The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1)

by Angela Panayotopulos

  and Immortality.”

  –Emily Dickinson

  The red-scarfed man watched from the rearview mirror of his car, parked in a neighbor’s lot further down the street near the woods. The old man emerged from his house at the crack of dawn, bundled in a gray coat and an old-fashioned cap he’d retained since his youth as a fisherman. He made the trip to the beat-up rental car twice, once carrying his suitcase and once leading the limping wolf. The neighborhood roused itself slowly around them, one or two of its most hard-working citizens emerging in their suits and walking briskly to their cars. They looked down so their gleaming black shoes wouldn’t slip on the thin layer of fresh snow. Their exhaled breaths gushed from their mouths like empty comment bubbles. They paid no heed to the old man loading up his car.

  Gabriel revved up the car, backed out of the driveway, and eased on down the road. He paused and parked across the street, as the red-scarfed man guessed he would, along the curb where the forest began. He cracked open a window for the wolf and stroked her head with a last look into her adoring dark eyes, not realizing that these were her dying breaths. He then got out and walked towards the trees to uncover the mirror he’d hidden, never suspecting it for bait that had been stolen from a Yemenite’s front door.

  After a couple of minutes, the red-scarfed man followed him into the forest.

  . . .

  Gabriel did not tarry. The fear of exerting Yin trumped his unwillingness to leave her in the car. He plunged into the woods and rushed to the Firefly Tree. Kneeling near its base, he dug up the mirror with his bare hands. He wiped the snow from its surface and propped it up against the trunk in the same position as it had been when he’d found it, studying it for a moment.

  Of course he would take it with him.

  He stared at the mirror as if hoping it would speak to him. What had his granddaughter been thinking? Was this indeed a plea for him to join her? Or simply an explanation of where she’d really gone? Perhaps it had been meant as a promise to tackle what remained of her legacy. Or a question, showing him her progress to ask if she was on a path to salvation or suicide. Though she’d been careful, likely leaving it at the tree instead of the house for the sake of his safety, she obviously wasn’t aware of how tangible the danger really was. And if Lexi’s goal was that which he envisioned it was, she would need all the help she could get.

  “Brave girl,” Gabriel whispered. He glanced up at the cloud-shredded sky that pearled with the advent of the sun. He’d lingered enough already.

  When he looked back at the mirror, reaching for it with one hand, a devil appeared behind him.

  . . .

  “It’s not how I originally envisioned it,” said Dominic. “I used to imagine we’d meet over a Thanksgiving dinner or something. I’ve always been an idealist.”

  The old man turned and stood to face him. His face twitched as if fighting to conceal his horror at what he’d seen in the mirror.

  “You’ve been watching me,” he said.

  Dominic grinned. “It’s been a riot.”

  “You’re an agent.” This was not a question either.

  “I was assigned as Lexi’s lover.” Dominic relished the look that flitted over the old man’s face. “You raised her well, all things considered. I kind of liked the kid. But then she had to go and step so way out of line. I suppose I can’t blame her completely. I guess you’re complicit, too.”

  The old man’s face tightened. “Where is she?”

  “I was hoping you’d have the answer to that.” Dominic raised his eyebrows. A strange pang of disappointment rippled through him. “But it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to tell me; it’s obvious you’re going somewhere. Somewhere important. I’ll just tag along.”

  The old man couldn’t fight him, of course. He wouldn’t be able to outrun him, either. So Dominic wasn’t surprised when the grizzled Greek attempted to reason with him.

  “You have a choice, you know. You always have.”

  “I do know. I’ve made it.”

  “Have you? Or have you been tricked by what you see?”

  “Okay.” Dominic offered a mirthless smile. “Let’s agree on what we obviously both see. The Devil’s good looks, am I right?”

  “You have free will. That’s all I’m saying. You cultivate your image or you let your image cultivate you. You choose how much of the so-called otherworldly you choose to project.”

  “Do I look like I give a damn? Let’s skip the psychobabble, shall we?”

  “Humanity made in His image,” Gabriel persisted. “Haven’t you questioned whose image? If we are indeed molded with horns and wings alike, what does that make Him? And what does it make us?”

  Dominic offered him a mirthless smile. “So you don’t believe I serve as an embodiment of the Devil. Do you need to crucify me, too, to make your point?”

  “If you do serve as what you say, then so do we all. And since that’s so, it’s a part of our humanness. Why do we insist on blaming all our sins on the one trademark Devil? You don’t see us shaking off all the praise for our good deeds and redirecting it all to the Lord, do you?”

  “I didn’t come here to discuss theology. You’re welcome to continue the conversation with your Maker once I’m done with you. I won’t be long.”

  Before Gabriel could react, Dominic leapt forward, grabbed his wrists, and whirled him around. He forced the old man to his knees and crouched behind him. They found themselves face-to-face with the mirror. Dominic saw the grizzled angel and the red-scarfed demon that stared back at them and felt no joy.

  But the angel smiled. “You see?”

  . . .

  It wasn’t the darkness that killed people. It was the people who carried the darkness within them who did. And yet this darkness was something separate, something you could lift or shake off. Gabriel looked into the mirror and studied that tight pale face, the curly hair, the clear hazel eyes, the full lips that blanketed so many secrets behind them.

  A man’s face.

  As an agent, Dominic had likely done many evil things. Gabriel had heard of how agents were sometimes assigned to families that threatened the government’s authority. Such families were usually assassinated. That his family had survived so long, albeit not without abuse, could not have been coincidental. And Gabriel had seen Dominic’s brow crease—not in rage, but in worry—when he realized Gabriel did not know Lexi’s whereabouts. That Lexi lived—that she created mirrors and yet lived—was a twist of fate perhaps attributed to a guardian angel masquerading as a demon. Gabriel knew his granddaughter. Her passion and transparency mirrored his own. She could not love—or trust—anyone with half of her heart. And Dominic should have found countless moments to turn Lexi in. Or kill her.

  Yet he hadn’t.

  Gabriel glanced back at Dominic’s actual face. It made it easier to remember how human the stranger was without the implications of his black curved horns and blood-flecked eyes. When Gabriel looked back at the mirror, the younger man’s horns had vanished.

  “See what?” Dominic stared back incredulously. “Are you playing at idiocy? I know what you can see.”

  “Yes.” Gabriel pointed at the mirror. “I’ve seen your horns. But I see your wings, too. Dark gray-green, the color of the sea before a storm. So large that the pinion tips must nearly drag on the ground when you stand.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “No. I merely choose a different perspective. I see what you refuse to see.”

  “You think you know everything, old man.” Dominic seized again Gabriel’s wrist and twisted it, glaring at the reflection of the old man’s face. They both watched as Gabriel’s wings faltered and his eyes dimmed. “You’re the disillusioned one. You can’t bear the horror, so you start focusing only on the good in people, feeding yourself fables. You think the beast can be transformed? To Hell with your goodness and your fairy tales. They can’t save me and they sure as Hell won’t save you.”

  Gabriel’s gaze now reflected darknes
s. Dominic’s abuse stirred an echo of tortures, decades-old, shallowly buried and never forgotten. Human monsters who seemed more monster than human, German and Greek alike. For a moment, the pain wretched the goodwill out of him.

  In its stead, Gabriel watched in the mirror as the younger man’s murky wings wilted away into objects of bone and brimstone. He saw again what he had seen from the start. He recoiled, shrinking into himself, caught between the reflection of a demon and the actual creature. He did not bear to face himself.

  With a sigh, Dominic let Gabriel go. He stood up and walked to a nearby tree stump and brushed off the snow before he sat on it. He watched as the old man once more turned and stood to face him.

  “I’m a soldier, Gabriel. You of all the people in your family should understand the implications. I follow orders; I do what I have to and say what I must to be in the league of surviving gentlemen.”

  “The things you desire are perfectly normal.” Gabriel held out an upturned palm in acknowledgement. “You choose the winning side. You want to fit in. Fitting in isn’t all it’s made out to be.”

  “I don’t want to fit in.”

  Gabriel frowned. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to accept reality. Help me destroy that which is used against us.” Dominic’s lips twisted into a sneer, but his voice seemed strangely tinged with sadness. “You people pull out the darkest elements from within us and flaunt them in our faces. And yet you never see the darkness inside yourselves. You judge without realizing that you are monsters.”

  “There are many monsters,” the old man agreed. “But we do not have to be included in their number. God knows I’m no saint. I’ve had darkness overtake me at times. But every day is a battle and I participate. I can sense that you have, too.” He took a deep breath and wondered if Dominic himself had realized he’d fallen for a mirror-maker. “I just saw it.”

  . . .

  Dominic hadn’t seen his wings for a very long time. He knew, from past sightings, that their feathers were indeed the color of the sea before a storm. He knew the old man was not bluffing.

  That did not, however, absolve Gabriel.

  “You say that. But you don’t mean it. None of you ever do.” Dominic shook his head. “You forced yourself, before, to see what you desired to see in me as a survival tactic. You wouldn’t have otherwise. You glimpsed something quite different when you first saw me—I saw it in your eyes. I’ve seen it in hers. She would come to see me as a monster. They always do.”

  He stood up from the stump and began to pace from tree to tree, straying a few yards from Gabriel, never too far.

  “She never saw my side,” Dominic continued. “She never asked about my story. You people constantly demonize us for it. You pull ‘monsters’ out from under the bed and feed and clothe them. And then you act all surprised and shit when your precious little monsters just keep getting stronger. When they start becoming tangible.”

  “You still think I am vilifying you?”

  “And always will. You ignite a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don’t you get that the point is you can’t destroy it, no matter how many heads you slice, no matter how Herculean your efforts? Don’t you see that many heads are better than one? You’ve never understood that it’s the only recipe for survival.”

  “So it’s a story of creating yourself. We can agree on that. Why should you let me define you, then? Mirrors are a conversation.” Gabriel gestured behind him at the mirror. “This object has no power of its own! Results don’t depend just on what is being seen; they depend also on the seer. The same thing happens when you read a book or study a painting. You’ve felt that; you already know this.”

  Dominic shook its head. “It’s a skewed perspective. You uphold the images and the illusions; we’re not like you, so you fear us. And of course. You can’t just mold a monster and then expect it to pick daisies. You can’t tell the scorpion not to use its stinger. You can’t just make me follow you out here in a forest and expect me to play fair. It isn’t in my nature. My nature is to hide my nature. If you insist on exposing it, it’s also in my nature to kill you. All of you. And this time we won’t be merciful. We won’t send your families to the hospital. We’ll plant them in a grave.”

  Gabriel reached behind his back for the pistol; Dominic had seen the outline of it before, when he’d forced the old man to his knees. High time, Dominic noted. What took you so long? With practiced ease, he stepped forward and grabbed the old man’s wrist once more. He twisted it until something cracked; Gabriel groaned in pain as the weapon dropped from his fingers.

  “Do you see now how you force me to these atrocities? Are you not afraid?”

  “Yes.” The old man gritted his teeth. “But I am not afraid of you. It is the darkness within you that unsettles me. You have power over it. You can fight it.”

  “Too late.” Dominic pushed the old man away and tossed aside the pistol. Gabriel slipped on the snow and stumbled. He caught himself before he fell, his eyes on Dominic’s face. “Shall I tell you why?”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “Oh? Let’s play a game,” Dominic snarled, growing tired. He’d coddled him enough.

  “I don’t like games.”

  “Guess who was chosen to keep tabs on your family?”

  “No.”

  “Who ensured that your son will waste away in solitary confinement?”

  “No…”

  “Who was selected to sleep with your granddaughter and to rape her of her innocence?”

  The smile in Dominic’s voice hurt Gabriel more than even his words.

  “Who pinned the note to your front door the day your daughter-in-law tried to play the hero?”

  The old man gave a terrible cry. All the strength of his youth burst from the depths of his heart and swept through his body. He ran towards Dominic armed with nothing but his bare fists and his blinding rage. Dominic did not have time to think. He lowered his head instinctively. He felt the impact as Gabriel flung himself in his direction and was speared by the horns. The old man did not have the time or the lungs to scream.

  For the first time, Dominic knew the horrified awe of the bull that gores the matador.

  35 / The Revisionists

  “No matter what he does,

  every person on earth plays a

  central role in the history of the world.

  And normally he doesn’t know it.”

  –Paulo Coelho

  When you really desire something, Lexi had read once in a book called The Alchemist, the entire universe conspires in helping you achieve it.

  Fighting a sputtering furnace fire, Lexi hadn’t noticed the headlights of a car snaking up the road. She didn’t hear the thrum of the motor. Yang had left for his nightly hunt. Her cell phone battery had died days ago, and the charger itself had fallen in the snow and no longer worked. She was alone when her world exploded in light. When she turned, it blinded her eyes. The headlights of a car transfixed her like a fawn-soon-to-be-roadkill. Her other hand stayed behind her back, statue-still, and extracted the knife from the waistband of her jeans. A terrible sense of déjà vu shuddered through her. Her heart leapt to her mouth.

  A fawn, she reminded herself, with fangs.

  Four years ago—hell, four weeks ago—she would have been scared stiff. She would have screamed. She might have run. Perhaps true warriors are not those who feel they have nothing to lose, but the ones who have everything to protect.

  “Who is it?”

  Lexi squinted and raised an arm to shield her eyes. She didn’t bother moving out of the way. If the intruder wanted her dead, he or she would have run her over or shot her down already.

  “Talk to me,” she demanded.

  Abruptly the headlights switched off. A car door opened and slammed shut. A lean silhouette walked towards her, arms raised to signify that the person was unarmed. Lexi fought to adjust her vision back to the moonlight. Her fingers tightened around the knife.

  “Lexi, it’
s me! Relax! It’s me…”

  And so it was.

  Lexi fought to keep her face blank. “Why are you here?”

  “I just am,” he said.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I’d find and extract you from the crowds of Hell if I had to.”

  “Do you have a death wish?”

  “One never knows.” He strode forward and gripped her shoulders. The knife fell from her hand and clattered to the floor. The metallic clang echoed in the quiet. He nodded approvingly.

  “What?” Lexi’s lips curled back, emotions jumbling across her face. Her hands rose up to press against his chest, to push him away. “You keep saying that! What does that even mean?”

  He refused to be pushed. “It’s from The Little Prince. What, a writer who’s never read it? You should give it a chance. Read the classics, then make your own rules.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you want?”

  I want, Lexi thought, and the thought was as bittersweet as unripe fruit, glazed with desire and tinged with despair. I want the man who grows out of his selfish ways and who unpacks himself of boyhood grudges. I want the man who questions what he knows but knows what he stands for. I want a heart that’s as big as a werewolf’s and a shoulder that won’t slip away and passion that’s paralleled by potential. I want clean eyes and clean souls and clean beginnings. I want my family back. I want peace. I want to wake up to the world before.

  I want.

  But she said: “You can’t be here.”

  “I’m not five years old,” he replied gently. “I’ll be wherever I damn well please. At the moment, that just so happens to be here.” He released her and turned to look around the factory, a space so clean and cold and functioning. He studied the piles of mirrors on the floor, leaning against the walls. He smiled at the ugly brown tarp.

  Lexi looked at him. She felt the strangest sensation, like her heart was melting and plummeting at the same time. What a mess that would be, literally, within a person’s body. Like a burning elevator in a building. Falling, she realized.