Her life is full, but mostly pointless. She can never win the battle she is waging. There are too many of them, and only one of her. Still, it is all she knows and all she can think to do. So she continues.
Yet on this day, as she walks her streets—searching, watching, and waiting for the inevitable—she encounters someone she has never seen before. At first, she is not even sure what she is looking at. It appears to be a man, yet the edges are unclear and shimmer like something made of water disturbed. She does not look away, however; she continues to concentrate and, finally, the man takes on a definite shape.
Now she studies him closely. He stands in the shadows to one side between the buildings. He is big, but not threatening. She cannot explain why that is, but she feels it. She cannot make out his features, so she walks over to him to see what he will do. He does nothing. He stands where he is and waits for her.
“Angel of the streets,” he greets her in a low, rumbling voice that comes from somewhere so deep down inside him that she cannot imagine how it climbs free. “Do you walk in shadows or in light this day?”
She smiles despite herself. “I always walk in light, amigo. Quien esta?”
He steps out of the shadows now, and she sees that he is Native American, his features blunt and strong, his skin copper, his hair jet black and braided.
He wears heavy boots and combat fatigues of a sort she has never seen, and the patches on his shoulders are of lightning bolts and crosses. One hand holds a long black staff carved with strange symbols from top to bottom.
His smile is warm. “I am called Two Bears, little Angel,” he tells her.
“O’olish Amaneh, in the language of my people. I am Sinnissippi, but my people are all gone, dead now several hundred years. I am the last. So I try to make the most of my efforts.”
She nods. “Is that what you are doing here?”
“In part. I arrived last night from other, less friendly places, searching for a place to hide. Those who hunt me are very persistent. They dislike the idea that there is only one of me. They would prefer that there be none.”
“Los Angeles is not particularly friendly, amigo,” she says, glancing around out of habit. “It may look it, but what lives here is only resting up for the next attack. There are Freaks of the worst sort. There are street gangs.
There are things I cannot even give names to. You might be better off in a smaller, quieter place.”
“I might be,” he agrees. “I will find out when I leave. But I need to speak with you first. I came to do that, as well.”
She hides her surprise, wondering how he would even know of her.
“As you wish. But we will not do so here. Are you hungry? Have you eaten today?”
He has not, and so they go to a place where she knows there is food to be salvaged, and they carry the packets to a small open square and sit on stone benches to eat while the sun, hot enough to melt iron, sinks slowly into the maze of buildings that lie between them and the ocean.
“Who hunts you?” she asks him after a few minutes of chewing in silence.
She regards him carefully. “Who would dare?”
He smiles at the compliment. “Many more than you would think.
Mostly demons and the once-men in their service. Do you know of them?”
She does not, and so he tells her of the history of the Great Wars and of the source of the destruction that has changed life for all of them. He tells her of the Word and the Void and the battle they have waged since the beginning of time. He tells her of how life is a balance between good and evil, and how each is always attempting to tip the scales.
“Each side uses servants to aid its efforts. The Void uses demons, black soulless monsters that seek only to destroy. The Word uses its Knights, paladins sent to thwart the efforts of the demons. Once, they were mostly successful. But humans are an unpredictable, volatile species, and in the end they fell victim to their own excesses, fostered by the work of the Void’s demons. They succumbed, and civilization succumbed with them.”
She doesn’t know if she believes him or not; certainly she thinks his story is as much fable as truth. But the way he tells it lends it the weight of truth, and she finds herself believing despite her reservations. His words provide an explanation she finds plausible for all the mad things that have happened to the world. She has always known that it is more than it seems, that the conflict between nations, between peoples, between beliefs, is augmented in a way she doesn’t understand.
“I serve the Lady, who is the voice of the Word,” he continues. “It is given to me to find a handful who will attempt to restore the balance once more.
For a long time, it wasn’t possible; the madness and rage were too great to be overcome. But enough time has passed, and now there is a chance it can be done.
Are you interested in serving?”