The Innocent

by Michelle K. Pickett

  Standing at the end of the drive, I stared at where the patio door had been. It was replaced with a pile of rubble. Squeezing my eyes closed, I turned away. I could feel the cocoon of numbness starting to fade.

  “Milayna!”

  I turned at the sound of Ben’s voice. Crouching, I held my arms out to him. Running into me so hard, he nearly toppled me over, he squeezed me so tight that he choked me. I loosened his arms and set him away. “Hey, frog freckle.”

  He looked at me with wide, tear-filled eyes. “I was scared you weren’t coming back.”

  “Me, too.”

  “It’s done?” My dad stood over me.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, glancing quickly where our house once stood. “It’s done.”

  Why doesn’t it make me feel better? Revenge isn’t quite as sweet as I thought it would be.

  I gave Ben a quick kiss and stood. Taking a deep breath, I walked up the drive to the patio door—at least where it used to be—and sat cross-legged in front of it. I put my elbows on the sides of my knees and my forehead in the palms of my hands and cried—shoulder-shaking, hiccupping, snot-bubbling, mouth-drooling, ugly-faced sobs.

  Tears born of true pain.

  I felt a hand rest lightly on my shoulder, but I shrugged it away. I didn’t want anyone around. I needed some time, just a few minutes to pull myself together. Just a few minutes with Chay before I had to leave him. This time, he wouldn’t be coming back. But whoever it was beside me didn’t take the hint. Instead, they sat down next to me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?” I looked up.

  “I said I’m sorry.” I turned to him. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I yelled to you, but you couldn’t hear me—”

  I launched myself toward him. His arms wrapped around me, holding me tightly to him. “I thought…”

  “Shh. It’s okay.”

  I buried my face in the bend of his neck and clung to him. Pulling back to look at him, I ran my hands over his chest and shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” My hands fluttered to his face, cradling it. “How?” I looked at the pile of rubble to my left, and then back to him. “How did you?”

  He closed his eyes briefly, shaking his head slowly. “The roof collapsed on this side, but it hadn’t on the other side. I was able to crawl out a window before it collapsed completely. But with the ground splitting and then the trees and boulders flying around, I had a hard time getting to you. By the time I got here, you were already gone.” He took a breath, and ran his fingers down my face. “I’m so sorry for—”

  “Shut up.” I pulled him into a kiss, a long, deep, frantic kiss. “I was so… you had me… I thought I’d lost you,” I said through my sobs when I pulled back to look at him. He had some minor cuts on his face and a pretty deep gash over his left eye, but otherwise, he seemed fine.

  “No, you’re stuck with me, Milayna. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I buried my face in his neck. “Promise?”

  He nodded and threaded his fingers through my hair, gently pulling my face to him for a kiss. “I promise,” he murmured against my lips.

  ***

  We ate Chinese food from the take-out cartons, using chopsticks because, according to Ben, it was more fun that way.

  “No, it just lets my food get cold before I can get it to my mouth,” I grumbled.

  “You’ll live through it,” Ben said, fishing something out of his carton with his chopsticks. He was the only one of us that had mastered the art of using them.

  “Hey, look, I got a pea pod,” Chay said, smiling. His chopsticks shifted and the slimy green vegetable flew across the room, landing with a splat next to the phone on the bedside table. He frowned. “Well, I had one.”

  I laughed. “It’s okay. Just put the carton up to your mouth and scoot the food in like my dad does.”

  “Gets the job done,” Dad said around a mouth full of beef-fried rice. “Oh, here it is.” He turned up the television.

  “Well, today is one for the record books. The small suburb of South Bay had an earthquake. Yes, you heard right, an earthquake. The first recorded earthquake since records have been kept…” The news anchor went into detail about the earthquake and the damage it caused to the subdivision believed to be at the center of the quake.

  “See, the simplest explanation is usually the most believable.” My dad scooped the rest of his fried rice in his mouth and tossed the carton in the paper delivery sack. “Now, where’s my fortune cookie?” I rolled my eyes. My dad loved to read his fortune cookie. “Let’s see what my fortune says. ‘You will experience a change of scenery.’”

  “It doesn’t say that.” I reached for the slip of paper. “Huh. It does. How weird is that?”

  “Like flyin’ monkey weird,” Ben said, and I laughed.

  “Yeah, like flyin’ monkey weird.” I was still laughing. I looked at Chay. A grin pulled at the corners of his lips.

  “I’d better get home.” Chay stood and stretched. “Thanks for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson.”

  “John and Rachael, remember?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Mr. Jac... um Joh…ah, goodnight.”

  “We’ll keep working on it. You’re bound to get it one of these days,” my dad said with a chuckle.

  “John, leave the boy alone. He was raised with manners.” My dad waved my mom’s words away with his hand.

  “See ya, Chay.”

  “Catch ya later, Ben.”

  I walked with Chay out of the hotel room so I could say goodbye properly. The kind of goodbye that involved my lips, but no talking. The kind that curled my toes and made my stomach do all sorts of funny things.

  He ended our kiss and looked at me with a crooked grin. “I’d better get home. I think our parents will have how long it takes me to get from your place to mine timed before long.”

  I laughed. “You’re probably right.”

  I watched him walk away—because, let’s face it, the back view was almost as good as the front—and stop at the door to his family’s hotel room three doors down from ours. Their house suffered a lot of damage in the ‘earthquake,’ too. The entire subdivision did. The hotel was full of our neighbors whose houses were unlivable because of Jord’s temper tantrum.

  I waved to Chay and went back inside to finish making a mess while trying to eat my pepper steak with the stupid chopsticks Benjamin insisted we use.

  ***

  We met the insurance adjuster two days later. We knew there was nothing salvageable, so we hadn’t returned before then. I knew things would look bad, but I was surprised by how terrible it actually was.

  Most of the houses were flattened. The few left standing had shifted off their foundations, making them unlivable. The road was impassable. A large fissure ran down the center of it. It looked like a ditch digger was drunk and dug the ditch in the wrong place.

  The insurance adjuster didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. The house was a total loss. It’d have to be torn down—that was laughable since there was nothing to tear down—and rebuilt. I suspected that many of our neighbors were getting the same news from their adjusters.

  Muriel and her parents were staying at her grandmother’s house out of town when the ‘earthquake’ hit. They didn’t see the damage until the next day.

  “It’s just a roof and a basement.” Muriel walked around the area where her house once stood, looking dazed.

  “Yeah. Freaky, isn’t it?”

  “Not as bad as fighting off Jord by yourself. What were you thinking, Milayna? That was probably one of the most asinine things you’ve ever done.”

  “It was definitely a stop on my crazy train.”

  Muriel kicked at a piece of roofing. “Pssh, ya think?”

  “It’s done now, which is a good thing, because if I had it to do over again, I don’t know if I could. I didn’t stop to think about it that night, I just did it. Had I given myself time to think, there’s no way I could’ve done it.”

  “It’s
over. That’s what matters.” Muriel picked up a photo frame and brushed away the broken glass.

  “No it’s not.”

  “Hmm?”

  I turned to her. “I said it’s not over.”

  She dropped her hands, the photo frame smacking against her leg. “What do you mean, it’s not over? Is there another brother that we don’t know about?”

  “No. But there’s still Azazel to deal with.”

  “Azazel? Without the Four Brothers, he’s weak,” Muriel said.

  I crouched and brushed away some debris, looking in vain for anything that could be saved. “Yeah, but there’ll always be someone to help him with his dirty work. This time was the Four Brothers. Who knows who it’ll be next time? But he’ll find someone and that means we’ll always be looking over our shoulders, waiting and wondering when he’ll be back to cause trouble.” I picked up a board and tossed it into a large, green dumpster.

  “So you want to kill him?”

  I nodded once. “That’s the plan.”

  “And do you have a plan on how exactly you are going to do that?”

  “Nope.”

  Muriel blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Didn’t think so.”

  ***

  “Why did that man do that to our house?” Ben dragged his fry through a puddle of ketchup on his paper plate.

  I stopped chewing, looking up. My parents stopped talking and looked at him.

  “Um, because he was mad,” my dad answered.

  “Is it okay to do that when you’re mad about something?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Ben. What do you think?”

  I held my breath, waiting for his answer. I wasn’t completely clear on the finer points of the age-of-accountability thing, but I knew it had to do with Ben’s awareness of right and wrong and his ability to choose one over the other. If he was asking questions about what was and wasn’t right, it might mean he was nearing his age of accountability.

  Ben cocked his head to the side and seemed to think about his answer. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think it is.”

  “I don’t think it is either, son.”

  “So was he a bad person?” he asked around a mouthful of fries.

  “What do you think?” My dad tilted his head to the side and watched Ben’s reactions.

  “I think he did very bad things,” Ben said before popping a bite of chicken in his mouth.

  Bingo.

  “I think you’re right. Do you think bad things are fun to do?”

  “Not like that.” Ben shook his head.

  “Then what?”

  “I sometimes steal gum out of Milayna’s purse.” Ben giggled.

  “I knew it! You little sneak.”

  “But that bad thing was really wrong. He shouldn’t have done that,” Ben said, twirling a fry between his fingers.

  “Would you?” My dad had stopped eating and leaned across the table closer to Ben.

  “Nope.” Ben shook his head. “Not even if I was mad. That was wicked bad. He should be grounded from video games or go to jail or something for doing that.”

  And there it was. The age of accountability. Ben knew what was right and wrong—beyond just sharing toys and stealing gum. He knew what was wrong, and he understood there were consequences. And so he made his choice. He chose good over evil.

  Ben is safe for now, but only until the year of his eighteenth birthday. I can’t let him go through what I did.

  Ben was what demi-angels called an innocent. He chose good over evil. That was not to say he’d be a perfect child, but he’d live a normal life, free from Azazel’s evil influence. He wouldn’t remember his visions or anything that happened the few weeks the Four Brothers and Azazel ruled our lives, and he wouldn’t hear the term demi-angel until closer to his eighteenth birthday. That was when normal flew out the window and the freak show that was our life as demi-angels began.

  I couldn’t sleep. It always took me a few nights to get used to the sounds of a new place before I was comfortable enough to fall asleep. So I lay awake in the bed next to Benjamin, my parents next door in the adjoining motel room.

  I smelled sulfur first. Sitting up in bed, I listened. I heard rustling outside the window at the back of the motel. Slipping out of bed, I grabbed a knife out of the small kitchenette.

  I peeked out the window and saw the ground moving. The dirt swirled like an upside-down tornado. It broke through, and I could see the faint yellow glow at the bottom of the pit.

  There was a rap on the door, and I jumped. Unlocking the door, I let Chay and Muriel inside.

  “Drew will be here in a second,” Muriel said.

  “What are they here for?” I looked out the window, watching the hobgoblins hop out of the hole.

  “Ben, what else?” Chay asked, putting his arm around my waist and pulling me to him for a quick kiss.

  I pulled my head back and shook it. “No, we think Ben reached the safety period tonight.”

  “Really? The age of accountability. Go, my man. Good for him,” Chay said with a smile.

  “Yeah, good for Ben,” Muriel said. “Bad for Milayna. If he can’t have Ben, he’s here for her.”

  “That’s what I figured.” I bit my lower lip. “We gotta get out of here.”

  “What? Why?” Muriel asked.

  “Because if he starts throwing things, catching things on fire, crumbling roofs, or anything like that, I don’t want it to be here where there are innocent people who could be hurt. We need some pillows and a blanket.”

  “Milayna, what are you doing?” Muriel asked with a sigh.

  “I’m using the pillows and blanket to make it look like I’m carrying Ben. Azazel will think we’re taking Ben somewhere safe, and he’ll follow because Ben is who he wants. He doesn’t know that he’s in the safety period yet.”

  “Oh. That’s actually a good idea.”

  “Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I have one every once in a while.”

  “Where do you want to go?” Chay asked.

  “Home.”

  ***

  We drove to the subdivision and waited. We didn’t have to wait long. Azazel had his demon angels follow us. As soon as we stopped, they flew back and told Azazel where we were. One perk of being a demon was that you could poof yourself where you wanted to go. Azazel was there almost instantaneously.

  “Hello, Milayna. You didn’t think you could run from me, did you?”

  “No, Azazel. I brought you right where I wanted you. I knew you’d follow me.”

  “Give me the boy.” He held out his arms.

  I shrugged. “Here you go.”

  Azazel let out a frustrated scream when the pillows fell out of the blanket. “Milayna, you really do piss me off.”

  The feeling’s mutual, buddy.

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s reached the safety period, Azazel. You can’t touch him.”

  “No!” he shouted.

  “Oh, yes,” I said with a smile.

  This is almost fun.

  Azazel inclined his head, and the demons swarmed us. I sliced through the air with my dagger, killing the demons who came in contact with the knife. One after another, they came at me.

  I wasn’t paying attention to my back. One grabbed my arms from behind. Another advanced on me from the front, a grotesque smile on its face. When it was close enough, I kicked it in the stomach as hard as I could. It fell backward. I threw my head back and hit the demon holding me in the face. It let go of my arms. I sliced its arm with the dagger, watching as it turned into black ash and floated away on the breeze.

  Muriel had three demons around her. I stabbed one in the back, flipped the dagger into my left hand, and ran it across the second’s leg. The third used Muriel as a shield. There was no way I could hit it with Muriel in the way.

  Think… think… think.

  “Muriel, use your head.”

  She looked at me for a beat before she understood what I meant. She bent her head forward and sla
mmed it backward into the demon’s face. I rushed it, stabbing it in the chest. He was done… a pile of ash.

  Drew was doing a good job of fighting off his demons, and Muriel went to help him. They had it under control. Chay was quickly becoming outnumbered, so I ran to him. I was able to use the dagger on a few of the demons, but three were just too fast. They saw me coming and darted from place to place. I just needed to get close enough to touch them. So I reverted back to what I’d been training in all my life, mixed-martial arts—I’d always wanted to take piano. Now I knew why my parents insisted on martial arts.

  One demon got close enough, and I kicked him. I barely made contact, but it caught him by surprise. I was able to nick him with the dagger—he was ash before he knew what happened.

  The second demon was braver. He came closer to me than the first. I roundhouse kicked him—well, I tried—he grabbed my foot and I fell hard on the ground. The dagger embedded in my side. At first, I didn’t feel the pain, just the warm, sticky blood flowing over my hand. Then the burning started, like someone had lit a match inside me and it was burning its way out.

  “Enough.” Azazel held up his hand. “Bring them to me.”

  The demons grabbed Chay, Muriel, and Drew and pushed them to Azazel. The demon who knocked me to the ground grabbed the collar of my jacket and dragged me across the ground, the knife still sticking out of my side as I bounced against rocks and ruts. I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes closed to keep from crying out. The demon dropped me at Azazel’s feet.

  “Well, Milayna, have you had enough? Are you ready to end this?” Azazel adjusted the sleeves of his cloak.

  “Yes.”

  Not in the way you think it’s gonna end.

  “So what’s it gonna be, you or your brother?”

  “Me.”

  “A wise choice”

  “Milayna! What are you doing?” Muriel yelled. She struggled against the demon holding her.

  “It’s what I have to do, Muriel.”

  “Milayna—” Chay reached out for me.

  Trust me, Chay.

  “Chay, it’ll be fine.”

  “Well, come on. Get up and let’s get going,” Azazel said.