chapter VI
Sawtooth mountains of Idaho, present day
LARGE QUESTIONS LOOMED OVER all of us. It had been a few hours. Now all of us were showered and changed and we had finished up in the kitchen, having feasted on whatever we could find in the house.
We were now sitting comfortably in the library.
“Okay, I’m ready to talk about the elephant in the room,” Kim said. We had to clear the air. I was really glad at least one of us finally broke the ice.
The fire was roaring nicely, casting the three of us in a warm light. It was just past midnight. Kim and I were sitting on the antique loveseat and Michael was seated on an armchair, leaning forward toward the fire, elbows on knees, staring into the flames.
Kim went on. “First of all, Michael—are you going to be okay?”
Michael looked like he had been caught doing something naughty. “Yeah, I just…this is…”
“I get it, you’re a jerk, a loser, and you don’t deserve her.” Kim pointed to me.
My heart felt stabbed.
“But she likes you. She loves you—I think—”
“Hey,” I said, trying to deflect the direction of the conversation. “How about you, Kim? Are you okay? You look pretty rough…”
Kim said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little bruised up. It’s like that when you’re duct taped to a chair for a day or so.”
Again my heart felt wounded. This is all my fault. But the look on Michael’s face said otherwise.
She turned back to him. “Anyway, Michael, you’d better make it up to her.”
“I’m sitting right here, Kim,” I said. “I can handle my problems.”
She ignored me, laying into him again in attack mode, and I couldn’t interject. “What are you? Who was your dad? And James…I don’t even know where to begin.”
He sighed. I had never seen him like this. He looked older than eighteen. There was even a shadow of stubble on his face in spite of the fact that he—that all of us—had had a chance to wash the blood from our hands, our bodies.
“I know. Who am I really other than a backstabbing demon?” He looked her dead in the eyes.
Again, something I found arresting. There was some strength about him. It was way beyond the look he had given me on our first and only date. Before we were kidnapped.
“Right?” she said. It was a total Kim thing to say; ditzy, childish, playful. It seemed like she was back. Maybe.
Michael went on, “For once in my life, I wonder what’s going to happen to me. To us, I mean. I’m not used to this feeling. I’m used to having a plan; the plan. Stanley…always made sure of that.”
I found it very telling that he called his father Stanley instead of Dad. I wanted to interject something but I couldn’t think of anything to add.
“Stanley trained me to kill. To blend in. To win people over with charm, make friends, find out about their friends’ friends, and sniff out any that had angelic blood running in their veins. Like you.” He looked at me, eyes cutting into me for the briefest of moments before looking away.
It got quiet. Kim and I traded a glance.
“About that…” I said.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, tears filling his eyes in the firelight.
I spoke, and as I did, I choked up too. “I know. I know you’re sorry. I believe you. You don’t have to keep saying it.” I was a little frustrated.
“I know; I’m sorry…”
Kim slapped her palm to her forehead and we all laughed.
“But seriously,” I said. And then I softly blurted it out: “I love you, Michael.” It was as if a bomb went off. And it was crazy; like both of us knew it but neither of us wanted to be the one to actually say it.
The answer came even softer. “I love you too.”
It was very still in the room, like being in a deep forest right before a storm breaks; there was a buzz in the air, anticipation.
And then Kim popped the balloon. “Okay, you two totally need to kiss now.”
My jaw dropped.
Michael said precisely what I was thinking: “Awkwarrrrd…”
I laughed.
“How about a raincheck, mister.”
“Totes,” he said smilingly in Kim’s vernacular. He relaxed for the first time that day.
Kim rolled her eyes before speaking. “Okay, whatever. But I still have questions. Like, Michael, what freaking happened out there?”
He nodded, again looking older than he was. “It’s hard to know where to begin.” He sat back, crossing an ankle over one knee, his fingers interlaced over his stomach. “If you want explanations…I guess I could start at the beginning. My first…assignment.”
He breathed in and out. “Her name was Sally Potts. She was twelve, the youngest by far to change. I was thirteen. It was at a little school in West Texas; a one-room schoolhouse, just like in Little House on the Prairie.”
“Okay, creepy,” Kim said. “We’re not looking for a full-on confession here, dude. So save it. I just want to know how in the world we got here. How did we get here from whatever happened out there on the cliff?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Michael. I think you’re a good enough guy. You did save her in the end,” she said, looking at me. “…even if it took you long enough. But can you, pretty please, fill me in on what I missed out there?”
“Okay, it’s simple: Stanley killed Airel.”
“I know. I saw that much,” she shivered.
“So did I,” I said.
“Then I killed Stanley,” Michael said. “And that’s when everything went wrong. Really wrong. James—my demon—tried to finish the…the…job? No, no. That’s not the right word.”
“You can say it,” I said. “I was just a job.”
Michael looked like I had stabbed him. “At first. But that changed…” He was beginning to defend himself, but he let his words fade and stared back into the fire.
I looked at him. There was something different about him now. Something good. And bad. It was as if he was under a burden or in restraint. It made him seem…like a man and not a boy.
“Airel, you have completely wrecked me,” he said, his eyes bright and piercing. “I wish…I mean, I never wanted any of this to happen. I found my courage too late to help you. And I was desperate. That’s why I wrote you back to life.”
I was shocked. “Wait. What?”
He just pointed to the mantelpiece, the rough wooden shelf above the fire, the inkwell and quill pen…those old books. Call me crazy or stupid, but it had only just then occurred to me that I was alive and kicking for a definitive reason. I hadn’t put two and two together yet. I was normally really observant, smart as a whip, but somehow this one had come at me from my blind side.
“Michael, what are you talking about?”
“This,” he said, standing. He walked to the shelf slowly, quietly, with reverence. When his finger brushed one of the books, I heard a shout go out and echo back to me from the deepest recesses of my heart and mind: Michael.
He took my Book—I knew it was my Book—and gently delivered it to me.
I opened it and saw what he had done. I saw the three words he had written there:
“But she lived.”
The page was warped from his tears. I was stunned. Shocked. “How could you…” I felt violated. “How could you write in my book?” I didn’t even know I had a book. I thought only full angels had them.
“Airel, I—”
I was overcome. “I can’t believe it,” I stammered. What I meant to say was something along the lines of this: I can’t believe you’re that bold, that amazingly desperate…for me. The bigger picture started to come into focus. I reached for She. But there was nothing there. I felt completely alone…I felt like my childhood was over and, ready or not, I was now an adult. Far from what I had always thought, it wasn’t glorious. It wasn’t liberating. Nope. It scared the crap out of me.
I was beginning to hyperventilate. “Michael!”
He knelt in front of me, naked anxiety on his face. “Breathe.”
I held my book open on my lap, dumbfounded. “I have a book!” Everything about my life, if it was bigger than the universe before, was now totally impossible. “I can’t believe you did that…”
“I’m…sorry?”
Oh, no. He was taking it wrong. So was I. “No. I’m sorry.”
He took my hands inside his own, wrapping them up in warmth and strength.
“I just can’t believe you did that! It was incredibly brave. How did you even know? How did you figure it out? How did you find this, and—how could it have even worked?”
Michael flashed me his trademark smile, the crooked smirk that could melt me in a second. “It wasn’t me. It was El.”
I was really confused. “It was—?”
He nodded. “It was El. I asked Him and He told me. I had a…a conversation with Him. After I found Kim.”
We looked at her.
She gave Michael a look. “You are so weird.”
“All I remember is being tackled…falling off the cliff, splashing into the lake. I saw you…” I looked at him. “I saw you!” It was all coming back in a flood. I couldn’t say that I thought I had lost him too. I wiped my eyes.
“And I remember: I forgave you.” I looked at him, grabbed his face with my hands and locked my eyes on his. “I still choose that, and you.” I collapsed on his shoulder, weeping, wrestling with my rash words in juxtaposition to my doubtful and damaged heart. It was all true, sure. But the trouble was that it was all true.
He simply held me. When I finally recovered, Kim was gone. I figured she felt like a third wheel. Or that she had gotten the answers she wanted, at least in part.
Michael and I rested against each other, our heads touching. I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek, smell the rugged clean sweetness of his scent. It was Abercrombie Fierce. Oh. “Oh!” Memories, impossible ones, came back to me. I caught my breath, my heart in a frenzy beneath the scar on my chest. I pulled back from him; it felt dangerous.
Hey, speaking of wounds… “How come I never healed completely? Why the scar…” I asked no one. There was no answer. “And how did you heal?” I looked up at him from my Book. “Can you heal too?”
He looked straight into my eyes, and I saw how deep the pain in him went. I couldn’t see the end of it. “Something like that.” He stood and walked back to the fire. He leaned against the mantelpiece, half turned back toward me. “I guess Kim took off, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He nodded.
I could tell the conversation had moved on, but I didn’t know how he felt about that. I wished I could hear what he was thinking. “So…Stanley is dead. James is dead…? Or something. And Kreios is gone.”
“I don’t know—I guess so. I haven’t seen him since…since I was carrying you back. He looked really, really pissed.”
I wasn’t getting it, but I could tell he was trying to tell me something.
“I’m pretty sure he still thinks you’re dead.”
I didn’t get it at first, but then it hit me like a city bus.
The implications were enormous. What would a five-thousand-year-old supernaturally powerful angel be doing if he had just lost his granddaughter to…yeah…this is not good.
In the spiritual dark that surrounded the Master, three iniquitous shapes cowered, bent under the burden of his countenance. There was no exchange. No information changed hands on the air. When orders were given, they were understood and that was all. Everything was disconnected.
There were more like them, these three, but they were an ancient kind and rarely beheld. In the earliest days under the sun, when the Master—the great Leader—had procured the Dominion, these three had a different appearance. They were once tall, strong, robust, even beautiful. Now they, as well as all the others of their kind, were shriveled, encrusted with a growth of filth and fungus. Open pustules spewed forth clouds of black spores from their once beautiful skin, now threatening contagion wherever they went. Milky pus glided across the deep crevices of their hides, and they moved as if they were diseased, as if they were puppets on strings, jerking and spastic and shaky.
But they were fast. Dangerous. Deceptive. And as they stood before the Master, the Leader, they understood what mission he had conceived for them. As always, there would be at least two objectives: one that was disclosed…in a fashion…and another that the Leader kept to himself. In a kingdom populated by usurpers, command was executed ruthlessly, because it was true that a kingdom divided against itself could not stand. None dared to contradict what was understood in this room: the seat of all deception; the antithrone of Self.
The room was a clean space. Pure white. But it was all mockery; it was empty and plunged at all times in deepest hollow blackness. For that was the essence of clean: blankness. Up was down, right was wrong. And hatred was righteousness.
The three now stood taller, having imbibed the desires of the Leader. They knew. The thought-language was pre-Babylonic, very clean, direct. In one unarticulated thought they understood numberless ideas about the girl, the Immortal, the one who had wielded the Sword…and the one who had betrayed the Seer. They understood death. And how to use it.
They were gone.