Showdown
“I’LL walk you to class,” Xavier offered. I was wearing his oversize Sigma Chi T-shirt that came down to my knees. I had to keep hitching it up so you could see that I was in fact wearing shorts underneath.
“You don’t have to.”
“It’s on my way,” Xavier said. One of the few upsides of having to keep our relationship secret was that Xavier had taken to courting me again; walking me to class and picking me up from my dorm so we could sneak off to lunch together. Everybody accepted that we were close as siblings could be.
“Can we go to the square to eat?” I asked.
“Sure. Why don’t you bring Molly?”
“Seriously? You really want me to?” Xavier never suggested we bring Molly anywhere.
“No,” he said, sighing, “but it can’t be just the two of us all the time. We have to be aware of that.”
“We never get alone time anymore,” I grumbled.
“We’ll get some time soon. A lot of kids will be leaving this weekend.”
“How come?”
“It’s an away game.” I gave him a blank look. “It means the Rebs are playing at another school.”
“How come football determines everything around here?” I asked, and Xavier looked at me as if I’d just said something deeply offensive.
“Beth, football is like a religion here.”
“Well, I don’t get it.”
“I’ll take you to the next game and you’ll understand.”
“You know how I feel about crowds,” I hedged.
“Don’t worry,” Xavier laughed. “It’ll only be about sixty thousand.”
My jaw dropped and he gave my shoulder a fraternal squeeze. “Oh, Laurie, you have much to learn.”
We walked past the imposing façade of the Lyceum, the university’s first building, with its towering white columns, which I knew from my reading had once served as a hospital during the civil war. The surrounding flowerbeds were awash with color, planted with daffodils and purple pansies. I marveled at the pristine state of the campus grounds and the efforts that must go into keeping it that way.
We made our way to the old lecture theater with its tiered wooden seats and polished gray linoleum floors. It was already teeming with students pulling laptops out of backpacks and chatting casually as they awaited the arrival of the English professor. I noticed Xavier didn’t seem in a hurry to leave.
“So I’ll come find you when I’m done?” I ventured.
“I might just stick around if that’s okay. I want to see what your class is like.”
“Don’t you have study group?”
“I’m sure they’ll manage without me.”
“Is something wrong?” I asked suspiciously.
“Nope, I just don’t feel like leaving you right now.”
I didn’t argue. I knew what he meant. After the last conversation with Gabe and Ivy, I also wanted us to stay close to one another. If anything were to happen, I wanted us to face it together.
We edged our way past students standing in clusters and veered toward the back row. It might have appeared antisocial but I wanted to dodge any questions about what we were doing there together. But I was fairly certain nobody knew me well enough to pay much attention.
I didn’t know why, but I was on edge that day. Something had changed; a few times I caught a whiff of something foul carried in the air. I sat upright and tense in my chair, the back of my seat rubbing uncomfortably against my spine. Xavier, on the other hand, looked comfortable in the aisle seat, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles.
When Professor Walker finally arrived with his thatch of silver hair that stood upright on his head like a cockatoo’s crest, he carried no notes, only a battered copy of the Norton Anthology of Literature under his arm. He peered at us in a world-weary way over round tortoiseshell glasses that had slipped midway down his nose. As soon as silence fell, he directed us to turn to the page containing Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Beside me I heard Xavier let out an audible groan. A couple of girls in front of us turned around, giggling and pulling faces in empathy.
“Poetry?” he whispered. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“It was your idea, remember?”
“Is it too late to make a run for it?”
“Yes. You have to stay now. Besides, you might even learn something.”
“This better not really be about an urn,” he said, scowling.
I jabbed his arm with my pencil to silence him. Xavier slunk lower in his seat and cupped his face in his hands as if he wanted to make himself invisible. His usually piercing blue eyes flashed me a look of betrayal. I gave him a contented smile in return. Boring as he might find what Professor Walker had to say, I was going to enjoy having him beside me for the next hour.
But as it turned out, class that day was not as uneventful as Xavier expected.
* * *
IF we harbored any doubts before, the fact that the Sevens chose a public venue to launch their attack on us confirmed how little they valued human life. When I looked back on it, I realized their actions went against everything they were created to do. They were supposed to maintain harmony on earth, not wreak havoc. But it seemed a handful of mortal lives lost was a small price to pay for the capture of an errant angel. After that day, I began to harbor serious doubts about the Creator’s involvement in the events that unfolded. That day felt like the work of a celestial vigilante group, a rebel faction that had taken matters into their own hands.
The first tangible thing that alerted me to trouble was the rumble overhead that everyone assumed to be thunder. Only I remembered how cloudless the sky outside had been just minutes before. This was followed by a barely audible hum that sounded vaguely familiar. It bothered me so much I strained to hear it above the resonance of the professor’s voice. I so badly wanted to believe it was due to faulty air-conditioning, but then I saw something that made my blood run cold. When I looked up at the vaulted ceiling, I saw the solid plaster become as ductile as dough. The whole roof seemed to be quivering like jelly, as if the entire room had suddenly become malleable.
That was when the door of the lecture hall burst open and I saw it, a gilded white horse snorting and pawing at the ground. He appeared like a rough sketch, not properly filled out. I grabbed Xavier, slamming my hand down over his on the desk. I caught sight of a jeweled saddle as the horse reared its head, the white mane fanning down its back. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been beautiful, but it was nothing but a warning sign, preceding the arrival of its masters. The other students looked curiously at the door, oblivious to its presence. The horses appeared only to those who understood their significance.
“It’s back,” I whispered. “Xavier … it’s them.”
No sooner had I spoken those words than the masked figures appeared like phantoms in the lecture hall. Their hands and feet were concealed under swirling black robes. Whatever semblance of a face they possessed was hidden behind masks of white plaster, which seemed to adhere to their faces. They had slits for eyes through which there was nothing but empty sockets to be seen. There was not even a hole through which they might draw air; they had no need to breathe because they weren’t of this world. The only skin exposed was their calloused hands; a hoary color, like decaying flesh, half covered by fingerless leather gloves. They were the Sevens from my nightmare, only in the dream there’d been just one. Now there were at least a dozen.
I felt Xavier go rigid beside me. The other students sat up straighter and pointed, some concerned, some intrigued, and some laughing at what they assumed to be an elaborate, high-tech hoax perhaps executed by some creative frat boys. Few could have understood how real the threat they were facing was.
In the next moment, Xavier was out of his seat and shoving me down onto the hard floor, trying to conceal me from view. I didn’t resist and crouched under the folding seats with the metal bars pushing into my shoulder blades, my heart racing uncontrollably. They were so close, was i
t possible they hadn’t seen me? Surely their storming of this particular class hadn’t been mere coincidence. They must have known I was there. But if they hadn’t seen me yet, maybe we still had a chance of getting out alive.
From my crouching position I only had a fragmented view of what was happening. I heard Xavier take charge, urging people to move.
“Get out!” he shouted. “It’s not safe here. Run!”
Everybody reacted differently. Some refused to heed his warning, determined to see for themselves what the spectacle was all about. Professor Walker had stopped speaking and stood in open-mouthed wonder. The heavy anthology he’d been reading from slipped from the lectern and thumped to the floor. The Sevens were blocking the exits; they seemed vast and unmovable in their voluminous robes. The sound of the scratchy, labored breathing coming from beneath their masks filled the room. The black hoods that concealed their faces were ruffled by an invisible wind and flapped against their plaster cheeks.
Some hysterical girls turned to Xavier for help, desperate for an authority figure to give instruction when everybody else appeared to be rendered useless.
“What do we do?” they screamed, clutching one another. “What’s going on?”
Xavier could see immediately there was no safe way out of the lecture theater. He put a hand on a girl’s shoulder, the one who seemed least hysterical, and looked her dead in the eye.
“Get down and stay low,” he instructed, and threw a glance at the other two who were a mess of tears and smeared mascara. “Look after them, they need you.”
The girl nodded and swallowed hard. She guided the others who were still whimpering to the ground and I watched them crawl away on their hands and knees to the safety of some nearby desks. Other people were still stumbling around the aisles or hastily trying to bundle their belongings into backpacks.
The Sevens reacted swiftly on hearing Xavier’s voice and they began to advance toward us. They couldn’t see us; I knew that for a fact—they were like blind animals that relied on other finely tuned senses to hunt. Their heads creaked eerily from side to side as they surveyed the room. What were they using to detect us? Was it smell or voice recognition or could they pick up the vibration of our souls and know instinctively who we were? Either way, Xavier needed to get out of sight. I reached forward and caught hold of his ankle. He nearly yelled out but stopped himself just in time when he saw my face peeking out at him from ground level, and he managed to back away silently and slide under a desk beside me. We both lay as still as we could, holding our breath and hardly daring to move a muscle.
The Sevens reached inside their capacious black robes and withdrew long bars of metal that glinted in the light. It took me a second to realize they were swords, the jeweled hilts gripped in their gloved hands. Against the stark white walls of the lecture hall, I caught a flash of the shadow of wings, dark and tattered, almost skeletal. The feathers seemed to be falling away, leaving the wings bald, only the bone structure with wisps of residue still clinging to the frame.
At the appearance of the swords, it didn’t take long for the human survival instinct to replace curiosity. Students began to panic, running in all directions and shielding their faces with books. The swords the Sevens carried seemed to ripple slightly and appeared to emit a powerful heat. Soon the room began to feel like a sauna.
The Sevens swept up and down the aisles. One of them passed by the desk under which I lay hidden, so close I could smell the odor of damp, rotting leaves that clung to the hem of his robes. He held the sword by the hilt at his chest, its tip pointing toward the ground. I could feel the heat radiating from the metal, as if it had been held under an open flame. From the tip I could just make out a thin beam, like a laser, that seemed to be searching for something. I didn’t have time to jerk back and the beam traveled across my hand, which I hadn’t tucked back under my body after reaching out to Xavier. I felt a blinding flash of pain as the skin sizzled, the heat burning deep into my flesh and leaving my hand smoking with the burn. I bit down hard on my lip to stop from crying out and felt my eyes begin to water. An angry blistering stripe now marred my hand from my wrist down to my knuckles. I tried not to look at the bubbles of skin and red, raw flesh. The Seven stopped for a moment and I thought I heard a wolf-like sniffing. Could he smell the injury, smell my fear, or both? Slowly, and with great difficultly, I turned my hand over and pressed it into the carpet, hoping it might block out whatever the Seven was detecting. I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore the little prickly fibers now digging into my exposed flesh. A moment later the Seven moved on and the beam from the sword continued … only now it was heading for Xavier’s ankle. He braced himself, ready to face the pain, but nothing happened. The beam passed over him, harmless as a blowfly. I realized then that the swords were designed for me—to ferret out my hiding place. If one came in direct contact with my body, it would sear me until I had no choice but to scream and reveal myself.
The masked creatures continued to scope the faces in the crowd with their unseeing eyes. I could hear the breathing of the one beside me, rasping like he suffered from advanced emphysema. I was surprised at their ability to ignore the fearful cries and wild scampering of the human students around them and I wondered if they could even hear them at all from behind their plaster masks.
Amid the confusion, a figure began to walk toward the lectern. At first all I could see of him was a pair of heavy black boots, each step hitting the ground as heavily as if they were made of stone. I pressed my face against the floor, trying to get a good look at this mysterious newcomer. He was tall and built solid as a rock. His rich ebony skin had a slight sheen and long matted dreadlocks hung to his shoulders. His black eyes were hooded and expressionless. He had no cause to wear a mask—I could never have doubted his identity. This was Hamiel, the leader of the Sevens and a prophet of doom. Wherever he went, suffering was sure to follow. He looked around the lecture hall and a small smile began to play on his lips.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice that had a curious singsong quality. “You can’t hide forever.”
Xavier’s hand curled protectively over mine and I turned my head a fraction to look at him. His honey-colored hair fell over one side of his face. He couldn’t speak but his brilliant, electric blue eyes held all the unspoken words. His hand tightened over mine and I knew he was saying, “Don’t you dare. Don’t even think about giving yourself up.”
I flicked my eyes desperately toward Hamiel’s boots and back again. He wasn’t going to be patient for long. If I didn’t surrender myself, I had no doubt he would slaughter every person in the room until he found me. Hamiel’s tar-black gaze fell on a girl cowering nearby. She screamed as his massive presence approached her and picked her up by the scruff of her neck like a dog. I didn’t know the girl’s name but I recognized the curtain of red hair and pale skin from my dorm. Susie, was it? Or Sally? I couldn’t remember and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Hamiel would kill her if I didn’t step forward. He tossed her down on the ground and swung his sword in a gentle arc so the flat side of the gleaming blade thudded dully against her neck. He was playing with us. All he needed was to change the angle and put a little more force behind it and she’d be dead in an instant.
It was time for me to act. I pulled my hand away from Xavier and leaned across to awkwardly kiss his cheek. It wasn’t the farewell I would have chosen, but I had no choice. I wasn’t going to let some poor girl die in my place. I might be a disgrace to Heaven, but I was still an angel and it was my job to protect human life. I hadn’t forgotten that.
I couldn’t speak to Xavier and risk giving him away, so I gave him a look that I hoped conveyed a fraction of what I felt for him. It was hard to break away; I felt like I was trying to leave my own body behind. But the petrified look on the face of the redheaded girl spurred me into action. The heartbreak at leaving Xavier made my whole chest tighten. But there would be time to grieve later. Right now I had
to be strong. I wriggled out from under the desk and folded my arms across my chest.
“Hey there,” I said casually to Hamiel. “Looking for me?”
15
Class Dismissed
HAMIEL’S face broke into a grin, his teeth stark white against the rich sable tones of his skin. There was no amusement in his expression, only victory. He had won, smoked me out of my hiding place and right into his clutches. He signaled by clapping his hands and the Sevens stopped dead, turning in a formation to face him and await instructions. They were like trained dogs, acting blindly at their master’s command. He needed only to say the word and they would end me.
I felt a slight movement at my shoulder and then Xavier appeared at my side. I could almost feel my heart breaking as he protectively took his place beside me. More than anything I’d wanted him to stay safe. But I should have known he’d never let me face the music alone. My condemnation was his condemnation. There was no separating us now. I wanted to cry, but I would not show weakness by breaking down in front of Hamiel. Instead, I reached out and took Xavier’s hand, entwining our fingers and holding on tight. Taking his cue from me, Xavier refused to be intimidated. He leaned against a desk and drummed his free hand against the wood.
“You boys need to get out more,” he said. “And really, what’s with the masks? C’mon, this isn’t Scream.”
Despite whatever horrors might have been laying in store for us, I forced myself to give a defiant smirk. The whole situation was so unthinkable there was nothing left to do but show them they couldn’t wear us down completely. Hamiel narrowed his eyes.
He was clearly not expecting this sort of reaction from us and although his face remained unmoved, I could see the flicker of rage in his black liquid eyes.
“Who do you think you are, boy?”
Xavier shrugged. “I’m with her.”
Hamiel flicked his gaze back to me. “I’ve heard.”