of suffering. There are those in the world doing unspeakable things in the name of the Source of All That Is in every country and under the aegis of every religion. I am not one of those misdirected humans. I am Azrael.”

  “All of your names sound foreign,” she said, grabbing the gun and glancing quickly at the telephone. “And you’re talking some end-of-days war bullshit . . . uh-uh. Sounds like a jihad or some kind of fundamentalist evangelical holy-war crusade to me, brother.”

  “Each of our names is translated into this language with the tonal sounds that vibrate with our spirit essences and thus sound—”

  “Cut the crap!” she shouted, trying to get the phone to work.

  “Yes, cut the crap, Azrael,” a deep, sinister voice said behind her, making her spin around to meet it.

  Celeste trained the gun on the new intruder, but he didn’t seem to care. He was tall and willowy, almost seemed delicate, but she could feel an aura of pure danger waft from him as he smiled. A pair of steel gray eyes so clear that they seemed wolflike fixed upon her, and a preternatural wind from nowhere, one that she couldn’t feel, lifted his long, platinum blonde hair off his shoulders and made his black leather coat billow out around his leather-clad legs. His complexion was nearly the same hue as his hair, and were it not for his gray irises, she would have thought him albino. But her eyes left his gaze to study his mouth and the unnatural line of his teeth that seemed to be slowly lengthening.