The Airel Saga Box Set: Young Adult Paranormal Romance

by Aaron Patterson

  “What the—”

  “Pick up your jaw from the floor, mate. It is real.”

  “That can’t be real,” I said, my mouth a little numb.

  “Behold,” she said grandiosely, “the city of Glasgow.”

  It was true. We were looking out from a high hill over an entire city at dusk, the view framed by the closet door, which itself was now evidently in the midst of a Victorian cemetery. A great stone angel monument stood in the foreground, what looked like a tomb marker, and farther on and below stood cathedral spires, the buildings of a modern civilization.

  “This is,” Ellie said, “one of the thin places.” She touched my arm and I glanced back toward her. “It’s the reason Kreios built his house here.”

  CHAPTER V

  Glasgow, Scotland—Present Day

  ELLIE FOUND JOHN RIGHT before he boarded the charter C-37. She missed him in Glasgow, but planned to listen to his thoughts on the ride back to the U.S. and find out what happened to the woman he was hunting and if he found the Bloodstone.

  John looked out the small window as the English countryside slid by under the wings, giving way to the icy waters of the North Atlantic. “I’m going home. It feels so good, really, to fail at this kind of stuff.”

  Nothing had gone according to plan for John Cross. He hadn’t been able to find much at all on one Eve Crawford back in D.C. using the Web, so he figured he could get something locally once he was on site in Scotland. Maybe talk to some shopkeepers and landlords, work the streets for better information. “That proved to be a rather ill-advised roll of the dice. I didn’t think I was gambling on that score, but apparently I was.”

  Ellie let him think. She found a seat in the back where she could close her eyes and try to get a little rest.

  “Eve Crawford was a shell identity. But why go to all that trouble?”

  John kept trying, unsuccessfully, to block out of his mind the idea that he or his family might have to pay a serious price for all this. He imagined the displeasure this turn of events would produce in PILLBOX, let alone MAGICIAN, whoever that was.

  She could tell he was glad not to have another murder on his hands. But he was sad he had missed Christmas with his family. Again. “I told myself this wasn’t going to keep on happening, especially after what went down in Kigali. And in Potosi. Rwanda. Bolivia. Hostile situations. I got out with barely more than my own skin intact. It’s a tough business, dealing in force with backstreet thugs, and I swore more than once I’d had enough of it. The only times I sleep well are in my own bed, by the side of my own wife, my arms around the one woman I love.”

  As the C-37 reeled off the miles beneath, John briefly allowed his mind to go, to haunt the depths of depravity and think on what might happen if worse came to worst. What would MAGICIAN do to him now that he’d failed?

  Would there be a second chance?

  CHAPTER VI

  Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho—Present Day

  WE WERE SEATED BACK in the library before my world really started to fall apart again. Why is my whole life under attack?

  I felt She rustling in the back of my mind once more, felt like I was standing on the edge of something enormous in my life, like I was about to do or hear or learn something that would change everything yet again. It was both exhausting and exhilarating. “Hold on tight,” She said, “and remember who you are.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Ellie asked me, referring to what we had just seen in the closet.

  “‘Amazing’ doesn’t quite cut it,” I said, “when you have a whole city in your closet. So what are you telling me? That the little concrete room—what did you call it?”

  “The Threshold.”

  “Yeah, that. You’re telling me that when I open that door, I can walk straight through to a graveyard in Scotland?”

  “Yeah. And lots of other places.”

  “What? How is that even possible?”

  “See, there are these thin places in the world. This is one of the very first. It’s how Kreios was able to find his Book. As the world under the sun has aged, there have been, through natural decay, lots of other thin places popping up. Did you ever read The Lord of the Rings?”

  “Of course. I’m a fantasy nerd par excellence.”

  “Then you remember the Palantir. The seeing stones?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s part of what corrupted the world of men and linked Eisengard to Mordor.”

  Ellie looked impressed with that, like it wasn’t where she was trying to steer me, like it was an unanticipated wrinkle. “True. The way the Threshold works is similar, but different. Wherever there’s another thin place, if you’re concentrating hard enough on where you’d like to go or what you’d like to find, the Threshold takes you there. At least, as long as you’re either an angel or a half-breed, like us.”

  “How does that work?”

  “The thin places are where the natural realm has worn away over time, where the eternal, the everlasting, is beginning to break through. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say those places are haunted, even demonic. And in some cases, depending on the circumstance, you might be right. But all it really means is that the world under the sun is wearing out. Quite literally.”

  “And because of this ‘Threshold,’ as you call it, we can what, go places instantly? Like teleportation?”

  “Nope. It’s not like that.”

  I felt something familiar begin to ruffle within me. I wasn’t sure what it was. I hadn’t felt it in a long time. It was a sweet pain, a longing. “Then what is it like?”

  “Airel, the eternal—the spiritual—is what this world was created out of. The ‘natural’, as we know it, including time itself, is passing away. The everlasting is beginning to punch through, assert itself over what amounts to an unclean usurper, an illusion in the final analysis.”

  “The natural world—under the sun—you mean everything we can see is an illusion?”

  “From El’s—from an angelic perspective, yes. It’s passing away, Airel. And when anyone crosses over the Threshold, they’re crossing not just from place to place under the sun. They’re crossing out of time as well.”

  I wrinkled my brows in consternation, widening my eyes. “Time travel?”

  Ellie shook her head slowly. “It all depends. And one must be careful in there.” She pointed down that long hallway, at the end of which loomed what I was thinking of more and more as a doomsday device of some kind. “It’s best to close your eyes. It’s not called the Threshold for nothing.”

  “So when I go—if I ever go—in there, exactly what is it I’ll be on the threshold of?”

  Before she could answer, I was overcome by that feeling again, that familiar sense that I couldn’t quite place, and I nearly collapsed on the floor. I caught myself, tried to breathe, and rubbed my head with my fingers.

  “You feel it too, don’t you?” Ellie asked.

  “What is it?”

  “Kreios. He’s coming.” She looked very sad, especially in light of this new information.

  I thought she should be ecstatic.

  “Ellie,” I said, trying to think how I wanted to phrase my question, “what is it you’re not telling me?” As far as I was concerned, I was extremely excited to see Kreios, and I didn’t get why she’d be sad, of all things.

  She stood and walked to the mantel, the shelf above the fireplace. This was where the Books were kept—the Book of Kreios, my Book, other books and odds and ends I wasn’t sure of. I hadn’t thought much of it until that moment, but then it suddenly hit me—Where’s mine? I didn’t know. I could have sworn it was up there with the rest of them, but it’s gone.

  Ellie took down a familiar volume and handed it to me.

  In confirmation of my internal question, the name resounded within my being, ringing like a house-sized bell. KREIOS. I opened the cover.

  “Read,” she said.

  I looked up at her, questions in my eyes. Why? And where’s mine? And where’s your Book, Ell
ie?

  “But before you start, you need to know something about me.”

  I groaned. “What is it now? How come you like to play these mind games? I hate this.”

  She snorted. “I’m not playing games, Airel. I’m trying to protect you. I wasn’t lying when I said that before, on Wideawake Airfield. I am here to protect you. But as you read this,” she gestured to the Book of Kreios, “you’re going to find out why. And when you do, you’re going to be angry enough about it to want to kill me.”

  I was shocked. All I could say was, “What?”

  “Kreios will be here soon. Read up. I’m going to the kitchen for a nosh. Bring you a coffee?”

  I flashed her an “are you freaking crazy” look and shook my head, wondering what on earth she was talking about, and also what exactly she told my mom in order to get her to allow me to come up here. “I will never want to kill you, Ellie, no matter what. You are my blood, my friend.”

  “Thanks, Airel, but never say never.”

  I reached out to She. Do I really know Ellie at all? I got this feeling that meant I already knew the answer. I hated that feeling. So much.

  Ellie half turned to go, and then stopped. “You read your Bible, yeah?”

  “Of course.” That wasn’t true—I was no scholar of biblical studies. I didn’t want to look bad.

  “You know who Judas Iscariot was, then.”

  My stomach felt like there was lodged within it a fist of ice. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Yeah, well. In life’s play, that was my primary role. The traitor.” She turned and walked away.

  Stunned, I walked back to the library, curled up on the couch, and then opened the Book of Kreios.

  The Book let me in this time, took me further than I’d been before, let me see pieces of the story it had withheld from me until now. I read about loss and hurt and traitorous pacts made with wicked men, about Uriel’s activation, about her ability, about the legend of the Derakhshan. And still more.

  About her son.

  CHAPTER VII

  Arabia, 788 B.C.

  QIEL HAD JUST TURNED twelve. It wasn’t two months ago, and his mother wondered many things about how to proceed as his only parent. How can I teach him to be a man? She looked around at the little shop she had managed to build for them in one of the towns of men. These little trinkets she crafted and sold—inkwells and pens, paper, the tools of the scribe; brushes, reeds, inkstones, paperweights—these were all so meager, and the life they now lived together was nothing if not humble.

  It was, she realized, a perfect opposite to everything she lived for before Qiel had come along. He had changed everything—everything that was possible to be changed.

  Should I now abandon him to another? Someone, a man, who would show him how to embrace true masculinity? Someone not part of the Brotherhood? Someone who will not, no matter what he intends, she thought bitterly, activate his gift? Someone who will not, no matter what he intends, shine it like a beacon in pure darkness, beckoning the Horde to come and kill him?

  Uriel’s life was drifting in uncharted waters—all of it. While she knew this, and while she had made her peace with it as much as she could, she still wondered in these moments why El had consigned her to such an existence. She had ceased to ask the question aloud many years ago.

  She stood at a crossroads in every sense, and neither path looked suitable or even reasonable. If she were to keep Qiel close, try to keep him safe, he would turn—if he hadn’t already—and when he did, what might his reaction be? He would hate her, probably as much as she had hated her own father. But not now. Oh, to have certain decisions to make over again. The cup of their lives would be filled to brimming with misunderstanding and hatred and ultimatum. Already the boy knew there was something different about their lives. Indeed, how could he miss it?

  But what if she were to let him go now? He would not understand. He would feel abandoned. Rejected. He would not understand that it would be for his own safety, that her decision to leave him, to send him out into the world at this young age, was for his own good, his safekeeping. But what would he do? Where would he go, and to whom would he cling for shelter, for love and for peace, for food and clothing? Would he come into manhood in the filth of the gutters, surviving on what morsel he might beg from those in the streets more respectable than he? Than we?

  Had she raised a beggar? Had they come all this way for nothing? Would there be no end to consequence in her life, in the lives of those she loved?

  “Mama,” Qiel called to her, ducking in from the blinding sun outside under the blanket draped at the entrance to their little shop.

  “I’m here,” she said, standing from where she had been kneeling behind one of the tables that held her wares.

  “Oh, there you are,” he said. He was already taller than she was, though that wasn’t saying much. Some in the village mistook her for a child, at least at first. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You had a funny look on your face.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Qiel screwed up his own face as he regarded her.

  Her heart thundered with fell anticipation; something terrible was going to happen soon if she didn’t do something. But what? What decision should she make? How could a mother choose between two different kinds of damnation for her son? Was there no alternative?

  “You cannot fool me, Mama.”

  She gasped in playful shock.

  He smiled. “Mama, there is a rich man in the square hoping to buy a paperweight for his scribe. I told him to come, but he was very specific about the kind of weight he desired.”

  “Good. Let him come,” Uriel said, crouching down again to the small crate she had been unloading. She took two such stones from it and laid them on the table before her. “We have what he requires. Even if he does not yet know it.” She winked at her son.

  “Yes, but he said he wants a red one, and we don’t have—” Qiel was interrupted by the blinding light of the rug flap being drawn aside at the entrance. In came a tall, cloaked man, his hood drawn low over his white-bearded face. “Oh, sir. You’re here. We were getting our paperweights ready to present to you.”

  The man did not look up or reveal his face but strode quickly into the shop, hands tucked away out of sight.

  Uriel noticed this, but didn’t put up her guard like she would have in the past—when she was a warrior, not a mother.

  Before she could react, before she gave the first thought to the powers of her gift, now long dormant and unexercised, it came. From out of the folds of the man’s robe a thin reed rose up against her, and with a small blast of air, the poison barb launched and sailed, pricking her throat and fouling her angelic blood with its payload.

  As her vision began to fade, her ears rang with the whine of the drug’s effects, and she heard the screams of her son as the man in the cloak seized him bodily. Oh, El. There is a third way. Qiel… She faded from the world, wishing she could weep but lacking the strength or the will. She saw Anael turn and leave with her son in his arms.

  ***

  WHEN URIEL AWOKE, SHE was no longer in the village. She was in a dark, cool place, her breath a vapor, the air a fume of dank fungus that racked her lungs and assailed each breath she took, making her wheeze and cough.

  The first thing she thought was, Where is my son? The first feeling with which her heart was seized was terror, and not for herself, but for Qiel.

  She opened her eyes. She struggled to focus—everything was hazed and milky white.

  She heard a voice.

  “Before you begin to get too creative with your gift, Uriel, you must know first that I hold all power over you now.”

  Anael. Traitors could never rest easy in the company of thieves. Uriel knew already that her worst fears had come upon her, had overtaken her. Anael has my son; he will use Qiel as his token for trade. A dark titter of laughter swept over her, and she smelled Anael’s rot. He was close.

&n
bsp; “You have already guessed my game—good. I smell despondency upon you. Let us not waste any words. You will bring me the stone—surely you remember what pact we crafted between us over four hundred years ago?”

  She managed a groan as she tried to come to herself, but it was mostly in vain, like puffing air into a great canvas sack in an attempt to fill it round. She reached for the limits of her body—as she would do when remanifesting from having dispersed herself into the air—but those limits were vague and unreachable. Yet she felt her body was sound. Only numbness. What was on the tip of the barb with which he poisoned me? She filled with alarm.

  Anael continued. “When I possess the stone, I shall return your son to you, greasy traitoress. He shall be as you have known him to be, but oh,” he snorted, “apart from one difference.” He leaned closer, and she began to suffer from his rank breath. “I am afraid the boy has started to metamorphose. Regrettable,” he said, his tone nonchalant. “I do not suppose I can pretend to know how many more days will be allotted to him, even if you were to fulfill our covenant and earn his release. Many Brothers will pursue the spark his life emits under the sun and seek to snuff it.” He backed away from her prone and motionless body. “But such things,” a wicked smile became audible in his tone, “tend to make one’s life … compelling. Yes. The compulsion will drive you as you were meant to be driven—like a dumb beast.” He struck her.

  She could hear the footsteps he made as he took his leave of her.

  “I shall return with instructions when you are lucid. If you betray me again, your son will die.”

  She fell again into darkness.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Mountains of Hijaz—Present Day

  THE HOST WERE VERY old. They were among the first of the angelic creatures created, and they swore fealty to the Maker of all things. El gave them orders and they carried them out with all their being.

  They were the guards of old, from legend and myth. Hidden beyond the sight and reach of man, Eden grew more lush and beautiful than on the day it was created. The Host did not only guard the entrance, they also tended the garden and lived on the sands of its shores and among the fronds of its jungles.