Fallen Angels

by Warren DeBary

  “Thank you.”

  She grinned childishly, and then disappeared from view. She popped up in another place like a playful otter.

  Shivering, I sat down on the hard ground, my teeth chattering. I could not still be in the tropics. Where the hell was I? Where was George?

  My confusion had gone on for too long, and I was ready to just stay here until someone explained things to me.

  I mean, c’mon. I was almost killed by some kind of possessed asshole and the school gets all shot up, and I find out my teachers are part of some Alien conspiracy with a capital A? Not to mention meeting a frickin’ fire goddess, who sends me through a portal to this God-forsaken place, and discovering my best friend, someone I’ve known for years, is some kind of Angel-Alien protector. Worst of all, my dad knew all about this and never said a word.

  What the hell?

  I’d lived a lifetime of being told what to do and how to do it, being carried like a piece of luggage all over the world, to places I never wanted to be. Not having a mother, and a father who thinks of me as his soldier.

  Every lecture, every rule, and I followed them all, only to find out that it was all lies. My father knew about this world; he knew that I was in danger. He knew that there are things out there, things that would take a gun and shoot Dominick down.

  My friend.

  My fault.

  The memory of Dominick’s blank, staring eyes brought tears to my own, and it wasn’t long before my cheeks were wet. But then I got angry.

  How dare my father keep this from me!

  How dare all these people keep me in the dark! I didn’t know with whom I could trust. Who could I turn to? I was angry. Never having any control over my life. Never knowing what the truth was.

  Abruptly, a painfully intense pressure built just behind my eyes. My head suddenly felt like it would burst and I collapsed from the sheer agony. Searing pain rushed down my arms, terminating at my hands, forcing them open like too much air into a balloon. I screamed, pawing at the wet mud at the water’s edge.

  Suddenly, my pendant flared, shining out over the water. It connected with me, consoling me; but the pain was so forceful, I couldn’t listen. I lay in the mud, the torment overwhelming. I could feel the pendent in my mind searching, and then finding. Something shifted and I was able to look up again.

  Above me, I saw currents of green energy pouring into my body like the pressure from a fire hose tearing apart a bucket. My Loci sent flashcard images, showing me what to do. The pain was still excruciating, but now I could at least function again.

  I raised my right hand, my left directed at the falls. The green energy flowed and a beam of pure power shot up through me, out my right hand and high up into the night sky.

  The power from this sacred site was pure intoxication and I indulged in the ebb and flow of the waterfall’s current.

  Now I understood why George had leapt off the pathway on that cliff with Pele. The power was addictive, compulsive, and I basked in its glow. I felt like a kid on too much sugar, like a druggie on an amphetamine high.

  My pendant was speaking to me. Trying to help me to close myself off to that energy, to control it and to stop it, but I didn’t want to stop.

  The pendant pleaded with me, begging me to stop. It told me that it was dangerous; images of a burnt-out husk were thrust into my mind. But it was already too late. I was addicted and ignored the imageries, the beseeching emotions, befuddled by the power I now commanded.

  I laughed, the laugh of a child, and a fire ignited. I embraced it.

  Joyfully, I stoked that fire with my will. The flames raged and burned, instantly drying my clothes and everything else around me. I was no longer cold. It was overwhelming, menacingly seductive, yet I bathed in it, casting it out over the pool.

  Gazing skyward, I shot another beam hundreds of feet into the air and screamed in adulation, in awe of my newfound gift. Let them come, let them attack. I am not afraid. I saw shadows twist and dive and I held my hands up and cast my power into the night air, screaming at them to come, to be burned.

  “Hey!” Someone yelled from the top of the falls. In the fierce light, I saw the little water nymph, her face a mask of fear. She dove back under the water, barely escaping the firestorm I had created. The mists burned away, the moss shriveled and died, and I was ashamed.

  My concentration faltered and the light failed. The energy that had been flowing from the falls was somehow shunted aside. My head was woozy from the sudden lack of energy.

  The grotto drifted back into darkness, the cold closed back down and grated at me again, but my teeth did not chatter this time: The power warmed me from within.

  “Does it feel good, boy?” I heard a voice behind me. Turning, I found the old man with the golden eyes staring down at me. I hadn’t heard anyone approach, nor had I seen anyone when the entire bay was lit up as bright as day, but there he was.

  “Get out of there before you catch your death. Never knew anything like it. Young pup thinking he can control the energy of the universe but don’t have enough sense to get out of the freezing water. Makes no sense is all. We’re gonna have to keep you away from these places. Acting like a drunk idiot.”

  Before I left the water, I looked for the little water creature.

  “You don’t worry about Undine. She’s survived more than you can channel right now. Just get out of there and we’ll see ‘bout getting you home.”

  “Home? I just got here!”

  I felt my power come back up again, and for an instant, I saw the old man singed in flame. The energy from the falls was still flowing; I could grab it if I wanted to.

  The old man chuckled to himself, his beard quivering in the moonlight. “The boy thinks he can burn me like a barbecue. He thinks I went through all that trouble just so I can take him back without even a how’d you do?” He waved a hand and I couldn’t feel the energy anymore, like a light switch had been turned off. Just like that, the insane anger disappeared. He smiled.

  “One day, you’ll have enough control to handle that power responsibly. Right now, it’s off-limits to you,” the old man said. I was a little hung over from the heady feeling of the energy, enough to be surly.

  “Why? When I was with Pele, I was fine.”

  The old man stared at me, his eyes hard. “You were with one of the Potestas, fool boy. She was sucking up all of the energy away from you. If I know Pele, she didn’t want to give you a taste, jealous of anyone who might steal her power. Good thing, too; if she felt you were a threat, she might have turned you char-broiled.”

  I just stared at him, thinking about how one of Pele’s fireballs could have been heading right at my head.

  “I know your name, Matthew Rising, but you don’t know mine,” the old man said. “You may call me Rene, Rene Farrell.”

  Above, someone was coming down the steep cliff. I could tell who it was just by the loud footfalls and the resulting falling rocks—as well as the constant cursing. George leapt from about twenty feet above the foot of the cliff and landed between the old man and me.

  “God damn it, Rising! Couldn’t you see that you should have gone right instead of left at the portway exit? You had your eyes closed, didn’t you?”

  “Ahem!” Rene’s guttural sound shook the unburned trees behind him. George practically jumped out of his skin. He tripped over a root and fell; then skittered across the muddy ground and into the shallow water until he bumped up against my feet.

  “Don’t do that to me!” he yelled, staring at the large dark skinned man. I couldn’t stop laughing. Even the old man smirked as George got up in the knee-deep water, dripping wet.

  “What is wrong with you? Spooking people out in the middle of the fricking, forgotten forest from hell. Don’t you know there are some really creepy things out here tonight?” George asked, twisting water from his shirt.

  I laughed even louder and even George grinned. Rene looked upward. “Kid has a point. With that little outburst of Mr. Rising’s
here, he might as well have lit off a flare. We’re about to have some company if we don’t get going now. We’ll have to take the back way.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked. Everything was just moving too fast.

  “We are taking you to safety, where you should have gone so many years ago. I’m taking you to Emily.” Rene took off and we followed him up the hill. A trail was hidden from below, but it wound up the side of the cliff.

  I looked down and saw the little water creature peering at us from the blackness of the water below, her eyes catching the light of the moon. Rene had called her Undine. I waved, silently thanking her for helping me. She nodded and dove under the water, disappearing from view.

  We followed Rene up the trail until he turned abruptly and disappeared into what looked like a solid wall of rock.

  “C’mon,” George grunted as he pushed passed me, disappearing as well.

  Well, I guessed this was a day for all kinds of new experiences, so I walked toward the grey stone of the cliff and passed through the rock and into what looked like the entrance of an airport. A figure about the same height as Rene stood guard over a door, holding a shield and a sword. The figure flickered and I realized it was some kind of holographic projection.

  Rene walked up to the projection and waved his hands over a crystal, revealing light runes very similar to the ones I’d seen in the sewer under Mr. Ching’s restaurant. The doors opened and we followed Rene into the darkness within.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “A transport stop, of course,” George said.

  “A transport stop? To where?”

  “Anywhere you want to go in the system.” We followed Rene down a narrow hallway. “Its not like non-humans can use Alien Airlines. Be kinda hard if you’re made of metal to walk through a metal detector, now wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  “I thought they’d use spaceships and stuff.”

  “Spaceships?” George laughed. “Do you have any idea how much of a pain it is to have one of those? Besides, there’s enough problems with Earthbounds spotting the AGVs when their light displacers crap out.”

  “AGVs?”

  “Anti-Gravity Vehicles… c’mon, stay with the smart class now,” George said as we followed Rene down another passageway.

  We reached a small, brightly lit grotto. Along one wall were chairs lined neatly in a mechanical dispenser. As we walked further into the grotto, a strong musk-like scent filled the air, the kind of smell you find at a zoo.

  A creature that must have been eight feet tall if it was an inch stood at one of the machines. As we got closer, I noted that it was covered in a thick, reddish fur. Its face was ape-ish with a large forehead and expressive eyes. It pushed a few buttons and waved its hand over another crystal. One of the chairs along the wall shifted and released above a very shallow flue of water.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

  “Why? What do you think it is?” George smiled.

  “That’s Bigfoot!” I said, my mouth gaping.

  “Gee, I’ve never heard that one before,” the large ape-man said with an indignant sniff just before stepping away.

  George laughed. A whir of machinery and a clicking sound locked the chair into place. There was a system of dispensers and flues throughout the small grotto, all lined up and feeding a body of flowing water in the center of the cave.

  Bigfoot sat in the chair, and I watched as he was encased in a yellow, shimmering capsule. Another click and Bigfoot coasted down the flue and into the main stream, then disappeared.

  “Boy, you have got a lot to learn,” Rene spoke for the first time since we left the water. “If you’ve got no more manners than that, I may send you back to that rock you just got off of. Dr. Enkadu is a respected xenobiologist of the Galactic Council and has been on this planet cataloguing the flora and fauna for close to two thousand years. You better keep your manners, or other things that aren’t so nice may bite that tongue right outta your head.”

  “Two thousand years?” I coughed, but the old man just stared at me until I responded with a simple, “Yes, sir.” I didn’t want to insult the ugly, big, hairy, red, stinky xeno-whatever, but c’mon… that was fricking Bigfoot. He’s lucky I didn’t ask him to put a giant paw print on my forehead. Bigfoot! You don’t see that every day.

  Rene huffed and stepped in front of one of the machines, waving his hand over the same sensor Bigfoot had just a moment ago. Three chairs disengaged from the dispenser and lined up in one of the flues. Rene sat in the first and George followed in the third, leaving the second chair open for me.

  “Wait!” I said. George rolled his eyes in the universal sign for what now. “How does this thing work?” I asked. For all I knew, in that tunnel was a cattle knocker that would hit me on the side of the head with a sledgehammer and then slice and dice me for someone’s dinner.

  “Stop being such a jerk, Matty. Get in the chair. I’ll explain it on the way,” George said. Rene just stared, waiting as I decided to trust them. The yellowish light encased us just as it did Dr. Bigfoot, and the sound of water disappeared. The only thing I could hear was George’s breathing behind me. I heard a click and we were moving toward the tunnel, its mouth wide open ahead of us.

  I shuddered as we entered the tunnel, thinking of nearly drowning a little while ago, but the interior of the capsule was dry and pleasantly lighted, like a late summer afternoon, golden and comforting. There was the wrench of acceleration and the capsule shot off into the darkness.

  Rene faced the front of the capsule. George pressed a small button on my right chair arm and my seat spun freely. I turned to face him.

  “Okay, man. What is this?” I asked.

  “Matty-Boy, just roll with things for a while. It’ll go easier for you,” George said. He triggered a three-dimensional map above us and tagged one of the lines on the map. A blinking dot moved quickly along it.

  “This is us,” George said, pointing at the dot, “and this is where we were,” he added, pointing at the beginning of the tunnel.

  “Where are we?” I asked, trying to make out the map but getting nowhere.

  “You know that falls you went over like a moron?” George asked.

  “You mean the one you didn’t tell me to watch out for, asshole?” I replied.

  “Yeah, that one. That was Burney Falls. We are,“ he paused and looked up at the blinking map above him, “that is, was, in the Mt. Shasta area. A regular hotspot for Sentients.”

  “You mean Mount Shasta, California?” I’d been there before. Dad took me on a camping trip. I remembered the giant forests and the snow-covered mountains. But after the first day, we got out of there fast. I wondered if all of this was the reason why.

  “Yeah, hey, give the kid a star there, Rene,” George said, holding his hand up, waiting for a high five. Rene ignored the hand completely. “Just gonna leave me hanging, huh?” Rene stared blankly.

  George dropped his hand and pointed at the blinking light as it moved down the illuminated map tunnel. He double-tapped the image, bringing up another super-imposed map showing the geography. “Mt. Shasta is one of the least populated areas in the most populated state in the country and is protected by the federal government to stay that way. Why do you think that is?” George asked.

  “Uh? Because Californians like to go camping?” I replied.

  “Bzzzz! Wrong, Waldo! It’s because the entire Mt. Shasta region is one of the largest interplanetary transport terminals on the North American continent. Meaning Sentients arrive from other planets… hell, other galaxies, at Mt. Shasta regularly. They then transfer to other areas on the continent using the tube system we’re in now.”

  “Tube system?”

  “Yeah, what do you think you’re in right now? It’s a tube. The whole system uses a combination of water and magnetic energy to transport us a long way with little to no power. These tunnels push us along in these little yellow capsules, sending out signals to tell the system connections
where we want to go. No waiting, no bums asking for handouts in a subway car. Total privacy,” George said. “The system is self-contained. Guess how fast we’re moving.”

  I looked at the blackness surrounding us, “Maybe seventy miles per hour?”

  “Try over two hundred miles per hour,” he said, pointing at the blinking dot whizzing down the map.

  “How is that possible?” I asked. Not even a bullet train could travel that fast.

  “Oh, that’s nothing. This is a slow track for local travel. The hardest part about Earthbound transportation is the need to start up and then stop. This system has taken that inefficiency out of the equation. The capsules accelerate independently in their own entry tubes and then join the main system once they’re at top speed. Sort of like the winds of Neptune: nothing to slow them down.” George wound his hand to illustrate the circular tunnel system. “At the end of the ride, it decelerates in a separate tunnel, not taking any energy out of the entire system. In fact, the deceleration gives energy back.”

  “What’s this green-lit area here?” I asked, pointing at the map.

  “That’s where we’re heading,” George said as Rene frowned.

  I examined the highlighted area. The strange markings were unfamiliar, but the geography, the land features, I knew. The Pacific Ocean invaded the landscape in great bays. Somewhere at the point where the ocean initially poked into the land, it should say Golden Gate Bridge. I also knew the name of some of the bays in the North from looking at the map my father had made me memorize that one time we went to San Francisco. We were heading north of that: Suisun Valley, where my Aunt Emily lived. I was finally going where my father planned me to be.

  How much of this did he know about? How was my father involved in this, and why is it that he never told me about it? It was obvious there was more to his life than I knew about, and not for the first time in the last two days, I asked myself what was going on. These were questions I would ask when I saw him again… if I saw him again.