Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “Bindings for fallen angels. They’re called atah’pay, or just bindings,” Silea said. The bullet was whisked from my fingers and loaded into the rifle. “Radeo?”

  “Still one tagalong,” he said.

  The van turned hard and I grabbed onto the shelves to prevent myself from sliding along the floor. Silea maintained her position with one hand gripping a post. I didn’t think that I had ever seen a more serious teenager than the one she presented. Nor had I meant to intrude upon her life with this. I should have gone along with Adriel and the injured little girl. This never would have happened otherwise. “I’m sorry,” I blurted. “You probably had a nice day planned out for yourself and I’ve gotten in the way.”

  “This is our work,” Silea said stoically. “It will be good to return Japheem to his bindings.”

  “You’ve caught him before?”

  “Not us. Other Kreeling hunters caught him hundreds of years ago. He managed to escape. Hunters looked for him for a long time without success.”

  “Found him for you,” I said in a weak joke. She didn’t laugh. I was pretty sure this girl never laughed at anything. The van turned left and I held on. Silea locked her arm around the post and filled a pouch at her belt with more of those odd golden bullets.

  “A second Graystone is here. Do not shoot,” the walkie-talkie crackled. The voice coming through was male and a little sullen, rather like he wanted to shoot.

  Oh God, what a mess I had made of everything just by going to Seataw! The man in the front cried, “Silea, I think this one is getting ready to fire-”

  The van jerked off the road. We drove through the trees, jouncing painfully on the uneven ground. Then he hit the brakes and snatched up a rifle from the passenger seat. “Run for the bunker; I’ll cover you!”

  Silea forced the door open and I followed her out into the woods. We had come to the lane where the Kreelings and Coopers lived. A tree was turning to ash beside the mailboxes, and even as I watched, fire raged down from the sky and melted those boxes to nothing. The man lifted his gun and looked up where the fireball had emanated. Silea shouted, “Come on!” She pressed the walkie-talkie to her mouth and exclaimed, “We’re hot, we’re hot, location base and have target, one tagalong and it has opened fire!”

  We ran through the trees in the direction of the first house. The gun blasted behind us. I heard the horrifying sounds of children playing farther down the lane, unaware of the chaos headed their way. Gasping for air, I said, “Silea, we have to tell them to get inside!”

  “There’s no time!” Silea ordered. We ran around the side of her house. Past it was a flight of stairs in the yard leading down to a door.

  “Chase! Chase!” a boy was shouting. Children screamed and laughed. Now I could see them, a cluster of dark heads running over the lane down by the last house. Silea stopped at the top step and turned her gun to the sky. Then she screamed my name, since I was running for the road.

  “Get inside! Get inside!” I shouted to the children. Some stopped and turned with curious looks; others didn’t hear me. Reaching a boy and girl of kindergarten age, had they gone to school, I snatched their hands and darted for the house. Fire raced down the lane and disintegrated a tree.

  “Jessa, come back-” Silea’s voice was undercut by a low rumble, not that of an earthquake but a growl. I looked back to see her sprinting after me. Suddenly she tumbled into the grass, white wisps collecting into a four-legged shape and charging past her in a direct trajectory for me.

  All of the kids were shrieking with fear now, and scattering as muddy fireballs came down from the sky. Dirty flames rose up at each strike, the creature made of wisps of air blasting through them. This must have been what Adriel was talking about, the wind wolves called anemoi. Though its body was see-through, its teeth were solid and sharp. The two children and I ran over the lawn with it coming closer and closer. We weren’t going to make the door in time . . .

  Taking a club from her belt, Silea pressed a button upon it. Blades punched out from both ends. She threw it at the anemoi and struck it in the back of the head. The creature exploded, knocking both of the children and myself to the grass not a foot from the porch steps.

  The children scrambled up to the door while I searched the road for any others still out in the open. A gun fired with a reverberating boom and a golden net exploded over a wisp of dark smoke that was shooting down the lane. The dark smoke turned into a figure, whipping about wildly and coming to rest at the curb. The links were so miniscule that no feature of the trapped fallen angel could be seen.

  The man named Radeo lowered his gun and shouted, “Silea, get her inside!”

  Silea retrieved her club with the blades and motioned for me to come along fast. The two of us dashed across the lane while adults came out of the houses to see what was going on. At the sight of Silea and Radeo, they called to the children hiding behind trees and trashcans to come inside. Doors slammed shut and curtains drew.

  In the Kreelings’ backyard, I hurried down the steps that went into the earth. Silea pressed a code into a keypad to open a heavy metal door. Within was a carpeted room packed with food and water, racks of weaponry and cots. I took a seat upon one in exhaustion. Silea returned outside and closed me in. A walkie-talkie was in here, a man and woman’s voice crackling back and forth. “They’re firing!” “Get to the ridge!” “Pull back; they’re going south-” “Graystone engaging in battle-” “Down! Down!” It was horrible to listen to it, safe in a bunker while everyone else was in danger. The walls were so thick that I heard nothing outside.

  The door opened without warning, Silea and Radeo dragging the netted figure in. It was one of the females, who screamed within the links to be let go. They set her in a chair and further bound her there with chains before peeling the links from her face. Thrashing in the bindings, the blonde girl said, “The others will come for me!”

  “Then we will bind them as well,” Radeo said. “Silea, see if we have an identity on her.”

  Silea unsnapped a thick, pen-like object from her belt. A green light scanned down the Ripper’s lovely face. Looking at the display on a tiny screen, Silea said, “Her name is Zofia. Slim records, assumed to be a fairly recent fall. Unknown crime.”

  “How long have you been here?” Radeo asked Zofia. I watched from the cot as the fallen angel continued to thrash in her bindings. “How long, Zofia?”

  “Why should I tell you?” she spat.

  Silea shined the green light upon a blank spot on the wall. Information presented itself there, a sketch of Zofia and a note that she was theorized to have fallen fifty years ago. “We can add to this, Uncle Radeo,” Silea said. “Known Ripper companions: Barasho, Makala, Japheem, and Trenton.”

  “Trenton’s not a fallen angel!” Zofia exclaimed.

  “Captive human then, presumably,” Radeo said.

  This was the highest tech I had seen in low-to-no tech Spooner. The sketch on the wall changed to one of Japheem, whose information was much more extensive. In equal parts unwillingness and eagerness, I got up for a closer look. Having fallen a thousand years ago, he was in Kreeling custody for three hundred years before escaping in the early eighteen hundreds. “Why did he fall? Does it say?” I asked.

  “He was redoing the tapestry to suit himself,” Silea said. The information was coming out of her head; it wasn’t written up on the projection. “Some angels tweak the lives of humans only a little here and there and fall for that; he redid entire portions of the actual tapestry to suit his purposes before he was caught.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “Japheem is insane.” The image changed to Makala. “She judged the worth of her guarded soul and decided not to intercede at a critical point in development. That was several thousand years ago. She wasn’t a Ripper for the first part of her life as a fallen angel. Japheem was one almost instantly.”

  “And Barasho?” I asked as a sketch of his stoic face overtook the projection.

  “He was a
splitter and fell for it not long after Makala did, although they didn’t meet for quite some time,” Silea said. “It is thought that his decision to become a Ripper influenced hers. She was largely hermitic until then. They’ve been running together for a thousand years now or more.”

  It was strange to hear time tossed around so casually like that, when I thought my grandfather’s sixty-plus years made him ancient. The legs of the chair thumped on the floor while Zofia struggled. Her voice almost at a hiss and her eyes furious upon me, Zofia said, “They will free me and take you!”

  “Adriel won’t let you take me anywhere,” I said defiantly.

  “You think he can stop us? If we want you, we’ll have you, and there isn’t a soul on this planet who can prevent it except the Thronos. And they won’t bother.” Zofia laughed. “Look at how you shield! Is it because you’re afraid of what we can do, or afraid of what your fallen angel can’t do?”

  Silea mumbled, “I doubt Trenton is his real name.”

  “Don’t bother researching him, it doesn’t matter,” Radeo ordered. Silea immediately turned her attention back to the fallen angel information on the wall.

  “I should think he does matter to someone,” I said.

  “In his true life, he doubtlessly did,” the man said. “Rippers pick off people slated to die-”

  “I know that,” I said. “But can’t you rescue him and send him home?”

  “No,” Silea said. “Whoever he is, his family believes him dead. That is how it is woven in the tapestry, and how it should be. Returning him would be a bad idea.”

  The walkie-talkie had gone alarmingly silent, leaving the only sound in the bunker the thumping of the chair legs. Radeo watched Zofia’s exertions. “It’s her first time in atah’pay. Only the first-timers fight their bindings for this long.”

  “You can’t hold me. I’ll get out of these!” Zofia threatened.

  “It feels like you have room, doesn’t it?” Radeo said in a kind voice, even though his face held no kindness whatsoever. “To your perspective, it feels like you have a great deal of wriggle room in there, like you can stretch those links far enough to snap them. But the truth, Zofia, is our perspective. You’re bound so tightly that you can barely move at all. These chains are your new home, and you will spend eternity in these bindings. Even if your friends burst in here, they couldn’t assist you in escaping them. They only respond to human touch.”

  “Then how lucky we picked up that human lost in the snowbanks,” Zofia said spitefully. “You reveal its own weakness.”

  “Hardly, for that is common knowledge among fallen angels,” Radeo said with a chuckle. He was enjoying this capture, and had a hard pleasure shining in his dark brown eyes. “The others in your party would know this, all save their youngling Ripper. And they know what will happen to you, buried deep in the earth with so many others like yourself, to spend century after century captive. But you won’t mind it much in time. Soon your mind will give in and accept your fate. You’ll hallucinate of all the places you’ve gone and the people you’ve seen, living in memories that seem as real as when they were new. Do you know what has always struck me about the Ripper caves? The silence. No one talks to pass the time, no one sings or begs for mercy from the caretakers. No one pleads for food or drink. The only voices are the newest ones, and they quiet in time, a century or two. Hundreds upon hundreds fill the caves, all lost in internal reveries. And now you will join them.”

  I hadn’t ever heard about anything so creepy as the Ripper caves. Zofia looked appalled, and when he finished speaking, the chair thumped against the floor more strongly than before. Radeo pressed the walkie-talkie to his lips and called for people named Evanyi and Collan. They didn’t respond. Then a crackle joined the thumping within the bunker, and Cadmon’s little voice came through. “Hello? Hello? I’m here.”

  Confused, Radeo said, “Who is this?”

  “It’s Cadmon Graystone,” I said. “Give me the walkie-talkie.”

  Radeo did not. “Cadmon, give the walkie-talkie to the kreolos this instant.”

  “I fell,” Cadmon said.

  “He is the youngest one of theirs, Uncle, remember? Very newly fallen,” Silea said.

  “He doesn’t understand!” I exclaimed to Radeo. Crossing the room, I yanked the walkie-talkie from him and said, “Cadmon? It’s me, J-”

  “No!” Radeo said loudly, covering up my name with the boom of his voice. He motioned to Silea, who lifted the chains in a puddle around Zofia’s neck and raised them to cover her head. “Now speak.”

  “Cadmon, it’s Jessa,” I said. “Is Drina there? Or Adriel?”

  “Drina was running.”

  “Where was she running, sweetie?”

  “Out the door. She was running. Then she had wings. No wings!”

  “Did you follow?” I asked.

  “I followed.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “To the tall trees.”

  “Do you see her right this second?”

  Radeo shifted with impatience, but this had to go at Cadmon’s pace, not Radeo’s or mine. After a pause, Cadmon said, “I see her. We were dancing to music in the living room. I like dancing. Taurin and Kishi had gone to do the shopping. Then the phone rang. It was Adriel. Now she is in the sky.”

  “What else do you see in the sky?”

  “Fire. Bright fire and dark fire. She told me to stay on the cliff.”

  “Do you see some kreolos hunters there?” I had no idea what they looked like, or if Cadmon remembered them from when the Graystones introduced themselves to the Kreelings years ago. Turning to Radeo, I said, “Do they have hair like yours?”

  “No. Both have light brown hair,” Radeo said. “One man, one woman, they’re very tall and in their mid-thirties-”

  “They are hiding from the fire,” Cadmon breathed. “Dark fire hit one and they had to hide. No wings!”

  “Wings are okay right now. Are you safe?” I said.

  “I am hiding in a tree. The cliff was on fire. Drina said to stay on the cliff, but it was burning so I used my wings. The Kreeling hunters had to climb down and hide. One is hurt. They dropped this talking box. The other box burned up.”

  “Tell him to give the talking box to the Kreelings,” Radeo hissed.

  “Can you see the Kreelings, Cadmon?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him to give-” Radeo whispered furiously. The chair thumped.

  I cut Radeo off. “Cadmon, can you take the talking box to the Kreelings without the Rippers seeing you?”

  “Hit! Hit!” Cadmon shouted. “Adriel hit one!”

  He was still all right. “Cadmon?”

  Silence. Then a woman’s voice came through. “Who is this?”

  I gave the walkie-talkie to Radeo, who said, “What’s the situation, Evanyi?”

  “These ones are wild, and currently they’re too high to shoot. Collan is waiting to see if one lowers and I’m out of action with a wounded leg . . . they’re gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” I asked.

  After several tense seconds, the woman said in panic, “Radeo, they’re headed your way, all three of them plus anemoi! I’m watching them close in with my binoculars. Move!”

  We were already in a bunker. Where were we supposed to go? I thought of those trees incinerating at the insane cold heat of that fire. This place wasn’t safe. With a tear of fabric, Silea pulled up the carpet from the floor to reveal a trapdoor. A keypad was embedded within it. Her fingers skimmed along the keys and the door opened. Lights flipped on in a tunnel below. “Jessa!”

  “Ten seconds until impact-”

  I jumped down to the stone floor of the tunnel with her landing a second later. As the chair was dragged along the carpet above, Silea shouted, “Uncle, leave her! There’s no time! Jessa, run.” Radeo dropped down without the fallen angel and closed the trapdoor.

  More lights turne
d on as we fled down the tunnel. The walls were made of stone and adorned only with the lights. The passageway ran straight west to a crook, but I was nowhere near it when an incredible blast struck behind me and shook the tunnel hard. Silea and Radeo kept running, so I regained my footing and did the same. The tunnel went south for a brief spell and then turned west once more. There must have been sensors buried in the walls or the floor, since the lights responded in blocks every time I closed in on a dark stretch. Finally I reached the end and Silea pressed a code into a keypad. Radeo pressed on his back like it hurt.

  A ladder was against the wall, and the code in the keypad opened a circular hole in the ceiling. Silea went up first, looked out cautiously, and motioned for us. We climbed back to the surface and stepped out into the woods beyond the lane. Zakia’s shed was nearby.

  Radeo’s walkie-talkie made a noise and a man’s voice said, “We’re headed back there.”

  “Do you have them on binoculars?” Radeo asked.

  “Negative. We don’t have a view of the sky from here.”

  The street was quiet. Lifting their guns, Silea and Radeo crept back to the houses with me coming along behind. The tree cover was too thick to see much of the sky. Scorch marks ran down the cement and lawns in long stripes of black.

  A car jerked around the corner at the far end of the lane and screeched to a stop in front of the first house. Zakia leaped out of the driver’s seat and ran for the smoking bunker, shouting, “Jessa!”

  Then a silver light dove down to one of the lawns. The hunters raised their guns and I said, “No, it’s only Cadmon!”

  His shirt was in shreds, since his wings had gone through it. Flame had blackened his sweatpants, although his skin underneath looked fine. Searching upwards, he called, “Drina?” He ran down the lane away from me, still looking up. “Drina, I’m here! Come find me!”

  I stepped off the curb and followed the hunters down the road. The sky held nothing but clouds, and thin streams of smoke rising up from a hundred places. The houses were still, although sirens wailed in the distance. Something clattered at the bunker and I heard Zakia calling for me anxiously. I cut across the lawn and looked down to a black hole where the bunker had been less than five minutes ago. Zakia was ripping twisted shelves around and sifting through the mess.