With a departing growl towards Mea, Clyde stepped off to the side and onto the sidewalk. The giant wolf faded into the shadowy, moonlit lawn of a neighbor’s house… and he was gone.
Nisha nodded to herself then glanced at Mea. Not again. She sighed at the thought of Mea’s question: are you the new wolf-god? and about the night’s long, tense stand-off. And not really wanting to rehash the death of her father yet again, Nisha let out a defeated huff, snapped her glaive in half, and then slapped the two pieces onto her back. “Fenrir’s gone, and my brothers are… gone. And I… We are only here to honor Fenrir’s promise, his commitment to you. He gave you seven days.”
“And?”
“You have three left,”
Despite Nisha’s sudden curtness, Mea appreciated the support. Although it didn’t really surprise her. If Nisha was of Fenrir’s flesh, she would, at the very least, have some of the same honor he held. And so far, her words and demeanor did not have Mea doubting her as pack leader.
Nisha continued, “The pack, my pack… we have scouts throughout the world. There were whispers that the outcasts were regrouping, rumors of them assembling under a new leader… that they were coming for the surrogate family of the one that exiled them.”
Mea’s thoughts returned to her family: Ryan, her mom… Azazel. If it hadn’t been for the wolves, they might have been killed. With her hand no longer sliding towards her sword and now rubbing her forehead in relief, Mea said, “Thank you.”
Uncomfortable with the emotions and the unexpected gratitude, Nisha hardened. “You have three days left, and then… Then you will have no reason to thank me.” Nisha whistled, and her army of wolves turned around and walked away. Without a second glance, Nisha did the same.
Watching them leave, Mea looked to the sky, at her watchful storm dragon. Anna was drifting through the city sky, lazily circling above atop her giant midnight wings that looked like the black sails of a pirate ship. Pulses of lightning traced the giant beast’s scales while more lightning ran through the veins of its stretched out wings.
The storm dragon’s wings stretched out even further, and the creature expanded as it circled around at a quickened pace and finally dropped down, out from the sky. Landing atop an apartment complex caddy-corner from her own, the building’s roof was barely large enough to hold the giant beast. And as the claws on it hind legs curled over the ledge of the building, searching for some sort of footing, a handful of bricks broke off and came crashing down.
The storm dragon, though closer than before, was now cloaked in darkness and covered in the city’s shadows, and the great beast was nearly invisible as the night itself. It watched as the wolf pack retreated then batted a giant blinking eye at Mea. Though the beast’s face showed no emotion, Mea still saw the sad regret of her friend Anna. Then it was gone.
The beast let out a ferocious roar that came out as thunder and rippled down the street and sent the army of frightened outcasts a step further away and the fear of death shivering down their spines. Its wings flared out, and the beast rocketed into the sky and into the dark, heavy clouds that filled it. Thunder crashed again, and angry tentacles of lightning stretched across the sky and lashed out at the clouds while golden flashes of light lit up the dead city street.
While the heavens came alive, Mea watched Nisha and her wolves as they walked away. With each burst of lightning, the block lit up and the street came alive with renewed visibility. Nisha’s wolves flickered into the shapes of men before becoming wolves again. Nisha herself was replaced by a giant gray-and-white wolf that was the size of an elephant. Though smaller than before, the wolf’s muscles were more pronounced and had the appearance of oversized industrial pistons, and her claws were the size of pickaxes.
When the lightning ended and the shadows settled, they were all gone.
While Mea dealt with Nisha, Azazel and Daikon still had to deal with the horde of outcasts that were staring frightfully at each other. And with the storm dragon raining electric death from above, they were all but trapped in the middle of the otherwise quiet suburban street.
Daikon lifted the emerald sword and tossed Trevor’s severed hands aside. As they hit the street, the dying flesh did the same as the rest of Trevor and shattered into a storm of tiny black pellets. Admiring the emerald blade and looking through its distorted glass-like blade at Azazel, he said “I believe this belongs to you.” Then he handed the sword to Azazel.
Azazel didn’t take it. Seeing the outstretched handle and the sword’s engraved pommel, Azazel froze. The blade was a sudden, sharp reminder of his failures: his failed rebellion, his weak leadership, those that died under it, how he had treated Mea, everything. He hesitated to take it, to grab it, to reassume the role that he’d failed in so many times before.
“Go on,” Daikon said, jabbing the pommel at him. “Take it.”
Azazel couldn’t. “I… I don’t want it.” He looked up at Daikon with sad eyes. And while they normally matched the emerald glow of the blade, they were hints of gold in his usually cold eyes, gold like they were before he rebelled, before he was exiled from heaven, before he murdered Anna and tried to murder Mea, before he became… cold, a monster. “I… I can’t. Give it to someone else, throw it away, I don’t care. Just-just get it out of my sight.”
Azazel dropped his eyes to the ground, unable to look at the legion of fallen angels that once followed him with unflinching loyalty. For every one living, there were at least two dead, all under his command. After all his mistakes, after eons of blocking out the memories—of blocking out the pain, he couldn’t anymore, and his heart was flooded by the pain and now drowning in regret. It was all just a hoax, he thought. The blind leading the blind. The blind leading the blind off a cliff was a more accurate statement. If they only knew the truth… but they don’t.
Azazel was about to walk away, but he was stopped by Daikon’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s just a sword.”
Azazel nodded somberly, and Daikon let out a grinning, ill-timed quip. “Guess I’m not the only one going through some changes.” He shoved Azazel in the shoulder, trying to get him to lighten up. “Hey. Hey, it’s just a sword. It’s just a sword, man. Someone else can take it.”
But not Trevor, he thought. Trevor can’t take anything. You know, for obvious reasons. Daikon’s internal struggled continued, and Raven’s compassion was fading while Blackwell’s dark, dry humor was rising to the surface. Still, Daikon appreciated the resurging sense of self, something that had been missing since he became… whatever it was that he’d become… a mash-up of a sociopathic deity and an overly sensitive reaper… a poorly-concocted, derivative version of Frankenstein’s monster. “How ‘bout that one?” Daikon chirped out, aiming the emerald blade at someone in the crowd of beautiful, dirty faces. Waving the blade back-and-forth, Daikon clarified. “Not you, you. Yeah, you.”
Seeming to know who he was pointing at, the outcasts parted like the Red Sea and the chosen one stepped forward, passing through the walkway of wayward, wingless angels.
Frightened and confused, the chosen one finally made it out of the segmented crowd of their peers. Her face was full of fear, like she had been sentenced to death and was heading straight for the gallows. Her hair bounced like trashing flames of a wicked, well-stoked fire. It was Jessica.
“How about her?” Daikon asked. “Will she do? Unlike Trevor, she doesn’t seem particularly interested in murdering any women or children… and she didn’t desecrate my body—Jessica, would you interest in a job? A promotion of sorts.”
“Jessica?” asked Azazel. “You’ve reclaimed your name as well?”
“Sir, I…” she stuttered. Then, swallowing her nerves, she summoned whatever courage she had remaining. “Yes, I have reclaimed my name. It is the end, and we have sat in the shadows for too long. We have mulled over our past mistakes and wallowed in our regrets for too long. We… we have to move forward.” She stood up straight and held her head high, and now looked a few inches taller than
she was. Half-expecting them to kill her, she exhaled anxiously and began gnawing on the inside of her bottom lip, preparing for the worst. Accepting her fate, Jessica had clearly made her decision, to die with honor, with her head held high. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Azazel gave her shoulder a short squeeze and reassured her. “That was… well said.” Azazel nodded to Daikon and said “Yeah, go on.”
Daikon tossed the emerald sword in the air, caught it by its blade, then pointed it, hilt first, at Jessica.
Wide-eyed, Jessica glanced back-and-forth between Azazel and the emerald sword. She was about to be the leader of the outcasts, all of them. Plucked from the sea of anonymity, Jessica was about to become more powerful than she could ever imagine. Back at the abandoned warehouse, Jessica had taken on the role of house mother, but she was no leader. She wasn’t a warlord or a diplomat or anything she considered a leader to be… but now she was. If she thought someone else could do the job, she would have said something, but she didn’t. I have to, she told herself. I have to do this. We can’t suffer another leader like Trevor… or Azazel, for that matter.
Like a magnet, Jessica found her hand drifting upwards, towards the hilt of the prestigious emerald blade. As her hand wrapped around the leather-wrapped grip, she lost her breath from the surge of power—real and imagined. Still staring at the blade and her hand that was holding it, Jessica heard Azazel’s voice. “Protect them,” he said. “Watch over them, keep them out of trouble… Do a better job than I did, be better than me, better than I was.”
Jessica nodded and finally took the blade from Daikon’s hand. Full of awe, she examined the blade again as she listened to the rest of Azazel’s guidance. “No killing, okay? And watch for rogues. There’s always a few that stray, that think that they can steer the boat better than you can, and they’ll gain followers. They’re like leeches. If they grow large enough… it never ends well—never. It’s better to stop it before it starts. Do you understand? And you… You’ll need to protect them—from the rogues, from what’s to come… from themselves. We are not of this world. Our ways… we are not like them, the mortals. I was fool to think that we could integrate with them. The mortals, they are… they’re more complex than we are. And our rules, our laws, they’re not the same as theirs. They wouldn’t understand. They couldn’t.”
Jessica nodded to Azazel to convey her understanding.
Azazel sympathetically squeezed her shoulder again. “This world remains strange, especially to our kind, even after all these years. Them… they will need to be led, to be cared for. That is your responsibility.” He finished with, “Learn from my mistakes. Be better than me.”
Jessica nodded again then stepped away. Showing her new horde of followers the blade, Jessica pointed away from the narrowly avoided battle, and the outcasts retreated down the street. The swelled cluster of outcasts thinned with most of them dispersing down side streets and between houses, returning to their respective nests.
Jessica touched the left side of her hip, and a scabbard appeared and stretched down the side of her oil-stained, frayed jeans. And after admiring the blade one last time, she finally sheathed it. Giving Azazel and Daikon another look and a nod, Jessica walked away, down the middle of the once-again quiet suburban street.
A few of the outcasts linger—seven of them, most likely the leaders of their respective nests, like she had been. She had a few words with them, and they responded with their own nods of understandings. Then they dispersed as well. Jessica gave another fleeting glance and a nod to Azazel and Daikon—goodbye—and after lingering for a bit, she took her leave like the others.
Daikon asked, “So what changed?”
“Everything,” Azazel answered. “Everything’s changed. The boy…”
“We got bigger problems. If we’re to believe Trevor, Vandriel has awakened and...” Daikon saw Mea approaching them, and he lost his words. At the moment, a longing he didn’t fully understand erupted inside him. And it didn’t matter if she was in a ratty t-shirt, her favorite hoodie, a gown, or the silver armor she was currently wearing, she was perfect, the beginning and end. She was everything. He couldn’t tell her what happened—that he had killed and also become the two people she cared so deeply about.
Putting his hand on Azazel’s shoulder, he said, “Don’t tell her… please.” Then he stepped away and behind an oversized van, and he melted into the shadows.
CH 14: Meet the Parents
Mea walked up to Azazel, puzzled by the mysterious man who had just walked away and was nowhere to be found. “Azazel, who was…” Her words faded, and she gave pause. Her hand again slid over to the hilt of her sword. This time going a step further, her hand wrapped around its leather-wrapped grip, grabbing onto it like a joystick, and she squeezed it until the leather ground into the palm of her hand. Then she did the same with the other sword strapped to her other thigh.
The air stirred with something foul, and everything felt wrong. The suburban street seemed to be swaying in bleeding colors, and Mea didn’t think that she could trust her own eyes. The faded asphalt of the street seemed to be made up of a thousand crawling beetles. The rest of it was blurred, like heatwaves on a hot summer road. The sidewalk was moving somewhat like the road but swayed more, like ocean waves that never crashed. Across the street, the silver paint on the van—the same one that Daikon just disappeared behind—twitched with the dimming shadows emerging with the newly visible moonlight and the dissipating clouds. Then they came alive.
A long muzzle lined with ivory teeth shot up from asphalt. Another leapt out of the side of the silver van. Snapping at Mea like two chatterboxes, their meeting was swift, ending with both meeting the end of Mea’s blades; one through the top of its head—right above its pointed, chattering teeth. The other one got opened like sliced bread, from jaw to tail. Then, with their teeth still chattering, the first one’s carcass bounced over the street before slamming into the side of a parked car. The other one, both halves of it, tumbled down the street in different directions.
Then the sidewalk came alive. Leaping into the air, right behind Azazel, he didn’t even see it coming, but Mea did. Flipping her sword around, she gave it a fling. While it wasn’t her best throw, rushed and sloppy, it still struck true. Cartwheeling just over Azazel’s shoulder, the silver blade found its mark, right between the creature’s narrow reptilian eyes.
More came. This time Azazel was ready. His axe slammed into the first one’s forehead, crunching through some sort of reinforced bone before effectively stapling the creature’s head to the curb with his axe remaining stuck in both. Another leapt from the bushes. Camouflaged in forest green, it wildly shook its head, shaking loose the leaves and bristles from its cover. Growling, it hopped to the side, gave another short hop, and then shot into the air, ready to pounce on Azazel. Azazel saw its outstretched claws and chattering teeth raining down on him, but with a spinning backhand, the sharp tail of his other axe met its belly, sliding between two hardened scales, while the beast yanked his axe from Azazel’s hand. Crashing as it landed, the sidewalk hammered in Azazel’s axe even further. Then it bounced over one car before landing atop the hood of a metallic blue sedan, crashing into its windshield with an axe half-buried in its underside. What a strange beast, thought Azazel, and he watched it die. The creature’s chattering teeth slowed. Its green, camouflaged skin lightened to a pale cream color then brightened into a metallic blue, almost perfectly matching the color of the sedan.
More creatures appeared, erupting out of the seemingly innocuous surroundings. Two fell out of a tree and landed with an expected bounce. Another one shot out of a rusty, brown manhole cover, rolled forward, then bounced onto its feet. Holding the brown color, its skin, or fur, slowly grayed to match the color of the faded asphalt of the street. Surrounded, Azazel chuckled. Well, he thought, after everything that’s happened, I’m still going to die tonight. He saw the creatures rearing back, preparing to attack. Though it didn’t seem to be coming fr
om their toothy muzzles, the creatures were still emitting strange hissing sounds. Azazel’s eyes drifted over to Mea before a look of shock exploded over his face.
Mea had the look of a killer. Her eyes were replaced by wild, white-hot flames. Sprinting towards Azazel, her swords leapt through the air and returned to her hands. She slammed her shoulder into Azazel, knocking him into the neighbor’s lawn and taking his place as the bullseye for the monsters’ imminent attack. While they did attack, pouncing at her all at one, after a series of slashes, spins, and ducking; they met the same fate as the others, and Mea walked away with nothing but a few cosmetic scratches that never made it through her armor.
“What were those?” She asked as she sheathed her blades and checked her wounds. Three parallel scratches (claw marks) were etched into the silver armor covering her shoulder, three more were etched in her right forearm. Another set on the far-left side of her chestplate.
The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones) Page 28
