Michael (The Mark) (The Airel Saga, Book 4: Part 7-8) (4 page)

Answers? They would come. I believed that, and it was enough.

CHAPTER V

MICHAEL KNELT IN THE sand, filled with grief.
What have I done?

But it wasn’t his fault. Surely not.
Why does it have to be like this? This is unbearable. Why do they have to do this kind of thing?
He raged against what had happened, and at his hand. Again. Regret, most bitter of all the emotions, rained down upon his heart and mind, soaking into the very marrow of all that he was.

He knew the methods, of course. He should have seen it coming. But he didn’t imagine it. It took wickeder minds for that.

Airel whispered to him, “What happened?” She stroked his back, and it calmed him a little.

At first he was unable to speak. Once he tried, however, the words began to come easily. “They … I knew they had sent scouts. I just didn’t think … I just didn’t think the Brotherhood would do it like this. To send the … the Garrison of the Offspring.” Michael knew how horrid and evil it was. Demons manipulating the minds of the innocent, the children, making inroads against El by turning the children against Him. It had been a product of cold genius to him when he had first beheld it years ago. But now it was too real. “They sent the children.”

“What?” Airel said. “What does any of that mean?” She looked horrified in the darkness, looking back and forth from the dead countenance of the corpse to that of his own.

“It means,” Michael tried his best to regain his composure, “that they have opened up the entire armory against us. And they want us to know it. Not that they’re desperate. But that they will do whatever it takes.”

“To do what, kill us?”

“Yes.” He looked away from the dead eyes of the child to the distance, across the river. “And recover the Bloodstone.” Tension, then. Heavy and sudden, full of unfinished business that would have to remain unfinished for now. “That’s what they’re trying so desperately to grab. The Infernals don’t care how much military capital they have to expend in order to gain it.”

He looked at her. She seemed very scared, which was unlike her.

“Don’t worry. At this point, it’s every man for himself in the Brotherhood. They’re still not beneath the idea of killing each other in order to get the Bloodstone. With it comes the power of the Seer. They want that more than anything.”

He looked back to the rapidly cooling body of the child in his arms.

“What happened?” Airel asked him.

He sighed. “I asked Ellie to help me ferret them out,” he began. “I had begun to see some suspicious activity around the fringes of our movements here in Arlington. Since our plane isn’t here yet, and since I also didn’t want them to follow us when we leave, I decided we needed to confront and destroy them …”

Grief raked its claws across his wretched mind once more as he thought about the aborted life of the child he had killed, the missed unlimited chances it represented for life. For good or ill, the boy had a right to live. Michael had revoked all of that with a single act.

He tried to move on with the account of how it had happened. “With Ellie’s help, we managed to isolate the tail. We had ascertained that there was only one. We cornered him here on the beach, against the water. I should have known before I took him down …”
…that he was too small to be a grown man…
“…but I took my shot anyway.”

“You shot him?” Airel hissed in a whisper, then recovered. “Wait … you shot him? I didn’t hear any gunshots.”

“The freeway’s right there.” He pointed straight ahead. The racket of interstate traffic, mostly trucks at that hour, became very loud once attention had been drawn to it. “Besides,” he patted his ribs under his sweater, “Stanley trained me well. I know when to use a silencer.”

It came off rude, like sacrilege, and he did not intend that. But he couldn’t stop himself. “One shot. I took him down with one shot.”

He then collapsed into more heaving sobs.

“I knew him, you know…” His voice softened as he brushed a hand over the boy’s cheek. “I used to help change his diapers.” He choked on a sob and swallowed hard.

Airel prodded softly, “What was his name?”

“This was Marc.” Michael was running out of tears to cry. He could feel anger beginning to set in.

“Did he … attack you?”

“Yeah, I chased him here. He was just beginning to change … I had to kill him. There was no time to think, really.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. She was silent for a while. “But you had to defend yourself. You had to defend me—us.”

“God, I killed him. I killed Marc. What else is there?” His voice was quiet. “When will it ever be enough?”

He stood, holding Marc dead and dangling. The boy was small in his arms. “I need some time alone. To take care of this, to think.”

“What are you going to do?”

He looked at her. “Take care of it.”

“Where should I go?” She sounded lost.

“Back to the room. Sleep. Ellie says her man will be here with a car at 8 a.m. sharp to pick us up and take us to the airstrip. That doesn’t give you much time.”

Airel looked very sad. “You want me to leave?” She stood off from him, hands in her back pockets.

He looked at her perhaps a little cruelly, he thought. “Yes,” he said, hoping she would understand all that he had been through for her. For them.

Eyes brimming with tears, she left him.

***

I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. Michael had killed a boy; demon host or not, he was a
boy.
And now he didn’t want me around. I felt like I didn’t even know him anymore. I didn’t know how much to attribute to the Bloodstone, how much to all the crazy circumstances of our situation, and how much was just me doing my over-thinking thing again.

I walked alone, back to the hotel room. Back to Kim, the zombie; and Ellie, the weirdo. A little slice of hell.

CHAPTER VI

Arabia—1232 B.C.

“HE HAS FAVORED YOU with a glance, Uriel. I think you have found favor in his eyes,” Santura said. She smiled broadly at the young man, a little too much so for Uriel’s comfort. She turned away from the boy Santura had indicated. He was tall and strong enough, perhaps, but his piggishly small eyes were much too close together.

“Him,” she whispered with disdain. “He’s not what I should call handsome at all.” Still, she was of age and she wanted a man of her own, if even as a plaything. Less for romantic exploits than to irritate her father, truth be told. Her uncle Yamanu gave her the kind of free reign only uncles could, the kind of liberties a father, in her experience, could not and would not ever grant a daughter.

Santura giggled as she flirted with the young man for herself. “Uriel, stop it. He is handsome enough.” She gave him a little wave. “Besides, there’s more to a man’s eligibility than the construct of his face. There’s nobility, for instance.”

“Oh, Santura, you can rest assured. I know all about
his
line. Dear Yakob shall one day inherit vast riches not only from his father’s bloodline, but also from his mother—the union of his parents was
most
wise
and
judicious.” Uriel did not say that she found it deplorable for women to marry for dowries. For expedience. Was there not more to hope for under the sun?

“He is well liked by the elders,” Santura said, running a hand through her long blonde hair and fiddling with the pure white flower of plumeria that she had tucked behind her ear.

“Power and lineage are not everything, Santura. I want to marry for love. I long for the embrace of the one I would breathe for.” Uriel looked out and away, across the rooftops of the city of Ke’elei to the red mountains beyond. “That is true love. I shall find him one day.” Of course she knew of whom she spoke. But she would not speak his name. Not yet.

They stood at an upper window in her uncle’s house. Yakob, down in the street below, blew them a kiss, delighting Santura, exasperating Uriel. She turned away from the scene, leaving her friend to her work—for work it was and work it would not cease to be. “Ugh,” she couldn’t help exclaiming.

She thought back to the strange and beautiful young man she had met not even a fortnight ago. Now
he
was something. There was something about him of which she could not rid herself in her mind. Indeed, in her very heart. He haunted her dreams and she found herself enwrapped within the soft, welcoming folds of self-centered fantasy.
How could he capture me so, and in just one chance encounter?
He was all she could think about, all she wanted to think about.

Santura ducked back inside the stone-arched window and sighed at her with big blue lovesick eyes. “Oh, Uriel. Isn’t it wonderful? Life is amazing …”

“Santura, you are being unbearable again.” Uriel smiled at her to soften the blow.

“I know, I know. There is someone else you have in mind?” She squealed like a little girl. “Perhaps the boy we met the other night?”

Uriel screwed up her face, trying to appear to be confused, but then turned away when her blushing cheeks betrayed her.

“I knew it. You
do
fancy him. Admit it, Uriel, you dream of him, do you not?”

“Santura, stop. He is a … a most fascinating young man, I will admit.”

“Ha.”

“And if you must know, I do think he is amazing.” She turned away and tried to busy herself with something, anything. “What I mean to say is that … is that he does have the most … the most captivating eyes.” Intense redness swelled into her cheeks and forehead, making her feel slightly ill.

Santura shook her head like a sage old woman. “Ah … love.”

“Santura. Stop …” she begged, but did not mean any of it. She rather adored everything about him, even Santura’s little tortures. All she could do was meditate upon his face, his features, his broad and very strong chest, his name. “Subedei …” she whispered the name and smiled wide.

He was not of the city of Ke’elei, of course. He was from out beyond the red mountains, a traveling merchant, she guessed, perhaps some kind of nobility in his own right judging by the manner in which he carried himself, the quality of his robes, his headdress.

She had met him in the market. She had been walking with Santura, looking back over one shoulder to try to fend off a hawking fishmonger, when she crashed quite literally into him.

“Subedei …”

He was so tall, so strong, so bronzed and handsome. His eyes were like the blade of the sword, and just as sharp. His frame lithe, supple, rippled with muscle, aglow with health and strength. Her imagination ran a bit wild thinking of him.

She had walked right into his powerful chest, stumbling over both his feet and hers, and looked up into his face as if awakening from a dream, his strong arms around her. “Oh,” she had said stupidly, “I am so sorry.” She had dropped her purse, a little leather pouch of coins given as an allowance by her uncle for incidentals at the market. She glanced down at it in concern. The market was no place to go around dropping coins; anything could happen.

“Let me,” he said as he reached down and picked it up, placing it safely into her open hands. They stood uncomfortably close for complete strangers, but neither of them made a move to separate for a long moment. Santura had been watching the whole thing unfold; her heavy breathing brought Uriel back around and she silenced Santura with a scolding glance.

Uriel turned back to the young man. “Thank you,” she said.

“Subedei,” he replied, and took her hand and kissed it, causing her to blush. This impetuous young man from parts unknown had the air of romantic adventure about him.

She fell instantly and surrendered her name on the spot. “Uriel.”

“It is a pleasure,” he had replied.

Uriel sighed at the memory of it. It was such a shame that they had decided for the sake of propriety to keep moving on, she and Santura. But after all, it had been so embarrassing. It was really almost unbearable. She looked back in woeful regret. Would she ever see him again?

Reality came crashing back in upon her with even greater force as her uncle burst into the room. He wasn’t ever one to come crashing or bursting into anything—he was so soft-spoken. She knew her reaction of shock was owing solely to her state. Love. Fantasies. Self-absorption. “Oh, hello, Uncle,” she said in greeting.

“Greetings, my beloved niece, and her favored friend Santura.” He bowed to them. “Uriel, are you ready for your shadowing lessons today?”

Her heart sank. All she truly wanted to do was to sit in daydreaming speculation about the mysterious Subedei, ponder over their wedding day feast, wonder at the power of his love, dream about the home they might build together. “Oh. Why, yes, Uncle. Yes, I am.”

“Good,” he said. “Meet me in the training hut two hours before the evening meal. I have a special wrinkle I wish to throw at you today.” He winked and smiled at her. “I must go. Do not be late, beautiful girl.” He left as suddenly as he had come, pausing only to grab an orange from the wooden bowl that lay perpetually on the table of the house, the wooden bowl she had gone to the market a fortnight ago to restock with fresh oranges, figs, and breadfruit.

She was heartsick. She had to admit it. Ever since that day, she had not felt well.
This thing called lovesickness is quite real.

Yet all she wanted was to see him again—and she would.
Perhaps I can turn these shadowing lessons to good use.
Perhaps she could sneak out of the city under cover of the trade of the Shadower and search for her man.

Subedei.

CHAPTER VII

Boise, Idaho—Present Day

“HONEY, I HATE TO do this to you, and especially now, but …” He searched for a way to say what he needed to say, “…but I’ve gotta take another sales trip.”

She didn’t react at all. That was not a good sign. If at least he could get a rise out of her he would feel better, feel like she wasn’t completely overwhelmed with the situation. After more than twenty years of marriage, he knew her well enough to know that.

“Honey? Did you hear what I said?” He knelt down in front of her easy chair. This was her spot in the house. Nobody else sat here. She read her gardening magazines in this chair in the summer, crocheted in this chair when the weather was bad. “It’s out of town …” He placed a hand on her knee.