And Mr. Emmanuel was deeply pragmatic. He knew the old schools of classical philosophy, and he picked and chose what he would adhere to. Was that not pragmatic? And after all, he was a god, so whom should he fear? At least he believed he was. And if he believed, was he not a god? Who could say otherwise? Who would dare correct him?
Except the master.
Yes, but that went without saying. As a matter of fact, he preferred it went unsaid.
To all who resided on the downwind slope of his affectations, he was and would be a god. And that was enough.
His nostrils flared.
Here comes the mark.
Mr. Emmanuel allowed him to pass him by and then followed nonchalantly at a discreet distance.
The mark didn’t know it, but he was completely caged. Mr. Emmanuel flicked a finger and the teeming crowd swerved, carrying the mark toward the mouth of a corridor where he was quickly and inconspicuously tased and then snatched by three strong men. Mr. Emmanuel smirked. A taste of your own medicine, John.
The three thugs were faithful servants. They would bundle John, the mark, into the back of a Kombi and deliver him, as ordered, to the building.
And Mr. Emmanuel would take the helo to the top of the city tonight, in the same building, the skyscraper his petrol company owned. It was all a shell game; it was delicious.
Sure, sometimes it bored him, but did not the gods suffer boredom from time to time? It was no matter. He would smite someone from his Olympus and then he would feel better. Sleep like a child.
***
AIREL’S FATHER NEVER SAW it coming. He should have, if he really knew what he was up against. But he couldn’t dream of the wickedness arrayed against him.
The crowd in the international terminal was close, and like a mob at a sports event, one simply went with the flow. When the flow forced him toward the mouth of a nearby hallway, three goons came out of nowhere and tased him. His body went limp; they gagged him, bagged him, and snatched him up. Then they stuffed him into the back of a van.
Very professional. But now he was at the mercy of some real baddies, and he knew it. What was more, he probably knew them. He could recognize the effects of the weapons he sold. Which client had turned on him? He had some ideas.
But then he felt the prick of what could only have been a hypodermic syringe. Great, John. Now what? Everything went dark.
***
Arabia—1232 B.C.
KREIOS HAD BEEN PREPARING a lecture for her in his mind as he killed the last few members of Subedei’s stupid entourage. Of course he had known; what father would release his as-yet unformed adult daughter into the wilds without at least watching over her? He had known she was headstrong, even stubborn, but this … this had been a surprise.
Had he not tried to instill more sense into her? Had he not spent himself in her childhood, trying his utmost to raise her to be prudent and wise? What she had done this night felt like betrayal.
He swooped upward toward the treetops, thinking on all she had done. She deserved a stern word or two, and he would not fail to deliver. But as he approached the bough where he had left her, he knew she had gone. He cursed himself. He had placed her there in the hope she would be both safe and unable to flee easily from him. But she had found a way.
How had she managed that?
Unless she had been taken. His heart suffered the pang of anxiety as he circled the treetops in the vicinity, double- and triple-checking that she was indeed not there. He descended to the path below, where the leaders had circled to discuss the incident.
Yamanu was among them. “Have you seen Eriel?” Kreios grabbed his tunic gruffly.
Yamanu turned to him, surprise and concern showing on his features in the darkness. “Is she not safe?” he asked.
“I do not know,” Kreios said, panting a little. “I thought I had left her in a safe place during the skirmish.”
“The one called Subedei escaped,” Yamanu said. “That was the one Eriel had come out to meet …”
As he said the words, Kreios knew in his heart what had happened. “What are you not telling me?”
Yamanu did not speak immediately, and still more angels gathered roundabout, awaiting further orders, further action.
Kreios extended a hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Tell me, friend.”
Yamanu shook his head. “I am afraid, Kreios, that I am responsible for this debacle.”
“Why do you say such a thing?”
“Because, friend, I had been teaching her how to use the gift of the Shadowers. Perhaps before she was yet ready.” His face was downcast. “I could not help but see a predilection in her for the gift. She has much potential, Kreios; you should be very proud of your daughter. After one lesson, she escaped through the defenses of the great city and found her way to liberty.”
“Are you telling me that she is still somewhere near? Perhaps hiding from us even now?”
Yamanu’s face betrayed the deep fear and pain he felt in regard to Eriel. “My friend Kreios, there is more that remains to be revealed to us. I am sorry. I started her training too soon. She was not ready. She does not yet understand the purpose of the gift; she cannot properly bear its attendant burden.”
Kreios grasped Yam by both shoulders and looked deep into his eyes, his own eyes begging without words for a morsel of bare truth.
“I am afraid she could be anywhere, Kreios.”
“We must find her.” Kreios turned to bolt; he wanted to begin the search and make sure she was not taken by the boy.
“Kreios,” Yamanu said, touching his arm from behind, “we cannot.”
“What do you mean?” Kreios asked him incredulously. “This is absurd. We cannot?”
Yamanu nodded quietly.
“Why?”
Yamanu paused before answering. “Because, friend, she does not want to be found.” He waited yet another moment for this new and profound information to settle.
Kreios slumped.
Yamanu grasped his shoulder. “She is that good. Until she wants to be found, we will never find her.”
CHAPTER XX
Somewhere Over the South Atlantic—Present Day
EVERYTHING EXPLODED.
I had been knocked unconscious.
When I came back around to myself, the air was filled with an enormous roaring sound. From the instrument panel behind me, there was a gaggle of loud buzzers sounding off. I peeled my eyes open, and they were instantly stung by a thousand needles of thin atmosphere. I was dizzy; it was difficult to breathe. One arm was hooked through the supporting structure of a seat, and one leg was cocked up and wedged behind me in the doorway to the flight deck. I looked out the closest available window, one of the windscreens in the cockpit behind me, and I saw what looked like blackness with an occasional pink-orange stripe passing vertically from right to left.
That’s the sunset. The horizon. We were sideways and cartwheeling through the air.
My body was being pulled. I looked back to the direction I was facing, the direction I was being pulled. There was Michael, still buckled to his seat and passed out. More importantly, though, there was wide-open nothingness where the back of the plane had been.
And I was being sucked toward it.
Where is Ellie? Hex and Bishop were gone. I could see Michael, and I tried to make my way toward him. I knew I would be able to use the sucking momentum to get to him, but I had probably only one shot. If I messed up, I would be sucked straight out the back without him. And I needed to rescue him.
I wasn’t sure of the details, but I knew I had to get him out of the plane.
Pressure pulled relentlessly at every part of me. I had to get across the aisle and move … fly … about ten feet toward the rear of the plane in order to connect with him. It was very difficult to breathe. I felt my body flirting with another blackout.
I had to make my move.
It was ugly. When I let go, everything happened so fast. I became airborne and hurtled backwards. I almo
st missed my shot. If I hadn’t pushed off with my legs a little, I would have gone straight out the back.
But I didn’t. I collided with Michael’s chest like a 98-pound football, startling the crap out of him and waking him up. He grasped me in a bear hug, looked around with wild eyes, saw me, saw the foggy atmosphere in the plane. and craned his head all over the place like a bird. “Airel, wha…” His eyelids grew heavy, his grip on me weakened.
He passed out again.
Oh, no. I clung tightly to him, trying with one hand to reach the release on his buckle.
“Hey.” Ellie screamed into my ear and I jerked back a little in surprise. My eyes asked the question for me. “Never mind,” she screamed above the roaring noise. “Just grab the parachute.” She was standing in the aisle, her feet braced hard between two seats.
Parachute. I didn’t think we would need those. I thought about the inflatable raft I had seen in the cupboards as well; the survival beacons. Everything suddenly became far too real. This is life and death. In a wrestling match.
I grabbed the chute from Ellie; it was an enormous thing. I slipped my free arm through the straps, grabbing Michael with the other.
“Ready?” Ellie screamed again.
I nodded.
She let herself go. She was sucked violently from the plane. I decided it was a very scary thing, but I didn’t want to die, either.
Holding fast to Michael and the parachute, I found the seatbelt release and pulled.
***
Cape Town, South Africa—Present Day
KREIOS FELT THE DRAW on his strength as he neared the center of the principality of the evil prince Nwaba, the enormous high-rise citadel of the Nri. He did not wanted to admit it to himself, but he could feel himself weakening, feel the longing for the Sword, wondered why he could not retrieve it now of all times. He consigned himself to the strong possibility of a suicide mission.
But now everything was different.
When he had seen the great demonic horde flying west, he was struck. In his impetuous youth, he would have given chase, which would have ended in a sound defeat. Instead, he bided his time and thought it over.
He had guessed Nwaba was at the head of his westering detachment then, and now he was quite sure. He felt his strength returning in waves. The prince was away. The city was unguarded. And Kreios could attack in strength.
He would do what El had done to Sodom and Gomorrah. He would burn it to the ground.
CHAPTER XXI
Somewhere Over the South Atlantic—Present Day
IT WAS LIKE WE were shot out of a cannon. Everything around us was completely dark, and if it was difficult to hold on to both Michael and the parachute in the confines of the plane, it was seriously close to impossible while falling through the sky. All the problems I had inside the plane were now magnified: it was louder, harder to breathe, more physically demanding, and I couldn’t see because I couldn’t open my eyes.
She said, “Let Ellie help you.” It was a good thing I had ample warning because before I knew it, Ellie was shouting in my ear again. Something about getting the parachute on. Clumsily, I gave her one arm at a time as she helped cinch everything up. This is insane. The straps were either big enough to bundle me together with Michael or there was an extra set. I didn’t care about details—I just wanted the madness to end.
I worried that we were going to hit the ocean at any minute, that I wouldn’t see it coming. It was really bizarre that my number-one instinct was to see it when it came. Now that there was at least a parachute, though, everything should have balanced out. But it didn’t.
She was going berserk in my head, Ellie was shouting, the wind from our descent was debilitating.
I forced my eyes to open. My tear ducts were emptying themselves in the fierce wind and my vision was blurry. It didn’t help that we were falling through the last dying embers of the sunset, either; it was almost pitch black.
Except for a weird cluster of light off to one side, that is. As my brain tried to process this new information, I became sick with fright: I was looking at the city lights of Cape Town. From like, thousands of feet above it. I could see the outline of the coast of South Africa below, but it wasn’t directly below. It was below and far away. We were going to fall into the ocean.
Ellie shouted something into my ear again, grasped something on the front of me and then pushed off violently, yanking hard on the straps as she went. “Hey.” I shouted in total impotence, the pelting wind sucking all the volume from me. And then I realized something new. Ellie had pulled my ripcord.
It was like hitting pavement. Or maybe like getting your arms ripped completely off. Whatever the case, the chute opened above and Michael and I were saved. I realized how thankful I needed to be for all that had happened at Ellie’s hands. I couldn’t have held on to Michael if I had wanted to. I was very glad to have him strapped to me.
I looked around me, trying to orient myself by the lights of the city and what remained of the sunset behind us. Below, I saw Ellie’s chute deploy in a bright red and white flume, filling with air, arresting her descent as well.
I breathed a sigh of relief and wept silently to myself. This is totally crazy. I can’t believe Hex and Bishop. Is Michael okay? How do we get out of this one? Are we going to just crash into the ocean? Who will save us then?
I looked out to the horizon again, glad for a moment’s peace. A bloom of white and orange erupted far below us. That was the plane. It just crashed into the ocean.
Then something flew by me. Something big and dark. Dark. My mind returned to the dark cloud I had seen from the cockpit before everything had gone horrible.
“Get ready,” She said.
***
Cape Town, South Africa—Present Day
IT HADN’T TAKEN LONG at such a late hour for Kreios to drive the little Toyota bakkie from Muizenberg to Cape Town’s business district. He had parked about a half a kilometer from the building.
It was a major landmark, one of the tallest in the city. The ruse was that the company drilled for, refined, shipped, and bought and sold speculative shares of oil. And that provided its masters with the resources they needed to ply their real trade. Kreios knew it all; how could he not? The wicked hands at these controls belonged to fallen angels with whom he had once dwelt in paradise. Before all the stars fell.
He decided on a direct course of action. Something bold, impetuous. He would see how many he would have to kill before the Nri Infernals noticed.
As he walked along the sidewalk at the front of the building, he looked inside the massive lobby through the glass. There was a lone security guard at the enormous desk, which rose like a sailing ship’s quarterdeck above the lobby. Beyond it were the main elevators, eight of them.
The guard’s head jerked up as Kreios neared the main revolving doors. Slowly, as the truth descended upon his features, the guard’s face went white with abject fear.
Kreios carried with him no natural weapon. It wasn’t his appearance that had given the guard cause for fear. It was simply that Kreios, now fully aware once more of his body of work over thousands of years, was in close proximity now. And when El’s Angel of Death was upon the doorstep, what happened next was inevitable. Final.
The guard stood and began to tremble like a frightened child. Some of his trembling was due to the fact that his Brother was ripping out of his flesh, becoming fully manifest.
Kreios stopped at the revolving front doors, of which there were a pair. Their partitioning panes of glass were arrayed at ninety-degree intervals along their axes of rotation and extended out from there in a radius of at least eight feet, all glass.
Inside the glass façade there was the security desk, set up like a fortress, a command post in the midst of the lobby, and behind that were the elevator cars.
Kreios turned to face his objective. He saw beyond the glass, the polished tiles, the electronic surveillance and security measures, the steel-reinforced concrete. He saw, much lik
e he had seen on the night of the original Passover, not just that there was no signal of atonement on the “lintels,” such as there were. No, indeed, not only was this building not excepted from him, it was covered with sign upon sign and symbol upon symbol of its effrontery to El, the enmity it not only represented but embodied. It stood as a monument to itself. It was therefore precisely identical to Lucifer, which was intentional on the part of its masters.
Kreios widened his stance, bending at the knees, and removed his hands from the pocket of his hoodie sweater.
***
Somewhere Over the South Atlantic—Present Day
“RESERVE CHUTE.” IT WAS cryptic even for She. But it soon became clear.
The dark cloud, a.k.a. a huge cluster of freaking demons, was swarming. They were coming out of nowhere. They were everywhere, swooping in, through and around us at all times. Meanwhile. Michael and I were just hanging there in the sky, a punching bag, a dangling bull’s-eye.
I could tell one of them was bigger than the rest. Worse, it was hounding me. I could feel it circling us, feel the massive bursts of air pressure from its wings, and I caught glimpses of its hideous shape as it passed under me.
In one fell swoop, all the cords holding us to our parachute were cut. We were falling again. And though I couldn’t see much, I could see enough to know that we didn’t have much time.
My first reaction was stark fear. But something within me rose up and protested against it, told me I was tired of it already. I became contemptuous. That was the only word for it. Letting go of Michael, fully trusting the straps for the first time, I held out my hands.
This stabilized our flight, sending us on a straight trajectory. I scanned what bits of the sky I could see. There were dark shapes flitting everywhere. I couldn’t see Ellie’s chute. I assumed she too had been cut loose. I also could not see the jerk that had sent us plummeting again.
I quickly realized that I could steer by shifting the position of my limbs. If I put my feet together and held only one arm close to my body, my outstretched arm produced drag and we spun in a barrel roll. Using this newfound trick, I wheeled us clumsily around to face the heavens. I squinted, trying to see, looking around desperately for my prime offender.
The Airel Saga Box Set: Young Adult Paranormal Romance Page 59
