by S. L. Duncan
“Thank you.” Gabe turned toward Micah and Afarôt.
“How? How can you stop her? How do you know that Joseph is even—? You can’t go. You’re not well, Gabriel. I won’t allow it.” She stood abruptly. “Your father would never forgive me if I let you leave on some . . . fool’s errand. The Western Alliance is surely on its way. Wait. They will have a strategy. They will have weapons.”
“They won’t be able to stop Lilith. It will have to be one of us. Micah, Afarôt, me. We have to try,” Gabe said. “My father knows that more than anyone. You know he knows. Duty above all else. Remember?”
Her eyes were wet again, and after a moment, she nodded. “Come back. Please.”
“I’ll try.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Gabriel?” Alois called. He was walking with Micah and held a cloth, which he spread out on the hood of one of the cars parked under the porte cochère. “This is all we could find.”
It was a crude artistic rendering of the land, torn from one of the paintings that hung in the interior of the facility.
“No maps?” Gabe asked.
“Blame your mobile phone,” Micah said. “This was the best we could do.”
Alois drew a blue dot just at the edge of what looked like a lake. “We are here. Roughly. If you head due north for ten or so miles, you’ll hit water again. You’ll need to find a boat that’ll take you across. Otherwise, you’ll have to walk around, and that would add a few extra days, I imagine. From the far bank, Istanbul should be in your sights. There will be signs everywhere.”
“I don’t read Turkish.”
“This will not be a problem.” Afarôt smiled. “I have been here a very long time, my friend. One gets bored.”
“And what about a compass?”
Alois held up the top to the ink pen. A tiny, jittery needle spun on the dial of a novelty compass. On the side of the top was an advertisement for a travel agency.
“You have to shake it a bit to get it to work. But at least it points north.”
“That’s it?” Gabe asked. “Not one of these soldiers had a real compass?”
“All digital,” Micah said.
“It’ll work well enough to get you to the coast,” Alois said. “This isn’t the Sahara, after all. If you get lost, you can always ask somebody.”
Gabe assembled the pen and put it in his pocket. Micah rolled the map and zipped it into her backpack, which Afarôt lifted so she could put her arms through the straps. She adjusted the sword over her shoulder, then helped Gabe into his backpack.
It pulled at his shoulder and neck muscles, heavy with water and food.
“Are you sure you will not let me join you?” Alois asked.
Micah shook her head. “The Western Alliance will be here soon. I need a leader and someone who is familiar with everything.”
Alois nodded, “I understand.”
Gabe noted he didn’t offer much resistance to her plan, which was odd considering he was sworn to protect their lives. Gabe looked north, to the rising and falling hills that led to the water. Istanbul seemed like an eternity away.
Though suddenly eternity didn’t seem that far off.
Micah grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him toward the facility’s road.
“Easy,” he said. “When did you get so bossy?”
She smiled and sped up toward the Land Rover. It had been idling there since Alois managed to give the engine a rolling start. Nothing electronic in the vehicle worked, not even the headlights.
“If we’re doing this,” Micah said, “we’re doing it my way.”
The Gethsemane Sword jostled on her backpack as she walked. Gabe recognized the same initiative from that moment in her doorway at Castle College in Durham when she’d grabbed him, pulling him in to a kiss.
His legs seemed to find some reserve of energy, and he hardly noticed the weight on his back. “Your way it is.”
The sound of seabirds and the smell of saltwater joined them in the darkness as they drove into the small town of Altinova before the little car’s engine sputtered one last time and died.
After a while, traffic had begun to appear in the smaller villages they passed through. Not much, though. And what he saw seemed to be driving away from town at high speeds. A few miles away from the facility, streetlights had begun to glow above the road. Istanbul’s glow lit the horizon in a soft yellow light. Whatever had affected the Nicene Facility had not affected the entire country.
Just inside the town limits, they got out of the car and grabbed their backpacks, not bothering to lock the doors. Gabe and Micah followed Afarôt to a small hotel in the commercial district. The streets looked empty, as did the building.
“I’ve been here before,” Afarôt said. “Many years ago. Not much has changed. Though it oddly seemed much more populated once upon a time.”
Micah looked at him quizzically.
“You did not expect me to stay in the Ethiopian church the whole time, did you?” Afarôt asked. “The ring stayed quite safe, I can assure you.” A small, rusted service bell sat on the desk. Afarôt stared at it for a moment and then picked it up. He examined it closer and then shook it, the muffled ringer clapping against the metal.
“No,” Micah said, taking it from his hand. She set it on the desk and tapped the button, chiming the bell. “See?” She did it again.
Afarôt frowned. “As I said, it was many years ago.”
“What are we going to do about the Land Rover?” Gabe asked. He leaned against the desk for support. His ring finger itched.
“Leave the vehicle,” Afarôt said. “As I recall, there is a ferryboat only a couple of miles to the west of here. The map showed it was still there. If a boatman is still in service, we can cross the Marmara.”
“Will that get us there? To Istanbul?” Micah asked.
“No. But it will put us on the outskirts. We will sleep here tonight.”
“Sleep?” Gabe asked, his voice rising. “What about my dad? What about stopping Lilith?”
“It would take us twice as long to go around the sea. The ferry runs early. That, I would imagine, has not changed. And you will need your rest. We go in the morning.”
Gabe looked at Micah. “Who the hell made him the leader?”
“He’s not the leader. But he’s not wrong, either. I agree. We sleep and leave early.”
Afarôt’s smile faded to a worried look.
An older woman walked toward the desk. She was pale, almost pea green—ill, or maybe even dying. Her mouth hung open slightly, and under her sky-blue eyes were dark rings.
“I don’t look that bad, do I?” Gabe whispered to Micah, his hand over his mouth.
“I’m not sure she’s even breathing,” she whispered back. “Though I doubt you’re going to make any magazine covers, either.”
Afarôt said a few words to her in Turkish, and she hobbled away.
Afarôt adjusted his backpack while they waited for the woman to return with their keys. “You said that while I was out there was an earthquake, yes?”
Gabe and Micah nodded.
“Were there aftershocks?”
“No, not that I can remember,” said Micah.
Gabe shook his head.
“I believe the First Vial has been used,” Afarôt said. “That woman bears all the signs of the affected. We should be wary.”
“How do you know?” Micah asked. “What did it do?”
“You can see it in their eyes. A pollution, breaking the light in favor of darkness. It will manifest like a sickness, a disease among the population. Those who are not affected will subconsciously feel the decay within their neighbor, and they will abandon them much like a weak animal in a herd. This would explain the exodus we’ve seen on the roads.
“The first vial creates a link between the realms. Hell and Earth. That link also causes new abilities to awaken in those who carry the Mark of the Beast. Urges they did not know existed inside them.”
“Like Satanists?�
�� Micah asked. “There can’t be many of those.”
“No. You think of it as humans do. In terms of religion. You attempt to define everything. Make rules. You say ‘God’ and ‘good.’ ‘The devil’ and ‘evil.’ But this is only because the universe is unfathomable to you. It is easier to think in terms of light and darkness. Darkness is not bad, nor is the light necessarily good. But to live in your realm, you require a balance of both. That balance, it seems, is shifting. It is there inside us, as it is across the stars and across the realms. And in some humans, the darkness is greater. It is their primal nature. As the balance shifts, they will forget the light.”
“He’s saying it creates psychopaths,” Gabe said to Micah and walked to the entrance of the hotel. He stood in the doorway. A car drove by, nearly hitting an older homeless man who was walking down the street.
“How are you feeling?” Micah asked.
“I bring up psychopaths, and you ask how I feel? Nice,” Gabe said. His muscles seemed looser, stronger than they had since Axum. “But now that you mention it, better.”
“The ring has been awakened to Septis’s dark energy. It will want more and do what it can to feed. You will feel stronger as we approach the Hellgate. But you will be affected as well,” Afarôt said and looked to the sky. “The sun will rise in only a few hours. Light will be our friend on this journey. Our ally. And this is good. Because as the darkness of the First Vial sets in, we’ll need one.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Gabe lay on his bed, trying to overcome the sweaty heat of the night and fall asleep. Without air-conditioning, the atmosphere in the room felt stagnant and dead. Heavy. Thick.
He looked at the clock. It was blinking 12:00 a.m. again. The power had just flickered and had been doing so, on and off, throughout the night. He’d reset the clock twice and figured it must be nearly four in the morning.
Gabe rolled over and beat the cheap pillow into a ball that barely supported his head. He twisted and stretched until he found a position that didn’t completely make him want to scream in frustration. Thoughts filled his mind about things he would miss in the end. New York. Coren. Soccer. The first time Micah had kissed him. They all drifted together, and his eyes felt leaden, his consciousness slipping into the ether of a dream.
There was darkness but also light. In it, he felt both lost and found, his pain fading, yet acutely present. He drifted upward and out, away from all these things until there was nothing left that mattered. And it was nice.
Gabe wondered if this was what death would feel like.
A hard banging against his door broke his peace, and he fell back into the world. Instinctively, he looked at the clock. Nearly five.
He closed his eyes, wondering if he could squeeze in two more minutes of sleep.
“Gabriel,” shouted Afarôt from the hall. “Get up! Gabriel!”
He rolled onto his back, the weirdly shaped moisture stains on the ceiling now revealed by the feeble light coming through the thick dust collected on the closed window blinds. Suddenly the stench of gasoline and saltwater woke his senses. “What the hell?” he muttered, sitting on the edge of the mattress.
“Hurry, Gabe,” Micah’s voice said.
He stood, his legs protesting with an ache of stiff muscles as he stumbled across the small room to the door. He opened it, flipping the light switch on. The sharp, blinding pain ended when Afarôt turned them off.
“No light,” he said, moving quickly to the window. He seemed to be looking for something outside.
“What’s going on?” Gabe asked Micah.
“I got up for the call to prayer at four thirty-one.”
“So?”
“It never came.”
Gabe realized he hadn’t yet heard it shouted over the speaker attached to the nearby minaret, not that it was a thing for him to be expecting. He’d heard one about an hour after midnight, which had contributed to his current lack of sleep.
“Maybe you just missed it?” He rubbed his face and yawned.
“Did you hear the earlier one?”
Gabe nodded.
“Do you think it’s possible to miss that?” Micah asked.
She had a point.
Afarôt stiffened at the window. “Did you feel that?”
Gabe stood still, and then he felt something beneath his feet. A vibration as though someone was revving a motorcycle just down the block. It changed, moving from a vibration to a rolling, swaying feeling.
The building began to shake. Violently.
The bulb shining light in from the street lamp outside sparked and shattered, leaving the room cast in total darkness.
There was screaming in the darkness. And shouting. Confusion, as Gabe lost his balance and fell to the floor. A crack grew across the plaster of the wall from floor to ceiling. The lamp on the table toppled over, and Afarôt pushed him and Micah under the bed. Electrical sockets sparked like lightning, and windows shattered. Car alarms blared on the street below.
After a moment, the shaking calmed.
“Another earthquake,” Gabe said.
“Really, genius?” Micah said, coughing in the settling dust.
“Another vial,” Afarôt said. “We need to leave. Now.”
“What about the ferry?” Micah asked. “It doesn’t run for another hour, you said.”
“We may have to improvise.”
Gabe looked out the window, to the darkened city. Alarms sounded in the night, the cars’ flashing lights the only thing alive in the streets. His ears rang, and the jewel on his finger seemed to have a luster instead of its usual dull shine.
Something was happening in the world. Something bad. He knew it because the ring knew it. His gaze was drawn out the window to the western sky, and a feeling urged him in that direction. “There. That’s where we must go.”
“Yes,” Afarôt said. “That way is Istanbul.”
The horizon loomed ominous, painted in dark purples and grays.
Power flickered back on in the room, yet in the distance, no light polluted the sky.
Micah stepped up to the window. “Istanbul is a big city, right? Shouldn’t we be able to see its light in the sky from here?”
Afarôt nodded. “Yes. Yes, we should.”
CHAPTER FORTY
From the outskirts of Altinova, Gabe, Micah, and Afarôt walked west for a few miles until they neared a ferry terminal port. They passed car after car, person after person heading away from where they were going. As they made their way toward the sea, Gabe found that large parts of the commercial district were now underwater. Restaurants looked half-submerged, and small fishing boats, broken away from their moorings, floated in their parking lots.
Three- and four-story buildings bordering the street had collapsed like accordions set on their sides.
For the most part, the city seemed vacant.
A solitary boy stood ankle-deep at the water’s edge, staring at a building that had toppled. Most of the structure was hidden underwater. The boy’s black hair moved in the sea breeze. Shirtless, he kicked his feet at the small rolling waves now breaking on the street. As Gabe walked by, the boy turned, and Gabe saw confusion and fear in his eyes.
“There will be many dead,” Afarôt said. “As it always is when the earth moves at twilight.”
“Should we stop and help?” Micah asked.
“What can we do?” Gabe said, almost to himself.
Gabe watched the boy and guessed he was no older than six. His eyes were half-opened, stunned. His hair was a mess, as if he’d just been pulled from bed. He absently stroked a teddy bear in his arms as he turned back to the water and continued to stare at the building, as though he was waiting on something.
Or someone.
“I know,” she said. She was looking behind her, at the boy. “It’s just horrible.”
“And it will get much worse if we are unable to get to where we need to be,” Afarôt said.
As they walked on, the boy disappeared into the mist.
Farther down the road, they passed under a sign over the highway that had an arrow pointing down the road and read Feribot Terminali. In smaller letters below was the word Gebze, their destination town, according to Afarôt.
“Half an hour by ferry, if we don’t get lost in that,” Afarôt said, observing the fog over the water. “Then an hour by road, if we can find a vehicle.”
Gabe saw the docks, just visible in the dense white cloud. They looked strangely empty. Bus and taxi lanes were vacant, and no cars lined up at the tollbooth for parking. Very few people were in the area, but after the earthquake, he wasn’t really expecting anyone to be out this early. Remembering the effort it took to get onto a flight to Axum at the airport in Egypt, Gabe figured it would be the same trying to board a ferry to Istanbul.
However, nobody seemed to want to go to Istanbul.
Micah was looking at the digital board, trying to make out the schedule.
Afarôt joined her. “The first ferry is set to arrive for pickup in thirty minutes.”
“Only if the times are correct,” she said. “I’m not even certain they have power right now.”
Gabe felt his anxiety jitter under the surface as he thought of his dad. He looked at the docks. They had few options. He walked over to the ticket booth, Afarôt and Micah following. Inside the small kiosk, the light was on, as was the computer till and a hand radio, but nobody was inside.
He pushed through the turnstile and into the passenger area. Some bags had been left beside benches, their owners nowhere to be found.
One ferry floated, broken and idle, by the concrete pier that reached out into the sea, some of its parts strewn along the ground. Its ramp was lowered, waiting on cars and buses. The vessel’s shape reminded Gabe of the mouth of an enormous manta ray, gaping to swallow vehicles, while the passenger cabin sat atop the bulkier body.
Beyond the vessel, the Sea of Marmara looked jaundiced, cast in many shades of orange and yellow. The farther out to sea, the heavier the white fog became, like a great city wall that reached to the sky.
