by Hanna Peach
“I’m sorry Passar. But I can’t be too careful.”
She points her sabre down towards the ground but she doesn’t sheath it. She eyes Passar’s soris hanging from his belt.
“What are you doing back here?” He glances around again. “If they find you...”
“Is it that bad?”
His grim expression is answer enough. Passar’s eyes widen when he notices the bandage around her calf. “What happened to you?”
“One of the Darkened sliced me with a weapon but I don’t know what it was. I can’t heal the wound,” Alyx says. “Passar, you should have seen them. Nightmare demons, hate demons… the greater demons that we always thought were just legends. They’re real and they’re here in Saint Joseph and they are congregating. Something is happening, something terrible.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw them all myself. We followed them to a house in the Valley.”
“We?”
Alyx hesitates before speaking, “I’ve been Guardian-bonded to a mortal.”
Passar let out a low whistle, his eyes widening. “He must be pretty special.”
Her eyelashes lower, her thought turn to Israel’s smiling face, causing her body to warm. “He is.”
She has a thought. “Passar, you have to warn the other lightwarriors. Warn them about the greater demons, about their new weapon. Tell them that the Darkened are up to something.”
“If it’s this big then I should to go to the Elders.”
“No. You can’t trust them.”
“What are you talking about?”
She bites her lip.
“Alyx, it’s me. You can tell me.”
Finally she nods. “I found a communication thread belonging to Elder Michael. In it were maps of a secret Seraphim city and an update on a secret Seraphim army. I don’t know how many of the other Elders are involved.”
Passar frowns. “Elder Michael has been acting different lately. Do you remember that strange address he made at Announcements?”
Alyx nods as she remembers some of Elder Michael’s words that day, “The mortals grow selfish, destructive, greedy... Be prepared for the coming of a new era.”
Passar continues, “He’s been making more speeches like that. Some of the Seraphim are starting to openly agree with him.”
“He’s planning something.”
“Let me dig around, see what I can uncover. I’ll share with you what I find out when it’s safe for me to sneak out of Michaelea. Just tell me where to find you.”
Alyx draws back, hesitant. “It isn’t safe for you to get involved. What if they catch you? What if they find out you’re helping me?”
“I’ll be careful, I promise. Alyx you can’t figure this out on your own. You need help. Let me help you.”
You don’t have to do this alone.
Alyx takes a deep breath and some of the growing anxiety she has been carrying around by herself eases a little. “Okay. Thank you.”
Chapter 54
The small studio apartment brings back so many memories for him. Israel stands at the foot of the bed looking at the painting of a sandy beach hanging on the far wall. He bought that for Adere at the el Souq markets. They had talked often of going away to the beach together. For some reason they never made it there. What is he doing back here?
“Hello stranger,” a familiar voice comes from behind him, cool and clear as a bell.
Israel spins on his heel. Adere is sitting, stoic and pale like a ghost, against the faded lemon love seat. Her light hair spills over one shoulder, her thin arms stretch along the top of the seat. Her petite features are just as he remembers. There is no mossy skin, no protruding horns, no jagged teeth. She looks human. Israel finds that he can’t speak.
“Have you been looking for me?” she says, and stands, her thin silk shift skimming over her long lean body.
She walks towards him, fluid, like a dancer. A part of him wants desperately to run from her, but a part of him wants to stay.
“Adere? Is that really you?”
She stops before him, close enough that he can feel her breath on his chest. “Of course, my love.”
“But your face, it’s...but it can’t be. You’re Darkened.”
“It’s really me. Oh Israel, you don’t know what it’s like to be a prisoner in your own body, having your own memories used against you, having to witness everything but being powerless to stop it. The only time I can gain some control back is when the demon is asleep. I’ve been watching the demon use her powers. It’s how I’ve been able to slip into your Dreamscape. She doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Look at my face Israel. Do you see any signs of demon?” She grabs his hand and pulls his fingers across the creamy skin of her pale cheek.
“No.”
She presses her body against his, fingers fluttering against his chest like little butterflies. Her voice lowers to a shaky hush. “You have to help me Israel. You’re my only hope.”
“What are you talking about?” He wants to turn away from her but... he can’t.
She peers up at him through lowered lashes. “Do you remember, Israel, all the good times we had when we lived here together? You and I.” Her hands find his stomach under his shirt. He gasps at how cold her fingers are but he doesn’t push them away. Can’t push them away. “Do you remember we would stay in bed all night and all the next day? We can have that again.”
“Adere, what do you want?”
“Do you still want me?” Her hands travel down below his stomach. He grabs her wrists, jerks his hips away.
“Adere, seriously, what do you want from me?”
She looks pained, then her face melts into a dreamy wistfulness. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it was you last night. I knew you had been looking for me. Still being a hero. My hero. You haven’t changed a bit, my love.” Adere pulls her hands out of his grip and cups his face. “Israel, there is a way to turn me back. To make me wholly human again.”
“No. Alyx said there’s no way.”
“Alyx? Is that her name? That Seraphim you were with?”
Israel doesn’t answer. He doesn’t feel right talking to Adere about Alyx.
“She’s lying to you, Israel. There is a way.”
“She would never lie to me.”
“She may not lie, but she may be wrong. Her Elders, they lie to her, don’t they?”
Yes. The Elders have lied to Alyx.
“She would never lie to me,” Israel says firmly.
Adere cocks her head. “You care about her don’t you?”
“Leave her out of this.”
“She’s a Seraphim warrior Israel, an immortal. She will stay young and beautiful forever and you will only get older. It’s only a matter of time before she leaves you. Then you’ll be alone. Old and alone.”
She already left without him.
“We are meant to be together, Israel. Us. We two are alike. We are both broken, damaged souls but we can grow old together. If you change me back I promise you, I will never leave you.”
Israel feels a beautiful ache through his body when he thinks of Alyx. Feels a sea of fire through his soul when he remembers her lips on his body. Her perfect lips on his scarred body.
“She doesn’t need you, Israel, I do.”
She doesn’t need you.
Adere is right. How long until Alyx grows tired of him? How long until she realizes exactly how damaged he is? How long until she leaves for good?
“You owe me this Israel,” Adere says, her voice with a hard edge to it. “You owe it to me.”
The memories of the night Adere become Darkened come back to him in a twisted wreck of guilt. They had been screaming and arguing, he can’t even remember about what. He remembers the crashing of the plates against the wall near his head, the cursing from her mouth. Remembers the things he yelled back at her. Unforgiveable things. Then in her anguish, the Dark took over.
<
br /> It was his fault. They were trying to get to him through her. He didn’t warn her about them. Didn’t think she would believe him.
It’s his fault that she’s Darkened. He owes this to Adere.
“What do I have to do?”
“That’s my boy.” Adere’s face breaks out into a triumphant grin. “You can’t tell Alyx. She would never understand what you’re trying to do. Sneak out tonight and meet me. I will trick the demon into going out alone. Capture the demon and release me.”
“How?”
Adere glances about the room, fear suddenly in her eyes. “I can’t explain now. Just meet me at the place we first kissed.” She sets her gaze back to Israel and smiles. “You remember our first kiss don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Promise me you’ll meet me there. After midnight. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“I have to go. I’ll see you soon and then, then we can be together again, my love.”
Adere presses her lips to his. He lets her.
Chapter 55
“Israel, I’m back,” Alyx calls into the dim warehouse as she yanks up the roller-door and squeezes under it. She moves quickly through the darkened warehouse, past the familiar machinery arms and conveyor belts still as ghosts. Everything is quiet. Too quiet.
“Israel?” There is a small movement within the tangle of sheets in the corner. “Don’t tell me you’re still in bed you lazy bones.” Alyx walks over to the mattress. “I can’t believe you’re still in bed.”
Alyx kneels beside him and yanks away the covers. His face has black skin and hollow eyes like a skeleton.
“Boo,” the nightmare demon growls. And lunges for her.
Alyx flips back, catching herself upside down mid-air and pulling her sabre from its sheath. Two more demons rush out from their hiding places behind machinery, brandishing swords with black blades, their faces shimmering with the green skin and horns underneath like rows of teeth.
The two demon’s rush for her. Her sword clashes with the closest green skinned demon. She knocks his sword point down towards his knees. Her blade lashes out. The first demon falls without a sound.
The second demon won’t fall so easily. Their blades clash several times as Alyx flits forward and back in the air, in and out of the reach of his sword.
She flips over his head and thrusts her sabre forward from another angle. The demon tries to block her. She evades his blade and hits the underside of his sword, causing him to over-swing. Her sword slices into the demon’s exposed neck. His sword clatters to the ground, then the thud of his body.
Alyx hears clapping. She spins to see the nightmare demon, now standing up on the mattress. “Well done. They have trained you well haven’t they?” He steps forward from the tangle of sheets.
“What have you done with him?” Alyx says, trying to stop her voice from leaking her fear.
The demon pauses as if hearing something far away. “What...” his voice starts to warble and grow higher in pitch as he speaks, “what have you done with him?”
Alyx can’t believe her ears. The demon now sounds exactly like... her. “What is this? Where is he?”
“Where is he?” Alyx hears the nightmare demon repeating in her voice. “What is this?”
They’ve hurt him. They’ve killed him. He’s dead. The voice, her voice, repeats over and over until it is echoing off the insides of her mind.
“No,” Alyx screams as she shakes her head, trying to clear the noise. The voices drop all at once like stones. Suddenly, it is the silence that is deafening.
Alyx blinks. The nightmare demon has disappeared. Holding herself aloft in the air, she listens for him. She floats above where the he was last standing, her eyes searching the floor and between pieces of machinery.
There’s a body on the concrete.
A moan falls from her lips like a single drop of blood. The life ebbs from her arms. In her weakened grip her sword almost slides from her fingers. The very thing she feared the most.
Israel’s prone body, surrounded by a pool of blood. His lifeless eyes are open, staring at her, as if to accuse her.
“Israel. Please. No,” Alyx chokes out between sobs, the pain in her chest so crushing she can barely breathe.
She flies to him.
Her knees hit the ground hard enough to bruise as she throws herself to his side. Her sword is dropped, forgotten, clattering against the ground.
She never told him how she felt about him. Now she won’t get that chance.
“Israel,” she whispers, her hands shaking so hard she can barely control them. She unfurls her fingers to touch his face, his lifeless face. To brush, one last time, across the silent scar that will never dance for her again.
Her hands go right through him. What? This isn’t right. She clutches for him again. Again her fingers go straight through him like he is made of mist.
His body flickers then disappears. Alyx stares. The concrete floor is bare. No blood, no body.
A sound over her shoulder. She rolls sideways. The nightmare demon’s falling sword clips her arm, clanks against the concrete.
“So touching,” he growls and charges at her again. Alyx darts up towards the roof of the warehouse out of his reach. “Not fair little girl. Come down and play.”
Alyx looks down at her arm and pushes her focus to it. But this cut continues to bleed. She turns her eyes to his sword, a black glassy blade. She has never seen such a weapon.
The demon picks up her sword from where it lies. He continues to taunt her as he jumps around the pieces of machinery trying to get within sword’s reach of her.
Alyx spies a demonsword near the body of one of the fallen Darkened. Can she make it? She speeds like a bullet towards it, the nightmare demon leaping after her.
Alyx swoops to the concrete, grabs the demonsword by the handle, rolls in time to clashes her sword against the nightmare demon’s blade, inches from her face. She kicks the nightmare demon off her and lashes out with the demonsword.
“Where is he? What have you done with him?”
But her anger has made her heavy-handed and sloppy. The demon laughs as he merely steps to the side to avoid her blade.
“Silly girl. It is you who brings to life what you’re afraid of. I merely amplify the effect.”
Metal echoes out across the span of the warehouse as they fight back and forth. Alyx can feel the rush of fear start to tremor louder under her skin. The voice begins to echo again in her head.
Not good enough. He will die because I’m not good enough. I was never good enough. Never
good
enough.
The demon draws a large breath of air into his lungs and starts to chuckle. He seems twice as big and twice as strong as when she first started to fight him. Alyx can feel her body begin to tremble. She isn’t going to get out of this alive.
Alyx is driven further and further back as the demon hacks at her blade, her arm feeling heavier with each blow. She feels a wave of blackness trying to pull her under. The Guardian-bond is trying to take her into Israel’s mind. It takes all her mental strength to push away from the blackness.
It is enough of a distraction. A bony hand claws around her forearm, pulls her in close, trapping her sword arm between them. Her blade is useless.
This close to him she can see the rotting teeth in his exposed flesh and the crawl of pale wriggling maggots. She can smell the stink of decay. The demon grins and a piece of his flesh falls off exposing more pallid bone underneath.
Alyx screams, the sound tearing out all the air from her lungs. Her body drains of energy again. The demon laughs and rips her sword from her hand. He throws her aside like a child throws a doll.
She lands, winded, on a belt of rollers. Pain shoots through her arm where she has fallen on it. It feels broken.
The demon jumps up after her. Before she can move, the length of his forearm is crushing her throat, his body is pinning her to the steel rollers.
&nb
sp; “You Seraphim think you’re so much better than everyone else but you’re not so different,” the demon says in her voice. “You also let your fears cripple you.”
Over the demon’s shoulder Alyx sees a hanging arm of a crane sporting a mean-looking hook. If only she can push the demon onto it. She wriggles and fights. It does little to move the creature looming above her. The demon chuckles at her attempts.
Her eyes falls upon the control panel beside them. To a green and a red button. The hook, this machine, they are connected.
“Goodbye little seraph.”
Alyx kicks out to the panel. Misses.
The demon places his other hand on her chest. “It’s been fun playing.”
A tearing sensation rips across her whole body as the demon starts to draw the life from her. She screams. She is dying.
The demon closes his eyes, throws his head back and roars with pleasure. Through her shredding pain Alyx gathers enough strength to kick out towards the panel one last time. She clips the green button with her heel.
There is a whirring of gears as the machine crunches to life. The demon, consumed with the ecstasy of her life-force, doesn’t seem to notice. Alyx squeezes her eyes shut and waits for death.
She hears a loud wet noise. Then a choking, a gurgling. The pain in her body ceases and the choke against her neck loosens.
Opening her eyes, Alyx sees the demon above her, eyes bulging. The hook has swung through his torso causing a spread of foul smelling blood across his chest. His arms are now hanging limp, sword skittering across the concrete having spun off the machine rollers.
The machine continues to grind as the large hook drags the demon over her, his moist and rotten skin sliding across hers causing her to gag. The demon is pulled completely from her and down the machine track, his feet dragging along the rollers making them spin.
Alyx kicks for the panel again, this time hitting the red button. The machine shudders and falls silent. Alyx falls back against the rollers with a gasp.
Chapter 56
Tonight, Israel keeps in the darkness around the edge of Remembrance Park, the scattered old lamp posts shining moons of light on the grass.
