A loud announcement speaker blared, filling the terminal with a distorted female voice. I couldn’t understand the language; it sounded almost Arabic, with a lot of clicks and tongue rolls.
After the announcement was over, the people around us began searching their pockets and luggage. Leid pulled out two boarding passes, handing me one.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Leid’s eyes drifted ahead, narrowing. “Nowhere.”
Before I could reply, she nodded to the crowd as they assembled into single file at the gate. “See that man, third from the front?”
I followed her stare.
We were looking at a middle-aged fat guy in a mustard button up, holding a black suitcase and carryon bag.
“What about him?”
“That’s my newest target.”
“Since when is being overweight and having a terrible sense of fashion a violation of any code?”
Leid’s lips curled into a smile, but I didn’t think she found my sarcasm funny.
***
An hour later, I was staring resignedly out of the window as our plane flew to only god knew where. I couldn’t read my boarding pass, let alone understand what anyone else was saying.
But Leid could. She spoke their language, however that didn’t help me one bit.
Clouds drifted by the window like white smoke; occasional pockets revealed the terrain below. Rooftops of cities, like tiny cubes. We’d passed a large body of water earlier on, and were now soaring across open green fields.
Leid was trying to kill me again; this time with boredom. If this was what she did on a regular basis—follow around otherworldly scumbags in desperate need of a jog—then count me out.
Our target read a journal, sipping from a soft drink on the small passenger table. He’d been doing that since we boarded. Leid stared at him with callous eyes. She’d been doing that since we boarded.
I leaned in. “Think you could make yourself look any more suspicious?”
Leid frowned. “We’re sitting behind him.”
“God forbid he gets up to take a piss.”
She glared, saying nothing.
“What’s going to happen, anyway? What are we waiting for?”
“You’ll see.”
“Once again, a verbal explanation would suffice. This is the communication issue that I was talking about.”
“Quiet.”
I rolled my eyes, leaning into a palm. “And to think I could be at the Nexus right now, adding more glory to my flawless reputation.”
Leid arched her brows. “Flawless? Funny, since you’d have died had I actually finished my job.”
“You still haven’t told me why you di—”
She clutched my arm, silencing me. Her stare intensified.
I followed her eyes.
The fat guy was emanating black smoke.
Our target leaned to the side, toward another man who was sitting next to him. He said something, pointing to a stack of journals that hung on a rack beneath the window. The guy beside him reached down, grabbed one, and handed it over.
Their fingers brushed.
The smoke vanished.
It reappeared a second later, surrounding the other man.
Our former target stood up and took several steps toward the restroom. He didn’t get very far, and his expression was sort of blank with confusion. He almost looked disoriented; scared.
…And then he brought both hands to his face, boring out his eyes with his fingers. The wet noises flipped my stomach.
Another group of passengers shot out of their seats, tackling the psychotic man. Our plane filled up with screams.
The smoke-covered man that our former target infected was leaning forward, reaching toward a mother holding an infant in the seat in front of him. He gently touched her shoulder and she didn’t seem to feel it, preoccupied with the struggle in the center-aisle.
The smoke disappeared from the man, reappearing once again around the woman.
The man immediately sifted through his carryon bag, removing a pen. He pulled off the cap, and then jammed it right through his head without so much as a moment’s pause.
I was frozen in my seat, mesmerized by the chaos
By now, the shadows had formed around an adolescent boy in the front row. And while everyone was still preoccupied with subduing the eyeless maniac in the aisle, the woman gleefully bashed her infant’s head against the window, creating a crimson smear across the glass. It became more pronounced with every thud, and each time I flinched.
“A-Are we just going to sit here?” I stammered.
“Do you understand what’s happening?”
“That thing is transferring through touch. It’s killing everyone.”
“Incorrect,” she whispered. “It’s making them kill themselves.”
Before I could respond, Leid leapt out of her seat, clearing the entire length of the plane in a blink.
Crunch.
Leid held the adolescent boy by the neck, his feet dangling off the floor. All life had drained from his eyes. She released him and he collapsed in the aisle, his throat crushed.
… And if everyone wasn’t screaming already, they sure as fuck were now.
An older man lunged at Leid, belligerent and teary-faced. Considering everyone else had wisely decided to choose one side of the plane to back against, I could only assume it was the kid’s father. Nothing propelled fearlessness like protecting your child.
Leid swung, taking his head clean off with a punch. Actually, his head exploded on impact, showering her with chunks of brain matter.
And that was the straw that had broken my back. I swallowed hard, looking away.
…Casualties, she’d called them.
But my inner turmoil was placed on ice as the dead kid suddenly stirred.
Leid glanced down, just as some kind of black oil sputtered from his bluing, post-mortem lips. It spilled across the carpet, congealing into a puddle. It rose; took form. A man.
An outline of a man; a shadow without a body.
Leid grabbed for it, but it surged past her in a blur.
I dove out of my seat, right into its path. I reached for its neck but the shadow ducked, crashing an elbow into my ribcage. A shadow with substance—corporeal.
And strong. The hit brought me to my knees, and all I could do was watch it disappear through the airplane emergency hatch. Through it.
…Had it just jumped out of the plane?
Leid ran by, pulling me to a stand. I choked as she dragged me toward the hatch. She kicked it in; bolts flew in every direction and I ducked. A groan ravaged the plane as her strength warped the metal.
The hatch tore open, door sailing away into open skies. People and other inanimate objects were sucked out like a vacuum. I cowered against the wall, watching the passengers surge past.
Too much excitement, even for me.
Leid tugged me forward while I tried to pry her fingers from my suit.
“Okay!” I shouted over the roaring winds and screaming, flailing passengers. “Okay! I am officially scared! You have scared me off for good, I promise! Just do—”
She threw me out of the plane.
***
Holy shit
Holy shit
Holy shit!—
—was the only thought circling my mind as I plummeted forty thousand feet above sea level.
Freezing winds beat against my face. The pressure from falling at such an altitude nearly crushed my skull. I wondered if this had been Leid’s plan all along. Had she brought me here to kill me?
No, because if she wanted to kill me she would have done that in Jerusalem.
I forced my back against the wind, facing up. Leid fell, too, a hundred yards above. Arms out, hair lashing against her body, she watched the plane as it soared away. An ear-shattering groan split the sky. A surge of rippling waves shot out from her body, smacking the air with a sonic boom. A second later the plane shook, nearly bending in half before it erupted into
a ball of fire. Smoldering plane shrapnel shot toward us; the force of the explosion adding more momentum to its descent than ours.
The next half-minute was spent avoiding smoking engine parts and chunks of searing hot metal, all the while screaming my fucking head off. I managed to dodge everything except for someone’s luggage. It rammed me in the head like a cinder block.
I blacked out for a second. When I came to, there was blood running down my face.
Leid was falling beside me, not a single scratch marring her. She grabbed my arm.
“Alezair, your wings!” she screamed.
…
“DOES IT LOOK LIKE I HAVE WINGS?” I screamed back. “PLEASE, PLEASE TELL ME YOU WEREN’T RELYING ON THAT NOTION WHEN YOU DECIDED TO THROW ME OUT OF THE FUCKING PLANE!”
She stared, unnerved.
The ground was getting really, really close.
Her attention shot below, and she emitted another blast of rippling air. Leid was firing at something. There were starbursts behind my eyes.
The injury from getting hit in the head was a lot more serious than it’d felt; adrenaline had numbed the fact that I was losing a lot of blood.
The ground was seconds away. Fortunately I wouldn’t see my death.
My eyes rolled into my head, and then I was out.
***
The sky.
I would have shouted in delight that I wasn’t dead, but unbearable pain made that reality a nightmare. Every cough sent shocks down my spine, shaking my legs. I rolled on my side and stared vacantly ahead, savaged by agony.
I was on a cliff ledge; loose rocks and pebbles were scattered across the ground. A patch of strange yellow flowers lay several feet away amid an otherwise dry and barren terrain. Leid was here, too, fighting that black shadow creature. I could barely watch the fray. They moved too quickly.
Leid eventually pinned the thing, punching through its chest. It froze, curling, and then she ripped something from its body.
A small, shiny square.
She threw it on the ground, smashing it with her stilettos. How those shoes stayed on after everything was a mystery. The square sparked beneath her heel, and the outline materialized, his body flickering like television static before turning flesh and blood. It was a he.
Dark hair, black coat, skin so pale it was nearly the color of the clouds overhead. He fell to his knees, retching.
Leid spoke to him in a language I couldn’t understand.
He responded, his voice a shaking whisper. His eyes rose pleadingly to her.
They were surreal—gold and red, glowing in absence of any light. Was that a demon? I hadn’t expected them to look so… deific. Pretty.
Leid spoke, and then he hung his head. His hair slid away, revealing his ears. They were exactly like mine, and that sight hitched my breath.
The intrigue turned to horror when Leid’s hand suddenly exploded, gore splattering over the ground. From her mangled wrist slid a black, pincer-looking blade. Now her victim and I shared the same look.
He tried to scramble to his feet and flee, but only made it several steps before she decapitated him. His head flew from his shoulders and the rest of him collapsed. Everything erupted into salt a second later.
Leid watched the wind carry away the demon’s remains. Something in her eyes told me she didn’t like her line of work. She knelt at my side then, running her fingers over my head. Her touch was gentle.
“You’re injured,” she murmured, face etched with concern.
I barely heard her, staring at the blood-soaked blade. “What…what is that? What are you? Tell me what you are!”
Lifting a finger to her lips, the blade retracted into her wrist with a shhhhck. She snatched up several pebbles, enclosing them in her fist. Her severed hand reconstructed itself before my very eyes—bone, muscle, skin, all woven together in a heartbeat. When she opened her fist, all the pebbles were gone.
Leid helped me sit. I caressed my head, shutting my eyes as blood trickled from my hairline, beading warm down the bridge of my nose. “You killed everyone on that plane. Why?”
“They saw,” she said, but the steel of her words bent to the quaver in her voice. “No witnesses.”
Leid rose to her feet, shaking out her new hand. We looked ahead.
Beyond the cliff was a meadow, decorated in strange trees—white bark, crimson leaves. Neither of us said anything for a while, gazing at the scenery.
“What now?” I murmured.
She turned, heading for the slope. “I’m giving you two options; I can take you back to the Nexus, or I can leave you here.”
I watched her, wordless.
“Decide. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Take me with you.”
“That isn’t an option.”
“I don’t want to go back to the Nexus, and I don’t want to stay here. I want to go with you, wherever you’re going.”
For some reason, what I’d said hurt her. I couldn’t fathom why. She pointed at the smoking plane wreckage that fouled the horizon. “That’s what you want? Believe me, the excitement gets old quick.”
“I don’t care about the excitement.”
“Then why?”
I looked away, unable to put feelings into words.
“You can’t come with me. It’s safer this way.”
I laughed under my breath. “You’re trying to protect me; is that it?”
“I’m trying to protect us both.”
What did that even mean? Our entire conversation felt like one giant deja-vu, and it was maddening. I struggled to my feet, staggering a step. She watched me rise, silent.
I stared at her, and she at me, and no words were spoken. There was something where our eyes met, something I knew yet couldn’t grasp long enough to substantiate. It was transcendental, harrowing.
“Take me with you,” I repeated, hoping she had waned.
“No.”
“You can’t just dump me here.”
“Why not? You seem perfectly capable of handling yourself. I didn’t make you leave your mission, Alezair.”
“You did!” I shouted, startling both of us. “I don’t know how, but you did!” She looked scathed again. “What was all this for, anyway? Why did you bring me along? What am I to you?”
“Nothing!” she screamed, but her eyes betrayed her words. “You’re nothing to me!”
“You’re lying,” I whispered, searching her face.
Leid turned, hiding.
And then it began to rain; the warm shower washed away all the blood and dirt, soaking us down.
“Please, take me with you.”
She didn’t object, didn’t say anything at all.
A moment later, she walked away.
Abandoned, I returned to the ledge and stared at the meadow trees. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to be. I was directionless, like a broken compass whose needle just spun and spun. The stirring of stones made me look over my shoulder. I caught a flash of Leid, and then a clear glimpse of her fist as it blurred for my face.
My head whipped sideways and I felt a crunch. Before I teetered off the cliff, she snatched me up and held me on my knees, another fist wound. There was fury behind her gaze, and again, I didn’t know why.
“L-Leid,” I choked, and my unhinged jaw sent shooting pains up my face, “I’m sorry. Leid, I’m sorry!”
I had no idea what I was apologizing for.
Her anger waned. She opened her fist and laughed, but the laugh was mirthless.
“No, Alezair, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for my pity, because someday you’ll regret this.”
I squinted, confused. She reached forward, cupping my face.
Gentle, burning.
My body convulsed and my vision blurred. A gurgled cry escaped my lips as my insides started to boil. The agony perpetuated, consuming me entirely. I’d swallowed the sun.
Leid released me and I hit the ground on all fours, breathing heavy. I battled consciousness through my teeth, failing mis
erably.
I looked up at her, conviction burning in my eyes. What have you done, they said.
The pain became too much.
I hit the ground, seizing, and everything went dark.
V
THE INDUCTION
I STIRRED AWAKE, FEELING LIGHT shining on my face.
I squinted, trying to open my eyes. They rolled back into my head on the first attempt.
I peered up at a white vaulted ceiling, lying on something soft and warm. My hands slid across it.
…Silk sheets?
Vertigo in full swing, I stared at nothing, waiting for my eyes to uncross. Pain radiated from my gut, shooting lava up my throat. It was so intense that I actually let out a startled groan, curling in response.
I was on a bed covered in white silk sheets, surrounded by bookshelves, a desk in the far right corner, and a nightstand. There was a circular window right above the bed, emanating eerie, silver light. Struggling to stand, I peered through the window. The sight beyond the glass sucked the breath from my lungs.
An abandoned city.
Marble sculptures of gargoyles and other winged creatures were carved into fifty foot towers along a white cobblestone path. Domiciles guarded by pillars framed the street. The place I was in was surrounded by an iron fence, protecting an impressive garden of neatly trimmed grass, red and white flowers, and a fountain. There was a strange ache as I looked at the scenery—a sadness taking form in my chest. Soon I had to look away, the ache too heavy.
I approached the bookshelves. My eyes trailed across the spines on the top row.
I slid one out, glancing over the cover. It was in a language that I’d never seen before. As I continued to stare at the illegible text, something happened, almost like a click in my head. And then to my astonishment, I read aloud:
Mannerisms and Mores of the Roman Republic.
Stunned, I rifled through the pages, able to read every word.
Tossing the book aside, I picked up another. This one was written in scripture different than the first. But yet again, I saw:
The Epic of Gilgamesh.
There was movement in my peripherals. I turned, staring at my own reflection in a full-length mirror hanging on the door.
I looked the same; silver eyes and dark brown hair cut jaggedly to my collar, loose strands falling into my eyes, shadowing the bridge of my nose. But I also seemed sick, with good reason. My stomach was threatening to eject its contents all over the fancy beige carpet.
The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy Page 3
