Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007)

by Coorlim, Michael

  Or at least Lily didn't. Not that she'd ever have told anyone. She wasn't a, you know, atheist. She just thought that He was another story, like the devil, like the flood, like Adam and Eve. It hadn't mattered to her that He might not have been really real, because she loved the Church and she loved her father. Her foster father.

  But now? If this was real, if she was half-angel, if she was the devil's daughter, then obviously God was real too. Right?

  "Hold up." Delilah had walked over to where Barny was kneeling in front of his bonfire branches, lighter in hand. She stood, arms crossed, behind him.

  "What?"

  "I was thinking. You said you could burn things? With your hands?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Could you do that now?" She nodded towards the tinder. "Show us, I mean."

  Barny glanced towards Lily, and then Gideon. "Sure, I guess."

  Lily was surprised that he seemed nervous, putting his lighter away and waiting for the group to gather.

  "How do you do it?" Delilah asked.

  Barny wiggled his fingers. "It's hard to explain. I just sort of tense my muscles and concentrate, and then my hand starts to heat up."

  "Show us?"

  "Okay." Barny looked at his hand for a moment.

  He reached into the branches and placed it on his kindling. After a few seconds tendrils of smoke started to rise from below his palm. The dry brush and newspaper ignited, and Barny drew his hand back quickly.

  "Did that hurt?" Jessie asked.

  "It feels warm," Barny said. "Tingles. Doesn't hurt."

  "Are you immune to fire?" Gideon asked.

  "Are you? Why don't you find out?"

  Glowering at Barny, the redhead brought his hand close to the flame, drawing it back before it got too close. "No."

  "Interesting," Delilah said. "We're manifesting different powers."

  "Don't call them that," Barny said.

  "Powers?"

  "It sounds dumb. Like from a comic book."

  She adjusted her glasses. "What should we call them then?"

  "Gifts?" Jessie suggested. "They are gifts from God, after all."

  "I'm not really comfortable with that." Lily said.

  "Why not?"

  "Melchizedek." Lily looked away from the fire, towards the desert. "What if we end up like him? Looking like him? That doesn't sound like a gift to me."

  "Who cares what we call them," Gideon said.

  "We have to refer to them somehow," Delilah said. "Call them abilities."

  "Fine, whatever," Barny said.

  "Wherever they come from, we have them," Delilah said. "We should try and discern their parameters. See what their limitations are. See what they can do."

  "It's a good idea," Lily said. "In case the men looking for Melchizedek show up. Take an interest in us."

  "And so we don't accidentally hurt anyone," Gideon said.

  Barny snorted. "Fine, whatever. How do you want to do this?"

  "Just one second." Delilah ran over to her dirt bike, a broad smile across her face. She returned with pen and paper in hand. "Let's start by listing what abilities you've noticed."

  "I'm stronger. Faster. I can make my body heat up."

  "Not just the hands?" Delilah asked.

  "Anywhere if I concentrate."

  Delilah wrote in her notebook. "How hot can you get?"

  Barny pulled a small object out of his pocket. It was thin, the length of his palm, and uneven, with regularly spaced grooves and spindles. "I made this out of sand."

  "You did?" Lily asked.

  It was translucent, glass, shining in the firelight. "Took me almost ten minutes. Wanted to see if I could do it."

  "Holy shit," Delilah said. "There's a high lime content in the sands around Laton, but you're talking over two-thousand degrees, Barny."

  "I am amused that you just know this," Barny said.

  "He melted through my bike pretty quickly," Gideon said.

  "Aluminum's melting point is lower," Delilah said. "And your bike is probably an aluminum alloy."

  "Point is he owes me a bike."

  "Nobody cares about your bike," Delilah said. "What powers... abilities... do you have?"

  Gideon folded his arms. "I'm strong. Tough. Fast."

  "How strong?"

  He pointed at Barny. "Stronger than him."

  "That's debatable," Barny said.

  "Fuck you, I beat your ass."

  "I wasn't expecting it."

  "Beat. Your. Ass."

  "We need to get an accurate measurement of how strong you are," Delilah said. "Barny, how much does your truck weigh?"

  "He's not lifting my truck," Barny said.

  "Come on, this is important!"

  "Why?"

  Delilah spoke quickly, waving her pen around for emphasis. "The more data we gather, the better we quantify the changes we've undergone. The degree of change seems to be different for each of us. There has to be a reason for that."

  "So?"

  "Understanding the reason will help us predict what's happening to us. What will happen to us."

  "Fine. The truck weighs five, five and a half tons."

  "Think I can lift five tons?" Gideon asked.

  "Probably not," Barny said. "This is dumb.You'd just break a piece off trying to lift it. A truck isn't one solid block."

  "No, I want to see if he can push it," Delilah said. "How easily, I mean. So we can see how strong we are. Relative to one another."

  "Fine," Barny said. "This would be easier with free-weights."

  "Do you have free weights in your truck?" Delilah asked.

  "No."

  "Gideon, go push Barny's truck."

  CHAPTER TWO

  One after another, Gideon, Barny, Delilah, and Lily took turns pushing Barny's truck around the parking lot. Jessie alone abstained, citing that she wasn't too much stronger than normal, and they let her time each person as they pushed the truck from one side of the Spot to the other. Gideon's time was fastest, and he seemed to be able to roll the truck along without too much effort. Barny's time was perhaps half that. Lily was between the two, though it seemed to be more of an effort for her. Delilah found she could barely rock it at all.

  "I'm stronger," she said, "A lot stronger. I don't think I could have even nudged it before. But I'm nowhere near as strong as you three."

  "That doesn't seem fair," Gideon said.

  "Life isn't fair," Barny said.

  "It sort of is," Delilah said. "After all, you can do the heat thing. Gideon is just super-strong."

  "Stronger than I am," Lily said.

  "You're faster," Gideon said.

  "Way faster," Barny said.

  "How fast?" Delilah asked.

  "Fast," Barny said.

  "Well, I run track," Lily said, shaking her hair out.

  "No, you're fast." Barny waved a hand.

  "How fast?" Delilah asked.

  "Fast enough that everyone noticed when she was running the track the other night."

  Lily felt her chest tighten, and her face paled. "They did?"

  "Hell yeah they did. That's why I was trying to talk to you before asshole here picked a fight with me."

  "You picked a fight with me!" Gideon clenched his fists.

  "Boys, focus," Delilah said. "Are you guys faster than normal?"

  "I don't think so," Gideon said, shrugging.

  "I can time you," Jessie said, holding up her phone.

  "Okay," Delilah said. "It's about a half-mile around the Spot's perimeter. Let's run it and time ourselves."

  "Man." Gideon groaned. "I hate running."

  "No shit?" Barny said.

  "Shut the fuck up."

  "Both of you shut up," Lily said. Their constant bickering was really getting on her nerves. "800 meters? Okay, I'll go first. Two minutes after I start, Barny goes. Two minutes, then Gideon. Then Delilah. Got it? That should stagger it enough so that you can record everyone's times."

  Jessie took the notebook an
d pen from Delilah. "Got it."

  Lily picked up a chunk of wood from the bonfire. It was lighter than she expected, and she dropped it near the wall. "Here's our mark. Ready Jessie?"

  "Ready."

  The track star took a standing runner's stance near the log. "Ready."

  Jessie held the phone up, staring at it intently. "And.... go!"

  Lily exploded into motion, following the curve of the wall around the Spot's interior. The footing was far from ideal, gravel shifting below her feet with every step, but her long strides carried her so far with each stride that it almost felt like she was flying. She slipped almost immediately into her runner's zone, and it wasn't long before she returned to where the others were standing.

  They all stared at her.

  "What the hell, Barny," she said between breaths. "Why didn't you start after two minutes?"

  "It hasn't been two minutes," Jessie said.

  "What?" Lily asked.

  Jessie handed the phone over. "You're not even at one."

  "No way." Lily stared at the stopwatch app, reading 59 seconds, and jerked her gaze away. "This is... this is a second faster than my time in the 400. I ran at least twice that far."

  "You were a blur," Gideon said.

  "This can't be right," Lily said, euphoric. "The 800 world record is only 1:40."

  "You were really fast," Gideon said.

  "This is ridiculous." She sat in a crouch against the fence.

  "As ridiculous as turning sand to glass?" Barny asked. "Or fat-ass slamming my truck around like a paperweight?"

  "Who wants to go next?" Delilah asked, grabbing the phone from Jessie. "Barny?"

  Jessie gently reached over and plucked her phone from Delilah's grasp.

  "It's late," she said. "I really should be getting home."

  "What? No! We need to see how fast Barny is."

  "Not that fast," Barny nodded towards Lily.

  Delilah pulled on the strings tightening her sweatshirt's hood."And we haven't even talked about your visions or any other potential abilities."

  "My visions aren't the kind of thing you can quantify."

  Lily glanced towards town. "It is getting late. I should get going, too. School tomorrow."

  "School? Who cares about school? This is important!"

  Barny shook his head. "What's important is keeping a low profile until we figure out what to do about this. I don't want one of you making some dumb mistake that exposes me before I'm ready."

  "You're full of shit," Gideon said.

  Something about what Barny had said left Lily twitchy. "Ready for what?"

  "I don't even know." Barny sighed. "It's late, and I got a lot to think about."

  She didn't know whether to believe him or not. "Yeah. Sure. We should talk about this later."

  "When?" Gideon asked.

  "Not too soon," Barny said. "Maybe next weekend."

  "Maybe," said Lily.

  She took a last glance at the track, trying again to comprehend having just run the world's fastest 800-meter dash.

  ***

  Delilah's head spun with the implications of last night's testing. Her parents hadn't commented on her return so close to midnight on a school night, and she hadn't managed to get any sleep after returning home. Maybe it was the excitement, or maybe she'd evolved past the need for rest. That would be amazing -- the idea of what she could accomplish with an extra 56 hours a week wasn't to be underestimated. Was she smarter? She felt smarter. She didn't feel significantly stronger or faster since the accident, so her abilities probably weren't physical.

  That was fine with her. Physical was boring. Maybe she could stop time. Or reverse it. Lying in bed, waiting for the sun to rise, she was pretty sure she couldn't make it go any faster.

  That was the downside to a more subtle gift. She would have to work up a methodology to test different possible capabilities. Potential abilities out of a nearly infinite set.

  It was almost three in the morning when Delilah rose and crept to the bathroom, unable to lie still any longer.

  The reflection facing her in the mirror didn't look any different. But neither had Lily, Barny, or Gideon.

  The only ability she'd manifested was the black smoke that Gideon had said that her blood had become after she'd landed on the fence jumping from the tower. That had been painful in the moments before she'd lost consciousness, but ultimately worth it.

  She picked up one of her father's razors, examining its edge in the fluorescent light. Melchizedek had said that a second near-death experience had brought him more obvious powers. Stronger powers. She looked at herself in the mirror, holding the razor, and contemplated hastening the process.

  She didn't.

  Delilah didn't live an easy life. Her parents were absent even when they were present. She couldn't relate to those her own age, and the older teens saw her as little more than a hyper-intelligent freak. She was, most of the time, desperately alone. Isolated enough to have considered checking out early.

  She hadn't.

  Part of the reason why was the social outlet she had in Gideon, and part of it was the intellectual understanding that the only way to ensure that things didn't get better was to take that irrevocable step. As sad as she might be, as desperately lonesome at times, she just didn't have it in her to make emotionally charged choices that weren't in her best interest.

  Swan dives from water-towers notwithstanding.

  Her gaze shifted to her other hand. Remembering what Barny had said about his heat-generation, Delilah clenched her fist and concentrated, willing something -- anything -- to happen.

  At first, nothing did.

  Delilah visualized the smoke as Gideon had described it, and she felt a tingle running from fist to elbow. It didn't look any different, but she could feel it. She could tell that something was happening, under the surface. Under her skin.

  Pausing for only a moment, Delilah brought the razor's edge down across the back of her forearm in one clean swift swipe. It only took a moment for a line of crimson to appear in its wake.

  It only took a further moment for that line to turn black.

  "Oh heck yeah."

  She kept her arm tense and doubled her mental efforts to concentrate on the blackness. It began to rise from her, not like Melchizedek's almost opaque mantle of shadow, but a gauzier, more transparent miasma. It seemed to shimmer in the air in front of her, twisting and billowing between her and the mirror. With a little effort and a growing sense of awe she found that she could guide the diaphanous film through the air.

  "This is too cool."

  She heard the floorboard creak overhead. Her parents' room.

  The moment her concentration waned, the blood-smoke retracted, flowing back into the cut in her arm, which was healing as she watched.

  Delilah caught her own gaze in the mirror, and was momentarily startled to see a dark film over her eyes, fading rapidly. This too warranted further investigation.

  The smoke was neat, but it didn't seem as immediately useful as superhuman strength or the ability to start fires. There was more to it. There had to be.

  She'd have to be careful, though. Meticulous in her methods. She'd need to document everything.

  She left the bathroom to grab her notebook.

  ***

  Monday dragged on slowly, filled with too many questions and not enough sleep. Delilah drifted oblivious through her classes, preoccupied with her discoveries and the questions they'd raised. Her teachers noticed her distraction, calling on the young student with an almost vicious regularity, and seemed put off when she had answers to every question put to her, unaware that she'd read and memorized her textbooks the first week of school.

  Delilah had stayed up all night cutting herself and directing her blood like a conductor, recording its behavior through a series of rigorous scientific experiments. Her control over the smoke had an astounding degree of precision, and she found that she was able to create complex latticework structures out of i
t in the air. The more she manipulated it, the less she had to concentrate, and the greater her control became.

  She had also discovered that the smoke exerted a small degree of pressure, enough to push talc across the surface of the mirror. Even more exciting was the fact that she sensed feedback when the smoke touched the mirror. It wasn't quite like the sense of touch, but something different. Something new. More testing was called for.

  All through her experimentation her eyes had developed a black smoky film. At first it faded when she ceased concentration, but the easier manipulating the smoke became, the longer the ocular film persisted and the more opaque it appeared, despite not impacting her vision. By the time she ceased her experimentation in the morning, the film had lingered almost until she left the house for school. She'd tried concentrating on it, willing it to dissipate, but there'd been no noticeable effect.

  She'd need to be careful, but she'd learned what she'd needed to.

  Of mild disappointment but not surprise was Gideon's absence from school. No big deal.

  She knew where to find him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gideon wasn't at the water tower.

  Delilah found him at the culvert. It was bone-dry this time of year, but mid-June the brief rainy season would begin, and the pipe would become passage for monsoon waters.

  Gideon waved her over as she approached, the bright cherry of his cigarette glowing in the dimness. "Hey."

  "You're truant, Mr. Cermak," she said.

  "Bill's got his guys looking for me," he said. "Did you see any patrol cars at school?"

  "I wasn't really paying attention."

  "You look like shit."

  A smile quirked at her lips. "Thanks, Gid."

  He grinned back. "Couldn't sleep?"

  "Up all night practicing. With the smoke."

  "Smoke? Oh." He took a draw from his cigarette. "You mean from your blood?"

  "Yeah," she said. "I can control it when it leaves my body."

  "Wild." He turned away. "I went back to the Spot and tried running it like Lily did."