She climbed down from the truck, greeted a few of the guerrillas who came up to her, and waved good morning to Helen Rice, who was already organizing into groups the children she had brought out of the Anaheim compound. Angel stood watching for a moment, filled with a sense of sadness she could not dismiss. It was all so futile, so hopeless. They were saving these children for what? For a chance to live? But what sort of chance were they going to be given if nothing in the larger picture changed?
They were in the guerrilla camp now, a wooded refuge that allowed entry and exit from several directions and could be watched over from a dozen high points close at hand. The defenders were heavily armed and organized. She did not think they would be caught off guard, but did not intend to linger long enough to test the possibility. By midday, they would be traveling north to wherever she decided they must go. They would do so because she was certain that the old man was coming after them with his armies and his weapons and his insatiable lust to see them destroyed.
Or, more particularly, to see her destroyed.
She thought about that for a moment, walking away from the encampment, moving back into the trees where she could be alone to think. The real target of his efforts, of this hunter of Knights of the Word, was herself.
His purpose as a servant of the Void was to eliminate all of the remaining Knights, and she was likely one of the last. Her battle with that female demon today demonstrated how intent the old man was on finding and eliminating her.
He would not stop because today’s attack had failed. He would come after her again, from a different direction perhaps, in a different way. He would come and keep coming until one of them was dead.
For just a moment, she considered turning the tables on him. She considered going after him before he could come after her. He Would not be expecting that. She might catch him unawares. She might kill him before he even realized he was in danger. The thought was immensely satisfying. It would atone for all the lives the old man had taken, all the anguish he had caused, all the evil he had perpetrated. It would be retribution well deserved.
It was also a pipe dream of the first order. Johnny would have been quick to point that out, and she knew enough to be quick to do so in his absence.
“Angel Perez?”
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. Angel looked around quickly, wondering who had followed her from the camp. But there was no one to be seen.
She stood perfectly still, knowing she had not imagined it, that someone had spoken her name.
“Are you Angel Perez?” the voice asked.
This time Angel turned toward the place where the voice seemed to originate, but she could see only trees and leaves and grass discolored by pollution and clouded by haze. “Who’s there? Where are you7
A small, slender figure stepped out of the foliage, materializing like something that had just this instant assumed substantive shape and form. A girl, her skin as white as chalk, her eyes dark pools, and her hair long and fine and colored almost pale blue, stood before her. The girl wore clothing that was diaphanous; it trailed from and might have been a part of her body.
She stood quietly before Angel, an ethereal creature of exquisite and exotic appearance, letting the Knight of the Word study her.
“I am called Ailie,” she said.
Angel knew her for what she was instantly. A tatterdemalion, a strange breed of Faerie creature formed of the memories of dead children, come alive out of circumstance and chance and to live a mayfly existence that was over almost before it was begun. How long was it—a month, two? She tried to remember and couldn’t. Those Angel knew about had a single purpose—to serve the Lady, the voice of the Word. Angel had never seen one, but she had been told about them by Robert, who had. Tatterdemalions were among the few Faerie creatures that had survived the unbalancing of magic by the demons and the rise of the dark years of the Void.
“She has sent me to you,” the tatterdemalion confirmed, as if reading her thoughts. “She has sent me to ask for your help in the battle with the Void. She knows the battle goes badly, but she also knows that there is still a chance to win it.”
Angel stared at the child-like creature, trying to equate the words with the speaker, to imagine what it must mean for it to exist in a world of demonkind and humans.
“I have only seen the Lady in my dreams,” Angel said suddenly.
But then it was said that no one did anymore. Not since the balance of good and evil was tilted in favor of the Void. She did not come to the Knights of the Word either in their dreams or in waking once they had pledged themselves. She was an invisible presence, a legend that no longer had substance, but that all of them who were Knights of the Word still believed in.
Still needed to believe in, she added.
“The Lady sent you to me?” she added, not quite knowing what to make of it. “What does she want me to do?”