by Hanna Peach
A few “hear, hear’s” sounded out among the crowd. Oh God. Not going well at all.
Tobias spoke up, “Perhaps I am not the best person to speak about these dangers, as I have not seen them firsthand myself. Alyx, where are you? Will you come up here?”
Alyx froze, her body going cold and her muscles seizing up. Suddenly the murmur in the room disappeared under the roaring of her heartbeat in her ears.
“Alyx? Where’s Alyx?”
No. This couldn’t be happening.
“Alyx, Tobias is calling you,” she heard Jordan whisper in her ear. “Get up there.”
“Jordan, no, I can’t.”
“Yes, you have to.”
I have to. Just do it, Alyx. Just do it. For Israel, she chanted as encouragement to herself. Still, her limbs wouldn’t move.
Jordan wrapped his arm around her and began pulling her towards the front stage. The Seraphim in the crowd were all staring at them, parting around them like the Red Sea as they went. Alyx could barely feel her feet.
She started to resist. “I can’t go up there,” she hissed at him. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Alyx, just talk from your heart. Tell them the truth. Show that you believe what you saying. Don’t be afraid to feel up there.”
“But I… God, what if they don’t believe me. Look at them, they all hate me already.” The eyes that stared back seemed to shoot daggers of suspicion at her. What was she doing? What right did she have to rouse an army or to lead one? Was she really just leading them all to their deaths?
They reached the edge of the stage. Alyx’s body had stiffened so much in Jordan’s arms that he was practically carrying her. He stopped at the front of the stage and turned her around to face him. He stood close to her, his back to the crowd of Seraphim who were peering, interested and curious now, at both of them. Oh God, they were all looking at her, hating her.
“Alyx, don’t look at them, look at me. At me.” Jordan held her chin in his fingers and tilted her head so she was looking at him. The whole ballroom disappeared behind his pale green eyes. The tightness in her throat loosened as she felt her body begin to relax a little. “Just be yourself, Alyx. They won’t be able to help but love you like I…” He paused, swallowed. “They won’t be able to help it.”
Without breaking eye contact, he wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her up. Alyx’s hands jolted to his strong shoulders out of instinct. The familiar feeling of his muscles under her hands gave her comfort. He placed her gently on the stage. “You can do it.” He smiled and stepped back.
Alyx tore her eyes away from him. She stood up straight and her eyes cast out to the sea of Seraphim in front of her. Holy fiery balls of Hell. Look at them all. She glanced down at Jordan.
He nodded. Go on, he mouthed.
She forced herself to move behind the lectern where Tobias stepped aside for her to take center stage.
“I...” Alyx cleared her throat. It had become terribly dry and gritty as if she had been chewing on a mouthful of sand. She tried again. “Thank you all for coming, um…” God, she was doing this all wrong. All damn wrong. Her shirt felt itchy and the lights that shone down to the stage from above were so damn hot that beads of sweat were beginning to line her hairline. “I know Tobias has told you what we need to do, um, that we need to…”
Oh God. All those eyes staring at her. Expecting something great to come out of her mouth.
“Don’t look at them, look at me,” Jordan’s voice echoed in her head, cutting through her thoughts. She glanced down at him. His eyes were soft with encouragement and a small sure smile held on his face. Faith and support were right there. Even if no one in this room believed in her, Jordan did. And he would always.
Immediately she felt her heart lift, her chest expand and the tightness around her torso loosen.
Just be yourself. Just be yourself.
She looked up over the crowd again. In it she picked out the faces of Vix and Dianne. They were both smiling and nodding at her. They believed in her too.
She took a long deep breath. Just speak from the heart. She began, “You are right to question us. To question me. To question the validity of what we say. It is good. You are thinking for yourselves. It’s a freedom and privilege of our lives here outside of the Elders’ society. It is likely why we became FreeThinkers in the first place, our tendency to question everything.” A few appreciative mumbles could be heard across the room. Maybe it was her mind playing tricks on her, but she was sure that she felt the shift in the energy of the crowd.
She continued, “But it is this very freedom, our very freedom, that is at stake. Up until now the Darkened have never been any real threat to Earth because we have been mostly ignored by those demons in power. The small numbers of Darkened on Earth have been wild, unfocused, and without a leader or a plan. But this isn’t the case anymore.”
She moved out from behind the lectern and as soon as she stepped out, she felt her lungs breathe easier. “You saw how organized the demons have become under Samyara. They tricked us, located our homes and synchronized an attack on our communities,” her voice cracked as she remembered watching Ky’s lifeless body being pulled from the Aradale building.
She paused at the edge of the stage. “You,” she looked down at a pale-skinned seraph standing near the front. He looked startled as a small spotlight came to rest upon his face. “Which community did you come from?”
“Florence.”
“And did you lose someone?”
She watched him swallow and nod his head. “Teresa.”
“I am sorry.” Alyx turned her head and she caught the eyes of an olive-skinned seraphelle. “How about you?”
“My friend, Gedar.”
Alyx moved along the front of the stage pointing at various Seraphim and asking them to call out the name of someone they had lost. The Nevernever ballroom filled with the names of the fallen and a heavy sadness.
Finally Alyx lifted her chin up to the lights, searching for Jordan’s face. “I lost Ky. He was just a boy, too young to have his life ripped from him.” She took a deep breath and made eye contact with both Vix and Dianne. “You see. We all lost ones that we loved. Now what? You think Samyara is stopping there, huh? You think he’s done?” Her voice became louder as she paced the stage, letting her anger show. “You think he’s going to stop there? No. Hell no. The attacks on us were just the beginning. There will be more attacks, more deaths, bigger losses. Unless we stop him.”
The crowd was beginning to buzz at her feet. She felt it, the emotion pouring from her voice was like a kind of magic of its own, unlocking the hearts of these people listening to her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Belle step forward, but Alyx raised a hand to stop her before she could speak.
Alyx continued, “Samyara is planning to take over this planet. Our planet. He has already started carrying out these acts of violence around the world in order to create chaos and fear and anger among the mortals, leading them to be more susceptible to become Darkened.”
A sound of crackling rang out. Dianne appeared at the front of the stage. In her hand was a MemoryViewer, a device that Tobias had invented which allowed MemoryWeavers to broadcast their memories externally. Dianne held the MemoryViewer up towards the large blank white wall behind her. The crackling rose up until an image appeared on the screen before fading.
It was a scene from a TV screen. The news. It was a report about the recent bombing in Syria. Even though there was no sound, the pictures said it all. The video flashed to a shot of a young boy flung across his mother lying on the ground, covered in blood, unmoving. The image of Ana clutching Ky came to Alyx’s mind. Then the TV camera panned the crowd. In the faces of the crowd were the haunting second faces of the demons underneath the Darkened.
“Look,” Alyx held her arm out to the screen. “We are not the only ones dying. The mortals, who our Elders swore to protect, are dying too. They don’t have the tools to defeat Samyara, not like we do.
If we don’t defeat him this world will crumble at our feet along with our freedom. What happens when the entire planet of humans has been turned? Where do we go then? We can’t leave them behind because this is our home now. They are our brothers and sisters too. This planet is our home. We can’t let the Darkened take that away from us.”
She stepped forward, encouraged by the murmurs of agreement from the crowd. “I’m not going to lie to you. It won’t be easy. Some of us will lose our lives, and if you fight with us, some of you will too. But all of us will lose if you don’t. All of us. So fight for Teresa. Fight for Gedar. Fight for Ky. Fight for freedom. Fight for life. Fight…for love.” She glanced at Jordan. “Find a reason and fight for it. Unlike the Elders, we are not asking you to fight for us, we are asking you to fight with us. Together. Side by side. Warrior beside warrior. Warrior beside Castus. And Castus beside Castus.”
“It’s pointless,” cried Belle. “There are too many of them in Hell. Look me in the eye and tell me that this fight will even make a difference.”
“You are right,” Alyx said to Belle. Belle looked stunned. Alyx turned back to face the crowd. “She is right. The fight against the Darkened up until now has been fruitless, pointless. You may or may not know that when killed, the human host dies but the demon inside is pulled back to Hell, free to find another human host. They return, again and again. Until now. We have a secret weapon. A weapon that the demons don’t know we have. We have a keye, a living breathing keye, as prophesized by Raphael in the Blood Prophecies.”
Gasps and mumbles could be heard around the room; some were asking what a keye was, those who knew were explaining, others were questioning how it had been found.
“Isn’t that just a legend?” someone called out.
“No,” Alyx shook her head. “He is alive and real. Samyara has been after him for years, but we have him now. He is under our protection. My protection.”
“How do you know he’s the keye?”
“I have been Guardian bonded to him.”
More gasps. More cries.
Alyx continued, “We now know that we can infuse his blood with our blades, and those blades, when pierced through the heart of the Turned, will break through the portal between our worlds and pierce the demon’s heart in Hell. It will make a difference. If we kill Samyara, we kill their leader. Without their leader the Darkened will disintegrate into disorder again. ‘Cut the head off the snake and the body will die’.”
“When are you planning to attack?” someone asked.
Alyx bit her lip. This was where she could lose a lot of them. Tell the truth. “Five days.”
“Five days!” The room filled with shouts of astonishment and cries of, “That’s impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible,” Alyx called back. “Yes, I admit that five days is not a lot of time to prepare. But we can do it. Some of you, especially those of you who were Castus in your previous life, may never have raised a blade to anything more threatening than a roast chicken. But you have your magic, your inherent gift, which you already know how to use. I propose we set up a training camp at our new community where we can work together to teach you how to direct your gifts towards that of an attacking nature. We can pair you with another warrior so you won’t be on your own in the fray. Our strength and battle skills as warriors matched with your magic…we shall be unstoppable.”
This. Now. The moment of truth… “So,” Alyx said, scanning the crowd. “Who’s with me?”
“I’m in,” yelled Jordan. “For Ky.”
“For Ky,” cried two female voices that Alyx knew were Vix and Dianne.
There was a pause. Then a voice called out, “For Gedar.” Then one by one more calls started to come from across the room until the cries echoed like a choir up to the heavens and the room was alive with excitement.
Alyx caught Jordan’s eye. The admiration was evident on his face. You did it, he mouthed. A smile grew across her face, making her cheeks hurt. Yeah, she did. But the work was just beginning.
The crowd were whooping and clapping now in excitement. Calls of “I eat demons for breakfast” and “Gonna kick some demon ass” could be heard among the cries. But Alyx had to rein them in. Their journey was just starting now. Training and planning over the next five days would be intense. She called for silence and the crowd hushed.
“Those of you who are with us, we shall take you immediately to our new community through the Purgatory door. We start training as soon as we’re settled in. Tobias, I don’t believe our new home has a name yet.”
He shook his head. “No, we haven’t thought of one as yet.”
Alyx turned back toward the crowd. “So I propose we call our new home, Castle Speranza.” Alyx glanced sideways at Belle. “Italian for hope.” For Fernando, Alyx mouthed.
Belle held Alyx’s gaze for one more second before she turned away, water in her eyes and a hand clasped to her mouth to hold in a sob. Fernando was the warrior that Belle lost. We all lost somebody.
After her speech, Alyx stood in the Nevernever room. Tobias, Vix, Dianne and a few others were helping corral the Seraphim into groups to take them back to the castle, but to avoid garnering too much attention, they took small groups one at a time.
Most of the Seraphim in the crowd had wanted to speak to Alyx after her speech, telling her of their own story of loss from the attack and promising her that they would train and fight their best. Alyx was exhausted, her head whizzing from all the names and faces of those FreeThinkers she had spoken to.
Over the shoulders of the Seraphim who were talking to her, she spotted that seraph in the maroon cloak who had been staring at her earlier. She frowned. Something about him niggled at her insides. She excused herself and moved through the crowd, keeping one eye on this seraph and taking an indirect route to him so that he wouldn’t be scared off.
“Alyx,” a voice said, just on the edges of familiarity. Alyx whipped her head right to see a tall, slim figure moving towards her.
“Tii’la?” Alyx said. It was her. Tii’la’s thick hair, now pulled back into a braid that lay down over one shoulder, was longer, but it was her. The last time she remembered talking to Tii’la was back in Michaelea before a training session just after her first vision.
“It’s me,” Tii’la replied and smiled as she stopped before her.
Alyx glanced back to where the seraph was standing. But he had gone. She squinted through the crowd trying to spot a flash of maroon.
“Sorry,” Tii’la said. “Were you looking for someone? Shall I come back later?”
“No, it’s fine.” Alyx turned back to Tii’la and smiled. “It’s good to see you. What are you doing here?”
Tii’la’s smile faltered. “I defected from Michaelea. A few weeks ago.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. Or…perhaps congratulations are in order. What happened?”
“I… I… Sorry, I just...”
Alyx reached out to gently squeeze Tii’la’s arm in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. “It’s alright. You don’t need to tell me. Where have you been staying since you left Michaelea?”
“One of the communities in France took me in. When I heard this meeting had been called about Samyara, I had to come. I want to help. And I was hoping to see you again.” She smiled. “To see a familiar face.”
Alyx understood. Tii’la and she had never been close. In fact, Tii’la had questioned her about the validity of her vision of Israel killing the Darkened. But now, sharing the same fate of losing their home made her feel closer to Tii’la. “How was everybody back in Michaelea before you left? Symon? Xavier? Lutando?”
“They’re good. Same as always, I guess. But Elysia,” her face fell, “I don’t know if you know…”
Alyx nodded, unable to speak as the memory of the loss of Elysia to the Darkened bubbled up into her throat in a ball.
“Who’s your friend, Alyx?” It was Jordan, who came to stand next to them both.
Alyx noticed immediately how T
ii’la’s posture straightened and her fingers went to fuss at the ends of her braid. “I’m Tii’la. An old friend of Alyx’s.”
“Any friend of Alyx is a friend of mine.” Jordan flashed her a grin.
Tii’la gave Jordan a shy smile as they shook hands for just a little bit too long, in Alyx’s opinion. Alyx fought not to roll her eyes. Really? Again? Was this the way it was going to be every damn time they went out in public?
“Good to see you again, Tii’la. Excuse me,” Alyx muttered as she pushed past them both. She moved through the crowd of milling Seraphim, not really sure where she was heading.
“Hey.” A voice over her shoulder told her that Jordan had followed her. Dammit. He placed his hand on her shoulder and she was forced to stop. He turned her around and peered at her face. “You okay?”
Alyx forced a smile to her face. “Fine.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow. Don’t lie to me.
She sighed. He could always tell when she wasn’t telling the truth. “I thought I’d leave you and Tii’la alone. I thought that my being there would just cramp your style.”
Jordan cursed under his breath. His hands came around her cheeks to hold her jaw, his fingertips extending to curl towards the back of her neck. His eyes were blazing a brilliant emerald color. “Alyx, let’s get one thing straight.” His voice dropped to a low growl. “I only want to be with you. Just you. No one else. Yes, I have female friends. But they’re just friends to me.”
“But they don’t just want to be friends with you. I’ve seen them; that girl from earlier, Tii’la…they all take your friendliness as a possibility for something more.”
“That’s not my fault, Alyx. Don’t punish me for that.” He sighed. “You’re the one who told me that you need some space. I’m trying to give you that.”
“I know. I have no right−”
