Fallen Angels

by Warren DeBary

  It convulsed once more, and then its eyes went dark. I pulled the blade free, moving away to avoid the weight of the now-lifeless head. The bulk of it lay beside me. The awful odor of sulfur and rotten eggs was even worse than before.

  “God damn, you stink!” I yelled as I kicked the colossal skull. I was about to kick it again when I saw my friend, unmoving, and my heart stopped.

  “George?” My voice echoed faintly.

  “Damn it all to hell,” George groaned as he turned over. “I’m never going to hear the end of this one.” His face was a grimace. I was so relieved to hear his voice I would have hugged the bastard if he hadn’t warded me away. He rolled over. His right arm was twisted and bent in the wrong place. I’d bet money that it was broken.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah,” he grinned harshly. “But two times in one day I gotta use a Heal-Rod? That’s not cool. Matty, you’re so bad for my health, man.”

  “I could have told you that,” I muttered.

  “Help me up, would you?” He grasped my offered hand and I slowly pulled him upright. He let out a low whistle as he looked at the dead thing. “What did you do to it?”

  “I killed it,” I said, surprised at how easily that had come to my lips. Besides the occasional bug, that was the first time I’d ever killed anything. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I just reacted when I saw my friend in danger.

  “Yeah, but how?”

  “With your knife.” I shivered. “What was that thing?”

  “That was a Gallu demon, and a right nasty one at that. I didn’t expect it to be so frickin’ big.”

  “A what?”

  George stopped and glared at me. “Gallu demons are just one of the things that will be hunting you. They must be really desperate if they’re letting those things run around free. Besides, that isn’t what we should be worried about. We should be worried about its master.”

  I stared at him but he turned down a side tunnel and picked up the pace. I chased after him.

  He paused for a second, holding up his hand.

  There was a loud screech, very much like the one we heard earlier. George’s eyes went wide, his jaw tensed. There was another screech, much closer and much more alarming.

  “But right now, if you want to survive this, no more questions and run.” He broke into a full sprint, his fractured arm falling limply at his side.

  I ran.

  We stopped several times and each time, George would listen. Then we would run again. My lungs felt like balls of fire. My legs were lead weights pulled along only by my force of will to keep up. The fading light from the street gutters dwindled to twilight, and still we ran. We had been running for so long, I thought it would never end. I was certain we were running in circles and was about ready to collapse when George stopped. His hand rose to silence the questions he knew were coming.

  “Hold on, I haven’t come this way in a while,” he whispered. Darkness circled his eyes. I bent over, my hands on my knees, and gasped for air.

  George scanned the tunnel and nodded in some silent affirmation. Then he stared at the sewer wall and murmured rhythmically. Glittering rune-like shapes coalesced on the dark wall, like shimmering layers of gold. At a gesture from George, one of the runes rose away from the concrete surface and disappeared. Then he moved to the next rune. Some he left glowing there. Others were cast aside.

  George slid the remaining runes like leaves on a pond, moving them back and forth. After a while, they locked into place. A crack appeared and a door opened in the once-solid wall.

  Perspiration dripping from his forehead, George clenched his teeth and drew another sharp breath. Favoring his twisted arm, he hobbled through the opening. The door in the wall closed with a rush of air behind us.

  We made our way toward a spiral staircase. Beyond the staircase was a large room filled with items unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Others were very similar, like the sparring equipment Dad and I used. The floor was marked in large concentric rings of various colors. It looked like an exercise room of some kind.

  When he got to the bottom of the staircase, my friend collapsed.

  “George!” I shouted as I ran to help him.

  “I guess I used a bit too much,” he said half under his breath. “Give me a hand, will you?”

  I helped pull him up the narrow staircase and opened the door at its top. Pale fluorescent light and the vinegary smell of orange chicken flooded through the opening.

  I helped George through the door and found two overweight men in stained white undershirts and black-checkered pants arguing in Cantonese.

  One of them noticed us and gesticulated wildly. The other man glanced in our direction and disappeared through a swinging door. I helped George lay on a few giant bags of rice stacked in the corner.

  A second later, Mr. Ching burst through the doors. He took one look at me and then went over to the now-unconscious George. He lifted George’s filthy shirt, exposing deep, dark bruises along his stomach and sides.

  “His ribs and arm broken and he bleeding inside. We expected you hours ago. Where you was?” He didn’t wait for an answer and prodded George’s arm. Muttering quietly, his hands began to glow with warm light. Then, he grabbed the crooked arm and pulled. George moaned as Mr. Ching twisted it, setting it straight with a crunch of bone. He grabbed some old aprons from a shelf in the corner and wound it around the now-set arm. “At least that’ll keep it quiet while we tend to it.”

  “Jo-ek,” Mr. Ching instructed the other cook, who nodded and left.

  “Help me with this.” We worked the shirt off George, exposing a collage of dark bruises and cuts. The skin was strangely misshapen, broken ribs for sure. He was in a lot worse shape than I thought.

  The cook returned with a pot of brownish goo that smelled like something he found in the dumpster out back.

  “Will he be okay?” I asked.

  “His blood save him. His kind, they tough.” Mr. Ching spread the smelly goo on the numerous bruises. “But he go around too long without take care himself. He know better.”

  The mixture filled the small kitchen with an awful stink, but George’s breathing eased and fell into the restful rhythms of true sleep. Mr. Ching let out a deep sigh and covered him with a blanket. He watched George’s steady breathing and nodded as if appreciating a job well done. The Chinese man gave the cooks instructions and then looked at me.

  “We need to get you home.”

  Chapter 7 – Guardians

  A No Lani, A No Honua

  The Guardian Belongs to Heaven and Earth

  A Hawaiian saying

  “Follow me,” Mr. Ching said.

  “What about George?”

  “He okay, just need rest. Your dad, he just get here.” We made our way to the front of the restaurant, where I found Dean Alena and a number of others.

  “It’s about time, Matthew!” Dean Alena said from the head of a large table. His cigar filled the room with bitter smoke. Dr. Mdou sat at his right, and Ms. Chen, at his left.

  I was surprised to find Father Silva, the priest of St. Peter’s, standing off to one side, pouring tea into a ceramic cup. Heavy bamboo blinds covered the large plate glass windows, giving us privacy from any passersby on the street. The doors were chained shut.

  “Matthew!” a voice said behind me. Before I knew what was happening, I was lifted into the air. “I thought you were dead, boy!”

  “Can’t breathe…” I wheezed as my dad squeezed me for all he was worth. Pain, like an ice pick stabbing my ribs stole my breath away.

  “Sorry.” He put me down. “Well, you’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, but Dad ignored me completely and glared at the others. I knew that look; he was angry, and there would be no talking to him. He wouldn’t listen.

  “What the hell happened at the school today?” my father demanded. “It was all over the news. They said it was an attack, twenty-four dead.�
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  “Twenty-four? Who?” My classmates, my teachers, all of the staff, who had been killed? Even through that, all I could think about was Dominick’s small body crumpled at the foot of the stairs.

  The teachers and the priest stared at me.

  “Matthew, we’re getting to that. John, please have a seat,” Father Silva said, motioning to an empty chair. He poured Dad a cup of tea.

  “I will not have a seat! I want to know what happened.”

  Dean Alena moved beside him. “John, the Enemy is aware that Matthew is in Sanctuary.” He handed my father a folder full of pictures. “These were taken today.”

  Over my father’s shoulder, I caught glimpses of pictures printed on white sheets of paper. Images of classmates I had known for years, wide, unseeing eyes and blood-soaked shirts. My Pre-Calculus teacher shot through the neck, ragged edges of skin hanging from his throat. Right next to him, the dark stain of blood where Dominick had lain.

  My friend.

  My fault.

  I had known them. I had known every single one of them, people who were reduced to nothing more than images on a piece of paper.

  My father was shaken. Red-faced anger ebbed away to white-faced horror as he looked at every sheet, every image. The pages slipped from his hands and fell to the tabletop.

  “How?”

  “We don’t know,” the dean said. “What we do know is that the enemy has been busy.”

  The trouble of the day was making it difficult to think and I had difficulty focusing on his words. It all seemed garbled and confused. I looked into my father’s eyes and realized he knew about the monsters. He knew about everything that had happened to me today, probably much better than I did.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. I would have pitied him if I weren’t so angry. George was near death and people had died. Good people, people I’d known. The image of Dominick’s corpse ran through my mind like a freight train, and my anger grew.

  Dad closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and inhaled deeply. “When I thought you were ready, I was going to.”

  I knew him. I knew he wasn’t thinking about what he had done to me. What he had kept from me. He was only thinking that he had failed, had been unable to protect those people from whatever enemy he was so afraid of, and now people were dead.

  “I guess it’s too late for that now.”

  “Matthew, your father did what he could and after a while, he brought you to us.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “We are the Guardians,” Dean Alena said, pointing to those around the room, “protecting those who refuse to fight. One of the greatest of us, Maui and his father Ru, formed a rebellion, making this island habitable for humans. He founded this land and named this place Pu’uhonua, Sanctuary. It is a place of refuge against the war. These islands have always provided sanctuary. It is neutral ground as described in the Accords.”

  “What war? What Accords?”

  “The Judgment Accords, the agreement that ended the slavery of the human race.”

  My mind ached. “What are you talking about? What is going on?”

  Silence filled the room as the other people exchanged glances. I stared at all of them, daring them not to answer.

  “Matthew, when you were a year old, there was a fire, a terrible fire,” my father began. His eyes looked tired, resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to control this situation the way he always controlled everything around me. “We left you at a neighbor’s apartment just for a little while so we could get some groceries. When we got back, the building was an inferno. We came home to find your babysitter screaming. The flames were so high; there wasn’t a thing she could do.

  “Abby, the lady who was watching you, said you started crying. When she went to check, she said the room just went up in flames. She couldn’t get near you. She had burns up and down her arms and legs.

  “The fire department was there but before they could get the fire under control, your mother ran up the stairs. I followed.” Dad looked at me, rubbing his arm across his forehead. “Then we heard it.”

  “Heard what?”

  “We heard you crying from that wreck of a building. We found you sitting there, in the middle of the flame and ash, your face black with soot. You were fine. Absolutely nothing wrong.”

  “Ahem!” Dean Alena glanced at my father.

  “Yes, well. One day a little after that, a man came, strange man, tall. I could tell that your mother knew him. He said he was going to take you.” My father stopped, his mouth a straight line, his jaws clenched. “Well, I got in his face and all I remember was a flash of light. The next thing I knew, I was looking up at your mother. She was screaming at me with you in her arms.”

  “Screaming at you?” I asked. This was the first time he’d ever said more than a word or two about my mother. I always assumed it hurt too much, so I never pressed him on the subject.

  “Telling me they found you. She said we had go to her parents. I was stationed in Colorado; they lived in California. We drove over the Rockies and up the Sierras in the Mustang.”

  “What happened then, after you got there?”

  “That’s the thing. We never made it. He found us, found you. He caught up to us near Lake Tahoe. Your mother did some things. Things I couldn’t believe.”

  He stopped then, his voice fading away as if the memory was just too much to bear. Father Silva put his hand on his shoulder and took the untouched cup of tea and placed it in his hand. Dad looked at him gratefully and took a sip. His eyes were weary, but he continued.

  “She told me to take you, but I wouldn’t leave her side. In the service, I’ve seen things, things that most people should never see. Been in battles with enemies that you couldn’t imagine, firefights that you wouldn’t believe, but it was nothing like what I’d seen that day. Your mother was radiant.” He trailed off. “I couldn’t help, couldn’t do anything. I’ve never felt so useless.

  “Finally, she put that pendant around your neck and told me to never take it off. She pleaded with me to take you as far away as I could. I promised her I would. Then I’d come back once I got you to safety. But just as I ran out of the building, there was an explosion. The building your mother was in collapsed.” He stopped and took another sip. “No one could have survived that. I ran with you in my arms. I’ve been running with you ever since.” Tears ran down his cheeks. I’d never seen him cry, never thought him capable of it.

  “The Adversary tried to take the boy?” Dr. Mdou asked.

  “We believe so,” Dean Alena answered for my father.

  “But how do we know he was responsible for today?” Dr. Mdou asked.

  “Mr. Ching told us that there was a Gallu Demon in the sewers. Is that right?”

  “We found the body of the Gallu when we went looking for Matthew. It’s amazing they survived,” Father Silva remarked.

  “Only his kind controls those beasts. Nasty creatures,” the dean said.

  “But what is all this? What’s going on?” I yelled in frustration. My best friend was unconscious in the back room, another friend was dead, and I just found out that I’m some kind of freak. I just didn't know how much more of this I could take.

  Dean Alena puffed at his cigar, the heavy smoke rising to ceiling. He looked at my father, who nodded. “We are at war, Matthew.” The dean stopped and took another puff from his cigar. “A war that, if we lose, could mean the end of Earth and all of us on it.”

  “A war with whom?”

  “Matthew. You have to understand something. Everything you’ve been made to understand about humans and who we are is wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The Sumerians spoke of beings from the sky that came down to Earth. They called them the Anunnaki, extraterrestrials that came here to rob the planet of its natural resources. Gold, platinum, whatever they wanted, they simply took.”

  “I’ve never heard of that
?”

  “That’s why we’re talking now. So pay attention. There was never very many of them and they simply didn’t want to do the heavy work of mining, so they did what any intelligent being would. They found a way for someone else to do the work. They made slaves. The bastards made us.”

  The room became quiet, every person intent on the words of the heavily jowled dean. After another puff of smoke, he looked blearily across the room.

  “What do you mean they made us?” I asked.

  Dr. Mdou spoke. “Exactly that. Our DNA is ninety-eight percent identical to a chimpanzee; the remaining two percent, well, that’s a different story. These ETs took our hominid ancestors and genetically enhanced them. Improved their ability to communicate, their ability to take orders, their ability to do the work that they needed them to do. They made humans into the perfect slave.”

  “Why only humans?”

  “It wasn’t only humans they experimented with. They tinkered with many species, genetically splicing animals together, changing the genetic coding, combining and testing. Abomination after abomination rolled out of their ships as they polluted our world with their atrocities. But our ancestors were one of the most successful of their experiments. We were their crown jewel, a new intelligent species. They were so proud. They paraded us around like circus animals,” Dr. Mdou said.

  Father Silva interrupted. “But they taught us as well, taught us to do whatever it was they needed. We built palaces for them, monuments to their home stars, anything they wanted.”

  “As slaves?” I asked.

  “Yes, but they saw we were intelligent as well, even in our most infant evolutionary stages,” Dr. Mdou said. “The ETs saw that and provided us with the tools and knowledge to do things we were just incapable of. You’ve seen pictures of the Pyramids of Egypt, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the temples of the Incan and Mayan civilizations?”