I began to shake my head but before I could answer, he cut me off. “Don’t let me send you out there with nothing to protect yourself. At least allow that.” There was such pain in his voice I finally nodded. He sighed, long and deep.
“Then I will see you first thing tomorrow morning.” He left. I heard the front door slam shut.
Chapter 12 – Aunt Emily
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4
I tossed and turned through the night, my dreams wild and vivid.
There was a man with a cigarette in his mouth. “You have finally come home. They have kept much from you.”
The world around me lit brilliantly and I discovered I was in an underground cavern. Molten lava boiled beneath a large platform. At the head of that platform sat a man on a golden throne. His eyes smoldered; his skin was dark. He looked like something out of a bad horror movie.
“So would that make me Pinhead or Freddie?” he cackled. I realized he had just read my mind, but funny things happened in dreams. “That is best. Take things as you perceive them. The truth is so much more difficult. Matthew, that is such a good name. Perhaps we shall change that. But I will allow you to keep it for now.”
“Who are you, and why am I here?” I asked quietly.
“Its not yet time for answers. But you will have knowledge soon enough,” the figure said.
He was gone, replaced by fluttering images.
My father running down a darkened driveway…
A woman screaming in the night…
Dominick’s childish face…
Tuli and the gun, the inhuman grin just before he lifted it.
Blam!
I woke with a start, the echo of that last sound not leaving so fast. Dim light filtered through gauze-like curtains. My pillow was wet with sweat, my shirt as if I’d been dipped in a chilled pool.
There was a presence in the room; someone was there with me. I scrambled to find a light and half-fell off the side of the bed. My shoulders hit the carpeted ground with a thump.
I turned on the bedside lamp and turned to see whoever was there with me. A middle-aged woman sat in a chair, peering at me through rectangular glasses while sipping from a teacup.
Blonde hair flowing in loose curls fell just below her hunched shoulders. Her posture made her seem old, but her face was much younger looking. Her skin was golden and warm, as if she spent time out in the sun. Her eyes were a rich shade of blue, not the hazel my dad and I both had. I don’t know why I compared her to me, maybe it was her face; we had the same face. She was family.
“Aunt Emily?” I asked.
She looked out the window for a second. “Matthew.” Her voice was musical, lilting. “Maybe you would like to get off the floor?” she asked, smiling at my situation.
I got up and sat facing her. I felt like a puppy being tended to by its mother.
“You were sitting in the dark?” I asked, trying to break the silence.
“I came up to see that you were taken care of. You slept all day yesterday and all night,” she said softly. “I was concerned.”
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“I came in just before the sun set.”
“What time is it now?”
“Just about dawn.”
“You’ve been here all night?”
She shifted uneasily and put the cup down. I should have been very uncomfortable. This woman had sat there, watching me through the entire night. How creepy was that? But for some reason, it seemed there could be nothing more normal.
It felt right.
“The sun is on the rise.” She rose from the chair. The windows were lightening and birds were beginning their morning song just outside. “I’ve some clothes that should fit you in the closet, and I’ve put towels in the bath there,” she said, pointing. “If I know Ms. Maggie, she’s cooking enough to feed a small army. Come down when you’re ready.”
The wooden closet door slid along its track, revealing a wardrobe. Jeans and t-shirts, workout clothes and dress shirts. I wondered about Aunt Emily, but that would have to wait.
I jumped into the shower, letting the warm water cascade over me, sweeping away yesterday’s dirt. Now, if it could only sweep away the memories. I still saw Tuli with the gun in his hand.
“Hey,” George shouted through the bathroom door. “You ‘bout done in there? Some of us want to get some grub.”
“Yeah,” I yelled, shaken from my memory as I opened the door.
“Hope you don’t mind, Matty boy, but I borrowed a pair of jeans and a shirt.” The clothes looked like they were a size too small, but they would pass. “I’m just glad they had a brand new toothbrush; my teeth were growing hair,” George said. “My parents booked me a flight out of SFO this weekend. So looks like I’m stuck here for a while.”
“George, about the Malakhim thing…”
“Don’t worry, Matt. It’s fine. Not everyone is cut out for it. Besides, I wouldn’t want you being as awesome as I am, now would I?” He smiled. I gave him a half-hearted grin. I felt like I had betrayed him somehow, after everything he had gone through. The beast in the sewer was like a nightmare, a nightmare on top of a horror movie, a nightmare on top of a horror movie on top of a haunted house and he had faced the thing because of me. I would have to make it up to him somehow. But right now, I just didn’t know how.
“There they are,” Ms. Maggie said as we turned the corner into the kitchen. The dog yipped grumpily, telling us very plainly, “Don’t distract her while I’m trying to get some food.”
As promised, Ms. Maggie had cooked enough food for the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan, and although I had never seen the Golden Horde, you know what I mean. “Where’s Aunt Emily?” I asked after taking a helping of bacon.
“Oh, she’s off training Kayla,” Ms. Maggie replied while stirring a pot of what looked like stew.
“If I don’t watch out, I’m going to get fat,” I told Ms. Maggie.
“You don’t worry about that. If I know anything, you’ll be working that off in training,” Ms. Maggie responded. “It’s gonna be hard enough keeping you kids out of the pantry with how hungry you’ll be getting.”
“You hungry, George?” Ms. Maggie asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said as he grabbed a sausage from the stove. “Ow, ow, ow. Damn that’s hot!”
“Serves you right. Teens…” Ms. Maggie laughed. “Go have a seat. I’ll make you a plate.”
“Hey, Matt. You get enough rest?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know why I slept so long.”
“Its part of using your growing powers; conservation of energy. If you use a lot of power, then the body will shut you down to replenish the supply.”
“That’s why you were always falling asleep in Trig class?” I asked. George was notorious for nodding off right in the middle of Brother Murphy’s lecture. His head would hit the desk, followed by the swift crack of the clergyman’s ruler on his shoulder.
“Yup, it’s tough, dude. Believe me, I know.”
Bailey took a spot staring up at me through the glass table. He knew an easy mark when he saw one. I threw a couple of pieces of bacon and he swallowed them whole before they even touched the floor.
George helped himself to a third helping of eggs. He was the same guy I used to eat lunch with at St. Peter’s. Things had changed, but it felt good to know that he had my back. The guy had almost died protecting me so I owed him, but I wondered, and not for the first time, what other surprises he would have for me.
“So, Malakhim, huh?”
He glanced up at me, still chewing on a piece of bacon. “Yup.”
“So you want to tell me about it?” I asked as I scooped a bit from a bowl of what looked like cream of wheat.
“What do you wanna know?” he
asked, still chewing like a cow on its cud.
“How long have they been here?” I asked.
“The Malakhim have been here for thousands of years. Made me sick sitting in history class learning about ancient history that didn’t actually happen.”
“Why, what happened differently?”
“Oh, several things. Like how the textbooks insist that Christopher Columbus was the first European in the Americas.”
“You mean he wasn’t?”
“No, of course not. There was a brisk trade with the so-called New World forever. It just so happens that when Atlantis…”
“What!”
“Yes, Atlantis,” he answered. “It was flooded by the Shed’im and they went back to their home planet. It really put a hamper on trade. Then all worldwide trade was put on hold due to the Accords,” George said.
“Okay, so Atlantis is real?” I asked and decided to just go with it. After everything I’d seen recently, I figured, why not? “But who are the, what did you call them?”
“The Shed’im. They are the descendants of the Starborn. Those who have decided to go against our own kind, to be a traitor to our race.”
“So the Malakhim fight against them?”
“Fighting is too strong a word. We don’t like each other, that’s for sure, and we disagree with what is best for the human race.”
“What is best? What do you mean?”
“The Malakhim believe that the future of the human race belongs right here on Earth. We believe that the only way to evolve is if Mother Earth, and every human on it, rises up and joins the galactic society. The Shed’im think differently.”
“How so?”
“They believe that the only way humankind will rise up is by leaving the Earth behind, including all the Earthbounds on it. Malakhim and Shed’im, two sides of the same coin,” he said disjointedly, as if thinking about something far away.
I looked at him quizzically. “Why is it that I’ve never seen any of this before, like the Menehune and those strange, flying things?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Yup, freaks you out, huh? I remember when I first started seeing things. I thought I was going nuts,” he said as he poured himself another glass of orange juice. “My parents didn’t say a word. They’re Malakhim, too.”
I knew Mr. and Mrs. Koa. They came out to the basketball games and were just as normal as anyone in the stands. They are Malakhim?
“You’re going to be seeing all kinds of things now because of your Loci and because your power is manifesting,” George went on as he dug a fork into his plate of pancakes. “It gives you the vision to see past simple veils and your Loci helps out, lets you see a lot better. That and you are attracting a lot of attention, so the Sentients are curious.”
“Sentients?”
“Aw, c’mon! Do I have to hold your hand and explain every thing to you? Sentients are intelligent species. We usually call those not from Earth that,” he said.
“Why would I attract attention?” I asked.
“Because of your special status and all,” he said through a mouth full of pancakes.
I hated that I didn’t know anything and that George was smug with all this hidden information. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I asked with a lot more venom than I had intended.
“Tell you what? That you’re part of an alien society whose sole purpose is to save the world? And what would you have thought if I told you that?” George asked.
I sat there and picked at my plate. “I don’t know.”
“I do. You would have thought I was crazy. Then anything I said after that would have been a joke. It’s tradition to have a potential Initiate go through a process. Your body is trained first, then the mind, then Malakhim training. It’s not easy, dude.”
I thought about that. I thought about all the years of training with my father. All the beatings I had taken. He told me, right before I left with Pele, that all that he did was for this. Everything was to get me ready for what I was going through now. A pang of regret flashed through me. Why couldn’t he just have been honest?
“We have a choice to become Malakhim or not, to take the pledge or not,” George continued. “Those who chose not to take the pledge are shielded, made to forget, and their families never share the secrets.”
“Will they make me forget?” I asked. George just looked down at his plate. “I didn’t choose to be in this situation,” I snapped.
“You always have a choice, Matty. Always,” George said.
“Oh, Matthew,” Ms. Maggie said from the kitchen. “Before I forget. Rene was called in for some emergency meeting with the Council and asked if George could go over some basic concepts with you today. He’ll be here tomorrow at first light.”
George smiled devilishly. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
“Um, yeah. I don’t think so.”
“Don’t worry, Matty-Boy. I won’t even leave too many bruises.”
I growled.
Just a bit later, we were on the far lawn. George pulled out his Kindjals. The runes on the blades shone with blue light, visible even in the early morning sun.
“Okay, Rising. Malakhim one-oh-one.” The blades winked and sparkled as George waved them around with practiced efficiency: fluid movements slicing through the air like scythes. “You’ve seen some of the things I’ve learned in training. Believe me when I tell you that’s only kindergarten compared to what a full-fledged Malakhim can do.”
He leapt through the air, his legs kicking out behind him. His body parallel to the ground, he swung his blades below him. I could tell that this was an exercise he’d been practicing for years.
“It’s a lot more than what I’ve ever learned,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe. But a guy’s gotta start somewhere. So here we are.” George did a somersault, the knives in perfect position to defend against anything coming at him. I stood, envious of his display. “Do you see?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Try to concentrate. Your Loci will help. Just get out of its way and let it do its work.” He tumbled again and the light from the two blades brightened, became more focused. But I still had no idea what he was talking about.
He leapt into the air again, his head easily reaching ten feet or more.
“Why didn’t you jump like that when we played St. Christopher’s?” I laughed, referring to our basketball team’s biggest competitor. “We would have won States for sure.”
He scowled at me. “Malakhim don’t cheat, Matthew.” He was deadly serious.
I wondered about that. Then I realized that this was a different world. I had absolutely no knowledge of the world George lived in, a world where training meant life and death. George was prepared for that world, and I was just a babe in the darkness. “Focus. Let your Loci run free. Allow it to help you.”
I didn’t know what he meant. The only times my Loci did anything was when I was in some sort of danger, or when Rene did something to it. I didn’t know how to get it to respond to my thoughts by itself.
Self-consciously, my fingers found the warmth of the golden metal under my shirt. It felt alive, watchful, but still, there was nothing else.
“I can’t.” That’s when the friend I’d known for the last three years attacked.
The Kindjals cut through the air, aimed directly at my head. I ducked away, just in time to see the path of the blades change sideways, trying to take my arms off. Reflexively, I pivoted and moved just enough to avoid the razor sharp blades, although I would have been hard pressed to slide a thick piece of paper between the blade’s edge and my skin.
“What the hell?” I yelped but dove as George sliced downward again, this time nearly carving the nose right off my face. “George! What are you doing?”
“Focus!” He yelled just as he somersaulted and swung again in a move that would have scalped me. I slipped away as he landed. He came again and again, and it took all of my knowledge and my father�
�s entire training not to get my head cut off.
“Is that the best you can do?”
I was really starting to get angry. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him do it to me.
“Go to hell, George,” I said and went on the offensive. I swung at him but he flipped away before I connected. It was like trying to fight tumbleweed in a hurricane. He jumped and twisted, but I had to be careful in my attack because his damned Kindjals kept countering, waiting for an opportunity to catch me off balance.
Finally, sheer exhaustion slowed me down and as I tried a kick, I slipped and fell. I stumbled to the ground and his Kindjals scored on my forearm. But instead of cutting my arm to the bone, it was like being hit by a baseball bat. My arm went numb as he hit me again and again. The pain made it hard for me to concentrate.
I was really angry now, and this time, my pendant flared to life, filling me with energy, giving me my second wind. My vision seemed sharper, clearer, like things were in HD, and George’s movements were easier to anticipate.
I slipped to the right and then to the left, avoiding his attack. Lines of light connected George with the energy around him, and my pendant flared. I dove at George, but instead of trying to hit him, I sliced at the connecting power with a red-infused wave of my hand. I didn’t know I could do that, but the string that was empowering George was severed.
“Good!” George said as he attacked again. I ducked around and cut off another line of power. This time, it flashed and disappeared. I could feel George’s energy weakening. He jumped again, but this time, he slid his Kindjals behind me. I realized he was trying to cut my power. But my pendant flashed again and my line of power disappeared then re-formed away from my frustrated attacker.
George lost his patience and attempted to catch me in a half-jump, but my enhanced vision made it easy to anticipate the move and I caught him with a rear leg kick. His breath rushed out in a gush of air as my foot connected with his diaphragm.
He fell to the ground and smiled as he looked up at me, his eyes gleaming.
Fallen Angels Page 10
