by L. A. Banks
Azrael nodded. “Point taken.”
“Thank you,” Isda said in a churlish tone. “We can walk tru’ da ether and be in Egypt before lunch. To travel wit dem is a hazard, mon. No offense. First we gotta get phony passports, get ’em tickets, get ’em tru’ security and patted down and on a flight. Twelve, thirteen hours later they land. Then they gotta rest, gotta eat. Plus being female Remnants in a city of twenty million beings that are still in what you might as well call a civil war, some of whom are looking for what we’re looking for, is not a good t’ing. So, I’m not hating or being melodramatic. All I was trying to tell BK is that we needed to send a reconnaissance team over there—and I was arguing about not going with the most precious cargo we’ve got in tow. But he says to leave them behind with a weaker security team is leaving them like sitting ducks for a snatch and grab—and I feel him on dat, too. It’s a rock and-a-hard-place setup.”
“When was the last time we had a visual on all the elements of the vault?” Azrael looked from Bath Kol to Isda and back.
Bath Kol rubbed the nape of his neck. “Okay, I admit it; I haven’t been the brightest bulb in the pack, all right. My light was dimming until you came down here three months ago and found Celeste. That battle on the waterfront was a V my spirit needed.”
Azrael released an impatient breath. “When was the last time?”
“A few years ago, when an old priest in Turkey had a vision. He took the crystal book of tablets out of Egypt when a bunch of bull kicked off in the Middle East. But I know somehow he or someone he confided in got it back there. I feel it in my bones, guys.” Bath Kol rubbed his neck again. “The old man was cool, just like all our shamans and priests and priestesses in the past that we gave the gift of discernment to—he was clean, man. The old man saw a premonition of the dark side taking the sarcophagus, prayed so he could mentally shoot the image of the abduction he witnessed to our side to alert us, and then preempted them and hid it on hallowed ground. The old dude was incredible. He maneuvered getting both the book and the sacred sarcophagus moved to a safe place, even at his frail human age—and for a long time, it seems, no one was the wiser about his stealth moves.”
“You say when bull kicked off in the Middle East?” Isda said incredulously. “What fucking era, mon? Excuse my French in fronta de ladies. A few years ago could be the 1960s, 1940s, or two thousand years ago!”
“The man said to watch your language,” Bath Kol muttered, using his beer to point at Isda. “You know how the years run together down here, okay, so don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house. Like you were always vigilant—never smoked a tree, never—”
“All right, gentlemen!” Azrael shouted, quelling the brewing dispute. “That’s how this got out of control before. The point is, where is the old man now?”
“Father Krespy passed on … like in 1982. He was well into his eighties when he had the tablet, and then his young apprentice, an Egyptian Muslim who was working with the old priest as an interfaith protégé priest, Daoud Salahuddin, took it to keep it on the move. Again, why I said looking in Egypt is a sound strategy.”
“BK, 1982 was just prior to the Harmonic Convergence,” Aziza said with a horrified whisper. “Before the period shifted to the time of Light.”
“Yeah, the dark side was hunting down everybody who had Light consciousness in their spirits around that time, making people sick, making them die suddenly, you name it. They knew that if they didn’t cull our human ranks of Light-bearers, when the shift came, we’d be stronger and have better access to keep the human vibration high and positive. That’s the last thing the dark side wanted, was for regular human Joes to be thinking, reasonable, humane individuals. They want war, ignorance, bigotry, fear, strife, yada yada yada. So knocking off good world leaders, community organizers, people in the trenches holding the Light, was their dealio. Always has been. But there was a definite uptick in the dark side’s activities just before the Convergence.”
“C’mon, man … that was like almost thirty years ago, and it didn’t dawn on you to give us a heads-up?” Gavreel looked around the room and headed toward the refrigerator.
“You know, BK,” Paschar said in a tight voice, “that’s saying a lot to send the angel in charge of peace to get a beer because you’ve caused him to lose it.”
“Nineteen eighty-two?” Gavreel said, then opened his beer and began to pace.
“Yeah, that’s right about the time I started drinking,” Bath Kol said, heading to the refrigerator for another beer. “You all have no idea what I see in my sleep and all day long.”
Azrael closed his eyes and spoke in a low rumble. “Then how do we know it’s not too late?”
“Because if they had it, they would have been back to kick our asses already,” Celeste said slowly, sitting.
“It was cool,” Bath Kol said, taking a swig from his bottle. “It was with a vetted apprentice who’d taken over for the old priest. How many times do you think the library has changed hands over twenty-six thousand years, brothers? Gimme a break. Humans last these days—what? like three score or seventy years or whatever? I forget. So caretakers change hands. Get over it. The point is, our guys up in the etheric realms sound the alarm through my visions if we’re in imminent danger of a real threat. Most of the time, the terror level is on yellow,” he added, looking at the women at the table.
After releasing an impatient breath, Bath Kohl rubbed the nape of his neck. “But this morning, I got a real warning at a red level basically—all right, folks? The dark side finally found the bones that were kept separately from the crystal book of tablets. They found Imhotep’s bones after all these years. So, the last thing we have time for is arguing amongst ourselves. And I’m the last person who feels like doing sand and tombs at a hundred twenty degrees in the shade, okay? But it is what it is. We have to go to Egypt and dig for where the guys on our side may have hidden the book. It’s out there in the desert in that hot, dusty, sandy, chaotic place going through a regime change. Hey, that’s not my fault, just the facts—so don’t shoot the messenger.”
Celeste’s Remnant sisters reached out their hands and squeezed hers, adding Aziza in the ring, all sharing nervous glances as they sat at the table. But just as Celeste was about to pull away, a blue-white charge slowly covered her fists, seeming to run through the length of the other women’s outstretched arms.
“The thing that is so sick is the dark side has created a full-scale blackout of the entire region, jamming vision frequencies from our side.” Bath Kol tossed his old bottle into a recycling bin with a crash and reached into the fridge to open a new cold one. “That interference covers North and East Africa all the way through the Middle East, and forget trying to see into the Holy Land at this point. We’ve got them blocked, they’ve got us blocked—the stalemate is so ridiculous that neither side can really see what’s going on over there, which goes back to my original point of needing actual boots on the ground to get the intel we need.”
“Daoud never left Cairo with it,” Celeste murmured, then looked up at Azrael. “It’s fuzzy, but I just don’t think he left the area.”
“Whoa, our locator can see past the dark side’s barriers when she’s joined by the power of three?” Bath Kol said in hushed awe. “Who freakin’ knew? But it makes so much sense.”
Just like that, their fate had been sealed. She and the ladies were flying to Egypt. Cloaked angels would be guarding the plane in the air, an advance team would walk through the ether to prepare the way on the ground, and their individual protector mates would be at their sides for the interminable, twelve-hour, nonstop flight.
Celeste blew a stray curl up off her forehead as she grabbed a section of folded T-shirts from her drawer and brought them over to her small, carry-on suitcase. This was so not how she’d planned to spend her day.
Logistics had been decided by edict; when Azrael was stressed, he didn’t do management by committee well. A small contingent of angel warriors would remain in Philly to
scout out a new location. Their role was to thoroughly equip the new barracks with artillery, protective prayer barriers, as well as living necessities, while an advance guard led by Isda would walk point in Egypt, clearing the path for hotel accommodations, transportation connections, and any mundane human issues that could get in the way.
Meanwhile, cloaked angels would escort their Air Egypt flight the way F-16 fighter jets escorted Air Force One. Azrael, Gavreel, Paschar, and Bath Kol would sit beside the three Remnants and the one sensitive like federal air marshals guarding VIPs, all without regular humans ever being the wiser.
Celeste shook her head the more she thought about it. If average travelers only knew … The flight they were booked on was probably the safest flight heading to that region that had ever left the ground.
Still, that didn’t stop her from worrying about what could happen once they touched down. She knew they had to find the crystal book. She knew they had to somehow secret it away. But that didn’t explain what she and her three “special” sisters were specifically supposed to do.
How were they going to tip the balance and turn on the Light within humanity’s growing darkness? Ignorance was so pervasive; the American airwaves were polluted by propaganda! No real news, no authentic journalism, was left; only talking heads that did the bidding of greedy corporations. One dark-souled billionaire alone had been allowed to buy up television stations, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and even a movie studio. The havoc only one human being had wreaked on the national consciousness was staggering—all it took was one powerful person without a moral compass to hire talking heads who would do his bidding. From there it was all downhill; the public as sheep were basically led to their slaughter, spouting rhetoric and talking points that they regurgitated from charlatans without true understanding. Mob rule was created, civility was gone, and the dark side had won the public relations war.
So what the hell could she do? She was just one person.
“That’s just it,” Azrael said calmly, drawing her attention to the bedroom-suite door. “He is just one man aided by the forces of darkness.”
“The guy who bought up seventy-five percent of the airwaves is a billionaire,” she replied, always amazed at how Azrael appeared just when she needed his calm wisdom most, but was never intrusive about the open-mind link they now shared.
“Still, he is one man,” Azrael repeated. “One human.”
“One human with a lot of resources.” She sighed and resumed packing.
“You are one woman with a lot of resources, aided by the forces of the Light.”
She stared at Azrael.
“In the end-times, the last will be first and the first will be last.” He held her gaze. “We are in the end-times, Celeste.”
“But do you know how many minions they have duped in that one propaganda empire alone? Like, if I wanted to get my words out to the masses, if I had something true to tell people, the propaganda machine would discredit me or wouldn’t cover it. So how?”
“I don’t know how yet. We’ve always been told to have faith and leave the details to the Source of All That Is.” Azrael smiled. “So far, that’s worked for me.”
His easy acceptance made her smile, and he crossed the room to draw her into his arms. Leaning down to take her mouth, his slow kiss under any other circumstances would have made her relax. But its too sweet ambrosia lacquer told her that he was more stressed out than she was.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly as she pulled back from their kiss and caressed the side of his face.
“Nothing,” he murmured, then hugged her tightly.
“I thought angels weren’t supposed to lie,” she whispered into his ear.
“It’s not a lie, nothing is actually wrong.”
“You’re splitting hairs and dancing with words—not technically lying, but avoiding telling me what’s bothering you.”
He released a heavy exhale. “I just know this mission will be extremely challenging for my brothers, emotionally—even though they’d never admit it in a thousand years—and I grieve for them.”
“Talk to me,” she said gently as she drew back and gazed deeply into his eyes. “This has to do with Isda and Bath Kol, doesn’t it?”
Azrael nodded and released another weary sigh. “After the war, maybe five hundred years in, their battalion broke the prime edict and lay with the daughters of man … this was in Atlantis and Lumeria. Our warrior brothers along with their fallen demon colleagues immediately beset the human populations, spawning the Titans and dark Remnants that our Light forces had to rout out. Both angels and demons procreated with humans, even though our angel brothers knew this was not allowed. But time and battle fatigue …”
Celeste nodded and drew him into a hug. “That’s how people like me got made?”
“Yes,” he murmured, kissing her temple. “Remnants of Light were scattered throughout the human race, and those hidden recessive genes carrying twelve strands of DNA were buried deep within the populations, only to emerge like you.”
Azrael pulled back and looked at her, tracing the edge of her jaw with his thumb. “After what I have experienced with you, there is no judgment in my spirit toward my brothers about how that happened. But in that day, the Law was the Law. And just as the fallens’ offspring created great misery and havoc, my brothers’ offspring created great civilizations … some were the first pharaohs, some elected to go dark and become great Roman conquerors. That was why there was the Law, because humans have free will and choice here on the earth plane. That choice was unpredictable. Some went dark, even those made by my brothers in the Light. This region that we are about to visit is like walking over a grave.”
When Celeste frowned, Azrael briefly closed his eyes and spoke in a low, somber voice. “My brothers have buried lovers, wives, sons, and daughters in the Nile Valley, Celeste. When Isda first incarnated here, he was a warrior. Then he broke the Law and was banished from home to forever be a Sentinel. He never turned dark, but when he was informed that his Remnant, a descendant of one of his closest allies, was born, he tracked her through the modern Sudan all the way to Uganda, out through the Caribbean, only to learn that she’d perished. She would have been the daughter of one of his closest angel battalion brothers, generations removed. Thus Isda is a warrior who has lived through the greatness of the African interior empires to watch it fall to colonization, then turn in on itself in civil war. He saw the horrors of the slave trade, fought in the Caribbean to lead uprisings against that. My brother’s spirit is exhausted. And now we have asked him to return to where he remembers the streets and temples paved in gold and with advances to civilization … to what it has surely become now. His heart shatters. That is why he protests so bitterly—he is no coward, just battle-weary.”
“Oh … Az …”
“Celeste, being immortal is a double-edged blade. A gift, and in a human body of flesh, also a curse. You live through it all, and see it all, but then you get to remember it all and feel it all, too.”
Guilt swept through her as she reflected on how oblivious she’d been to their pain. What she couldn’t bring herself to verbalize to Azrael was that a part of her had thought it would actually be easy for them to return to old battlegrounds to scout out possible hiding spots, just because they were familiar with the terrain. In hindsight she now realized how foolish a concept that had been.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, now staring up at him, unblinking. “I never thought of it in those terms, or even thought about how hard it must be for the original warriors that got trapped here to go back to the old empires. I just thought … I don’t know—like they’d know where everything was because they’d been there before.”
“How could you know?” Azrael said as he held her face in his hands. “Being immortal is almost incomprehensible to the human mind, just as we didn’t truly understand the pain, risk, desire, and sacrifice involved in living within the frail structure of a human body. While in etheric for
m and in the heat of battle, we were invincible. That is why the Source gave us this lesson and left the best of the forces here for so long to experience it all … a necessary thing to develop mercy, empathy, and good judgment, as well as to cultivate respect. We have definitely gained respect.”
“Maybe … I don’t know, Az, maybe Isda should stay here, if going back will be so hard for him?”
“No. He has to face it. Egypt, or Kemet, will spare no man. It was the first great civilization and they were all there … they will all have insights. Bath Kol will have to revisit what Alexander the Great, a direct descendant of his, wrought there against Isda’s people. All of them will feel it. All of them will walk through temples or familiar areas that they haven’t returned to in thousands of years … and their souls will cry out. But they will also be able to feel critical directions through that pain.”
Celeste placed her hands on Azrael’s wrists as he cupped her face, then slowly covered his palms to thread her fingers between his. “What over there will make your soul cry out?”
He pulled her against him and spoke into her hair. “Nothing. I was lucky. When I fought, I was etheric and powerful and then extracted home as the Angel of Death—deemed too valuable at that time to leave for the lesson. I’ve only been incarnate the three short months that I was sent to locate you. And in those three short months I have most assuredly learned to respect the power of the flesh.” He rubbed her back and rested his forehead against the crown of her head, making his confession in a low rumble. “Until I learned loss and pain and want, I was so arrogant, Celeste. Only because of your heartfelt prayer to the Source on my and my brothers’ behalf was the Law repealed, and only because you are not fully human did I slip through the door of judgment on a mere technicality or I’d be in jeopardy of being banished like they’d been—made a Sentinel to roam the earth for all time … because God only knows that once I met you and bonded with you, not falling in love with you was impossible. Not being allowed to join with you created a want … an ache like I’ve never experienced in all of existence. But then you prayed for us all, asked for mercy, and as has been promised by the Source of All That Is, mercy was not denied.”
