Michael (25 page)

Still, though. Something Michael said about Kim rang true and deep.

There was something about her that just wasn’t sitting well with me lately, though I couldn’t place my finger on it.
Why can he see it, and why can’t I?
Was it just because I was so close with her? I ran over the hypotheticals in my head: the what-ifs.

What if you had a friend who…I mean, what if every evil thing in all creation was making a beeline to you, was bent on your destruction? What would be the best way to get to you?

A man on the inside.

I looked at Michael.

We’ve already been through this.
The statement rang out in my head with an upturned questioning lilt at the end of it.

Who better to engineer ultimate betrayal, though? Who better than that person in whom there has been invested ultimate trust?
I had seen a ton of movies, and in every one, the best friend was suspect number one. But this was real life, so was I just thinking this because of my movie habit?

Why is Kim here?
I wondered.
Why would she be so eager to come along on what amounts to the worst imaginable version of a perpetual car chase scene?
I dug around in my feelings, searching for
She,
searching for El, searching for the truth, asking God for answers, reaching out once again for Kreios.

But there was nothing.

Part of me wanted desperately to defend her. Kim was my best friend from way back; nobody knew me like she did, and nobody could ever come between us.
Not even Michael….
Again, it resounded in my mind like a question, and it was difficult to know who had said it.

I shook my head and dug into the next slice of pizza. I was really hungry.

“Hey…” I said after a moment. My wheels were turning, moving on to different topics. “So… tell me again how we know Kreios is going to end up in Africa?” I had been wondering this for quite some time. I couldn’t remember if it was Michael or Ellie who had said it first, and I had been meaning to get some clarification. Preferably from him.

“It’s just what I’m thinking is most likely to happen. A hunch. The Brotherhood wouldn’t have sent those twitchy little fast ones—the weird little fungus-covered ones—if things weren’t deadly serious. I think Kreios is in big-time trouble. I think he’s going after the roots of everything that is evil in this world. He’s aiming for one of the most prestigious—I mean one of the most insidious strongholds of demonic power in the whole world. When I was in the Brotherhood…I mean…I know stuff, okay? I have memories that aren’t even my own, because of James.” He paused, breathing, apparently thinking.

“Those—those little twitchy fungusy ones are called Anti-Cherubs. They only come from Original lands. Like Africa. Or…the Middle East. Like where Eden used to be. The Anti-Cherubs are some of the original rebels, like that big guy said. They are pure blood angels of darkness. Their usual function is to encircle the earthly throne of the Prince of Darkness himself with apostate traitorous praise.” He paused and took a drink to fill the vacuum of silence between us.

“You talk about the devil. We had a brush with Satanic power the other night on that road. It’s not a laughing matter. And your grandfather is, like, stirring it up because he thinks you’re dead and he wants revenge. It would only make sense, based on what I’ve seen so far, that he has awakened powers in Original Lands either by threatening them or by actually
going there already
and fighting them on their own turf. It’s the Nri Clan. They’re legend among the Brotherhood. My f—I mean, Stanley…once when I was younger…um…shared with me…all this kind of stuff.”

His eyes looked distant and haunted. I never wanted him to look at me like that ever again for the rest of his life.

“Anyway, I’m betting if we start in South Africa, we’ll pick up one Hell of a trail. So to speak.”

“You think we can find him?”

“Kreios?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed and blinked back tears.

He reached across the table and grasped my hands, enfolding them within his own. “I sure hope so.”

“Do you think he’s…okay?”

He looked worried. “Of course.”

“You’re a bad liar.” I attempted a smile but quickly looked down. There was the pizza. I wasn’t so hungry anymore.

“You know why all this is happening, right?”

“Not really,” I said, starting to cry now in earnest.

“The Nri are hunting us down because my father is dead. And they’re not the only ones, don’t kid yourself. The one who retrieves the Bloodstone will become the next Seer.” He stopped, allowing this new information to sink in.

“So…where is it?” I thought back to the day on the cliff.

“What, the Bloodstone?”

“Yeah.”

“That is a really good question.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not going to talk about it any further.”

My jaw hit the floor in shock. Before I could shout abuses at him, he spoke again.

“At least not until you’ve had a chance to talk with Kim.”

“Kim? What’s she got to do with this?”

“You’d better ask her.” He resumed eating. It was grotesque to me; I wanted to barf.
Oh, no….
Was my sickness coming back? And what did
that
mean?

“But,” I began, “why would Kim have anything to do with…” As my voice did its decrescendo into nothingness, the light came on.
Oh, no.

I watched as Michael rubbed his chest, grimacing like it hurt.

From the Book of the Brotherhood, Volume 3:

…

The Brotherhood, dear Brothers and Hosts, had the honor to declare war against El from the beginning. The Fallen and their offspring, the Sons and Daughters of God, are traitors, not just to El—but to the original rebellion and the Leader, as well…

CHAPTER I

U.S. Highway 97, Oregon, present day

THE DUST HAD LONG ago settled from the landing and the white FBI helo sat immobile with its pilot just off the unusable roadway. The wreckage of the accident under investigation was strewn in lumps and shards more or less in a parallel line nearby.

It was a good decision,
she thought,
playing the Federal Investigation card.
Gretchen was glad that she had dismissed the local yokels and cordoned off the scene as soon as she had landed.

But there were anomalies. Unexplainable things.
Like this enormous dent in the middle of the road,
FBI agent Gretchen Reid mused. “Holy…look at these cracks in the asphalt, how deep…” she said to no one. Harry, whom she both valued for his usefulness and despised for his subservience to her, trailed her around, his weak hands trembling a little as he wrung them together at his waist, picking his way carefully, awkwardly over and through the debris.

Gretchen lifted her pretty head and looked around, assessing the situation. The log truck just up the road, Rawlins’ car, or what remained of it, pinned underneath. Then, in the opposite direction on a line that passed through the dent in the road, the black SUV. Or what remained of it. She made the calculations in her head, sizing it up. At first blush, it would appear that either the SUV or the log truck had crossed the double yellow and caused the wreck. Probably the SUV, because Rawlins had gotten too close, too obvious, and spooked the young man Michael Alexander.
High speed chase ensues. And Rawlins foolishly engages the youth. Stupid. I wouldn’t have done that.
The youth, driving at triple digit speeds in the dark and in the rain, lost control.

“And caused the accident?” Again, said to no one.

Harry, still wringing his hands, met her eyes for a moment and she saw something there that didn’t fit. But she let it pass, moving on.

The SUV had hit the log truck head on. No.
Not possible; it wouldn’t have landed way over there,
she thought, estimating the distance from where she stood to the SUV at about 500 feet. No, that wasn’t possible. After all, just look at what happened to Rawlins. Pancake city. No, something didn’t fit.

“It’s almost like it was thrown,” she said.
How could it have been thrown?
Her hunch, that there was more to this incident than met the eye, was beginning to be borne out by events. She stood there in the silence, gusts of wind whipping at her hair, plastering her pantsuit to her athletic body, tugging at the fabric like jealous hands.

She turned around again. Harry had turned his back to her, looking off at the distance, his hand in his jacket pocket as if searching for a stick of gum, perhaps his eReader thing. Once more, she looked down at the dent in the road’s surface. Then, with alarm she realized she hadn’t been seeing what was right in front of her.
This isn’t a dent. It’s dents, plural.
There were two. Side by side, like—“feet.” That’s when she knew what she had been missing. Whatever had caused this accident…had fled the scene?

“Impossible,” she breathed, looking down, wide-eyed.

Harry turned and she looked up. As he squared his body to her, his hand came out of his jacket. He brought it together with its opposite, raising them up. She then realized that his stance was all too familiar: that of an enemy gunman. And there in those hands was his pistol, real enough.

“Say goodbye, Gretchen.”

“That’s impossible—” The last sound she heard was only the first of two shots; a double tap that exploded her head like a coconut breaking open.

Harry put his pistol, an original Colt 1911A1 .45, back in his shoulder holster. “Hollow points, Gretchen. Double tap to the head.” He kicked her lifeless body lightly, playfully. “Bet you didn’t see that coming.” He laughed aloud. “Oh, well. Maybe, actually, you did. At least the first shot anyway.”

In the distance the helo began to start up, the metallic whine of its single turbine climbing in pitch. The pilot, assigned to Harry and not working for Gretchen or even the FBI, had known what the signal would be and he was waiting for it. Harry knelt alongside Gretchen’s body in the double depression of the “dents” in the road, the cause of which he had known full well, and all along. He placed a small RFID device down inside one of the cracks, below the surface of the road, and walked away.

Shortly, with Harry aboard, the helicopter took to flight, climbing. It hovered over the scene at an altitude of 1,000 feet. The pilot depressed the “pickle switch,” a euphemism for the button that deploys munitions. A cylindrical device the size of a five-pound sack of flour released from the belly of the aircraft and fell. A retarder, like a miniature parachute, deployed from its tail, slowing its descent and homing it in on the RFID beacon Harry had planted in the road. The helo banked sharply and headed southeast at maximum speed.

When the bomb hit the ground it plonked dully, nonmetallically into the tarmac, its nose deforming and absorbing most of the force of the impact, causing the bomb to stick to the ground on the spot where it landed. Inside the canister, a kinetic firing pin pierced a thick membrane. Inside the membrane was a small amount of the chemical ethylenediamine, and as it mixed with the nitromethane that filled the rest of the bomb’s canister, a violent explosion erupted. The two “dents” in the road were now an enormous single crater.

As for the rest of the “evidence,” i.e. Gretchen Reid’s body, it was engulfed, ablaze, torn apart and ejected in millions of fragments from the crater in a radius of more than six hundred feet. Harry smiled when the shockwave passed through him in midair. He sang a chilling little song: “Goodbye, Gretchen. Goodbye.”

CHAPTER II

Ascension Island, present day

KREIOS RESTED ATOP GREEN Mountain, blandly and simply named in spite of its sublimely beautiful setting, almost 3,000 feet above sea level. Ascension Island, in the South Atlantic, was a good place to stop and rest, to collect his scattered thoughts for a little while, indulge in a stolen moment. This had always been one of his favorite places; a sanctuary of sorts for him. In the past it was always a destination. Now it was just a convenient place to stop, a waypoint on a journey elsewhere, and it made him intensely sad.