Outcast

by Adrienne Kress

  “It was great to see her again,” replied Gabe.

  “Yeah, I know, the reunion thing, but the rest of it…aren’t you freaked out by everything?”

  “I dunno,” he said with a sigh, “I always thought the Church of the Angels was bullshit. Now that I know that he’s just worshipping a bunch of kidnapped people like me, it’s almost kinda funny. Almost. I’ll tell you, though, now that I know that I’m who I always thought I was…that’s a pretty big relief.”

  “But why are these non-angels taking people? Why does it happen every year?”

  “Sweetheart…”

  “You said you’d help me with the Chris thing. Well, now we have all this new information, we should try to answer those questions.”

  Gabe shook his head and sighed hard.

  “What?”

  He stopped walking and turned to me. “I know what I said about helping you with the Chris thing, but I’m starting to think it might be time to stop. I’m thinking we ain’t ever getting any answers. I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a lead. I was one of those things that took him, and, hell, I don’t even know what happened. I think…you need to just get over it.”

  “Nice. Real nice, Gabe. Thanks.” I started to walk again and heard him coming up behind me. “You think I can just forget someone like that? Someone I think about every single day?” Fighting back tears now.

  “Actually, I don’t think you think about him every day.”

  “Sorry?” That made me look over at him. He was keeping pace with me now. He didn’t look back.

  “I think this is all habit. I think you don’t even know why you’re doing it. Look, Riley, I’ve helped you out, done what you wanted me to do, gone to that stupid Commune. I tried, I really did. Can’t I just live my life now?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. Live your life. I don’t care. You haven’t been much help anyway. So we’ll live together till you graduate. Pass each other in the halls. Doesn’t matter to me. I always have to do everything myself anyway.”

  “Riley, what do you want from me?” He stopped again and grabbed my wrist to make me stop too.

  “Nothing!” I wrenched my wrist away from him as I kept walking, causing me to trip a little. I recovered in a huff and just kept going. “You’re right. You are so right. Nothing. It’s just I don’t get why you don’t care anymore, like none of this has anything to do with you. Say what you will about my obsession with Chris or whatever, you’re just an unfeeling son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Don’t start with me, Riley. I didn’t even know the guy.”

  “Yeah, no you didn’t. Why on earth should he matter to you? You didn’t even know the guy. Well, forget about caring about other people even if you don’t know them. God forbid you should have empathy for someone that has nothing to do with you. That’s just crazy. Forget about Chris. What about Deke?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you were both taken, right? So that obviously means he’s one of those non-angel things like you were. I turned you back into a human. We could probably do the same with him. We could probably do the same with all of them. Get some other people on our side. Our own little army, shoot those fake angels down. Just like with you. You’re totally missing the bigger picture.”

  We were back at his place now and I had to stop. So I tried to do it as indignantly as possible, placing my hands on my hips and staring right at him with what I hoped was a hardened expression. The tears in my eyes probably weren’t helping much.

  “I…” Gabe looked flustered. I hoped he was actually flustered. Though I had to admit, I didn’t like seeing Gabe unsure. Whether he liked it or not, the main reason I still wanted his help was that he calmed me, made me confident in my actions. Knowing he was there with me…

  “You…?” I mimicked. He didn’t respond. He was still thinking about my argument. It’d been a good one. I could understand his shock. To be honest, I was actually shocked myself. It was a really good idea, actually, one I hadn’t even thought of until I was desperate to convince Gabe to stay. Moments of desperation producing inspiration. Crazy. But it was pretty brilliant. I could get Chris back. We could stop all the Angel stuff. Stop Pastor Warren. All we needed were some people with good aim.

  Really, really good aim.

  “It’s a good idea,” said Gabe finally.

  “Took you long enough to realize it.”

  “Okay, you can stop being mad at me now, sweetheart. I’ve agreed with you.”

  “Oh, you have? Now that you’ve got something to gain from it?”

  “Don’t get all righteous, dollface. Would you be doin’ any of this if it weren’t for Chris?”

  “Yes.” Maybe. How could I know that?

  Gabe raised his eyebrow at me. I raised both of mine back.

  He stepped toward me, so close. I didn’t move, even though our knees were almost touching. He looked down at me, and I stared at his chest. It was then that I realized how absurd our argument would have looked to an outsider, this crazy fight about shooting angels, like it was something that people got mad about all the time,

  “Truce?” he asked.

  I looked up and he was smiling. “Yes. Truce. But only because you’re an idiot and don’t know any better.”

  He laughed. “Thanks.” He took a step back and put his arm around my shoulder, escorting me around the car. “Okay, so let’s head back to your place. I’ll follow.”

  “’Kay.”

  He opened the door for me and leaned against it as I slipped inside. I got myself comfortable and looked up at him. He was thinking about something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It ain’t gonna be easy,” he said. “To find people, I mean. No one’s gonna want to shoot the angels, and Pastor Warren ain’t about to let us either. He’s got the sheriff and police now. We’re gonna to need help.”

  “We are.”

  He met my gaze. “You got someone in mind?”

  “Well…it’s a bit of a crazy idea, but I do know at least one person who’s never hid that he wasn’t a fan of Pastor Warren and the Church of the Angels.” I stopped so he could guess.

  “This a test, sweetheart?”

  “Sure.”

  Gabe looked up and rubbed at the back of his neck. Then his head snapped back down and he looked at me with a broad expression.

  “You ain’t talking about…”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s a priest!”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Sweetheart, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You’re nuts.”

  I shook my head as I shut the door, but I kind of agreed with him this time.

  28.

  I was nuts. Clearly I was nuts. I was nuts to think that recruiting a priest as part of our sharp-shooting team was a good idea, and I was certainly nuts sitting outside on the swinging chair later that night waiting for a ghost-creature-thingy to appear again. I’d never been able to control when it showed up and when it didn’t in the past. And I certainly had no control over it deciding to talk with me. But after it had shown up just as I thought it would at Etta Mae’s, I’d started thinking that maybe things weren’t as out of my control as I thought. That maybe I could make it show up places if I wanted it enough.

  And tonight, I really wanted it to show up.

  But there was something else, a realization. I’d wanted to have a conversation with this thing for months, to just ask it about the Circle of Seven point blank, to ask it more about Gabe. But there was something different tonight. Something deep inside me that was different. I felt like…I felt like I could do it. Before, even though I’d wanted it in theory, I hadn’t really wanted to talk to it for real.

  Man it was so weird, so hard to explain. So hard for me to understand.

  It just felt right. And I knew it would show up. And I knew it would talk with me.

  Still it wasn’t exactly warm out,
and it was getting pretty late, and it was a school day the next day. Plus even though I knew I was ready to talk with the thing, it still totally freaked me out. So I was starting to seriously regret my decision as I swung gently back and forth.

  Riley.

  I turned to the left and saw the ghost thingy on the edge of our property, standing by the tree line. I hadn’t sensed it coming as I was already pretty cold and it startled me.

  “Oh, hey.” I stared at it for a moment. I really wished it didn’t look how it did. It was amazing how it didn’t do anything, barely moved, and yet everything about it sent shivers up my spine.

  I took a deep breath then stood up and crossed over to it.

  You want to ask me the question.

  “Uh, yeah, I do. What’s Gabe?”

  Oh.

  “Yeah, I know now. I know he can’t be an angel, but see, I’m confused ’cause you said he belonged to the Circle of Seven, and from what I understand only angels belong to the Circle of Seven.”

  Angels don’t belong to the Circle of Seven.

  “They don’t?”

  No, they work for the Circle of Seven. They are not owned.

  “Oh. Okay. So what’s Gabe, then? Is he…” I thought back to my conversation with Father Peter, to my research. “Is he one of the Nephilim?”

  No.

  No? That took me aback. I’d kind of thought at Etta Mae’s that maybe that was the right answer. I’d actually been kind of proud of myself that I came to that conclusion. “So he’s not an angel, and he’s not a Nephilim…how many more things are there?”

  Things?

  “Yeah, it seems like there are all these things out there that I had no idea existed, and to be honest, it’s super complicated to keep track, okay? So what is he?”

  He’s a Thrall.

  “What’s a Thrall?”

  A slave.

  “A slave?”

  Yes.

  My body was beginning to tire. It’d been a very long day. But I had to stay alert. I had to.

  “Can you tell me more about these Thrall slaves?” I asked, hoping it would be a straightforward enough question for this terribly literal ghost thingy to answer. “I’m just…I’m just going to go sit back on the swing and listen. You come with me.”

  It felt odd giving it orders, and yet somehow right. For some reason I wasn’t scared of the creature anymore. It still looked as freaky as heck, but its personality was starting to grow on me. And it certainly had had the chance to do whatever it wanted to me and it hadn’t hurt me or anything. Well. Not yet.

  Obediently, it followed me over to the swing. Though, it wasn’t like it followed me, it was more like when we were over by the swing it had been there the whole time.

  “Okay, go,” I said, sitting down.

  Thralls are slaves to the Circle of Seven. You are right that the lesser angels work for the Archangels. But there are some tasks that even angels will not do. So the Circle of Seven decided to take humans every once in a while and turn them into their slaves.

  “They did?” I’d never read anything about this in my research. This was a totally new concept for me. “But, if this is something they do a lot, how come there’s no literature about it, how come we never heard about the Taking until six years ago?”

  They take only a few, now and then. They have generations of slaves going back to the beginning. They do not need to take that many at a time. Humans did not notice. Or if they did they were considered insane when they explained what happened. Excuses were given. In current times, for example, they say it is an alien abduction.

  “Oh. So Thralls steal humans for angels.”

  No.

  “No?” No? “So what’s happening to us then?”

  It’s different here. Usually angels take humans and turn them into slaves, into Thralls. But here Thralls come to do the taking.

  “Why?”

  I do not know.

  This was a lot of information to process. I went over it in my brain. The Circle of Seven were Archangels. They were the bosses of the lesser angels. And they also had slaves that were once human but who had been turned into Thralls. “So let me get this straight. Fifty years ago Gabe was taken by angels. In that flash of light Etta Mae told us about.”

  Yes.

  “And then he came back six years ago as a Thrall and took other humans. He and some of his Thrall buddies.”

  It would appear so.

  “And you don’t know why.” That seemed pretty hard to believe.

  I do not.

  “But you know everything.”

  I do not.

  “You seem to.”

  I only know what I have observed from here in this town.

  “But you know stuff about angels. You know about the Circle of Seven, the angels that work for them, the Nephilim…” I was starting to feel seriously sleepy. “And the Thrall slave things. You know more than I do.”

  I come from the other place. Angels, Nephilim, Thralls. They all come from the other place. I know of them as you know of other humans, animals, plants, and so forth.

  “The other place.”

  Yes.

  “Where is this other place?”

  Here.

  “Here?”

  And not. It is and it is not. It is now, then, and will be.

  “Well, that’s straightforward…” I sighed and curled my legs up underneath me, resting my head along the back of the swing. I could probably just sleep in it for the night at this point, I was so tired.

  I’m glad you find it so.

  The ghost thingy seemed almost pleased with itself.

  “I was joking.”

  Oh. And, after a pause. You should stop doing that.

  “I should?”

  It is very confusing. You should speak plainly.

  “What, like you do?”

  Yes.

  I sighed again. “That was sarcasm again.”

  Oh. Once again a pause. But I speak plainly.

  “Well, the things you say might be obvious to you, but they aren’t to me.”

  It didn’t reply but seemed to be considering what I’d said. We were quiet for a moment, and I could hear the sounds of gently swaying branches creaking in the breeze.

  You care very much about this Thrall.

  “About Gabe?”

  Yes. You care deeply about him.

  “I…well…sure. Yeah. He’s my friend, I guess.”

  You care about him even more than you care about yourself.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far…” I had a thought as I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure why I’d thought it, but it occurred to me that despite the fact that both times I’d talked to this thing it had been late at night, maybe talking to it had something to do with how suddenly sleepy I always felt.

  You ask about Gabe. You go to the priest to ask about the Circle. You go to that Commune. You talk to the old woman. You even try to show me to her.

  “How do you know all that?”

  I was there.

  “Oh.”

  You do all these things for Gabe, and when you finally have the desire to speak with me again you ask of him. You must care deeply.

  That wasn’t really accurate. “Well, it isn’t just about him, though. It’s also about finding out where Chris is.” I opened my eyes. “Do you know where Chris is?”

  You ask me about Chris even before you ask the obvious question. Everyone before you.

  I closed my eyes again. If I hadn’t been feeling so tired, I would have been starting to get frustrated at this point. “Well, don’t make it out like I’m all selfless or anything. I mean, I want Chris back because I miss him … do you know what happened to him?”

  I do not know what happened to Chris. He was taken by the Thralls. That is all I can say.

  Never really helpful are you? Never quite useful. Stupid ghost thingy. It didn’t matter right now anyway. Right no
w I was ready to fall asleep. Right now I could barely stay conscious, let alone open my eyes. “Fine then. What’s the obvious question?”

  The obvious question is the one you have not asked.

  Though its voice was in my head, it sounded far off, like it was fading. I remembered that from the last time. I was losing the creature. It was pulling away from me.

  I opened my eyes. “Tell me what the obvious question is.”

  Yeah, but of course, conveniently, it had gone.

  29.

  I woke up several hours later. It was still dark out, but I could smell morning on the air. There was a mist over the lawn, and I was covered in a cold damp. I sat up and stretched out, my muscles aching from sleeping clenched in the swinging chair. Of course, the ghost thingy was nowhere to be seen. I was relieved. The thought of trying to speak with it again seemed overwhelming.

  I stood up and made my way back to the house and up to my room. My bed had never felt quite so comfortable before. My pillow was unbelievably soft. I drifted back to sleep. My alarm went off an hour later. I decided it had to die, so I threw it across the room. The sound of it breaking against my wall woke me up properly, and I sat wondering what on earth had possessed me to be that violent. I’d never done anything like that before in my life.

  What was the obvious question? The thought popped into my head before I could solve the throwing the clock across the room conundrum.

  Then I just wanted to get all the questions out of my brain, so I got out of bed and had a shower.

  At breakfast I sat opposite Gabe, watching him gulp down his eggs like he’d never had a meal in his life. Mother had gone out of her way to make us this crazy huge breakfast in honor of Gabe’s return. She’d been so glad to see him last night that she’d actually cried. I think that had made Gabe feel really terrible and yet really awesome at the same time.

  After she’d laid out the spread, she’d left us to go get dressed, so it was just me and Gabe, sitting eating together, for the first time in weeks. It was nice to have him back. Not just in body but in spirit. The old happy Gabe was sitting across from me and it warmed my heart.

  But I also knew I had to tell him what I’d found out last night, even if that dimmed the mood somewhat. He had to know that he’d been kidnapped by angels, turned into a Thrall, and been a slave for the last 50 or so years. It was only right that he understand what he was. But that would also mean revealing to him that I’d talked with the ghost thingy, talked with it more than once, and hadn’t told him. Maybe there was a way of telling him the truth without, you know, telling him the truth.