Michael (37 page)

Ascension Island, present day

Michael knew he wasn’t looking at Kim, though his eyes and his memory conspired against reality to manufacture the lie. And when she had said what she said, there was something bestial about it that repelled him.

His first instinct was to stall for time. “Hey…uh, Kim. What are you doing here?” But he knew very well.

“Shut up, pawn. Kim knows that you shroud your thoughts in deception; she does not believe a word you say. Kim is no fool. She cannot be tricked.” She licked her lips, coating her tongue with the sticky black tar that encrusted them.

Michael quickly analyzed his position. He stood downhill from her. The base of a little sheer cliff was to his left, a steep rolling drop-off to his right. He knew further that he was facing down one of the original manifestations of evil. No one knew for sure if the Bloodstone was Lucifer himself or merely a connection to him. There was a possibility that the Bloodstone wasn’t either of those; that it masqueraded as such to cause tremors of fear, upon which it fed like a ravenous beast.

Whatever the case, Michael knew his situation had become very serious. “All right then,” he said. “We won’t kid ourselves.”

“That’s right, seed of Alexander. We won’t.” She tucked the Bloodstone away inside the palm of her hand and held it stiffly at her side.

“You obviously know who I am.”

“Yes!” The one called Kim padded lithely back and forth, sizing up her prey. “You tried to kill me the last time I saw you.” She licked her lips again, her voice a razor’s edge.

“I failed.” Michael tucked his chin and spread his stance, readying himself. “Tell me, demon. What is your name this time?”

Kim roared violently, ejecting bits of black slime from her enlarged mandible-like mouth, spewing forth like a volcano. Bits of it sizzled wherever they landed. “The Alexander asks our name, does he? No! No, we shall not be tricked!” Kim’s skin was turning green, blending in with the tall grass in which she stood.

“Fine,” Michael said, and promptly drew his pistol and fired. The shot had been aimed squarely at the Bloodstone in her hand, but as the bullet neared its target its trajectory became twisted and bent, pulling it into compact orbit around the stone. It slowed and then fell to the earth harmless.

The demon laughed, a wretched constrained sound. She began to prattle on in an incoherent stream of meaningless words. Michael pretended to pay attention to her, wore a false look of dread on his face. But he knew what effect the unsilenced gunshot would have. He needed only to wait now for Ellie and Airel. Then it would be three to two. Unless Kim’s weird third-person monologue included more than one demon.

Arabia, 1232 B.C.

Kreios sat Eriel on one of the topmost branches of one of the tall redwoods outside the city walls of Ke’elei. He did not have the time to scold her or even to confirm if she was all right, nor could he take the time to tell her what surely she already knew: that she must hold on tightly or fall to her death. But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She knew these things now. It was clear to Kreios, just as clear as the fact that she had stubbornly chosen her path; she had been activated. Now nothing would ever be the same.

He then descended upon the demon horde below with ultimate wrath, sword first. A father’s love for his daughter manifest as a tower of rage if she ever faced harm from the hand of another.

Demon and weird beast alike fell under his blade. Horses, bizarre apes with smashed-looking faces, unchained jungle cats that had been saddled for combat, even one enormous lizard-like monster from the early days, when men lived to be a thousand years old, before the flood, before creatures like this had been mostly exterminated, evolving into dragon myths. The entourage of Subedei was decadent indeed for him to possess one.

But it made no tactical sense for such creatures to be here, which made Kreios despise his foe all the more as a fool. There were shouts as the single-handed slaughter continued apace. Subedei was rallying them into formation. But it was too little and too late. The guards upon the city wall, less than a league off, sounded the alarm and angel sorties had already organized into the air. Subedei’s little detachment of troops was doomed. It was now his turn to rue the recklessness of a foray into the woods so near the great city.

Kreios looped into the air with his kind and sized up the final blow, looking for the captain of this force. Sword to the fore, Kreios searched for Subedei. But he was not to be found.

Kreios shouted in rage. He had missed too many opportunities of late.

Ascension Island, present day

The Sword of Light made one heck of an entrance, especially when it came out of nowhere like it did when I wielded it. I leaped from the cliff top above Michael and Kim with a primal scream, sounding like a Valkyrie or something; it scared even me. I landed in between them Sword first, plunging the blade deep into the grassy earth, ejecting bits of geological shrapnel in every direction. Light spiraled around the Sword and up my arm, swirling with great energy.

Ellie took a different tack, deciding to come at Kim from the uphill side along the path, from behind her.

Michael crouched down in the blast radius of my landing, shielding himself just in time. Kim was forcibly knocked down. She never saw Ellie coming.

Kim, if you’re in there I hope you know I’m sorry for this…it’s not how I wanted you to go.

In an obscene movement, as if her body was a marionette on strings, she sat bolt upright in the dirt. Her head twitched a little as she looked at me, like her thoughts were a skipping record or like she was having trouble rebooting.

I approached her, Sword at the ready. “Kim—”

A beastly voice answered, “Kim is not…Kim is not…Kim is no more. It is only the Nri…” The tent of Kim’s body hiked itself to its feet in a crouch and looked up at me, baring its blackened teeth, twisting to acknowledge Ellie’s presence behind.

“You have to end this,” She
said within, in a very clear tone. I charged, but it was too late.
I
was too late.

Kim—it—leapt up to the top of the cliff above, inhumanly, a jump of thirty feet or more. Its ungodly wings unfurled in a huge sweeping motion, drooping down from the cliff to where we stood. The face of Kim smiled the wickedest smile I had ever seen and then looked to the sky. The wings were slowly raised.

Then the thing, the housing for the Bloodstone, bolted into the sky and was gone.

CHAPTER XVII

“FIRE IT UP, HEX!” Ellie shouted at her questioning pilot as she walked right by, straight to the door. Michael and I followed suit, glad to be done with the return trip to the airfield via the Bowler insanitymobile.

Hex asked Ellie, “Where have you been? I thought you were only going to be a few hours at most!” He scolded her like a worried parent, following along behind.

Ellie stopped abruptly, turning on him. He nearly bowled her spare frame over, but she stood fast. “Listen, Hex, just get us preflighted and out of here like yesterday, okay? I mean, light it up.” She turned and quickly bounded onto the G550.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Excuse us,” I said. Michael and I made our way around him toward the door.

“Sorry,” he said. He then turned to his work as we boarded and began doing all those little checks that pilots have to do in order to get the airplane ready to defy gravity.

Cape Town, South Africa, present day

After the refueling stop in Jo-burg, as the locals called it, the plane carrying Airel’s father had only about another hour’s flight to its final destination.

The 747, a city with wings, set down on the tarmac in Cape Town on a mild afternoon. Massive thunderheads loomed in the distance and a shroud of ribbon-like clouds were draped over Table Mountain. There were patches of sunshine that lent places like Hout Bay an aspect of having been lit from beneath, the turquoise color of the sea iridescent.

Though it looked like paradise, Airel’s father knew this was when the real heavy lifting would begin. As the lone sales rep for a clandestine arms and technology house, he did indeed have many tools in his arsenal. And he knew how to ply his trade, as well as the trade of those who bought his wares.

But he didn’t know where to start looking for his little girl.

He knew she had to be here, though. It was clear enough, looking through news reports like the ones he had seen that led him here:
Graveyard Massacre. Seventy-five men, two women brutally murdered…Schoolyard Ripper…
and all of them with something in common: the same man. Whether it was a grainy photo or a still from security camera footage, he could recognize the blond killer from the BPD report on the original incident at the movie theater. When he finally put it all together it was like a parting of the clouds to reveal pure sunshine. This mysterious blond-haired man had crossed paths with Airel once too often. Now he would cross swords with Airel’s father.
To the death.

He didn’t know what the killer wanted with his daughter. He could only assume she needed help and that the killer, if backed into a wall, would eventually lead him to wherever he was keeping her. He had all kinds of tools he could use that made people talk.

Now one problem remained:
Where to find the bastard?

Somewhere over the South Atlantic, present day

Before I knew it we were airborne, bound for South Africa, Cape Town direct. It wouldn’t be more than a few hours; Hex was flying us close to mach, the speed of sound.

I was worried about Michael. He had obviously not fared well on our little adventure up the mountain. He sat scrunched in his seat, his eyes closed, beads of sweat on his brow. I adjusted the ventilation so that a cool stream of air washed over his face. I loosened the collar of his shirt a little so his skin could breathe.

That’s when I first noticed the mark on his chest.

My mind flashed with anxiety, my hands pulling at the buttons of his shirt in desperation as more and more of the weird wound showed itself. It was like a star, purple-black at its center with spiral tendrils radiating out from there in red and yellow, that ugly bruise-yellow that attends blunt force trauma.