Into The Light (The Fallen Shadows)

by Rebecca R. Cohen

  “Absolutely fascinating,” Chance said repeating the sentence a few times, completely baffled by the Tracker in front of him.

  “Okay…” Katharine said rather uncommitted, “So my seeing the Golden Gate Bridge means that the Descended are what, hiding out on the bridge?”

  Ash chuckled at her innocence and lack of knowledge on how the entire tracking process worked. He couldn’t help but laugh at how adorably clueless she was. “No, it means that they are in San Francisco.” Ash explained standing besides Molli with his arms folded on his chest. “You won’t see the specific location of where the Descended are, nor do most Trackers see them so far away, you will see specific landmarks that will tell you the general area of where they are. It’s an imperfect system.”

  Chance shot him a look knowing that his last remark was a jab at the entire Tracker system.

  “There’s something else,” Katharine said remembering the inexplicable word she heard the Descended say during the ascension. “I heard something, a word I didn’t recognize, ulaz.”

  The entire garden fell silent. Katharine had said something that brought about fear and panic on the faces of those who had always worn faces of people in charge. Even Ash, who hadn’t wavered in his calm demeanor, looked as if someone had just shot him in the chest.

  The elders erupted with murmurs of panic. At first they sounded the way the adults in a “Peanuts,” cartoon would as if they were speaking through a trumpet, but after a few moments their dialect was that of another language. Katharine was able to identify the language as the same one that Ash had used to awaken the golden sphere the first night they met and the same language she had heard the Descended say. Moramo poceti. They were speaking to Katharine but she couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

  They repeated the phrase three more times as their wings spread, flapping rapidly, as they launched into the air. The flowers danced in the wind as the elders’ wings smacked the air in a downward motion. The smell of daisies and lilac lifted into Katharine’s nose as the flowers released pollen into the air as the elders took off through the roof of the garden leaving behind a trail of gold dust particles. They appeared in the distance as radiant swans floating through the air with majestic grace.

  Katharine was unable to remove her gaze from the white glow of their wings. She understood why religious believers gave them such worship. She felt her heart leap into her throat and she began to feel, as everything in her life, until that moment, had been completely meaningless.

  Despite everything she had seen and learned about the angels, Heaven and the Descended, it wasn’t until that moment that she truly believed it.

  She watched in awe as the elders disappeared into the bright sky cloaked in the blaze of the celestial sun.

  “What language is that?” Katharine asked no one in particular.

  “Its Croatian and it means, we must get started,” Ash answered looking at Katharine’s profile examining the way her nose crinkled as the pollen crawled up her nose. “The word you heard the Descended use, ulaz, it means doorway.” Katharine walked forward walking past Chance as if he weren’t even there. She kept her eyes locked on the roof of the garden where the gold dust from the elders sprinkled down the last of its particles. “They must be getting close to it.” His voice trailed off becoming softer and lacking in the same confidence he’d always spoken with. “I feared this.”

  “So what now?” Katharine asked.

  Ash unfolded his arms and took a very familiar place by Katharine’s side. The sun bore down on him creating a spotlight that glistened off his eyes revealing a pain behind them that she’d never noticed before.

  She wondered what he was thinking about in that moment. Was he afraid for her or was he thinking about Angelina? The thought of him thinking about another girl, even one who no longer knew he existed, angered Katharine. The jealousy searing through her was an unusual feeling. Jealousy was not in her nature, as she never cared enough about a boy to develop such an irrational emotion. She didn’t care for it and shook it off the way a person would shake off a buzzing fly.

  “Now, we go to San Francisco. We must find them before they have located the doorway.” Ash’s gaze was far away, lost in another time or place.

  Katharine had always known just how big the world was but she never realized just how vast and surprising it could be. As devastating as it was to admit Katharine knew that the weight of the world was almost literally lying on her shoulders.

  12

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Growing up in a small town with limited opportunities, Katharine and Molli would often talk about getting out and seeing the world. They planned a road trip for when Katharine turned 18-years-old. They would use Molli’s father, Howard’s car. It wasn’t the type of car one would simply cruise around in; it was quite the eye sore.

  Howard Harris was a car junkie and often collected old clunkers that most people would donate to a charity or simply leave at a salvage garage to be used for its parts. Howard however, saw the beauty in all the cars in his collection. He believed in running a car into the ground before getting rid of it.

  For Molli’s sixteenth birthday Howard gave his daughter a 1998 silver Toyota Corolla that had been sitting in the back of his garage for years. The car, whose coloring had begun to fade to a brownish silver hue from years of rusting, with all it imperfections was everything Molli could have ever wanted.

  The left headlight had been broken in three places and although Howard had fixed it, when the lights were on the left one resembled one of the stained glass windows from Meadowbrook’s chapel. The car was covered in scratches and various dents that painted a picture of a slight collision with a black vehicle.

  The passenger’s side door had become completely mangled when it was hit by a garbage truck a few years after Howard got the car, forcing Howard to replace the door entirely. At the time he only had red car parts, but the different colored door gave the car, “characters,” as Molli always said.

  The mangled, multicolored and rusting car was going to be the one that took the girls on their “epic” road trip. Katharine often wondered if the car had the juice to make it out of Meadowbrook let alone across the country. She had only been in it twice and only once on a long trip; Meadowbrook was so small one didn’t need a car to get from place to place unless they were leaving the town.

  A year earlier Katharine and Molli took the Corolla to Boulder, 50 miles outside of Meadowbrook, for a P!NK concert. It was the first long trip they had taken in the car that Molli had decided to call “Amelia.” The car coughed and putted as Molli accelerated once they reached the interstate, each sputter sounding more like a dying cat than a functioning vehicle. Midway through the trip the car began to jolt back and forth hissing as Molli’s foot pressed down on the gas pedal.

  “Come on Amelia I know you have it in you!” Molli would say, while stroking the steering wheel that was covered with a shiny purple satin cover. On the road behind the car was a dusty discharge of rust from the crackling muffler. Amelia had more than just character; she left her mark everywhere she went. Katharine thought if they went missing at least the cops would be able to follow the trail of dust particles to find them before they met their untimely demise.

  The road trip was planned out perfectly; it had to be, they had been talking about it everyday for years. They would start in Kansas and make their way through Missouri, visiting the St. Louis Zoo. They didn’t plan on staying for long - a night at most. From there they would travel to Illinois and visit the windy city.

  They planned on staying in Chicago for at least two days. From what they had heard the deep-dish pizza was phenomenal. Pizza was a sacred dish because Meadowbrook residents really didn’t know how to make a true pizza. Illinois would be followed up by a night in Indiana and Ohio with an extra night spent in Pennsylvania.

  The girl’s goal was to make their way to New York City. For years they dreamed of visiting the Big Apple and running the streets of Broa
dway. It was the furthest thing from Meadowbrook. Everything closed at eleven o’clock p.m. in Meadowbrook, at eleven thirty p.m. on weekends.

  New York was the city that never slept and the girls were captivated by the magic of it all. However, there was one state Katharine always wanted to visit that wasn’t included in their road trip - California. She wanted to feel the warm sun on her face and feel the crunching of the sand in between her toes. Colorado wasn’t known for its warm and welcoming weather.

  Once the elders had gone, Chance sent Molli to retrieve Davon leaving him alone in the east garden with Ash and Katharine. There was an eerie calm in the air as if it were just any other day and not one where Katharine had just developed magical, Heaven-given powers. Only moments ago Chance was practically on top of her attempting to get answers from her that she simply didn’t have. Now he stood with his hands clasped together behind his back with a serene look upon his face. He stood silently staring at Katharine.

  Ash stood a few steps behind her. She couldn’t see his face but she felt his eyes on the back of her neck. It had become a familiar feeling, knowing Ash was looking at her and it gave her immense amusement. She could not see his face but she knew how he was looking at her, it was the same way Mr. Denoza looked at his peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he cornered her about her declining grades and attendance; that same look of desire and hunger.

  She was standing there in a celestial garden with an elder angel, her ghostly best friend and the grandson of God and she was what fascinated them now. In her mind she chuckled but she wouldn’t dare allow him to hear her.

  Katharine had become quite good at having internal conversations with herself. Before Molli found out, she had only herself and Ash to truly talk to. She was always so afraid that she would slip and tell her parents and anyone else whom she spoke with about the Descended and the Trackers. Internal conversations just seemed like the best idea at the time.

  She had been through intense silences before during tests at Carnegie but the silence standing in that garden was much different. Back home whenever she took a test the entire class was forced to do so in silence. While the class remained quiet, with the exception of the occasion cough, sneeze or squeak of a chair from its shifting resident, the world outside paid no mind to the classroom full of students taking yet another agonizing exam.

  Outside the world carried on shuffling and acting up as it always did. Morning Doves sang their mournful tunes while cars flew by revving their engines as they saw fit.

  The silence Katharine was experiencing there in one of Heaven’s gardens was pure uninterrupted silence. She heard nothing but the sounds in her head of the words spoken by the Elders before taking off into the Heavens. She had always heard people say, “the silence is deafening,” but she never took it as a literal statement until that moment.

  She wished someone would say something, anything, just to break the bitter cold of the silence. Had they forgotten about San Francisco and their desire to keep the Descended from the doorway?

  She’d had enough. She had been ripped away from her life to become some mystical Tracker for a bunch of angels she never even knew existed. She had gone through an agonizing experience only to stand in silence? This is bull. Katharine grew uncontrollably impatient. Her eyes began to fill up with tears both out of frustration and pure exhaustion. Hard as she tried she could not force what was coming and worse yet she could not prevent the words from flying out of her mouth.

  “So are we just going to stand here all day or are we going to go make the painful ascension I just went through worth my while?” If no one else was going to say anything then she would.

  Ash, clearly startled by the angered tone in Katharine’s voice, turned to face her. He folded his hands behind his back the way Chance did, the arms of his shirt tightening with his movement revealing the outlines of his sculpted biceps. He smiled gently at Katharine. He appreciated her breaking the silence; it was beginning to get to him as well.

  “For someone who was so determined to remain a normal girl for as long as she could, you are certainly trying vigorously to get out there into the fight,” Davon said, walking into the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Davon’s pale face wore a satisfying smile. The Guide was calm, having let go of the intensity that Katharine had become so familiar with. Ash’s partner wore a dark blue shirt laced at the sides with black felt. Davon’s pants, a solid gold were hemmed with white lace and small, almost invisible, yellow diamonds. Around his waist was a pure white belt that seemed to be made entirely of leather.

  The belt housed weapons of various shapes and sizes. One of the most notable ones was a large dagger that rested just above his left hip. The dagger’s silver blade curved at the bottom where the golden tip rested. Its long shaft housed what appeared to be miniature versions of the blade itself. I would not want to go up against that thing. Katharine feared for the thing that Davon used that blade on.

  “I just want to make sure that what I just went through wasn’t for nothing,” Katharine replied watching as Davon’s confident strides placed him in front of her. He didn’t look at her with the same thoughts of disdain that he once had. The hatred and irritation he had when he looked at her before had been replaced by respect and bewilderment.

  “I guess you heard about my ascension,” Katharine said shrugging.

  Davon smiled daftly. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Well let’s see, it wasn’t a week ago that you looked at me like I was an ant you would have sooner squashed than allowed to live and now you’re standing there looking at me like I’m not the worst person in the world,” Katharine gave out a soundless chuckle.

  Chance cupped Davon’s shoulder and nodded. “It’s time.” He shared a knowing look with his Guides. Katharine saw the exchange of glares and knew that once again something was being kept from her.

  Ash, as if reading Chance’s thoughts, stood just behind Katharine enough that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. “The Transporter is going to take us to San Francisco now. Are you ready for this?”

  Of course she wasn’t ready, how could anyone be ready to go into battle with a bunch of fallen angels, one far more powerful than she. But she would do what needed to be done if it meant she could keep Ash at her side. At least if she were going to run into a battle she was glad to have him fighting alongside her. Before she could go anywhere that could potentially lead her into a battle she’d never be fully prepared for, Katharine needed to know what it was that her Guides were hiding from her now.

  “What’s going on?” she inquired of Ash who stared at her blankly. “What was that little exchange of looks between the three of you?” She pointed a finger at the other boy and Chance accusingly.

  Chance, know his Guide and knowing that he would not be able to keep a secret from his Tracker for too long, spoke up before anyone else had the chance. “Sometimes, here in the garrison, we speak to one another telepathically, or as mankind often refers to it as, mind-reading. I was doing just that with my Guides. I told them that they were to send the Descended to Purgatory and were not to kill them unless they were left with no other option.” He was so convincing when he spoke, Chance could have told Katharine that the earth wasn’t round and she would have believed it.

  The Transporter dropped them off behind an abandoned factory in the Silicon Valley, a place that always made Katharine think about models with fake breasts. She knew that wasn’t what it stood for but as a high school student she really couldn’t help it. The occasion immature thought or dirty joke was burned inside her mind like some crazy teenage branding.

  Davon and Ash rushed to grab their weapons from the boxes behind the netting on the aircraft, the same one that had taken them from the hospital to the Anchorage with, what Katharine could only assume, the same Transporter.

  She’d never see him but heard his voice when he announced that they had arrived. His voice gave way for Katharine to paint a picture of his fac
e in her mind.

  His inflections were that of someone from 18th century England, sophisticated and well defined. She pictured him having sandy blonde hair styled like that of Caesar from ancient Rome. His eyes would be a deep brown so dark they could almost be mistaken for black with perfectly formed cheekbones, similar to those seen on her favorite actor, Tom Hiddleston. He would be slender, but not sickly because he was of heavenly descent. His face would be clean, free from the piercings, which still boggled Katharine’s mind sitting, atop Ash’s face. She envisioned him looking no older than she was but wiser far beyond anything she could have ever imagined.

  The Silicon Valley was not at all how Katharine had pictured it. In her mind it was laid out with rows of factories stacked so tightly together they might as well have been one structure. To her surprise, it was more residential that she’d ever imagined. Just a few miles North of where the Transporter had dropped them off were rows of modern day family homes, each with a bright red roof and two sets of chimneystacks.

  The valley was vast and never ending. Miles of trees lined Katharine’s vantage point. She couldn’t look in a single direction without seeing the bright green hues of palm trees.

  She took a deep breath choking on the dry air as the air reached her lungs.

  The sun was warm on her face but unlike the celestial sun she had become so used to, the San Francisco sun allowed a cool breeze to wash over Katharine’s face. It was a welcome relief from the relentless dry air that was pushing through her lungs like a freight train barreling down the tracks.

  It was the first time she’d ever been that far west and the first time she’d ever seen a palm tree. Molli always told her about the palm trees in California and the way they towered over the streets like guardian angels watching over them. They were slender but grew in thickness as her eyes made their way up the trunk toward the layers of leaves sitting just beneath the clouds.