The Fallen 3 (2 page)

“Yes,” he said. “I felt it as well.”

Suria stared at him, eyes black and cold.

“We now have a mission to perform,” the angel spoke.

Geburah was well aware of what he needed to do but found himself fighting it, struggling with the identity he’d kept hidden away these years past.

“Can I be honest with you, Suria?” Geburah said with a
nervous smile. “I’d hoped—prayed, actually—that I’d never be called to duty—that I could continue to live like this.”

He looked around the kitchen, the memories of the years with Lillian cascading through his thoughts.

“Like a human?” Suria asked, his response tinged with disgust.

Angels believed themselves so superior, so above humanity. Geburah had no idea where Suria … where the others of their kind had been, as they waited … how they passed the time. Was he the only one of them to live amongst humanity? To pretend to be human?

“Like a human,” Geburah repeated with a sigh, knowing there was little choice for him. He had a duty to perform.

He owed it to Verchiel … to this world … and to Heaven itself.

“Foolish, isn’t it?” Geburah asked.

Suria continued to stare at Geburah, but his gaze had become harder … cautious. Geburah knew that if Suria believed their mission was about to be somehow compromised—that he wasn’t about to take control of their mission—Suria wouldn’t hesitate to strike him down, and assume command.

Again there was the foolish thought of escape, but then he saw, with more acuity than mere human eyes, movement outside the open kitchen window. Through the curtains fluttering in the warm, nighttime breeze, he saw that the others of his band had arrived and were waiting outside.

Waiting for the one who would now lead them.

“Are you … well, Geburah?” Suria prodded.

“I’m fine,” Geburah answered with a sigh, then released his angelic nature.

The truth of what he was … what he had always been … charged forward like a wild beast, and Geburah gasped as the divine power of Heaven flooded through him after so very long.

Leonard Michaels no longer stood in the kitchen of the Florida home. Leonard Michaels no longer existed. In fact, he had never truly existed at all.

In his place stood an angel—a soldier—the new leader of the heavenly host Powers.

Geburah spread his wings, reveling in the sensation. Sparks of divine fire leaped from the tips of his feathers, igniting the structure around him, but he did not care, for that part of him existed no longer. Burned away to reveal the true nature that had lain dormant within.

“Leonard?” a scared voice cried out over the shriek of fire alarms from someplace nearby. “Leonard, what’s going on?”

Geburah looked toward the doorway, the entrance to the kitchen now engulfed with orange fire, a pang of something vaguely familiar pulling at him, gnawing at him from inside, but it soon passed.

He turned his attention back to Suria.

“It’s nothing,” Geburah said as the fire hungrily spread. He calmly walked through the burning kitchen to the back door, and to the angelic soldiers that waited for him outside.

“Nothing at all.”

The last vestiges of the humanity that he had built burned at his back.

T
WO
M
ONTHS
A
GO

If only they could see what I’ve seen with these old, dead eyes
, Tobias Foster mused in response to a child’s curious question to her mother as to what was wrong with the old man on the corner’s eyes as they passed him on the busy Baltimore street.

He was going to answer the little girl, tell her that there was nothing wrong with the two milky orbs resting inside his skull, that he just saw things a little bit differently than most folks. Where mostly everybody saw the here and now, he saw glimpses of the future, and he’d just
seen
something that both distracted and disturbed him.

The brass horn in his grasp grew warm, reading Tobias’s change in mood. The instrument started to pulse, as if it were alive.

“That’s all right,” he whispered softly as he held the horn closer, feeling its heat through his clothes.

“Hey, old man, play us something.”

Tobias turned his head to fix his blind eyes upon the person standing on the street before him.

“What would you like to hear?” he asked, knowing that a song was probably the best thing for the horn at the moment.

“I don’t know,” the man said, the smell of alcohol wafting off his breath. “Play something nice.”

The horn needed a soothing song now. Something to calm it down.

Tobias brought the horn up, nearly scorching his lips on the mouthpiece, and began to blow. The horn fought at first, resisting his attempt to coax music from it, but it soon relented and the sweet sounds of something bluesy that he’d thought up on the fly drifted from the horn.

That’s it
, the old man thought as he played, feeling the metal grow colder in his grasp. Even after all these years with the instrument, he still forgot how reactive it was.

The horn’s previous holder had told him as much all those years ago when giving him the instrument; you’d think Tobias would’ve known not to let his emotions get the better of him, but what he had just seen … it was enough to ruin any man’s day.

He heard the sound of change clinking against the other donations that had been tossed onto the bandanna he’d set out in front of him.

“Thank you kindly,” he said as he took the horn from his lips, sensing the drunken man who wanted to hear something nice heading on his way satisfied.

The horn was copasetic again, forcing him to think about the vision he had seen moments ago without the emotional reaction.

Since he took the horn into his possession, Tobias’s ability to see had been taken away, but it was replaced with something he believed to be of greater value. Tobias had been given the gift of precognition, particularly as it pertained to him, and the safety of the horn.

The safety of the world, really
.

And what he had just glimpsed from behind his cataract-covered eyes would soon endanger all those things.

The old man sighed as he bent down, feeling around to retrieve the change and the few bills that passersby had given to him as he played.

It isn’t bad enough that the Powers nearly released Hell on earth in their attempt to wipe out the Nephilim
, he thought as he shoved the money and handkerchief deep inside his pants pocket.
Now they’re at it again. And are hell-bent on dragging me into their latest folly
.

That’s what he had seen in a disturbing flash: angels of the Powers host hunting for him. They were in the city, following the instrument’s scent. Tobias had always been a wanderer, even before assuming responsibility for the instrument. Since taking on the horn, he’d just had a lot more time to do it.

The instrument had prolonged his life.

He really didn’t remember how long he’d been on this planet. When anyone asked how old he was, he simply replied, “Very.” He had seen a lot during his wandering: kings had fallen, wars had been fought, and slaves had been given their
freedom. He was sure he’d witnessed many other important events, but, at the moment, he couldn’t recall them.

Tobias had other, far more disturbing things on his mind.

The Powers were coming for him … for the horn, and he was afraid he wasn’t strong enough to fight them.

Why can’t they just leave it be?
the old man thought as he shuffled past the busy National Aquarium, a chilling wind blowing off the harbor, foreshadowing cold times to come.

That was the problem with angels, they were so damn stubborn, always thinking they were right. Just because they were one of the first creatures created by God, they thought their opinions had greater value than everybody else’s.

As much as he hated to admit it, Tobias knew it was time his wandering ended, but first he had to find someone very special.

Someone who didn’t mind not dying for a very long time, and who was strong enough to take on the responsibility of the horn, and all that came with it.

T
he cold milk made Aaron’s teeth ache as he spooned cereal into his mouth, careful not to dribble anything onto the front of his shirt.

He glanced across the kitchen table at his little brother, Stevie. The boy, who was supposed to be eating frozen waffles, was rolling a Thomas the Tank Engine train back and forth in front of his untouched plate.

Aaron was about to tell the boy to eat when his mother entered the kitchen, a smile on her face that reminded Aaron how lucky he was to have her as his mom.

Lori Stanley was actually Aaron’s foster mother, but her smile, and the way he felt about her, made that fact inconsequential. As far as he was concerned, Lori Stanley was as close to a real mother as he would ever know.

“How’s it going here?” she asked cheerfully.

Stevie didn’t respond, engrossed in the repetitive movement of his train.

“We’re good,” Aaron said through a mouthful of sugary cereal.

He needed to finish up or he’d be late for school.

A few more quick bites and he was done. He grabbed his bowl and stood to take it to the sink.

“It was nice, wasn’t it?” Lori asked as he crossed the kitchen. She stood beside Stevie’s chair. The boy didn’t notice, but that was just how Stevie was, lost in his world of autism.

“What was?” Aaron asked, absently placing his bowl in the sink and turning back toward his mother. He wondered if he’d need his jacket. The calendar said it was spring, but it was still cold.

“This,” Lori said, her eyes becoming sad as she gestured around the kitchen.

“Yeah, I guess,” Aaron answered carefully. “Are you all right?”

His mother shook her head, slowly at first, but gradually with more passion. “No,” she said, her voice cracking. “No, I am not all right.”

And suddenly Aaron knew exactly what was wrong.

His mother was dead. So was Stevie.

This life was dead.

Lori looked at him, her eyes awash with tears. “Do you miss it?” she asked, stroking the little boy’s hair as he continued to play with his train.

Aaron found himself crying as well. “Yes,” he whispered,
wanting to go to her, to have her take him into her arms and tell him that everything was going to be fine. But something stopped him … something denied him that comfort.

“It got bad so fast,” Lori said. Wisps of smoke began to waft from her body.

“Lori!” Aaron cried as the smoke became darker, thicker, and tongues of flame appeared atop her head like a fiery crown.

“Mom!”

He tried to move but couldn’t, some unknown force preventing him from going to her aid. Fire completely engulfed her now, and smoke obscured the kitchen, but Aaron couldn’t look away.

“So fast,” the blackened skeleton said once more. Sizzling fat ran from its empty eye sockets in a mockery of tears. Her burning fingers still patted Stevie’s hair.

“It’s going to get worse,” the little boy said unexpectedly, lifting his attention from the train to fix it upon Aaron, his gaze suddenly very much aware. “A lot worse.”

Then Stevie started to play with his train again.

As he, too, began to burn.

Aaron Corbet awoke with a start, and stifled a scream before it could fully escape his lips.

He blinked repeatedly, his eyes somehow watering from the smoke of the blaze that had consumed his mother and brother.

“Aaron?”
asked a voice in the semidarkness of the bedroom.

He turned his head slightly on the pillow, expecting to see his girlfriend, Vilma, but instead he looked into the worried eyes of his dog, Gabriel, who lay on the mattress beside him.

“Bad dream again?”
the yellow Labrador asked in the gravelly dog voice that Aaron had no difficulty understanding.

“Yeah,” Aaron said, reaching over to rub the dog’s golden-brown ears. “But I’m all right now,” he lied.

He was about to ask the dog where Vilma was, but as the murkiness of sleep began to recede, he remembered that she had gone back to Lynn, Massachusetts, to visit her aunt and uncle.

Aaron wished that she were here with him now; he could have used her arms around him, the warmth of her body pressed against his. Her very presence was enough to chase away any nightmare’s lingering effects.

While he loved Gabriel, a Labrador retriever was no replacement for a hot girlfriend.

“Getting up now?”
Gabriel asked, sitting up, his thick muscular tail thumping against the bed.
“Breakfast?”

“Not yet.” Aaron reached up and gave the dog’s blocky head a final pat, then turned over on his side, pulling the blanket around his ears. “It’s still early. Let’s see if we can grab a few more hours of shut-eye.”

Gabriel sighed with disappointment but didn’t argue, settling down almost immediately. Aaron listened to the dog’s breathing grow slow and heavy as Gabriel drifted off once more.

But sleep eluded him.

He tried to clear his mind, to focus on his dog’s steady snore, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was the vision of his mother and brother in flames, their ominous warning echoing in his ears.

“It got bad so fast.”

“It’s going to get worse.”

“A lot worse.”

Vilma Santiago opened her eyes to the early morning, thinking that things were the way they used to be, that nothing had changed at all.

That the past few months had been only a bad dream.

But, really, it was her old life that seemed like a dream.

She lay on an air mattress on the floor of her cousin’s bedroom and gazed up at the ceiling, at the cracks in the plaster that had always been the first things she saw when she awakened, when this used to be her room. She remembered all the times she’d lain there, early in the morning, before the rest of the house began to stir, wondering what the day would have in store for her.

School, homework, chores, making sure her younger
cousins weren’t getting into any trouble. She’d never really thought about that life as she’d lived it, believing it all so predictable, so boring and inconsequential.