As the man worked, Kreios found his thoughts turning toward the ancient peoples. Where the man lived was not far from the Kara Su, what others might call the Western Euphrates, high above where it joined the Murat Su, the Eastern Euphrates, and then became one river. It was a high region of forest and brush far from where mankind had first trod the earth. Far from the garden that was now guarded by the angel of El with the flashing sword.
Here in the mountains by the Kara Su, the man was far from his old life, the past he had long ago fled. He was far from the mountains of Hijaz, where he had killed his brother.
CHAPTER XIII
Boise, Idaho—Present Day
WE STOPPED OFF AT my favorite coffee shop. It was the very same Moxie Java where, really, this whole thing had started. I ordered my “yooszh,” which was a coconut latté, only this time as a decaf. I was buzzed already, and didn’t need the jitters. Ellie ordered a cup of Earl Grey and we sat by the fire and sipped and talked.
“So,” she said, “how about you and the new guy, Dirk … What will Michael think? What a scandal.”
“Haha,” I said, “laugh it up.”
“Once upon a time, Michael was that new guy.”
“Hey, don’t be mean. If you think Dirk’s so hot, you date him.”
“Don’t be nasty. He’s hundreds of years younger than I am.” She giggled. “So … you’re probably amazed I’m alive.”
“Um, yeah.” I felt I should try to keep my interjections to a minimum for now, but I couldn’t resist asking where in the high heels she had been for the last few months.
She sighed, visibly heavy. “You probably ought to know a few things about me before I start bringing you up to speed. First, if you must know, I’ve been staying up at my father’s place.”
“You mean …”
“Yeah. Under the waterfall and all that.”
I chuckled darkly. “Narnia.”
“Pretty much. I had a lot of things to do there. A lot of studying. But anyway, I need to start my story elsewhere. You’ve read up on Uncle Yamanu, yes?”
I nodded, sipping, my eyes locked on her over the top of my cup.
“So you’re familiar with the shadowing arts.”
“Yes.”
“And how far did the Book of Kreios permit you to read?”
“What do you mean? I read that book to the end. Many times.”
She smiled. “No, girlie. You read it to the end it allowed you to see. So … how far did you get, then?”
“I …” I had to think. I was stunned at this new development. “I think it was before Christ still. Seven hundred B.C. somewhere, I guess.” I closed my eyes and tried to remember specifics. “788, I think.”
Her smirk turned, betraying unmistakable pain. “You don’t know even half, then.”
I couldn’t do anything but sit and stare.
“If you’re wondering why the Book did that to you, don’t. It was for your own protection. If fallible creatures of free will knew where their choices were to take them, they would become enslaved to inevitability. El has far greater love than to show us all ends.”
She sounded like an old woman, but it was hard to look at her and her blue hair and hear the way she could slip into wise old woman talk. “So what did I miss?” I asked.
She took a sip of her tea, savoring it. “The shadowers.” She sighed. “Yamanu knew I had been activated by the time I arrived at the City of Refuge. I have no doubt he prayed to El about it, that he ultimately received confirmation that he should train me as a shadower anyhow. I don’t know why, but he did. It only took one lesson for me to surpass him in every way. The rest, I learned on my own through trial and error.”
She looked out the window for a second and then let her gaze come to rest on the flames behind the glass in the fireplace. “I made a lot of errors. But in the end, I came up solid. I learned new ways to practice the art. Yamanu was a powerful master. He was able to call up the shadows in a physical fog, he was able to counteract the drain our kind feel around the Bloodstone, around the Brotherhood.
“As I came to maturity—and it takes years, girlie, trust me—I felt my gift increasing, doubling in power again and again. See, no one knows how our kind, the half-breed kind, will fully manifest upon activation. Anything could happen. Any power might be gifted, brought into this realm from the eternal. This is why the Brotherhood are so bent on rooting us out by intentionally activating us and then killing us. Because they don’t know how powerful we’ll turn out as individuals, Airel, and that scares them.
“The truth of the matter is that mankind wasn’t made a little lower than the angels. Mankind was made a little lower than El, at least before the Fall. Psalm eight.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have it memorized. Do I look like a Bible scholar?”
“My point is,” she continued, “when the blood of mortal women was mixed with that of our fallen fathers in their resultant children together, what occurred was not a perversion of angelic purity. It was an augmentation of potential power, because mankind was made in the image of El. The one-third that follows the Day Star, Lucifer, know this and hate it and seek to suppress the truth so we will cower in submission before them.
“Further, they know that with each passing day after activation, our power and gifting only grows. That was the case for me. It has been the case for you as well.”
I had to agree with her. At first, I had been a retching basket case. Through my own trial and error, plus the training Kreios had given me, I grew in power every time I overcame. Heck, I had even wielded the Sword of Light. Though not lately. Not even when I try like crazy to call it up. I guessed it had something to do with the universe of things I had yet to understand.
She sipped her tea again and then continued. “My gift isn’t so much to call up a shadow or fog. No, it’s different with me. I guess it’s just El showing his sense of humor. My gift is that I become one with the shadow. I can disperse myself into the air at will. I guess you could say that for all intents and purposes, I can disappear into thin air.
“The first time I did it, I thought I’d died. But I concentrated very hard on bringing myself back together, and succeeded. After that, it was simply a matter of courage and practice.
“I mention all of this for a reason, Airel. You remember that conversation we had on the island? With the seals?”
“Seal Island,” I said. “How could I forget? You told me to swim naked.”
“I was right, naturally.”
I blushed and shrugged. “Mostly.”
“You do remember what you said to me before you dove in, right?”
“Yeah. I asked you to help Michael.”
“And I said I would do all I could, didn’t I?”
My mind flashed back. Yes. That was precisely what she’d said. I didn’t answer aloud. I felt like my world was about to get rocked once again and I didn’t want to speak.
“I did all I could,” she said. “When you jumped into False Bay, you did it selflessly. You demonstrated to me total lack of fear. Sure, some of it was ignorance because you didn’t know how fierce and bloodthirsty those sharks could be in that area—but you did it. You committed your body to the deep, for love. You . . . It was an act of bold faith, Airel. You may as well have walked on water, for all the difference it would have made to me.”
“What are you saying, Ellie?”
“I’m saying you inspired me to use extreme measures, to take action. And I did what I was able to do. Did you never wonder how the Mark passed from Michael to me?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “But I—Michael and I both figured you just, you know, had your ways. Or that El intervened somehow. Then again, this is the first time I’ve seen you in months.”
She nodded. “I took the Mark upon myself because my unique shadowing abilities allowed me to physically dissolve not only myself, but also it. The Mark. I, well, for lack of a better word, I tricked it into clinging to me, into letting Michael go.”
“But how?”
“What, are you asking for a demonstration right here?”
I looked around us. “No,” I hissed, feeling the need to lower my voice. “But what happened next? How did you get off the island? And what about Kreios? What about all that happened up on Table Mountain?”
“My shadowing abilities have grown very strong, Airel. But it all changed when you did what you did. I could always teleport, for lack of a better word—but not very far. The longer I am in the wind, the harder it is to get all the pieces back together again.”
“Wait. You’re telling me that you tried to teleport off the island? With Michael? You could have killed him. What if your stuff and his stuff got all mixed up?” My head was starting to hurt.
“Like I said, I felt like I had to try. For all I knew, you were going to drown, and I couldn’t risk Michael dying there on my watch. Even without the Mark, he was not going to do well. Anyway, I tested it out.” Her eyes met mine, and I could tell she was about to confess something to me. “The first few times, we ended up in the middle of the ocean. But the third time, we made it.”
“This is crazy. You’re crazy. You know that, right?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘crazy’. All I know is that it worked. And I’ve been testing myself ever since.”
“And Kreios—is he … dead?”
“I don’t know, Airel. He is preeminent among angels, so I want to believe he made it somehow. When I woke up after he did whatever he did, I was all alone.” For the first time since Ellie had been back, the ready wit she wore like armor fell away. She bit her lip, and I saw tears nearing the surface.
“So he took the Mark for you?”
Ellie nodded and stared at her tea.
I reached out and touched her hand. She lifted her head and managed a smile. “But like I said, he is more powerful than any of us—for now, anyway.”
“What’s that mean?”
Ellie cocked her eyebrow and her snarky demeanor returned. “It means that your grandfather is the Angel of Death. Read up on what happened to Egypt when Pharaoh crossed El and lost every single Egyptian firstborn. Read up on the Jewish Passover feast and what it means. Read up on what happened at the ancient city-state of Ai. For that matter, read up on what happened at that petrochemical skyscraper in Cape Town, how many people simply vanished the night before you saw him in the sky and flew to him. Read up on how there were random piles of sand on every floor, how each one weighed what an average man might weigh if every trace of water in him had spontaneously evaporated. All Kreios. Airel, do you have any idea what it’s like growing up when your father is El’s ambassador for the grave? You think you and your dad have issues.”
I shook my head, wide-eyed. “So …”
“So Kreios is out-of-this-world powerful. When he sets his mind to something, especially when El is directly involved, nothing is impossible for him.”
“Then he has to be alive.” I wanted so badly for it to be true, and I could tell Ellie needed to believe it as well so she could at least have one last hope left to hold on to.
“Yeah, I think so,” she said. “If anyone can make it through what he had to go through, it’s him.” She took a sip of her tea, swallowed it slowly, and then breathed in the steamy aroma through her nostrils.
She looked as if she was enjoying it even more than I loved my coconut latté. I thought about trying Earl Grey sometime. She made it look pretty dang yummy. “So,” I asked, trying not to cry for Kreios, which is weird because it seems like he can handle himself, “what happened to him? I mean, when he took the Mark?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. I’ve read all the books I could get my hands on at his place to see if there are any answers. The ones I found weren’t pretty.”
I breathed out. “This is a lot to process.” I leaned forward and buried my face into the heels of my palms and rubbed my eyes, took a deep breath or two, and then leaned back in my chair. “But what now? What do we do? What happens to us? Are we safe? Where’s Kreios?”
Ellie laughed and shook her head. “He will show himself when he wants to be seen. When he’s able. For now, we stick to our cover and keep our noses in our books. Got it?”
“Sure,” I said, aghast at how the entirety of my high school career had just been upended because of this tiny change in perspective. Being a student is my cover now? I wanted to believe that Kreios was alive, but when I reached out for him, I got nothing. This wasn’t the first time I hadn’t been able to feel him, but I still worried.
“You’ll have lots more questions. Ask them. Just be careful when and where. Pretend the walls have eyes and ears, ’kay?”
I agreed with a glance. Outside, the first snow of the season was falling. I wondered if it would stick or just make the roads a mess. I grabbed my drink for a sip of coconutty goodness, but it was empty. I looked outside at the cold, the wet snow, and then at Ellie. “I think I want to try some of that tea.”
She smiled. I was glad indeed to have her back, even though, in truth, I felt as empty as my coffee cup.
CHAPTER XIV
Arabia, 926 B.C.
“WHERE IS THE BLOODSTONE, Daughter of Death?”
Uriel appeared before Anael draped in a dark gray cloak that reached her toes. “Lost, destroyed, no longer in these realms—who can say? I hunt it day and night, but I have yet to locate its possessor.”
Anael cursed her in the forbidden tongue. She could feel both his anger and his fear. He was right to fear her—she had grown much more powerful now. Surely he had heard rumors—if he hadn’t, he was not a worthy adversary.
“You have failed me. Our pact is now at an end.” His voice was tense and he clenched his fists.
“Why so rash, old man? I have only failed if I find the stone and then fail to hand it over to you. What, is your trust so short-lived? And do you think it an easy thing that I should go and steal this trinket for you? Without me, you have no hope of finding it, and even if by dumb luck you do, who will go in and wrench it away from its host? Not you. You could not surprise a deaf man from behind.”
Anael snarled and made a grab for the hilt of his sword, but Uriel moved like lightning, taking it from him before his fingers touched it. She stood back, holding it out before him as if she had never moved.
The change was immediate. “Please,” Anael said, falling to his knees.
Uriel crinkled her nose in disgust. “Do I need to rid the world of yet another coward?” She stuck the tip of the sword into the ground and approached him, crouching down just out of his reach. “What do they say of me?”
Anael shifted his weight and avoided her eyes.
She grasped his cloak and forced him to meet her eyes. “What do they say?”
“They call you the Derakhshan, meaning the bright, the light before death.”
She stood, crossing her arms and nodding. “And?”
“They say you live in the wind, that you appear to heat-crazed, exhausted travelers in the deserts in the hot brilliance of the day, shimmering over superheated sands. They hear your voice in their heads; they say you drive men mad. You strike terror into men’s hearts, melting their courage like wax.”
Uriel sighed in confirmation. This was even better news than that which she had heard among the Scythians to the north. “And what of you, Anael? What do you believe?”
He hesitated, but she could see a smirk brewing at the corners of his mouth. “I believe you are not one to go back on your word … that you honor your father with all you do.” He spit it out like an accusation.
Uriel flared in anger, and black mist boiled from her robes. Before Anael could react, she brandished the edge of his sword at his throat. “You dare mock me, impotent old man? Throwing my father into my face? Once, I let it go unpunished. Shall I suffer further insult from you now?” She threw him to the ground.
An instant later, she was gone, having moved to the top of one of the high towers in the City of Refuge. She would not
hear of her father, would not, because deep within her heart she harbored regret for the way things ended. But he killed the man I loved. Pathways to revenge remained open and inviting. In fact, they were irresistible, and every time she thought of Kreios, she tasted blood.
Uriel scanned the city from her perch, trying to calm herself. The pact. Stealing the Bloodstone would not be easy; the task had proven itself to be so. It seemed nothing in her life would be easy—nothing would bring her the peace she craved. She remembered her friends, her young adventures, and wondered if life would ever be like that again.
Doubtful.
She was one of the Brotherhood now. She was not a slave like most; they gave her a long leash. The Infernals know that one such as I will not be controlled. The acting Seer might have made her an Infernal, given her skill. But she had no desire to command a regular unit of troops. Uriel’s heart was made of and for things other than intoxication with mere power. Those things could never satisfy her.
Part of her—a part she could resist less and less as the days dragged on—longed for understanding, for companionship. She began to fantasize about walking into a marketplace like a normal human being might do, seeing those sights, letting those sounds and smells bounce off her fully manifest form. On occasion, she had. She told herself she was working, that she was in disguise and gathering information that could be used elsewhere. But the truth was, she wasn’t working. She wasn’t gathering information, wasn’t acting in a tactical sense at all. She was feeding her needs.
Below in the city, she could hear Yamanu, and Veridon’s booming voice, her uncle Zedkiel. She listened to the angelic peoples of the city indulging in dead memories. But the longer she listened, the more pain she could feel—El. And the men who had taught her to worship Him. Who was El to her? To the Derakhshan? El was a light trick, a rumor. El was nothing but the god of her father, the god of her people—and these had betrayed her.
The Airel Saga Box Set: Young Adult Paranormal Romance Page 69
