The Return of the Watchers (Armageddon Rising Book 1) (25 page)

              “No young man, no one sent for me. I've been keeping my eye on you for a little while- observing your progress, in a manner of speaking.” His eyes shifted, piercing Dorian's soul in an indescribable fashion. The man took his spirit across time and space an experience which seemed to last an eternity or a microsecond, he could not say which; it was beyond his comprehension. Time had no meaning where he was, and Dorian was paralyzed as he experienced the journey.                                                                       Without speaking, the old man proceeded to give him information that he was unable to recall. Coupled with his drunkenness, he thought he might also have been under some hallucinogenic substances.                             Then it was over. Dorian sat for a moment in shock and disbelief.              “Right, sir! Well, aren't you a fine thing? No time to be gettin' langered. Settle up so we can get going,” Yelnisha said with an impatient tone.
She was
standing next to him, looking him up and down.                            His lucidity returned all at once and he was stunned for the moment, trying to make sense of everything that just happened.                            “Do I- Yelnisha?” He asked with trepidation. She was tall and fit; with a slender, muscular build and a bushel of red hair that was pulled back. Their features were similar enough to that she could almost pass as his sister. Dorian looked around for the old man, who was no where to be found.              “Bang on. Now, if you don't mind, we're not particularly safe here so we need to move along.”                                                                                                   Dorian paid his bar tab and the two of them left. The waitress muttered something under her breath that caused Yelnisha to burst into laughter.                                                                                                                               “I seem to be a source of amusement for everyone tonight,” Dorian groused. “How did you know where to find me?”                                                        “Two sheets to the wind, are you? You sent me a text message with the name of the pub, remember?”                                                                       He checked his cell phone and sure enough he had texted her the name of the bar; only he had no recollection of having done so.                             “Wait a minute. I have to tell you about this old man in the bar,” he said, having sobered up almost instantly.                                                                      “Yeah, how does that joke go?” she asked with a slight smile as they walked to her car.                                                                                                  “I'm serious! Here, read my mind, you'll see what I'm talking about,” he replied in desperation.                                                                                     “You're letting on, yeah? You bought the old git a drink and he was full as a bingo bus on a Friday evening. Then his relatives came and got him. You need to get out more laddie. Any other stimulating conversation topics you want to share?”

              Pausing for a moment he wondered if it was all imagined. The answer was without a doubt a resounding 'no'. It was not imagined, yet it didn't make a lot of sense that Yelnisha would have seen a different set of events in his mind. Whoever he was, the old man's power was great.               “Yeah. Hmmm... I guess you're right,” he replied, letting it go for the time being.                                                                                                                              “We're going out of town, so we'll need to drop off your rental car. It's about twenty minutes to Spoto Angelo. You can follow me there,” she said in a chirpy tone as they walked to their parked cars.                                           “By the way, I hope you don't plan on going back to America any time soon. Probably ever,” she said, getting into her car.                                          “Why, what do you mean? What happened?”                                          “Besides the attack on the stock exchange there was a major earthquake in Yellowstone. They're saying it could go off any moment. Let's just say there's some serious rioting going on all over, and not just America. Let's get a move on.”                                                                                     Dorian stood for a moment wondering how bad it was and how Engel and Kasia were faring. He said a silent prayer for the two.

                                                                                                                                            Thirty nine minutes later, over Barcelona, Spain, an airplane carrying several otherworldly beings was circling back. There were many impatient stares at the meditative body of Arita'el, hoping for a sign of their quarry. Suddenly, he returned from his trance. “Turn the plane southeast towards Sicily. He's there.”                                                                       Lahash immediately got up and went to the cockpit to instruct the pilot to change their heading. A few of the corrupted Nephilim looked at each other with some skepticism, but were cognizant of the fact that Arita'el was an ancient fallen, while most of those present were either demons inhabiting humans or lesser beings. Arita'el's power was extraordinary and questioning his abilities could easily prove disastrous.

Back in Sicily:

              The next half hour went by uneventfully as Dorian and Yelnisha drove to the larger city to drop off his car, then made their way to the tiny village together. As they traveled he could sense her pulse quicken when she talked to him. “What is she nervous about?” he wondered, or was something else afoot? Perhaps she was excited by the idea of the two of them working together. To anyone else besides Dorian, it was obvious she had a bit of interest in him. She smiled several times, along with a few nervous laughs while catching a glance his way. He sat quietly,  focusing his thoughts so she would be unable to read his mind.                                           “So how long have you been doing this?” he asked, trying to get to know her better.                                                                                                                 “Doing what exactly? You mean assisting the Avavago? I've been with Urieth and Matthias for twenty-eight years, since I was ten. Well, now you know how old I am, so don't be calling me no 1690 or I'll bust your cranium!” she replied with a burst of laughter while driving the car through the winding roads.                                                                                                  “A what?” he asked.                                                                                                  “Sixteen from the back and ninety from the front, 1690,” she replied with a smirk.                                                                                                                “Ah, right then. You look pretty good for thirty-eight. I would have guessed about twenty two, give or take a few,” he replied.                            “Thanks. You know how to make a lady feel special. Actually, I'm aging a bit slower than most ordinary humans, but not like some of the other Elioud or Nephilim.”              

              “Yelnisha isn't an Irish name right? Where did you get it from?”               “Right. My dad named me after winning a bet with my mom. Have no idea where he got it from.”                                                                                    “Where did you get your abilities from?”                                                         “Well, my dad was an Elioud, like me. From what little he told me he was the sixth generation from a Nephilim, but he didn't know who he was descended from. I had no abilities before he died, so I really thought he was just making up some fancy talk about our ancestry. My mom was an ordinary human who had no idea what my dad was; apparently he kept it hidden from her. I was only eight years old when a truck on the highway rolled over on top of his convertible, killing him and my twin brother. The trauma of that event must have awakened my Shi. After that I started seeing all kinds of things- spirits, auras, Angels, dark spirits, fallen ones....you get the picture. Then the sounds started popping in my head; you know, random people's thoughts, all that noise. My mom took me to every kind of doctor she could afford; psychiatrist, neurologist, internist, gynecologist- anything ending in 'ist'. Nothing showed up on any of the tests or the psychiatric evals of course. They said it was all just an 'Overactive Imagination'.

              “After the so-called experts said I was making it all up my mom started beating me any time I would point out a spirit, so I kept quiet about it. Anyway, eventually I figured out how to tune out the noise and focus on hearing the specific thoughts of others whenever I wanted. It was kinda cool at first.”                                                                                                                              Dorian looked over at her with a frown. “I want the cool part. It's just giving me a headache most of the time,” he said in frustration.                             “Aw, cry me a river. This is my story so kindly shut your gob and listen,” she said, letting out another batch of giggles.                                          “Whoah there, sheesh. By all means, continue,” he replied with a raised brow.                                                                                                                              “The headaches will pass,” she said, smiling and sticking her tongue out at him to prove she wasn't trying to be mean. “Now where was I? Oh yeah, so I started using it to my advantage,” she said.                                          “Let me guess, poker?” Dorian interjected.                                                        “At nine years old? What am I going to win? Lunch money? Get a clue, boy. Back to what I was SAY-ING. Once you go down the pathway of reading other people's minds it becomes second nature, almost an obsession. So in school I would read my teacher's mind and know exactly what to say, but it just made the other kids hate me for being a know-it-all. By the way, my teacher, Mr. Connolly; he had such a dirty mind; had to keep both my eyes on him. . . .The girls I thought were my friends, well, let's just say they were a bunch of mean, rotten apples. They made me become more socially withdrawn. With my mom it was worse, because any time we argued I would call her out on any lie she made. Thing is, if you can read someone's mind you know when they're pissed off and what not to say, or so you think.

              “Eventually, she started to figure out there was more than an overactive imagination going on and began to believe the things I was saying all along; you know, about about the spirits, Angels, dark ones and stuff.  Anyway,” she chuckled, “she thought I was possessed so she calls in this priest to 'exorcise' the demons in me. Oh man, was that crazy! He was talking with her in the other room and then comes in to ask me some questions. In case you haven't noticed I have a hard time keeping my trap shut. So he looks me over and I take a peek inside his head and he's actually wondering what I would look like without my clothes. So I asked him, “Why do you want to see what I look like naked?” she said, bursting into laughter.                                                                                                                               “My mom looked mortified because she couldn't tell if I was telling the truth or not. Well, that caused the
p
riest to start shaking real nervous-like. He's thinking to sort me out, so he's quoting Bible verses and holding his crucifix in front of my face, right? Then he gets the holy water out and I figured since my mom is paying for this I might as well put on a show. So I start playing along, right? I'm grunting and growling, hootin' and a hollerin,' saying stuff like 'She's mine!' and he's thinking in his mind 'Sweet Jesus, she really is possessed!'
”
she bellowed, proceeding with a fit of giggles.                                                                                                                  “Anyway, this goes on for about ten minutes until I finally couldn't hold it in any more and I started laughing so hard I was crying. The priest was very embarrassed, my mom was so upset! She apologized over and over to him and went into the kitchen to get a rolling pin to beat me to death. That's when I grabbed my coat and ran out.”                                                         Her expression became serious. “When I came back about four hours later I found her in the bathroom. She'd had enough apparently. Enough of me, enough of trying to make ends meet, enough of disappointment in life. Even being able to read her mind, I never looked long enough to see that she was in a lot of pain.

“After her funeral, I was placed in foster care for a bit. The worst part of it was, I saw her wandering spirit. She was always around me apologizing, over and over. It was like she was this shell on auto pilot or something. I just about lost my mind, believe me. I prayed to God, to the Angels I saw, over and over. I only wanted her to find peace. And then I saw him.”                                                                                                                               She turned off the engine. “We're here.”                                                         “Go on, finish your story,” he said, sitting still in the passenger seat of the car, the cool air permeating the vehicle.                                                        “Another time. But that was fun,” she replied with a sly smile.              He sighed and sent a nasty telepathic comment to her. “You get that?” he asked. She smacked him across the chest.                                                         “Hey, you earned it. Can't leave someone hanging like that. Where the heck are we anyway?” The moonlight shone across the adjacent mountainside and he could hear the sound of a nearby river running. The car had travelled down a deserted road that led to a small, barely noticeable outlet amidst a thicket of trees that formed a privacy wall alongside a series of small mountains. A very high-tech fence, which looked significantly out of place at their location, barred their entrance beyond. Her cell phone rang and she picked it up.                                                         “Janey Mack! Right. Coming in now,” she said, then put her phone away.                                                                                                                               “Surprised you get reception out here. Everything all right?” he asked, observing the shift in her aura.                                                                       “We've got company headed this way. Got to get cracking.”               She got out of the car and waved her hand over the device and muttered some words, causing the gate to slowly open. Returning to the car, she started it up and the two proceeded through. The narrow road stopped at a dead end, yet they continued on over what looked to be gravel and boulders, heading straight into the mountain itself. She looked over at him and smiled. “Pretty cool huh?”                                                                                     Dorian was intrigued by the camouflaged entrance, but after what he'd seen recently it did not shock him the way Verdes Seventeen had.                “What is that, some kind of hologram?”                                                         “Way more than just a machine with lights and mirrors I assure you. This next part is going to be a bit trickier.”