chapter XI
By the Columbia River, present day
MICHAEL TRIED TO SLEEP.
But the act of holding Airel in his arms kept his mind racing, his heart slamming in his chest. He pulled her closer and felt her shiver as she warmed to the heat of his body. Soon she was in deep sleep, her breathing coming in soft rhythmic waves.
He closed his eyes at last, the gentle rocking of the train making his eyes heavy.
Ancient memories—none of them his own—twisted into his thoughts. It was a curse, the Brotherhood, and its influence could never be undone. When a man bonded with his Brother, especially in Michael’s case, and mostly because of his father, an impartation took place. The burdens were his to bear the rest of his life. He could smell the blood-soaked earth of each battle, feel each wound as the host of the Bloodstone died and was reborn. His link to the line of demons that had gone before came with memories that did not end.
Michael was yet very young, but in his heart and mind he was ancient and full of regret. This he had never wanted, and it had never, of course, been disclosed to him. It wasn’t in the brochure. But it was truer than truth itself. It was tearing him apart.
The train rocked back and forth like a boat on choppy seas. It was both soothing and uncomfortable to him. He could relate though. It was like the train wanted to go somewhere on its own, but was trapped on the tracks. With every lurch it tried to jump the rails. His life was on rails, too, he felt. He thought of El, considered praying to Him again, maybe asking Him for answers.
“Sacrilege.”
He opened his eyes.
Ellie was there, standing over them, staring at him. Watching.
He stifled a spasm; she had scared him.
“We need to talk.” It was her voice, but inside his head. Her lips weren’t moving.
“Are you reading my mind?” he whispered.
She rolled her eyes. “No, you plonker. Come on.” Ellie gestured for him to come along with her.
“Oh,” Michael whispered. “Just a sec.” He felt like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar or something, like a kid on his way to the principal’s office. As deftly as he could manage, he wriggled out from his interwoven reclined position with Airel. She stirred a little and then rolled away, nuzzling into the crook of her arm and settling in, snoring softly.
“Well?” Ellie was already headed somewhere, moving through the maze of crates and beckoning him to follow. “We’ve got things to discuss, just you and me.”
Michael dutifully followed, though as he began to wake up and become more aware, more present, he began to ask more questions of himself. He wondered if perhaps he might have been smarter to have grabbed at least one sword back there at the site of the crash. He felt capricious for having trusted Kim with his late father’s old 1911 Colt .45—the pistol he usually carried concealed but had failed to retrieve from her after the scuffle and the chaos back there at the scene of their stupendous wreck. After she had shot that big dude. He had to admit, it was possible that he was walking himself right to the gates of the slaughterhouse, with Ellie the butcher.
Ellie had climbed an ascending stack of crates like stairs, crawled along the tops for a bit and then lithely dropped down inside what Michael assumed was an empty space in the midst of them. He followed.
When he got to the edge of the crate tops, he looked down to see Ellie, hands on hips, looking up at him. “Come on down, demon boy. I won’t bite. Hard.”
Michael athletically dropped down inside a squared-off area that had been created by the irregular stacking of randomly shaped and sized crates, the “floor” an uneven surface of the tops of crates and boxes below.
“It’s sharing time, Michael.” Ellie’s eyes flashed. It was clear she meant business. “If we’re to work as one, be players on the same team…you’ve got to tell me a few more juicy bits.” She ran one hand through her hair, gathering it away from her eyes.
Her skin was flawless, smooth, glowing and radiating light. She was beautiful and he couldn’t help but acknowledge that to himself. “Okay…”
“I promise to reciprocate, don’t worry.”
Her eyes were the bluest he had ever seen. “What do you want to know? Can’t you just read my mind or something?”
“No. I can project when I want. I don’t have the gift of reading.”
Michael sighed and sat down, resting his back against a corner. “I really should be sleeping.” He looked up at her. She still stood over him. “And so should you, Ellie.”
“No rest for the wicked,” she said.
“Oh, for crying out loud, would you sit? You don’t have to act like that.”
“Like what?” She stayed put.
“Like you’re running the whole show here.” He looked up at her, his eyes widening a little in mockery.
“What—and you are?”
He sighed again, exasperated.
“You’re doing a bang-up job, mate. Really, you are. Allowing the police to track us, starting a high speed chase that nearly killed all of us, being too stupid to know how and why the Brotherhood know where and when we’re doing just what and how often. Yeah. Brilliant grasp of command in the field.”
He was shocked. All he could say was, “What? You told me to outrun the cops! What would you have done?”
“Do you do everything you’re told?” Her tone was mocking, but he noticed a hit of teasing in it.
“Would you sit,” he spat, gesturing to the opposite corner of their little conference room.
“Fine,” she said, and sat.
He couldn’t help but think she was quite graceful. Beauty graced her movements; it was simply obvious.
She gave him a look. “Talk, then!”
He sighed a third time. “All right, where do I start?”
She removed her dagger from its concealed sheath and began polishing it with the hem of her sweater. “At the top. Tell me what you know of the Brotherhood; anything that might help us with the royal mess we are about to get into.”
He was irritated at the implied threat of the drawn weapon, intentional or not. “Okay, then. My name is Michael Alexander—”
She cursed and jumped to her feet, dagger at the ready. “Say that again,” she hissed at him.
“What?”
“Your name, captain courageous.”
“Alexander.”
Another curse. “Son of Stanley Alexander?”
“Yeah, why?”
She cursed again and sheathed the dagger, sitting down, pressing her palms to her temples. She muttered under her breath. “This is worse than I thought it was.”
Michael eyed her warily.
“Mate…you’re not just any demon boy. You’re the son of the Seer.”
He shrugged and smirked at her as if to say, Duh. “Um, I know?”
“You’re The Alexander.”
“Yes. Michael Alexander.”
Suddenly fierce again, she said, “Tell me more.”
He told her as much as he could, wanting to get to the bottom of things with her. He told her how things worked in the Brotherhood, the rank structures, the way the training became manifest in the bond between man and Brother, the way he was a walking demonic encyclopedia. Something within him pulled at his heart, telling him to share as much as possible with her. He thought she would share as well in turn, and he needed to know what she knew if they were to have any hope for any kind of future that did not involve fighting for their lives at every turn.
But it’s not just that, he thought as he went over the account of the cliff-top fight involving James, his Brother; how he had murdered his own father. It was more than that. They had become entangled in something for which there were permanent consequences. Decisions made now, he knew deep in his soul, would reverberate throughout eternity. And he wanted more than anything to make the right ones from now on.
“Wait,” she said. “You killed your own father?”
“Yes,” he said, “I did.”
“How did you—how did you come to such a decision?”
Michael exhaled quickly, a brief laugh. “He was going to kill Airel. I killed him first.”
She looked genuinely shocked. “I hadn’t heard that part.”
“That’s what you get for trusting the rumor mill,” he said, not really wanting to know how those machinations worked. Plus, truth be told, he had gone as far as he was willing to go until she gave him something in return for what he had let spill. He was genuinely fearful of telling anyone about how he had written Airel back to life. He wasn’t sure yet just how that story was going to end, what it would mean for her, for him.
“Still though,” she said, searching for something to say. “I suppose…I suppose I should say I’m sorry.”
“Ellie, I’m done. Completely finished with the Brotherhood. My motivations have turned one-eighty and I’m trying to start over.”
“What drew you in? If I may ask?”
“What, into the Brotherhood?”
She nodded.
“I dunno. How much choice does the son of the Seer really have?”
She nodded again.
“I mostly inherited everything, I guess. I never wanted that life. Not really, if I had truly known. It was just all I ever knew. I grew up into it blind. But Airel…changed it all.” His eyes began to fill and he wiped at them with his palms. “She means so much to me. I would do anything for her. I hope I’ve proven that by now—even if it means giving myself up.”
“To the Brotherhood? No.” Ellie’s eyes flashed. “You cannot do that, Michael. That means eternal…the Second Death.”
Thoughts of fire and water flitted through his head, the symbology of the ages running roughshod over his ragged and tortured mind. “Water is the first death. All flesh is required to pass through it one way or another. Fire is the second death. All spirit will be refined by it now or be tortured in it for eternity after the end of this age.” He shook his head, trying to clear the echoes from his mind.
“Do you ever hear voices in your head?” he asked her.
“Depends,” she said.
“Yeah, well, I get ‘em. Trouble is, it’s hard to know in my case just who’s talking to me.”
“Right. Who to trust,” she said. “Well, demon—I mean…Michael, you can trust me.”
“I hope to God you’re right,” he said.
“I think you’re actually telling the truth. I can tell you’ve been searching Him out. Talking to Him.”
He blushed.
“Nothing to be ashamed of, mate. Not at all. It’s hard, at first, to know how to listen back, though. No worries. You’ll figure it out. That’s what life is.”
“I will not let them get to her. Not again.”
She nodded in understanding.
“So,” he said, “you’re here on orders? Why don’t you know all this stuff? You’re an angel; haven’t you been fighting the Brotherhood forever?”
She sighed. “I know enough.” Ellie’s face became blank, lost in thought. “I’ve got to tell you…I think the best, most effective thing we can do is take the fight to them.”
“You know I’m on the same page. We keep running; we’ll be on the run forever.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that. We’re in their territory. Everywhere under the sun, it’s theirs. At least until the end of all things. Until then we have to carefully pick our battles.”
He knew all that, he had heard the shouts of rage in his mind, the radical violence of the blindly self-centered whining for revolution, for glory, for the subjugation of all things right and good, and he knew what it was all about. It was utter emptiness. “I’m listening,” he said.
“I don’t quite know how to say this…”
He looked at her carefully. “Go ahead.”
She appeared to have a sudden change of mind. “Okay. I’m here for Airel.”
He thought back to the battle, how Ellie had pulled back from Airel, even how he had done the same, though he still wasn’t sure why. “You’re here for her? What, to…take her?” He allowed his face to show total confusion. What’s she not saying?
“No. I mean I’m not just here to protect her or to keep her alive. Guardian angel stuff.”
“Okay, so what then?”
“I’m to guide her in the path she must take. And on some level, she should know that already. But she’s still pretty hostile to me…”
Michael’s expression became enlightened. “So that’s what that was all about back there.”
“I was throwing her out of the nest. She dislikes me for that.”
“I might be able to persuade her for you.” He paused for a moment, the warm trace of a smile on his lips as he thought of her. “So…” the smile faded, “you knew about the Sword, then?”
“No! I was simply trusting El’s word to me. I knew nothing about what might happen. I was just as surprised as…as, well…as the baddies were.”
He laughed.
“And, oh! Don’t think it was me who called them on. It wasn’t me. I’m so not the dirty girl.”
“I never said that—”
“I’ll just tell you this: we’ve gotta be careful. Very careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the most dangerous enemy is the one you don’t see coming. The one that’s on the inside.” She stood, moved closer, and crouched before him, grasping his shoulders. “Michael, be on your guard. Always vigilant.”
“Ellie, just say what you mean.”
She looked at him, sizing him up. “I mean…everyone’s got an axe to grind, mate. Not everyone will be totally straightforward with you at all times.”
“And?”
“Look, I know something’s cockeyed here and I’ve got half an idea. That just means I’d better not go sharing it and polluting the pool. But I will say…that you, Mr. Alexander…need to be very careful. With everyone.”
A torrent of evil thoughts ran through Michael’s head, but he would not give voice to them. Not until he had more information. And if there was anything from which the ancient part of his mind benefitted, it was perspective.