“Sorry to disappoint you, but it isn’t going to happen,” Aaron said rather brusquely as he turned to the door. “I don’t care what or who you think I am, I’m not having anything to do with this prophecy business.” He grabbed the doorknob.
“You might not have a choice,” Camael said coolly.
Aaron spun to face the angel. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he barked, attempting to keep his voice down so that none of the insanity being tossed around the office would spill out into the real world. “I’ve been told my entire freakin’ life that I’m in control of my future—me, Aaron Corbet.” He jabbed his thumb at his chest for effect.
“And I’ve got it all planned out. I’m gonna finish high school, go to a good college, graduate in the top of my class, and get an amazing job that I love.” Aaron had no idea what that job would be, but he was on a roll and couldn’t stop himself if he tried. “I’ll meet a nice girl, get married, and have a bunch a’ kids.”
Camael said nothing, staring without emotion, allowing him to rant.
“That’s how it’s going to be, and note—there was no mention of angels, Nephilim, or ancient prophecies. Sorry, there just isn’t enough room.”
The angelic being stood and moved toward him. “You’re different, Aaron. I can feel it coming off you in waves. Let me help…”
“No,” Aaron spat. “I’m through.” He pulled open the door. “Go back to Heaven and leave me the hell alone!”
And as he stormed out into the main office, he thought he heard the angel whisper, “That is what we’re trying to do.”
Camael did not wish to be seen, and so, he wasn’t.
He stood on a grassy area in front of the high school beneath the flagpole and watched as students poured out into the world, finished for the day. The young ones had always fascinated him. So full of life, so sure that they had a complete understanding of everything around them and the universe beyond.
To be so certain of anything, he thought, it must be bliss.
He remembered how it had been when he first abandoned the host under his command. Even though he knew what he was doing was right, there was still that nagging uncertainty festering in the dark corners of his mind that could not be dispelled. Yes, deep down he felt what the seer foretold was truth, but if he had known in advance the suffering he would have had to endure these many centuries following the prophecy, would he still have taken up the cause?
How many had he saved? How many had he enlightened with the knowledge of their true nature? How many plucked from the destructive path of the Powers? And where were they now? he wondered. Hiding? Waiting for the time when they would be recognized by the eyes of God? And by that account, how many would never see that day of acceptance? How many were slain before even becoming aware they’d been touched by Heaven?
Was it worth it? he reflected, watching the last of the students trickle from their place of learning, milling about in front of the orange brick building in small chattering packs.
And then the one named Aaron Corbet stepped from the school and he experienced an elation the likes of which he had not felt since the day he first bore witness to the seer’s words of redemption. Is this truly the One? he pondered. Was this the one who would make all the loneliness and pain he had endured worthwhile? If the answer was yes, all he need do was protect him—all he need do was keep him alive to fulfill his destiny and it would all be worthwhile.
But am I strong enough? Camael wondered.
The boy was with a female, very attractive by what Camael had come to understand of human standards: dark hair, skin the color of copper, a radiant smile. And by the looks of it, Aaron was smitten.
This will not do, thought the angelic protector. There are far more important things for this boy than matters of the heart. He has no idea how much is at stake. Yet, there was something about the girl, the way she moved, the power in her smile—
“Is that the one that has caused so much excitement?” a voice said from behind.
Camael turned to face Verchiel standing just beyond him. He tensed, a weapon of Heaven just beyond his thoughts.
“Of course it is,” Verchiel continued. He leaned his head back slightly and sniffed the air catching the scent of the Nephilim that he had followed here. “Doesn’t smell much different than any of the others: heavenly power awash in a stink of offal.”
Camael chanced a quick glance to see where Aaron and the girl were. They were talking at the end of the school’s main walk.
He looked back to see that Verchiel had moved closer.
“Look at him,” Verchiel said, “completely oblivious to the world around him. He doesn’t even see us. How powerful can he be?”
“It’s not that he can’t,” Camael explained. “He just doesn’t want to.”
Verchiel mulled this over for a moment, his hawklike gaze still upon Aaron. “I see…he denies his true nature. He clings to his humanity while suppressing the angelic.”
The girl laughed at something Aaron said, and Verchiel flinched. “I hate the sounds they make,” he said, eyes narrowing with distaste. “Don’t you?”
“I have spoken with the boy and he rejects it all,” Camael said calmly, with just a touch of disappointment for Verchiel’s sake. “He wants nothing to do with his heritage.”
Aaron and the girl began to move across the parking lot.
“So he is of no immediate threat to us?” Verchiel asked, his head slowly moving as he followed the pair with his unblinking stare.
“He is content with being human,” Camael said, watching Verchiel closely.
“His contentment matters not, not in the least,” Verchiel said as he turned his attention to Camael. “He still needs to be put down, for his own sake.” The angel smiled, fully aware of the effect of his words. “He’s far too dangerous to live.”
Camael heard the sounds of car doors slamming shut and suspected the couple had gotten into Aaron’s vehicle. A burning blade manifested in his hand and he stood his ground, ready to fight if he had to. “Then you will need to go through me,” Camael said, an electrical energy radiating from his body and charging the air around them.
“You draw a weapon against me?” Verchiel asked as similar energy began to leak from his eyes and leap from the top of his head.
From the parking lot, car alarms inexplicably wailed, headlights blazed, and horns blared as if pronouncing the coming of a king. The humans ran about frantically, bewildered, not able to see the battle brewing in their midst.
“We were brothers once, Camael, sharing the same duty to our Heavenly Sire with equal zeal—and this is what it has come to?”
Over the din from the parking lot, Camael located the sound of a single vehicle starting up and driving away. Relieved that Aaron had managed to escape for now, he said nothing.
“I came here to warn you, Camael,” Verchiel said, his energy receding. “As former brothers, I believe I owe you at least that.”
Camael did not put his weapon away, scanning the area for more of Verchiel’s soldiers.
“It’s all coming to a resounding close,” Verchiel said as he casually slid his hands inside the pockets of his coat and turned away. “After so long, it is finally going to end. A day of reckoning, so to speak.”
Camael watched Verchiel begin to walk away. He wanted to call out to him, to make him explain further, but doubted that Verchiel would share any more.
“This moment of truce is over,” Verchiel said. “If you should stand in my way, I will not think twice about striking you down,” he warned. “Be careful which side you choose, for if you choose wrong—you will share their fate.”
The weapon in Camael’s hand gradually returned from whence it came. And as he watched his former comrade recede to nothing, he felt a familiar stirring from within. He knew the feeling well. It was something he had attempted to lock away when deciding to follow the words of the ancient prophecy, something he had held at bay, denying it freedom. But Verchiel’s words had drawn it from the shadows an
d fed its growth.
And its name was doubt.
CHAPTER NINE
Aaron drove his ’95 Toyota Corolla down Western Avenue and into McDonough Square. He had been in this area of Lynn thousands of times since learning to drive, but had never paid quite as much attention as he did now.
This was Vilma’s neighborhood. Febonio’s Smoke Shop, Snell’s Grocery, Mitchell’s Men’s Shop—all establishments that he never knew existed until now, all landmarks he would use if he ever had the chance to return.
“It’s up here, Aaron. On the left,” Vilma said, pointing through the windshield.
Aaron followed her direction and noticed the narrow street just beyond a small store advertising “Everything Brazilian.”
“Here?” he asked, snapping on his blinker and slowing down.
“Yep,” she answered. “It’s a dead end, a real pain to get in and out of.”
Aaron waited for the oncoming traffic to slow. A guy in a black van with a crude air-brushed painting of the starship Enterprise on its side finally waved him by, and he drove down the dead-end court called Belvidere Place.
“It’s the brown house on the end,” she said, hefting her bookbag from the floor onto her lap.
The street was very small, only a little wider than his car from nose to backend. A chain link fence across the end of the street separated it from a church and its parking lot beyond. There were eight houses, four on either side, all looking pretty much the same.
Aaron pulled over in front of the last house on the right, put the car in park, and turned to look at Vilma. She was staring straight ahead, her hand starting to move toward the door handle. She can’t wait to get away from me, he thought. He knew he’d been distracted since leaving school. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the effects of his meeting with Camael, and he was afraid that his moodiness was a turnoff for Vilma.
“I’m sorry your meeting with the Emerson guy didn’t work out,” she said, her voice filled with sympathy.
He had told her that the admissions rep had been a jerk and that he had given the man some attitude, probably eliminating himself from the running for a scholarship.
“That’s all right,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t really want to go there anyway.”
He hated to lie to her—it didn’t bode well for their future—but what choice did he have? There was no way he could share with Vilma the freak show his life had become over the last week. He had even begun to wonder if it was a good idea to start any kind of relationship with her. The last thing he wanted was for to her to be sucked up into the maelstrom of insanity swirling about him.
The silence in the car was nearly unbearable. Vilma finally opened the door a crack and looked at him. He smiled.
“Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it,” she said, returning his smile. Only, Aaron thought it put his to shame. “I think I had to bring every book in my locker home tonight. My bag’s popping at the seams,” she said, patting the stuffed nylon bag resting on her lap.
“No problem,” he said as he slid the palms of his hands over the smoothness of the steering wheel. “Anytime.”
The car door was open but she wasn’t leaving. He wondered if there was some gentlemanly thing he was supposed to do like go around to the other side and help her out.
“You know you can call me if you want,” she blurted out, as she played with the zipper on her bookbag. “If you wanted to, you know, talk about stuff? Like the Emerson thing—or our paper—I could help you with yours.”
Aaron looked at her—really looked at her. Suddenly any nervousness he had been feeling—any lack of self-confidence—was not an issue. In that instant, he decided that not only was Vilma the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen, but also the most real. There were no games with her. She said exactly what was on her mind and he liked that. A lot.
“Now why would you want me to do that?” he asked, looking back to the steering wheel. “I’m sure you have a lot more interesting things to do with your time than talking to me.”
She seemed to think about it for a moment and then began to nod her head slowly. “You’re probably right. Cleaning up after my cousins, doing laundry, my homework—yeah, you are right—I’d much rather do those things than talk with a cute guy on the phone.”
He was a bit taken aback, and reached up to nervously scratch the back of his head. “Are you saying that you think I’m cute, or is there some other guy you’re going to call?”
Vilma laughed and rolled her beautiful almond-colored eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be the dark, brooding guy—not the big doofus.” She shook her head in mock disbelief.
Vilma was laughing at him, but Aaron didn’t care. The sound was one of the coolest things he had ever heard, and he began to laugh as well.
“I’ve never been called a doofus before,” he said. He again looked at her. “Thanks.”
She reached out to squeeze his arm. “I like you, Aaron,” she said.
He had never wanted to kiss a girl so badly. Yeah, there had been that time with Jennine Surrette in junior high, but that was because he had never done it before. Kissing Vilma now would seem almost like his first time—like all the other kisses since Jennine were just practice leading up to this one.
He started to lean his head toward her, his lips being pulled to hers by some irresistible force that he couldn’t negate—that he didn’t want to negate. Aaron was relieved to see that she seemed to be having the same difficulty, leaning toward him as well.
There came a sudden knock at the passenger-side window, and the spell that was drawing them inexorably closer was abruptly broken.
A little girl, looking like how he imagined Vilma must have looked when she was around seven or eight, peered into the car, smiling. There was an open gap in her comical grin where her front baby teeth used to be.
Vilma shook her fist at the child and she ran off laughing.
“My cousin,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed.
The moment was gone, lightning in a bottle—now free to be captured again some other time. But that was all right. Kissing Vilma could wait—but hopefully, not for too long.
“I like you too,” he said, and briefly touched her hand. It felt remarkably warm.
Vilma unzipped the side pocket of her bookbag. She took out a tiny pink pencil and small pad of paper and began to write.
“Here’s my phone number and e-mail address,” she said as she tore the paper from the notepad and handed it to him. “Call between six and nine, my aunt and uncle kind of freak when anybody calls too late. You can e-mail me anytime and I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”
He looked down at the phone number. It was as if he had been given the winning number of a billion-dollar lottery—only better.
“You can give me yours later,” she said as she got out of the car, lugging her bag behind her. “I gotta get inside and kill my cousin.” She turned and leaned back in. “Maybe you can give it to me when we talk tonight,” she suggested with another winning smile.
He was about to tell her that it was a deal when he remembered he had to work. “I can’t call tonight—gotta work and probably won’t get in until after nine.”
“Ahh, blowing me off already,” Vilma said in mock disappointment.
“Give me that pencil,” he ordered.
She handed it to him, smiling all the time, and watched as he began to write at the bottom of the piece of paper she had given him.
“I’ll give it to you now,” he said as he finished. He folded the paper and tore away his number. “This way there’ll be no mistaking my intentions,” he said as he handed her the slip of paper.
“And what exactly are your intentions, Mr. Corbet?” she asked as she slipped the paper into her back pocket.
“In time, Ms. Santiago,” he said with a devilish grin. “All in due time.”
“Thanks for the ride,” he heard her say as she laughed and slammed the door closed.
He watched her walk up to the front porch. She opened the white screen door and turned to wave before she vanished inside.
The clock on the dashboard said that it was close to three o’clock. He had less then five minutes to get across town to work, but it didn’t really bother him. As he struggled to back out of the tiny, dead-end street, he realized he wasn’t really worried about much of anything right then. Everything was going to work out just fine.
He didn’t remember ever before feeling this way.
But it was something he could get used to.
Ezekiel drank from a bottle of cheap whiskey and pondered the question of redemption.
He shifted upon his bed to get comfortable and leaned his head back against the cool plaster wall. He took a long, thoughtful pull off his cigarette.
Redemption. Strangely enough, it was something he thought of quite a bit these days, since meeting the boy.
Zeke reached down to the floor again for the bottle of spirits and brought it to his mouth. Cigarette smoke streamed from his nostrils as the whiskey poured down his throat. It burned, but still he drank.
It was a kind of punishment, he thought as he brought the bottle away from his thirsty mouth and replaced it with the cigarette, a punishment for all that he had wrought.
It’s odd thinking about this after so long, he thought, staring at the wall across from him. A cockroach had started to climb the vertical expanse and he silently wished it luck. He could have told the insect directly but the communication skills of a bug were so primitive.
Forgiveness—is it even possible? After the Grigori were exiled, they had tried to make the best of it. Earth became their home. They knew they would never see Heaven again. The idea that they might be forgiven had never even entered his mind—until the day he first saw the boy at the common.
He took another drag from his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. There he was, minding his own business, looking through the trash for redeemable cans, when he sensed him—clear across the common he could feel the kid’s presence. He’d encountered others over the centuries, but none ever had that kind of effect on him. Aaron was special. He was different.
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