I crossed my fingers as I pulled on the cargo pants.
I giggled. They were about a foot too long and just as wide. I pulled the drawstring as tight as I could and cuffed them up to my knees. I looked like a refugee, but I was thankful at least for clothes to wear.
A burst of laughter shot out over the boardwalk, knifing through the night. It spooked me, but I realized it was just a bunch of people partying into the wee hours of the morning in their room, the balcony door wide open. They hadn’t seen me.
I turned up the path toward the café, trying to act like I belonged there.
My hair felt slimy and gross, but I was once again a girl. It felt awesome.
Now to find help.
I stumbled a little; my head was spinning. My stomach growled. Okay, first things first: I desperately need something to eat. “All right, She. Whatchagot?”
CHAPTER VIII
Cape Town, South Africa, present day
NWABA UTTERED GUTTURAL CLICKS, a language of the damned, of the fallen. He stood in the center of the circular room, the fire ringing its perimeter augmented now, the flames enlarged and intense, licking ever higher at the tops of the walls. The eight red-winged creatures hanging above echoed the ritualistic song, amplifying its effect, the three Anti-Cherubs issuing forth upside down with exhortations in unknown tongue.
In the center of the floor below, the body of Kim lay on the slab. Mr. Emmanuel, now robed in black, read incantations from an ancient book. John the bait man, still unconscious, was now suspended directly above Kim’s body by chains that descended from the black hole in the ceiling.
Outside, thousands upon thousands of Nri demons deposited their hosts on the roof and then clustered upon the building like an ant hill, crawling downward on its obsidian glass surfaces, penetrating through every aperture and crack to its interior, trembling with caustic delight at the prospect of conquest.
The master had issued the call to arms. That hadn’t happened for a thousand years.
Inside the building, now just one floor below the penthouse, the angel Kreios stood nearly omnipotent, in submission only to El. He awaited instructions.
Then in the middle of the night, as a closed door suddenly opens upon a new way—a path anticipated by faith—Kreios understood what he would do. El had made sense of his vendetta for revenge on the Brotherhood; He would make sense of this new thing as well.
Kreios was off like a shot, a bolt of pure lightning.
He pierced straight through the remaining structures that remained overhead, into the sky. The report of his flight was visible for miles around. He flew straight up, the trail he left behind pure white light.
Nwaba’s pathetic little ritual was thrown into chaos as the building shook. The demons on the ceiling chattered nervously, the bait man swung to and fro in his chains, and even Mr. Emmanuel was flustered in the reading of the incantations.
The three Anti-Cherubs wasted no time. They scurried back through the opening in the ceiling, gone. Gone.
Nwaba shrieked his displeasure and rage to the four winds, issuing immediate orders to seek and destroy the angel Kreios. What Brother could bring back his head would be promoted to second in command.
The swarming frenzy of Nri demons that had shrouded the skyscraper in a surging mass of hideous activity now peeled off like wasps, following the trail left by the angel.
I found part of a sandwich on one of the outside tables in the café, which, by the way, was what Bertha’s was; a restaurant. I had assumed it was some kind of clothing store, given how cryptic She had become.
My mouth watered as I looked at the half sandwich. I looked around like a thief before wolfing the whole thing down. I figured I could be grossed out later. My body was reminding me of my equally strong desire for a drink of water just then, when my eyes were drawn to something in the distance.
Then I saw it: Something pierced the sky in the distance like lightning. Except it was going straight up.
What is that?
Kreios was drawing the entire Nri clan out from its high citadel, the physical amplifier for its Babylonic power. The skyscraper had served from the time of its construction as a conduit for the transfer of power from the spirit realm to the natural. As such, Kreios reasoned, if it could be destroyed or at least minimized in the battle, the Nri would scatter like roaches when the lights came on. He trusted that El had a plan.
If the feint was to work properly, he would have to slow down and give the demons something to attain. In other words, he would have to let them catch up a little. Once more, he had to demonstrate what he believed with action.
But as he did so, he felt an old familiar drain on his angelic abilities. His heart sank. This could simply not be so.
Now he was entirely exposed in the sky, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no weapon in his hand and no clues from El as to what to do next. The more he fell back, the more his strength was sapped. He had gone too far this time. Past the tipping point. They would have him soon, and when they did, his life would indeed end.
Unless El does something.
Kreios fell still farther back. He reached out to El, questioning.
“Just watch,” was all he heard.
Nwaba watched his entire army depart, giving chase to a single angel. He began to have second thoughts as to the tactical sustainability of his last orders. He considered a countermand, but in the end dismissed it as impractical. Besides, he didn’t have even a single courier to send so that the order could be rescinded. He growled and let it be.
The tower could remain unguarded as long as the primary foe was completely engaged in battle, and that was Kreios.
But is it? Doubts filtered in around the edges of his mind. Was Kreios indeed the primary source of enemy power, or had Nwaba fallen for a ruse of war? It was too large for him to understand. Nevertheless, he had his instincts. And they were telling him to fly, that it was no longer safe to stay in the tower now. It was a target, and he, if he was smart, would get away from it as quickly as possible.
But where to go? Somewhere with leverage, that’s where.
He whipped his long thin tail around, skillfully cutting the chains that held the bait man aloft. He fell to the floor a wreck, beside the now fully thawed body of Kim. She was nothing but a cadaver.
The only pulse that remained within her now found its source in the Bloodstone. When the two were united and the transition ritual performed, she could be discarded. Until then she would remain useful, however.
“Mr. Emmanuel, we depart now. Gather these slaves.”
CHAPTER IX
I STOOD ON THE ground slack-jawed, looking at something impossible.
A bolt of pure light, evidence of heaven, shot straight up into the sky.
Kreios.
I spoke my grandfather’s name in awe: “Kreios!”
When I first saw him blasting through the atmosphere on a trail of light, my heart took to flight as well. I remembered his training; that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Indeed, love was all I could feel when I saw my grandfather. It was an awesome thing to see him take to the skies.
I let the waves of emotion roll over me. I allowed my heart to roam free in the excitement of knowing that my grandfather was still alive, that I might soon be reunited with him, that he might soon learn the truth about me—that I, too, was still alive. I had to get to him.
I realized then in my reverie that I had closed my eyes.
I opened them to discover that I was more than twenty feet above the pavement.
What the heck?!
Thankfully, She interrupted my alarmed thoughts. “Concentrate!”
I obliged, wide eyed. I thought of the last thing I could remember before I found myself hovering above the street. Kreios. I was thinking about seeing him again. Our reunion. I stared at the horizon, at the vertical line described by my grandfather’s incredible flight through the air.
I glanced down. I was now more than one hundred feet above the grou
nd, in the darkness of the predawn sky. Whoa. My mind calculated things I hadn’t needed before. It made accurate tallies of altitude with a glance, brought me trajectories and g-force loads and sharpened my vision incredibly. While I was taking it all in, She interrupted me again.
“Change of plans. Kreios needs you more than Michael right now.”
I was a gigantic question mark inside. What?
“Use the Sword. Defend your family. Airel…you were born for this. Awaken!”
Something inside me took hold. It was beyond thought or explanation. It just was. The word she used—Awaken—was perfect. I felt like every part of me, both human and angelic, once mere averages and mostly asleep, were now wide awake and aware of everything in my environment.
Wideawake. That’s what I was. It struck me that there simply was no such thing as coincidence anymore.
My eyes, once wide with new realization, now narrowed into the hard countenance of the warrior. Whatever had happened, She was dead right. I could do this.
I concentrated on one thing: speed.
If I could have seen myself, I might have fainted. I was starting to come into my own. The awakening process, much different from mere activation, had given me my wings. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them. With that change had come new powers of observation, like altitude and airspeed over ground, stuff like that. But I had also gained a new set of eyelids. It sounds gross, but they were cool. They slid down to protect my eyes from the sheer force of the wind rushing against them in flight. They were a little like those nighttime driving glasses, only far cooler and much more useful. They sharpened my sight, protected my eyes, illuminated everything.
I was definitely coming into my own.
I focused on where I needed to be: straight ahead ten miles and about twenty thousand feet straight up. I set my jaw and leaned forward.
I was gone, out of there.
The speed I gained came quickly. Before I knew it, I was passing five hundred miles per hour and still accelerating. I was going to go supersonic. I looked ahead, toward Kreios, trying to concentrate on flying. Flying!
A few seconds later there was a big boom, and everything went quiet. I was outrunning sound itself.
I stole a glance backward. Behind me was a trail of pure blue light.
Kreios was becoming desperate. He was getting very close to the edge of what he could handle. He would soon plummet to the earth, out of control, easy pickings for the Nri vultures. He closed his eyes and fixed his heart completely on El now.
“Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him.”
Kreios flamed out. He was out of energy, spent. He curled up and fell. It would not be long until the Nri intercepted him and tore him to pieces. There were no questions. There was no why. Whatever happened now would happen, and he would be at peace with it.
With this thought, shadows closed in upon his mind. He thought of his beautiful wife. He had told her thousands of years ago that they would be reunited. He longed to fulfill that promise. Perhaps now…
I was getting close. I could see clearly from one mile away that Kreios was falling. It looked like he was out of control. What is he doing?
“He needs your help.”
Kreios tumbled as if unconscious. A skinny demon with wings much too big for its body took a swipe at Kreios, grabbing him for a moment. I gasped and watched as he tossed my grandfather like a rag doll to another demon, much larger, who then turned back toward the earth.
I knew what to do. If my grandfather was a fearsome warrior, so was I. If he had killed his ten thousands of demonic infidels—which I knew from my own study was a word that meant “unfaithful”—then I too could, and I would. I thought of the Sword.
It sprang instantly to hand.
I opened my mouth to shout. The battle cry that came out shook the very skies, it was a shriek terrible to witness, sounding like a hawk diving for the kill…only I was ascending into the midst of a black cloud of Nri demons.
“This is the entire Nri horde,” She said.
They should have thought twice, I responded.
I did not see the masses of Nri wings and talons, just Kreios. He was my grandfather, he needed me and I would not let him die.
On my first pass through their airborne mob I sent one hundred and forty two of them to Hell.
I circled back around for more.
Kreios was still in the grip of the demon who had last grasped him, only most of that demon was gone. All that remained of it was a severed leg. The Sword was doing its job. The limb burst into ash, and my grandfather was free. But still falling.
Now at twenty thousand feet up, before Kreios fell to his death, I had quite simply a crapload of demons to kill. I faced the Nri horde alone, the Sword blazing in my hand.
CHAPTER X
KREIOS BEGAN TO FEEL something new. Rushing wind in his ears. The sensation of falling. He was not dead; he would not awaken to see his beloved bride. Not yet.
He opened his eyes. He was still alive and falling.
The drain…it was ebbing away. What was it he felt now? Vague but familiar. It was like the Sword of Light, only different. It was profound; it felt so similar to his beloved old weapon, yet it was clearly not somehow. He looked at his hands. They were empty. He felt it, though. The drain had stopped.
He was gaining strength.
He could fly again.
He corrected his descent and shot into the air, feeling all his strength beginning to return; he was being filled with power. El?
“Just watch.”
Then he saw what El was talking about. A blue streak cutting through the Nri horde. It was supersonic, and an attendant pure white light went with it. A great number of Nri demons were struck in the collision and began the long fall back to earth. They broke apart, turning back into ash. The blue streak circled back around again and again, taking more with every pass.
El, what is that? Kreios was genuinely bewildered, and what caused him to shake his head in amazement was that he had not felt bewildered for ages.
He could feel the delight in El’s voice: “Just watch.”
He did.
Kreios was safe. He could fly again; he was awake and aware, I could tell that much with my new super eyes. That left me free to use the Sword on the Nri.
And use it I did. Squalembrato; I sliced diagonally across the torso of a hideous and stinking wretch, then brought the blade back around and up, ready for the next one. Fendente; from 12 o’clock at the crown of its horned head with the temperato of my blade straight down the nasty thing, splitting its miserable carcass in two clean halves. I roared in vengeful fury, letting my love for my grandfather power my every move in midair.
Light from the Sword interlaced in three streams on the flat of the blade, winding down onto the hilt and onto my hand, up my arm. I was conjoined to the weapon; for the first time I felt that it belonged to me, that I possessed it, that it was mine to wield, mine to use. Together with it, I was aglow in the ash storm of demonic debris it created by my hand. None could withstand what I had now become.
Already supersonic, I began to pick up speed.
The streak of blue light wound its way around the cloud of the Nri, hemming them in on all sides; they had nowhere to go. Gradually as the streak went around and around, it began to take on the shape of a glowing blue globe, the trail of blue light passed through them so quickly. Huge amounts of demon detritus were grist in this mill. They fell out from the bottom of the globe as wings, trunks, limbs; now prey only to gravity and the surface of the earth miles below.
Kreios was overcome with emotion, coughing out an incredulous guffaw. El had utterly routed them. And quickly. “What is this new thing?” he asked.
Then he heard, “Just watch!”
Kreios waited and watched still more, and then the blue light slowed as the last of the Nri clan fell away beneath. The streak became still, a point of light, a round blue aura beneath pointing downward, the unmistakable pure and bright light
of the Sword of Light above.
Kreios was stunned for the second time that day. The Sword!
“Go,” he heard, so he went to it.
The sun was beginning its ascent in the east now. It threw its first rays upon the clouds where the battle had taken place, lighting them on fire in brilliant silver, red, and deepest midnight blue. Set like a jewel in a crown of magnificence was the radiant blue light, now just visible as a figure. It held aloft the piercing and pure Sword of Light, symbolic of victory.
He could not have imagined for anything in the world what he would behold when he drew near. There, with face burnished to glowing in the warmth of the Sword, was Airel. She smiled proudly at him.
He could do nothing but go to her and weep for his beloved granddaughter, his darling girl. She was dead, but was now alive. He shouted to the heavens with exultant joy, “She is alive! She is alive!” He fell on her shoulder and wept more, wept like a small child. The sun cast them in relief, a shimmering and pure sight.
CHAPTER XI
AS THE SUN ROSE over Cape Town there was a problem with the Table Mountain cable cars. The system was down, the cables jammed, and a car was stuck up near the top wheelhouse, dangling motionless from the cable 3500 feet above sea level.
Workmen doing the checks that morning in preparation for the open at 8 a.m. had gone missing. Clocking in, one of them was snatched screaming across the industrial floor of the mechanical room into the predawn darkness by something powerful and hideous. His cries were stifled shortly. The next one, alerted by the disturbance, had run into the room and been blindsided, grasped about the midsection by a massive clawed hand. Before he could draw breath to cry out, he was thrown out into the ether off the sheer edge of Table Mountain, falling to his appalling death after a very long drop into nothingness.
Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) Page 32
