Something dark and huge then mounted the cables, draping itself over the stopped cable car like a shroud.
As the sun began to rise, a fearsome cry rang out over the city. It sounded bird-like, but it was loud and it radiated darkness; it broadcast fear and rage. To the few early morning observers on the ground below, who could not see much, it looked like there was a massive tree tangled in the mechanism and dangling down from atop the lone stuck cable car. It fluttered and waved in the breeze.
But it was not a tree, and it was not passively fluttering.
It was the enraged prince of the Nri, the last of his kind, wearing his finest and largest suit—the one with the big wings and claws—“the better to kill you with, my dears”—and he was issuing the call for vengeance.
We heard the cawing croaking birdcall of the master of the principality from twenty thousand feet up. Though I had to shake my head at the relentlessness of events, I had learned to set aside my sometimes admittedly bad attitude and just buckle down. Besides, I had my grandfather back, and it was beyond awesome to be alive.
He was more than a little surprised to see me, especially up in the rarefied air he normally tread without me. He had so many questions that I was overwhelmed at first. I tried to begin to explain, but then this creature—Nwaba, Kreios called the prince of the Nri—had bellowed at us and we had to put the conversation off for the time being.
I couldn’t help but grin at Kreios as we flew together for the first time.
“I knew you were special, Airel, but this…I cannot believe it!” That just made me grin at him even more.
But the grin was wiped off my face when I saw what Nwaba had done.
There, on a cable car strung out above the city far below, was the biggest demon I had ever seen. He dwarfed the cable car on which he was perched, shrieking at us. In the carriage that dangled below were two figures that at first I did not recognize. One of them was in charge, the other was a hostage. It was obvious from their body language.
But then my newly enhanced eyes picked out something else inside the cable car, stretched out on the floor behind them. I recognized the dress. That little sundress. And the red hair. It was Kim. She looked horrible, like a corpse, and I wondered if she was alive. If they have killed her…I began to think of ways to punish the villains for their crimes, but then Kreios touched my arm. I looked at him and he shook his head. He had seen too.
“Remember your lessons,” he said.
I nodded and settled down.
The demon prince spoke.
“Kreios! You have been on a little killing spree, my old friend. Some of the strongest clans fell under your hand. And now you come here. To my house.” A guttural laugh. “And the daughter of El! She has found some new tricks to turn.” The demon looked down into the carriage and said something about a “Mr. Emmanuel” or something.
I looked into the carriage as it rocked under the weight of the monstrous demon. The wings of the beast drooped down far below the bottom of the car, and against the backdrop of the wheelhouse perched on the edge of the mountain, with its massive arched mouth waiting to receive its travelers, the sight was medieval. Dragons and castles filled my mind.
But then two and two clicked together to make four: I recognized the hostage.
No. It can’t be him. “Oh, no! Kreios! They have my dad!”
“Yes!” Nwaba cried. “Yes, I do! And I am unafraid to snuff his pathetic life!” He bared his teeth and hissed at us.
“Be careful, Nwaba. You are not in a position to make threats,” Kreios shouted at him.
“Am I not?” the demon said.
With that, the goon in the car, who I guessed was Mr. Emmanuel, then shoved my dad almost entirely out the window, holding him back at the last moment.
“DAD!” I shouted, and then noticed that something wasn’t right. My dad was standing, true. But he looked like a puppet on a string, asleep, yet he still stood.
“Shall I drop him?” the goon Mr. Emmanuel said. “Or shoot you in the head?” He then aimed a pistol at me with his free hand.
“Keep moving; don’t hover,” Kreios said, and I took his advice, making little dodging movements in the air that would complicate, if nothing else, a pistol shot at that range; about one hundred feet, which I knew thanks to my new precision eyeballs.
The demon spoke up with a deep guttural voice that made me shiver. “I want only one thing, Kreios. And you know what that is.”
“I do not,” he answered.
“Yes, you do!” the demon prince shouted. He was enraged. “How could you fail to see the most important piece of the puzzle, angel of El? Of course you know!”
Again, Kreios answered him, “I don’t know what you want. Whatever it is, demon, I will not give you anything.”
Nwaba screamed a vicious tantrum into the clear morning air. “Bring me The Alexander!”
Michael? Why would they want Michael?
“Bring me The Alexander, or I will kill her father!”
Panic started tearing at the edges of my mind.
Then I heard distant shouting, I turned to look. There on the service catwalk of the upper wheelhouse, perched on the precipitous cliff, was Michael. He looked like he was ready for a fight.
“Nwaba!” he shouted down at us. “I am right here! Come and get me!”
Wait. What? How did he get there? And where is Ellie?
CHAPTER XII
THE DEMON PRINCE WASTED not a single passing thread in the web of time; he launched from the wires, flinging himself at Michael Alexander with a single mighty stroke of his great wings.
The cable car was thrust into severe bouncing motions as Nwaba pushed off, bobbing on the wires like a weight on a bungee. It fell, then launched upward and then back down again violently.
The passengers inside were all thrown in different directions.
Mr. Emmanuel fell back, his grip on the bait man John broken by the forces at work. He crashed into the opposite wall of the car. The impact knocked the breath from him.
Kim, the host of the Bloodstone, slid into his feet. Either dead or unconscious, he didn’t know and he did not care.
No, what Mr. Emmanuel cared about was the bait man John. He had lost control of him in the swinging motion of the car, being forced to watch in horror as his bargaining chip toppled over the rail and disappeared.
I saw my dad falling and dove after him; there was nothing else to be done. It was horrifying. I managed to catch him, pulling up seconds before we hit the rocks below. He was unconscious, but he was breathing. What is it with the men in my life needing me to rescue them all the time?!
I had to find somewhere safe for him. I needed to get Kim. I had to help Michael. The more I thought about it, the more the impossibility of the whole thing became clear to me.
“I can’t do everything.” I had to do what I could do and trust El to do the rest. “Please, God. Keep them safe. Michael, Kreios and Kim.”
I scanned the landscape and spotted a boulder-strewn clearing in the nearby mountains. But there was something there that made me gasp.
“Ellie!”
Nwaba the demon prince plucked the boy Michael from the catwalk as easily as an eagle would snatch a trout from a lake, his talons wrapping like prison bars around the boy’s midsection. He flew off with his prey, moving swiftly for the business district of Cape Town, for his high tower.
Thoughts raced through his head; options. Perhaps The Alexander could lead him directly to what he desired most after all. Nwaba touched down on the rooftop of the tower by the big elm. He flung Michael to one side as he landed.
He scrambled away, moving toward the great elm tree, which was in full leaf.
Nwaba chuckled at his fear; it was delicious to him. “Now, boy, we can negotiate.” He now changed, the chameleon lord, into his favorite suit of clothes. His scaly skin became pure white, his tail thinned to a long wire, his face disturbingly humanoid.
Michael began climbing the tree, communicatin
g fear on his face, in his movements.
Nwaba was amused. “What are you doing, boy? Come down, coward!” he pranced and mocked him, cackling wickedly.
He scampered farther up the tree, grabbing for branches, paying him no heed.
“Come now, boy! I won’t hurt you. We must talk, negotiate. I know you are the rightful heir to the Bloodstone. I just want to come to terms with you.”
“You know I don’t have it,” came a voice from within the foliage.
Nwaba was given pause. “So you say,” he said, “But that does not matter. Let us find it together.” He paused again, pacing, his wire tail whipping around. “I know it calls to you, boy. You are the heir. Surely you have heard its sweet whispers…as I have.”
No answer from the tree.
Nwaba crept nearer as he spoke. “Surely, Michael Alexander, you have heard what lies in store. You have seen and heard visions.” He was at the base of the tree, the sticky pads of his hands feeling around for a hold, the claws of his feet sinking into the green wood. He began to climb upward. “You are The Alexander.”
Silence from above.
“I know what conquests can be made. I can still choose a new host, you know that as well as I; you and I can unite and be truly magnificent!” Nwaba articulated his long wire tail upward into the branches of the tree as he climbed, probing for the boy. “Surely you share my thirst for domination.” His voice snapped in contempt for the present situation, for his apparent powerlessness to convince the boy of what he wanted, what he needed.
Mr. Emmanuel regained his feet and began firing his pistol, loaded with .45 ACP magnum load hollow points. First he had taken a shot at Airel, but she was too fast, she was there and then gone, diving after the bait man John. He growled in frustration. Then he took aim at the angel Kreios, who was the only one not moving. The first shot went wide.
The angel moved quickly. Before he could fire another shot, Kreios was inside the car, pushing him away from the door, one iron hand grasping his shirt and the other thrusting his pistol skyward.
He thought fast, waving the fingers of his non-firing hand. The hollow point bullet he had just fired began to circle back around.
“Come now, boy! Do not hide! You cannot hide from me. You cannot hide from the Bloodstone.”
The tail was now far above. It had threaded its snake-like way through the branches, up and over and through, and was now making its way back downward.
“You are The Alexander, boy.” Nwaba saw the boy’s foot resting on a branch before his very face. He smiled. He reached up and grabbed hold of it and then shot forward and up, thrusting his face into the face of the boy, spitting, “It has called your name!”
Michael was unperturbed.
This, for a split second, confused the demon prince.
“Yes, I know,” the boy said. He showed his hand, in which he grasped Nwaba’s tail. It had threaded its way through the tree, up and over a great limb and back down again, and the boy had shrewdly procured it for his own use. “But who are you?”
Very quickly, he looped the wire tail around Nwaba’s head, pulled it tight, and leapt from the tree.
Kreios squeezed powerfully against the wrist bones of the man’s firing hand, first breaking them, then crushing them.
The man cried out in agony but the bullet was now on course; he smiled.
But the angel knew. He turned at the last minute, placing Mr. Emmanuel’s head directly into the bullet’s new line of trajectory. The last thing Mr. Emmanuel saw was the face of El’s most terrible angel, in most terrible aspect: victory.
Nwaba was hanged. He struggled viciously for a few seconds, his eyes shut tight. When the visions that appeared before him became too terrible to bear, he opened them wide and beheld nothing but blackness. The host had expired, he had nowhere to hide.
CHAPTER XIII
KREIOS TOUCHED DOWN ON the rooftop of the tower to find Michael Alexander not only alive, but well.
“Michael,” he said, “I should kill you.” Kreios did not know what to think about the boy Airel loved. He had harbored so much unbridled hatred toward him since that day on the cliff top that looking at him now…he wondered where it had all gone.
“Would you like to kill me now? Because I also wrecked your truck…”
He was in earnest, which impressed Kreios. He could sense a sea of change within the boy. He responded to him in deadpan, “No. I will not kill you right now. But the truck… perhaps we will talk about that later.” He looked up into the tree as the demon Nwaba broke apart into ash and floated away in the breeze. “I will say, however, that I am now an admirer of your work.” Words were so much cheaper than actions, Kreios mused. He would see, but perhaps the boy deserved a chance after all.
“Thanks.” Michael shifted his feet, looking away. The awkwardness between them thickened.
Kreios looked at him. “You are well. How is this so?”
Michael showed him his chest, which was clear of any sign of the work of the Bloodstone. “Ellie healed me.”
“Ellie? Who is Ellie?”
“She’s a half breed, an Immortal. We met her while we were trying to catch up with you. You know, along your trail of destruction. But—”
Kreios was grim. “Yes.” He thought for a moment. “I suppose I should apologize.”
Michael said nothing.
“Michael—”
“—Look, this half-breed girl, Ellie. We don’t have time to talk. She needs help. When she healed me…something happened. And I’m afraid the only one who knows what we might be able to do…is you.”
“Where is she?”
CHAPTER XIV
KREIOS AND MICHAEL LANDED in the little boulder clearing. He saw John lying in a patch of rough grass off to one side, still heavily drugged. Michael strode quickly over to Airel, who was kneeling before the prostrate form of a girl. This must be the half-breed Ellie, Kreios thought as he too approached them.
“Airel!”
Airel leaped to her feet and threw her arms around the boy, embracing him. “Michael, you’re… okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking down at the girl with eyes drenched in outsized responsibility and regret.
Kreios remained off to one side, looking at Michael’s expression.
“She saved me,” he managed, choking up. “Now she’s…”
“We have to do something,” Airel said, tears streaming down her face.
Michael pulled her closer to him.
Airel looked from Michael to Kreios with a spark of fear in her eyes. “Where’s Kim?”
“She…” Michael began. But he could not finish.
Airel’s face became white. She shook her head in disbelief, her eyes wide. She then fell into his arms sobbing. “No!”
Michael held her in his arms like a man would hold his bride of many years, consoling her, comforting her for some great loss; the grief of which he would be there to help her bear for years to come. Kreios was struck by the power of that image then, and the stock of the boy rose in his estimation once more.
So much pain and loss, and Kreios knew the taste of it well. Very well. Today one life had been snuffed. Kim was gone. Perhaps that was for the best, especially given how she had chosen…but it still didn’t reduce the sting, especially for Airel, he knew. But he could do something for this Ellie; maybe she could yet be saved.
He gently touched Michael’s shoulder. Their eyes met and Michael moved with Airel to one side.
As they moved away, Kreios looked down on the form of the half-breed girl, this Ellie.
He caught his breath, felt his legs go weak. He rushed forward and fell to his knees at her side, choking out his daughter’s name: “Eriel?”
Coming Soon ...
URIEL
BOOK THREE IN THE AIREL SAGA
CHAPTER I
Cape Town, South Africa, present day
KREIOS FELL TO HIS knees in the dirt beside her. His eyes were beyond tender. “Dad,” was all she said.
/> “Eriel,” he whispered.
She smiled, weak. “Dad, I’ve told you a thousand times. It’s Uriel.” She coughed up blood. “I’ve missed you.”
Kreios broke into heavy wild sobs, weeping bitterly over his daughter. Thousands of years had passed since she had disappeared. He thought she had died! And now…just when he found her again…she was as good as dead. The pain of these thoughts racked him into more despair, and he wept. After a few more moments he recovered enough to ask, “What happened?”
“Easy,” she replied, “I took the mark upon myself.”
Kreios was stunned, pained, confused. “But that’s my fault,” was all he could manage. He crouched back on his knees and looked up, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Michael and Airel are…” Uriel began, “…more important. They’re crucial, dad.”
He looked at her with blazing eyes and said, “But you are crucial to me! I cannot allow this.” He stood. Pure love radiated from his countenance; it was unrestrained.
It was dangerous.
He closed his eyes for a long time, remaining motionless.
Finally he broke the silence. “Airel…Airel, take Michael and your father and get off this mountain.”
“What?” she said.
He turned to her and said gently, “It will not be safe for you here, child. Not for anyone. You must go.”
He turned back to his daughter, to his Eriel—his Uriel. More tears crept up on him and escaped from his eyes. “If we…if what I am about to do makes an end of my daughter, you must go and find what is next for you. I may not be able to continue on.” His tone was flat, resigned. He knew what he would do. There was only one choice remaining; there was no sense delaying anything.
Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) Page 33
