From Heaven To Earth (The Faith of the Fallen) (4 page)

Riell could not find her center. Seeing Shrazz had derailed her emotions.
The thought of a partnership with him excited her, and she hated it. He had not
invaded her thoughts for at least a hundred years. His injuries should not have
changed that.

When Riell felt burdened to the point of distraction, she found comfort
in people watching. This therapeutic routine usually helped her surmount her
stresses and look to the future with optimism.

Her favorite place to do this in Nuevas Cruces was the boardwalk of the
city known as The Circ: an establishment built on the shoreline of the largest
lake in the city.

Its ring of themed bars, clubs and restaurants provided a wide variety of
entertainment options for different music tastes, social classes, sub-cultures
and sexual orientations.

If she ever tired of one area, she could move to another and experience
something completely different. The Circ had more than enough authentic
establishments to choose from. This alleviated Riell’s need to travel when The
Falling Curtain required her to remain in Nuevas Cruces.

At the outskirts of the section devoted to southern Asia, the sound of an
Indian woman’s voice caught her attention. Riell immediately knew the woman was
singing a portion of “The Ramayana.”

Riell had originally heard the epic from her teacher Devi in the
Himalayas. It, among other Hindu texts, had shaped her during the first century
of her life. She walked into the restaurant to listen to her.

The two-story high building looked like a temple dedicated to Vishnu.
Small statues of the god stood in niches cut into the orange-red stone of the
place. Its stepped pyramid roof climbed fifteen feet into the air.

She could hear the woman’s voice plainly now and recognized her lament.
She sang of Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu and his decision to banish
his wife Sita. The epic had reminded her of her relationship with Shrazz.

Shrazz was twenty and she eighteen when they moved together from London
to Paris. Three years of leisure culminated when Riell found Shrazz with three
other women.

She had heard their moans outside the apartment and watched their orgy
camouflaged.

Although they had been romantically involved from time to time, they had
never declared themselves as a couple. Riell could tell that he did not love
any of the women and had used them to satisfy his voracious exous passions. It
had been years since he had seen combat, so she gave him the benefit of the
doubt and tried to alleviate his tension by ambushing him from time to time.

Introducing unexpected violence into Shrazz’s life curbed his appetites,
but eventually the same women returned.

Weeks went by. With every one that did without Shrazz uttering a word
about his continued affair, Riell packed more of her things. She had assumed
Shrazz would want to work things out and be mature about the situation.

She had received a letter from her old mentor Dejanto before Shrazz’s affair
began. He wanted her to continue her education and suggested a teacher in the
Himalayas. Devi was that teacher.

By the time Shrazz had noticed that his possessions outnumbered Riell’s
in their flat his silence had already proved him to be only a selfish child.
She decided to leave.

Riell remembered her talk with Devi about the epic. Riell had not agreed
with Rama’s banishment of Sita when she had been completely faithful while in
the hands of the demon, Ravana.

“So you feel like Rama knew that she was telling the truth?” Devi had
asked.

“Yes,” Riell said. “He just wanted her to leave so he could be unfaithful
with a clean conscience. He never really loved her. She was just a beautiful
trophy of dark skin and curves that he could wrap his fingers around. Then he
used her to entrap Ravana, who may have truly loved her.”

“An interesting retelling,” Devi said. “Ravana was a demon who reveled in
destruction though. He had thousands of concubines waiting on his beck and
call.”

“Rama had concubines too,” Riell said. “But, while he fell prey to
temptation and lost his love for Sita, Ravana somehow fell in love with her
despite succubae being more than likely included in his band of mistresses.”

“You speak as if this story has historical truth,” Devi said. Her black
lips smirked, dimpling her dark wrinkled cheeks.

“You were the one that spoke of the truth behind the gods, goddesses and
demons of these epics,” Riell said. “Most of them actually lived as
half-breeds, which means some truth does exist in these tales.”

“You are astute,” Devi said. “So which are you? Rama or Sita?”

“What?”

“You told me about you and this exous, Shrazz,” Devi continued. “That he
had mistresses and still loved you. Despite that, he did not tell you the truth
and you left him.”

“Right,” Riell said, through a clenched jaw. While her teacher had
required Riell to tell her of her life to be considered as a student, Devi had
agreed to never bring up her past relationship with Shrazz.

“I am Sita,” she said.

“So he banished you?” Devi asked.

Riell could not speak.

Shrazz was her Ravana, and she had banished herself along with their
potential relationship. He had always loved her, despite the other women. Her
mistake was not professing her love. If she had, maybe they could have salvaged
their relationship. Maybe he would have understood that he had hurt her. She
wrote a letter to Shrazz that night to rebuild their friendship.

His reply came months later: a band of ragtag humans who dared to call
themselves knights with him at the helm. Still, Riell fondly remembered their
little skirmish, mostly because she was the one who came out on top.

She giggled.

I was on top later that night too...

She sighed, why was she acting like such a fledgling? She listened to the
woman sing for a bit longer. She missed the Himalayas.

I wish I could hash this out with Devi right now,
Riell thought.
The
thought of her taking me as a pupil humbles me to this day. She was worshiped
as a goddess. Not only one,
Riell smiled,
but three: a nurturer, a
warrior and a destroyer.

She walked to the guardrail of the boardwalk and looked over the lake to
let her thoughts bathe in the cool, limpid water.

That angel’s coming heralds the next Great War. Which is he, I wonder?
A teacher for these humans, a warrior fighting for a cause? Or perhaps he is
only the apocalyptic instrument of his God. How could such a being be
entrapped? And what does The Falling Curtain want with his life?

Riell gazed at the full moon.

“Whoa, check out this chick’s get up!” A man shouted from behind.

Riell closed her eyes tightly and silently rebuked herself for not
changing clothes.

“You know the medieval section is on the other side of the lake,” the man
said. “I can take you there if you want some company.”

Riell ignored him.

“Christ, you don’t have to be so bitchy,” he said as he continued on his
way and left Riell to her thoughts.

She turned back to the lake.

“That guy was right. You don’t have to be so bitchy,” a woman rasped. She
leaned against the rail and looked at their reflections in the water.

Riell’s hand went for her short sword when she saw translucent wings
cloaked the stranger.

The skia’s thin lips curled into a smirk. She reached into the pockets of
her jacket. She pulled a box of cigarettes out and the short jacket rode up.
Riell saw the top of the skia’s butt and her red G-string and relaxed.

Riell took her hand from her hilt but kept her eyes on the eavesdropper.

“You fledglings are always so classy,” Riell said.

“I just came here to talk, but your ego is getting to me,” she said.

“You’re the one with your junk hanging out,” Riell said. “Who are you
anyway? You’ve got some audacity following me here. If we weren’t in such a
crowd this meeting would be an unpleasant one for you.”

The skia jammed her cigarette box back into her pocket and lit the one
that hung out of her mouth. She took a deep drag and blew the smoke in Riell’s
face.

“Either tell me where the angel went or next time you’re not in such a
complicated area we’ll collect the bounty on your head,” she said and ruffled
the back of her brown spiky hair.

“Bounty?” Riell laughed. “No benefactor would dare place a bounty on my
head, not with my connections in The Curtain. You have heard of The Falling
Curtain, haven’t you, fledgling?”

The skia said nothing until she finished her cigarette. “When The Curtain
finds out that you and Shrazz are using a third party for the best paying
kidnapping job I will ever see in my life, you may find we’re not the only ones
after you,” she said.

Riell laughed. “Shrazz would never commit to such sacrilege,” she said.
“How old are you? Twenty-five?”

“Actually I’m closer to fifty, bitch,” the skia said. “Age doesn’t matter
as much as skill.”

“He and I have been at this for over three hundred years,” Riell said.
“You’ll soon find that age and skill are two inseparable attributes. Who
trained you?”

“Verill the Unbreakable himself.”

“The self-proclaimed ‘Unbreakable.’” Riell chuckled. “He has one loss on
his record, if I remember correctly.”

“Shrazz got lucky.”

“I have received training from many sensei, knights... warriors of all
kinds,” Riell said. “The goddess Devi is the most notable of them.”

“Gods and goddesses don’t exist.”

Riell laughed. “I guess calling Devi a goddess is being dishonest. She is
a skia with multiple personality disorder that has lived for thousands of
years. Each personality was a different well of knowledge. Her warrior aspect
was named Durga.”

The skia hacked out a laugh.

“So you learned how to fight from an insane hag?”

“How many times did you have to spread your legs to get into Verill’s
little posse so you could waste your time with your ‘training’?”

“We’re going to find the angel. Then you. I promise you that.”

Riell chuckled. “I’ve been absolutely cordial with you,” she said. “If I
see you or anyone else spying on me the last thing they’ll see is the tip of my
sword piercing their eyes.”

“You won’t find me on the end of your sword, old whore,” the skia said as
she walked away.

“Come again?” Riell asked, though she knew full well what the woman had
said. She concentrated on the area around the two of them and created a small,
imperceptible dome that would obscure them from sight for a short period of
time. She delved into the woman’s own shadow.

The skia’s hazel eyes met her green ones. “I said you’re a hag. And a
whore.”

Riell commanded the woman’s shadow to restrain her.

Tendrils of opaque black reached up and wound themselves around the
woman’s legs, wrists and neck. She tried to cry out, but the tentacles stifled
her scream. Riell smiled at the panic in her eyes: the woman’s inadvertent
realization of Riell’s superiority to her. Riell loosened the grip on her
throat.

“Why can’t they hear me?” she yelled.

“I erected a shield that blocks any physical or mental contact with this
area we’re standing in,” Riell said. “No one can see or hear us.”

“There’s no way you’re this powerful. Your wings... there’s no color
within them at all.”

Riell let out a sharp, sardonic laugh.

“The fact is, fledgling, my wings are so luminescent I had to train
myself to control the light they emit.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Riell let her wings illuminate and sighed in relief. It was like
discarding a heavy weight she had shouldered for hours upon hours.

The skia saw the uncountable brilliant colors of Riell’s radiance before
she covered her aching eyes.

“Now you understand your place, but this lesson will be the last one you
will receive in this life.”

Riell did not let the skia die quickly. She strangled her for a full
minute before she broke her neck. The tendrils of the skia’s shadow vanished along
with her heartbeat.

Riell tossed the body into the lake before she dropped her shield. She
searched the crowd for any of the skia’s cohorts. She could feel traces of
sloppy Inner usage and assumed they retreated.

Riell resumed her walk around The Circ. After she had made an example of
their messenger she knew they would leave her alone for the time being.

Ignorant child,
she thought.
Hopefully that will show them what
they’re up against if they want to try to take the angel for themselves.

Cold wind picked up and buffeted her. Her black hair flew in every
direction.

Riell stayed near the edge of the boardwalk to avoid the crowd. The
laughter of a group of young girls drew her eye, and she did a double take when
she saw that one of them resembled her as a child.

She imagined twelve-year-old Shrazz next to her. He would have been a
foot shorter than her, scrawny but wildly powerful. He wore baggy rags at that
age to conceal his electric green scales and bony body. Riell knew she missed
him. She always had.

“I guess I’m in Shrazz,” Riell said.

Gerald glided into Nuevas Cruces’ heart of metal and glass: a towering
center of skyscrapers connected by a network of glass covered bridges.

As he flew over the capitol district he saw a monument dedicated to the
current mayor, Michael Saffron: a spire of orange glowing rock. Gerald
believed, as many half-breeds did, that the stone actually powered the whole
capitol district.

From his height, the city looked like the luminescent organ of a living
machine. Streetlamps and halogen highway lights were veins for a mass of
snaking headlights: its blood.

His wings stiffened, and he nearly fell from the sky. He needed to rest.
After his fall, his damaged wings were nothing more than a feathery hang
glider.

Gerald landed on a building and willed his Inner to hide himself and his
angelic aura. His Inner chilled his body as it traveled from his forehead to
his chest. It branched out from there into his limbs and wings. His body grew
frigid, and he gradually disappeared. Any demon or half-breed that perceived
him would assume he was an enchanter imbued with temporary flight.

Gerald felt confident that this would ward off any curious half-breeds or
demons as long as he could stand the cold. Ever since the city had unknowingly
elected a group of enchanters as their mayor and city council, half-breeds and
fallen alike had developed paranoia for the Inner-infused humans.

Though Gerald would never admit it aloud, Nuevas Cruces was the only city
he would care to live in regardless of danger.

Soon after Mayor Saffron won his seat, Las Cruces flourished with new
industry and attracted humans and half-breeds from across the globe, resulting
in exponential population growth.

In a decade it surpassed Los Angeles and contended with New York City for
the most populated city in the United States.

The outside world watched Las Cruces’ revenue boom, streaming chiefly
from its technological contributions: highly affordable yet vastly superior
processors, chip-sets, and operating systems for home and business
applications. Mayor Saffron’s corporation, Alas Negro, developed and
manufactured all of it.

Their uncanny progress astounded competitors, who could never discern how
to duplicate the technology. Saffron, his council and his industry’s enchanters
were the only ones who were aware of their method: an intricate symbiotic
fusion of enchantment and technology.

When Las Cruces became the capitol of New Mexico it was renamed Nuevas
Cruces by want of Saffron and his council.

Gerald trusted only a small group of enchanters and never ventured
outside their business circle. He remembered the jails of the mayor’s lackeys
well enough and had no intention of returning.

Gerald cursed the two half-breeds that had imparted their Inner upon
humans and made them the first enchanters. With the resources and knowledge
given to them by the humans, the pair of them founded The Falling Curtain.

The Duo had always been two of the most respected and feared half-breeds
despite their decision. Gerald had thought their intentions to protect and
organize the growing half-breed population admirable, but to him their methods
were disgraceful.

He looked around to orient himself. South of downtown, rundown
apartments. It matched the image God had placed in his head.

I think that’s the building over there.

Gerald watched the angel’s entry point. A ball of light flashed into
existence on the building’s roof. When the blinding light vanished, Gerald
could see him.

The angel stumbled around, fell, and held his head as if recovering from
a concussion. After a few minutes had passed, he stood up and surveyed his
surroundings.

How is this one angel going to change these circumstances? Unless
he’s...
Gerald remembered the angel from his previous post in Heaven.
The
seraph, God’s personal caretaker
.
Yeah, this kid could be a pistol. I
wonder what happened to his wings. And why is he wearing jeans and a t-shirt?

Gerald heard wings flap in the darkness, looked back where the seraph had
stood and saw a cloaked skia there instead. She inspected the area and jumped
to another building. He blinked to refocus and tried to follow her camouflage’s
waver in the dark but could not. He considered the situation.

He’s down there in the alley obviously. He can probably take care of
the half-angel himself. Yeah, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.