Legends (To Absolve the Fallen Book 3)

by Aaron Babbitt

  His eyes swept the whole block several times, and he never let Sara out of his view for very long. He bent his will to detect even the slightest fluctuations in the supernatural energy around him. There were so many places a crafty demon could be hiding. He wished Gregor was here. Then, he would be sure that there wasn’t a demon for miles.

  Sara pondered the door for a minute. Something behind it held answers; though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what those answers were. Resolve set in, and she put her finger to the doorbell. A broken chime sounded from within. After some yelling and swearing, someone inside clomped toward her. The footsteps stopped at the door for a moment, as the person on the other side undoubtedly checked out the disturbance through a peep hole she stood in front of.

  “What do you want?” demanded a man’s voice.

  “A friend of mine was here not too long ago, and I was wondering if you knew where he might have gone. I was supposed to get something from him. Maybe you know something about it? It was a special delivery for me.”

  The door opened a bit, and an unshaven face, accompanied by the pungent smell of whiskey, appeared in the crack.

  “What kind of delivery?”

  Sara smiled. “A very expensive kind.”

  The door opened a little further, revealing a tall man, wearing a t-shirt, boxers, and a sour expression. He squinted down at her in the sun. He was surprised and annoyed, but he was the ideal businessman: ready to make a sale at any moment.

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “I think I might know what you’re looking for, and I think I might know where you can get it. If you’ll come inside and describe it to me, I’ll see if I can find it.”

  This was inconvenient. She needed John’s help now, but she didn’t have an excuse to give this guy a business card. She would just have to improvise.

  “I suppose this is cash on delivery,” she surmised, reaching into her purse.

  “Not out here!” he hissed at her. “Are you an idiot? On second thought, are you a cop?”

  “Of course not,” she replied, handing him the first business card she could find.

  He took it, and read aloud, “Rachel Andrews, DEA. What the--”

  His question was cut short as his body crumpled to the floor. John stood behind him with a blackjack in his hand.

  “He’s alive,” John said defensively after seeing the look on Sara’s face. “I’ll just have the other car come around and pick him up. We’ll search his house, while the car takes the unconscious dealer back to the safe house. There, he’ll be bound, gagged, and detained until such a time as he can be questioned by the two of us.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess you thought this out after all.”

  “We haven’t found anything yet,” he reminded her, “and he hasn’t confessed to anything. I think I’ll reserve judgment until I see the results, but I agree: That guy’s going to open doors for us.”

  “Hmm...” she pondered. “And the question remains as to whether or not he even has any important contacts. Well, you want to look around to see if he even has any drugs?”

  John nodded, pulled out a cell phone, and quickly sent a text message to the mercenaries in the car. “Yeah. That would probably be best.”

  ***

  Alex, Matt, and Liz stood relatively close to each other within a hundred feet of the barrier of fence and security that created a safe distance between Nisus and its audience. Alex and Liz could still clearly see Matt, but there were many people who now separated them.

  The band that opened for Nisus played for about forty-five minutes. Their style was interesting, and the crowd sort of got into it. Almost out of courtesy, a mosh pit formed toward the last part of the second song—the only song of theirs that had ever made it to the radio.

  The crowd cheered at the end, not because they particularly liked the band, and not because they were glad to see Black Market Blue Light Special leave the stage. The crowd cheered because they knew what was coming next. To many of the people in this audience, Nisus was the only music. They didn’t listen to other genres. They probably didn’t even listen to similar artists in the same genre. There was Nisus, and then there was crap.

  Alex wasn’t one of those people, even if he had recently met all of the band members. Alex enjoyed all sorts of music. In the time he could remember listening to music, he’d had several favorite bands; his collection of CDs was immense. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but there had even been a country stage in his musical evolution—not out of the ordinary in a small Midwestern town.

  Most of the crowd was dressed completely in black, and there were many t-shirts advertising various other bands. From time to time, he would see a Nisus shirt, and some of those were probably out of necessity (due to a spilled beer, blood, or some other nasty substance) rather than ignorance. Alex had learned long ago that it is a faux pas to wear a band’s shirt at its own concert; it implies “poser.”

  This sea of black represented Nisus’s fan base: the herd. The majority were disillusioned youth, angry with society, the government, and organized religion. Nisus spoke to them, for them, and gave them hope. It also gave them a reason to spend all their hard-earned, minimum wage dollars. Undoubtedly, most of the people around Alex could recite all of Nisus’s songs, had been to any concert they could reasonably get to, and owned all the albums.

  Of course there were a lot of hardcore fans who came, despite the night air being a little cold still, in wife-beaters and shorts. Those people would probably be the most active during the concert. Their goals often included hurting someone and/or being hurt themselves. They would be the ones creating and maintaining mosh pits. They would be crowd-surfing and kicking bystanders in the head. They would be getting drunk and getting into fights. Many of those wife-beaters would be stained with blood and sweat at the end of the night.

  The general admission was filled mostly with those people who hadn’t been standing in line when the tickets went on sale. They liked the band, and they enjoyed going to concerts of good bands, but this one wasn’t important enough to get down with the rabble and wrestle with angry, and sometimes violent, diehard fans to get a little closer to the stage. A lot of them probably had on Nisus shirts.

  Alex took in his surroundings as the crowd applauded, cheered, and screamed for Nisus. He could feel the excitement building, the emotions of the crowd nearly overwhelming him. For a moment, he felt fatigued and dizzy. Alex closed his eyes in an effort to keep the auditorium from spinning. Liz seemed to notice something was wrong because her grip on his hand grew tighter, which did not help matters as her own emotions came flooding in. He concentrated on forcing the foreign emotions out of his mind. After several seconds, he succeeded in dampening them, but he could still identify a definite tingle of excitement that was not his own.

  “What’s wrong?” Liz inquired loudly to overcome the surrounding noise.

  Alex didn’t seem to respond, but she could hear his voice clearly in her head: “There’s a lot of feeling here. It’s hard to fight it off and keep my own in check.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened in amazement. “Can we communicate like this?” she thought.

  “It would appear so,” Alex’s voice affirmed. “It’s just a little modification on an old trick. I get a little more control daily. Does it bother you?”

  “No,” she thought with a smile. “Actually, this is easier than trying to scream over these idiots.”

  “I’m not going any further than necessary for us to talk. Your thoughts are private.”

  “That’s too bad,” she responded, “because I’m thinking something naughty about you right now.”

  He resisted the temptation to confirm her claim.

  “So are you all right, now?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I am. Concentrating on this helps. Just keep holding my hand.”

  “I won’t let go.”

  Alex opened his eyes and looked toward the stage. At that moment, all
the house lights went completely out.

  ***

  Jeremiah walked out onto the balcony outside his office and faced the direction Alex had been looking when he learned that Metatron was close. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, and it seemed to light itself as it was on its way to his mouth. He felt her presence, but he chose to ignore it for dramatic effect.

  “This seems melancholy,” Abbie remarked.

  “Why aren’t you at the concert? Don’t you want to know?”

  She sighed and rubbed the ribbon in her hand. “Yes. Very much. If Raul Habsburg is still alive, he would be the oldest living prophet that we know of and a friend I have longed to speak with for almost a hundred years. But I intend to give him space. If I intrude, I could drive him away.”

  “If you don’t, he might think you lack interest,” Jeremiah countered.

  “No, I think he knows me better than that.”

  “You know,” he added with a smirk, “this is poetic. The demon everyone thought to have last killed Habsburg was Patheus. Some of you prophets truly are amazing deceivers. Your friend convinced the world that he was dead, but it would seem that he has been very busy indeed. I’m surprised he even has time to run a secret society, being the executive producer of a popular rock band and all.”

  “We don’t know if he runs the Society of Minds or is an executive producer of anything,” Abbie reminded him. “This story could be more complicated than we think. Further, I don’t exactly have conclusive evidence that Raul sent me this ribbon. It’s possible that someone found the ribbon in my past and is now using it as leverage over me.”

  “All the more reason to go to the concert and investigate.”

  “You just don’t want me following you anymore as you prowl around the mansion, checking guards’ guns and conducting last-minute-type meetings. Yes, I’ve been watching. And I have concluded that you are insane.”

  Jeremiah flicked his half-smoked cigarette over the railing of the balcony. “You would know, wouldn’t you, Doctor? I think that will be my last cigarette,” he announced.

  He pulled his pack of cigarettes out, crushed them in his hand, and dropped them off the balcony as well. Abbie only smiled.

  “It’s probably not very meaningful with my demise being imminent, but I think it does something for me.”

  “You’ve already died in your own mind,” she replied. “You’ve already fought the battle and lost. That’s why you want me to go away. You want to be martyred alone.”

  “Martyrdom is for saints. I’m no saint. I’m just tired, Abbie. I want my mission to be complete; I want to see my prize. It’s been so long since I’ve been in Heaven. And, you know, if Hell is the consequence of failing to defeat Metatron, then at least it will all be over.”

  “Why don’t we just pick up and leave?” Abbie suggested. “We can go to Kingstone and stand together with allies. You may not think so, Jeremiah, but you are important to us. You have done so much for prophets in recent years, and now you risk your earthly existence. I can only believe God would take you back.”

  “What you and I think may not mean that much to Him, but I appreciate your vote of confidence, especially after all I’ve done to you and your people.”

  “Paul wasn’t a very nice guy, either, before he met Christ on the road to Damascus.”

  “Yeah, that whole period of time is kind of foggy for me still. Anyway, I can’t leave because a substantial decrease in Metatron’s strength is vital, and that can’t happen unless he attacks me. If he arrives in Kingstone with everything he’s got, that battle will not go so well.”

  “But you can leave with us,” she objected. “We’ll all stay and do what we can. Then, we can all leave together.”

  “If I don’t buy you time, you won’t have the chance.”

  “Then, leave after we’re gone. Plan a different escape route. If you don’t think you can beat him, why stay?”

  “Because I can hurt him.”

  ***

  As soon as the lights had gone out, the crowd answered with a visceral roar. Then, came the compression. Everybody moved forward in an attempt to get closer to the stage, to Nisus. People came flooding out of the first rows of seats onto the floor. Security tried to look mean, but there wasn’t much that could be done. Alex and Elizabeth were thrust forward and forced to ride the wave until there was no more room to move. Their hands remained locked.

  The roar slowly waned to a continuous hum as a strange series of synthetic noises came from a main PA that had been hidden by black curtains. Alex could detect voices coming out of the speakers, but he didn’t know whose or what language was being spoken (maybe some Native American), only that the crowd liked it. The people rocked back and forth as a beat, which had been almost completely inaudible at first, grew gradually louder and faster. The voices chanted faster. A guitar joined in.

  The arena was charged with energy. Alex could feel it all around him. It flowed through everyone in the crowd and gave a sense of freedom to anyone who would embrace it. Alex fought the urge to accept it when he felt the tell-tale signs of manipulation.

  People around Alex started chanting along, imitating what was coming out of the speakers perfectly. Even Liz had started chanting; he could feel his connection to her getting weaker. He thought he could probably break the enchantment, but he didn’t want to hurt her.

  “Elizabeth?” he called in her mind.

  All he could hear was the sound of the music, the chanting. If she had been calling back, the background noise drowned her out.

  Alex couldn’t help thinking that this blatant use of supernatural powers to enhance the effects of a concert was a little dirty. He remembered the promise he had made Elizabeth: not to go any further than necessary for them to communicate. They couldn’t communicate in this condition, and he didn’t think she’d mind his intrusion to break Nisus’s intrusion.

  He duplicated the block he’d used to shield himself and put it in Elizabeth’s mind. Immediately, all sound ceased. He felt a sense of surprise, like being woken with a bucket of cold water. She was confused, disoriented, and stunned.

  “Liz?” he called to her again.

  “What happened?” she asked silently.

  “The effect of their music is quite...profound,” he replied.

  “I can’t hear it anymore.”

  “Really? That’s an unintended side effect. I put a block on the effect of the music in your mind. I guess it blocked it all. Everyone is pretty much chanting and swaying with the beat.”

  Then, the music, the chanting on the speakers, and the chanting of the audience stopped simultaneously.

  Alex dropped the mental block he’d put on her and spoke aloud into a silent auditorium: “Everything stopped.”

  The lights began flashing wildly, revealing the members of the band, already in position. The reaction from the crowd was like an explosion. As the cheer died down, the harsh tones of “Obliquity” could be heard.

  Lonny approached the microphone and sang, “Here is the source of my frustration: the bitter taste of no progression.”

  Immediately, mosh pits opened up all over the floor. In fact, Alex and Elizabeth didn’t see the one that opened up behind them until it was almost too late. Alex had felt a slight shift in the intense feelings that surrounded him, but he was paying too much attention to the band to pay much heed. When he could feel that there was no one directly behind him, he knew what had happened.

  “We have to move, Liz,” he told her in her head, “or we might get hurt.”

  They turned in time for Alex to see one of the biggest humans he’d ever seen bearing down in their general direction. The floor before them was nearly devoid of people. About twenty guys were slamming themselves against each other and bouncing off the ring of spectators who now had to watch the moshers to ensure their own safety. This, to some, was entertainment. To Alex, it was an obstacle he hadn’t spent much time thinking about.

  Lonny continued, “What should I do to
not fall into this?”

  The huge man, who looked intent on picking a fight with someone in the ring randomly, was bald, muscle-bound, and tattooed enough that Alex could see it all over his body from a distance. There was no telling where the guy was headed, but Alex decided not to take any chances. He commanded the big man to sleep, and the big man obliged, falling unconscious in the middle of the mosh pit. Someone in the pit, who noticed that his buddy had fallen, ran to his side. By that time, Alex and Liz had already forced their way through the crowd.

  “That guy,” Liz said in her mind, looking over her shoulder in vain to see what was going on, “just fell in the middle of the floor. Should we see if he’s all right?”

  “He’s just sleeping,” Alex replied.

  “Did you do that?”

  “Yeah. I was afraid that he was going to run over us.”

  Liz looked at him with a startled expression. “He could get hurt.”

  “I’m sure he’ll wake up when someone kicks him.”

  “What if he gets robbed, or he doesn’t wake up and gets trampled?”

  Alex stopped trying to push through the crowd and turned to stare at Elizabeth. “What can I do about that?” he projected into her mind.

  “We should at least see if he’s all right.”

  He cocked his head at her in confusion. “And do what, exactly, if he’s not? Or what if he’s pissed off and violent?”

  “Alex, you just put that guy to sleep with a thought. As long as you can do that trick again, I don’t think he’ll be an issue. We have a responsibility to see that he’s fine.”

  “All right,” he conceded, turning back the way he came and irritating many of the same people he had irritated to get that far into the crowd.

  He thought briefly of attempting to teleport the two of them back. Of course, revealing that magnitude of power to so many already riled people in that kind of setting would be a bad idea. On top of that, he’d never teleported someone else before. He felt that he could do it, but it wasn’t worth the risk, especially if he was risking her life.