Taking Flight: The Unforgiven 1

  Melinda sighed, wished she had a book, and settled for naming the constellations that she could remember from seventh-grade astronomy. She was amazed at the brilliance of the stars and the shimmery band of light crossing the sky. The Milky Way, she thought. Gemini. The Big Dipper. Occasionally there was the hum of an all-night semi going by, or the whining buzz of a car. It was quiet out here in the desert. There was no indication that there had been anything wrong.

  So why couldn't she rid herself of this feeling that something incredibly shitty was going to happen?

  It started as a low rumble, so quiet that she could only hear it if she held her breath, and then only between heartbeats. She sat up and looked around.

  It took a moment to find it -- an orange-ish ball of light, coming towards them from the horizon. It was weird. It looked like a fireball. She stared at it, trying to figure out what it might be. A really well-lit semi, perhaps?

  As the noise got louder, she realized that it was moving really, really fast, almost impossibly so. And that it was heading directly for them.

  She shook Gabe, but he swatted her hand away. "Not now, Mom," he muttered.

  "Gabe!" she hissed. "Gabe!"

  He bolted awake. "What?!" he demanded.

  She pointed at the glowing ball of flame coming at them. "Get us out of here!" she screamed.

  "Christ," Gabe muttered nervously as he popped the driver seat up and turned the ignition on. The engine coughed -- and stalled out. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" he chanted as he tried again and again.

  But the Jeep just wouldn't start.

  The fire ball was streaming closer and closer, eating up the distance impossibly quickly. They could see, outlined against the flames, the metal skeleton of what was once a big rig barreling down at them like a giant fireball.

  Melinda could see in the driver's seat a blinding-white aura, but the figure silhouetted in black was not the boy she pulled out of the barn two days ago. Even so, she knew it was him. She was just sure of it. A white light emanated from the figure's mouth. He looked like he was smiling, and where his eyes should have been were two glowing red embers while channel lighting ringed his body.

  Through the roar of the engine and the flames that ran it, they heard a cackle. It was too close enough now. They heard that evil sound clearly.

  Melinda threw herself over Gabe a split second before the fireball slammed into the Jeep.

  God, don't let him die, she was thinking.

  The roar of the explosion ripped through them... but the flames wrapped around them. God, don't let him die. The Jeep disintegrated instantaneously into a million swirling metal flakes, and she knew it was about to shred them both to pieces. "God, don't let him die!" she screamed as the world around them dissolved into flames.

  Melinda opened an eye and saw the creature that was once a scared, frightened boy coming towards them, black as sin with limbs of smoke and flame. Behind him were a pair of silvery, smoky wings. But this was no angel. And Melinda, strangely enough, became insanely angry.

  She risked her life to save him, and he did this to her?

  "How dare you?!" she screamed.

  He actually stopped. His look considered her, and somewhere in the galaxy her rational mind was thinking that she should be terrified right now but that her fury was so great that she actually stood up to meet him.

  "How dare you?!" she screamed again, with the full force of her anger behind her.

  But her voice had changed -- there was something underneath it, a force field of pure power that physically forced him and the flaming inferno back. She was just as surprised as he apparently was and it detracted from the purity of her rage.

  And there was something else -- a part of her mind had suddenly become aware that the flames had not engulfed her, nor Gabe, and it was not for his lack of trying. As she started to wonder, her fury ebbed more, and he started to push back at that force, that power coming from her. The circle of safety that sheltered her and Gabe from the fire started to shrink, and the terror came back to her in full force.

  She shrunk against Gabe, trying to protect him from the flames, trying not to get burned, to summon back the anger against the fear.

  But it was not working! The flames were getting closer -- dangerously so -- and the heat emanating from them started to burn her. She closed her eyes, there was no time to think. To summon up hope. There was only prayer.

  Please, don't make it hurt so bad...

  Then all of a sudden, it was gone.

  The flames, the smoke, the creature.

  It was silent.

  When she opened her eyes, the ground was smoking all around her and was covered in ashes. The only patch of desert sand that wasn't burned was the patch that Gabe was lying on. And he was alive -- breathing. She could clearly see his chest rising and falling.

  But she didn't have the time to see if he was truly okay because two men in gray suits and sunglasses were standing where the creature was.

  And behind them was the blue sedan.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Read the next book by Elena Snowfield:

  If you like this book, you will also like The Darkling...

  THE ALLIANCE OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

  THE LINES THAT BLUR FOR ALL TIME

  Angels, demons... and creatures that are made of both.

  Melinda and Gabe discover what Caleb really is--a force that will upset the balance of good and evil that has existed for millennia, a creature that cannot be killed by either side and can only be subsumed by the one whose blood runs in his veins. There's just one problem: Daniel is in hell, being tortured for all eternity.

  Ariel and Azgaroth attempt to use Melinda to stop Caleb, but things take a turn for the worse as they realize it's not that simple. Their attempt to find a way to stop him will take them to the ends of the earth...and beyond.

  Unravel more of this fascinating book, continue reading The Darkling...

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Related Books

  Did you enjoy this book? I recommend reading these related books, available on various retailers:

  Chains Of Darkness

  The Child Of Light

  The Unforgiven Complete Collection

  Reborn

  Bonus Preview:

  The Darkling

  Chapter One

  “GET BACK!” Melinda shrieked automatically, scrabbling in the burnt sand as she tried to push Gabe away from them.

  Then she noticed the aura of the dark-skinned one, the ethereal wings that shimmered and lit up the space between them as he unfurled them all the way. The other man in the identical gray suit, pale and curiously bloodless in the light of the moon and the angel’s aura, projected a similar aura -- except his was demonic.

  Even in her shaken state, she was cognizant enough to realize that angels and demons were not supposed to be amicably walking next to each other. Curiosity overcame her suspicions long enough to accept the angel’s hand. He helped her to her feet while the demon pulled Gabe up. Gabe erupted in a spasm of coughing brought on by the smoke. It was not until the angel touched his chest that he was able to stop.

  Gabe gasped a grateful “Thank you,” and perfunctory introductions were made all around.

  The angel’s name was Ariel. The demon’s name, when pronounced, sounded like a cross between a lion’s roar and a volcanic eruption, replete with the bone-shaking reverberations of both, and he told Melinda and Gabe to just call him Azgaroth.

  “So you’re the ones following us,” Gabe said weakly, nodding at the blue car.

  The gray-suited pair shrugged.

  “If you wish to call it that,” said the angel. “We were merely trying to find the creature you have been calling ‘Caleb’, and we knew that it would be after you.”

  “So you’ve been using us as bait,” Melinda said.

  “Please,” said the demon. “We didn’t have to interrupt him when he was about to incinerate you.”

  “Actually,” said the angel, “we d
id. A creature like that--“

  “What exactly is he?” Melinda asked. “I thought he was an angel, but he’s afraid of iron like a demon is.”

  The angel coughed, frowning. Even though he was wearing sunglasses, he somehow managed to convey his disapproval at her interruption. Melinda and Gabe were following the angel-demon pair through the cold blue-lit desert, away from the glassy crater where, just ten minutes ago, they would have been cremated alive. Melinda was taken aback for a moment by the eerie realization that she and Gabe were the only ones whose steps were crunching over the rough desert.

  “It’s a long story,” the angel said, but he was addressing the demon.

  “We owe it to them,” the demon said. “If we’re going to get them to come with us, they at least ought to know what they were getting into.

  The angel sighed. “Very well then. Shall I?"

  The demon nodded. "Go ahead."

  The angel went ahead. "Eighteen years ago, our intelligence wing received a wire from one of our human agents--“

  “You work with humans?” Melinda asked.

  “Technically speaking, most of our agents are nephilim, half angel and half human,” explained the angel. He gave her a stern look over the tops of his opaque sunglasses, his brilliant white teeth flashing against his cinnamon skin in a grimace. “Though in this case, he was a mad priest who made a pact with a demon and somehow got away with his soul intact, though not his sanity.”

  “You have to remember,” the demon added, “both sides had reached a... shall we call it a ‘cease-fire agreement’? For the last few-thousand years, anyway. In any event, the terms of the agreement were thus: neither angel nor demon would aggrieve the other, until a time specified by their commanding officers.”

  “But I saw one--“ Melinda said.

  “Yes,” the demon said. He winced, as if it was an unpleasant memory, and turned to Ariel. “You have no idea how lucky your side is, not to have minions just evil enough to undermine you but too dumb to know the consequences.”

  Ariel sighed. “You think you've got it rough,” he began, but he never finished, lapsing into silence, instead.

  Melinda and Gabe glanced at each other. Melinda wanted to ask Ariel and Azgaroth where they were going and how they found her and Gabe and what they were going to do now. But one look at Ariel’s impassive face under the foreboding opaque sunglasses and all of her questions wilted, and she found herself, much to her annoyance, adopting the blank expression and fake smile that she wore for the past three years whenever her uncle would riff on what a woman’s place in the world was, and bemoan her inadequate child-bearing hips. She forced herself to frown.

  “That was the end of the truce,” Azgaroth said. “And since then, both sides have been stockpiling -- what would you call it, Ariel? A’ chai hem -- is there even a word for that in this crude tongue?”

  Ariel thought about it. “Forces, I suppose?” He shook his head, clearly dissatisfied with the answer. After another moment, he brightened, and held up a finger. “To put it in the crudest of terms, the eternal battle between angels and demons is not exactly that of good and evil, although for the sake of human pedagogy it takes on that name. It was more akin to a battle for the forces that create versus those that destroy. For the past few years, then, we've been gathering together all of the... the creative energy, I suppose you could call it, that we can get. And his side has been gathering together the destructive impulses in this world. On the whole, they balance each other out--“

  “I thought demons only collected souls,” Gabe interrupted, earning himself a scowl from Melinda and what might be a death look from Ariel, were he not wearing sunglasses. Azgaroth, however, seemed to be a bit more forgiving and sighed, tucking a loose strand of his pale ice-blonde hair behind his ear.

  “Yes, and no. Souls are for the Lords of Hell to take. I'm a...what you would call ‘grunt’, I suppose. I'm afraid I'm not up-to-date on colloquial Americanisms,” Azgaroth said apologetically. He folded up his sunglasses and tucked them into a pocket of his suit. He looked human, but Melinda somehow intuited that what was under the suit was not human. And he’s scaly, she thought, but she didn’t know how she knew that either. “Anyway, Ariel and I just take orders from our higher commands. They tell us there’s a cease-fire, we stop fighting. They tell us it’s over, we start again.”

  “You guys seem pretty buddy-buddy,” Gabe observed.

  “We've been at this for millennia,” Ariel said, exasperation creeping into his voice. “When you've been fighting with someone for that long, you eventually sit down at some point and commiserate with each other over the futility of it, even if you have no plans to abandon your own side.”

  “And besides,” Azgaroth said, “the thing you call Caleb is all his fault.” He jabbed Ariel in the ribs. Ariel scowled back, but didn’t dispute it.

  “So what happened?” Melinda asked.

  “I was just going to get to that,” Ariel said. He lifted his sunglasses over his eyes and looked at the moon. “Would you mind starting a fire?” he asked Azgaroth. “It’s getting a bit chilly out here.”

  A second later, they were sitting on logs that had materialized out of nowhere, staring into a fire that was burning nothing, with mugs of hot chocolate in their hands.

  Gabe started to ask something, but then he caught Ariel’s eye and took a sip of his chocolate instead.

  Ariel cleared his throat.

  Chapter Two

  EIGHTEEN OR SO years ago.

  If the demons of hell were, in fact, up to something, Daniel couldn't figure out what it was.

  He was tempted to send a message reading, “FATHER PENDLETON BULLSHIT ARTIST” back to Ariel. But Ariel wasn't known for catching on to humor or aphorisms and would probably cable something like, “HOW DO YOU SCULPT WITH BULL SHIT?” back. But having scouted the entirety of Boulder, Colorado for the SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY that Father Pendleton had alluded to in his cable -- and finding nothing -- Daniel decided that maybe the good priest had been toking one time too many.

  So far, in Boulder, Daniel had counted three demons, but in accordance with the truce, Daniel had only followed them. They, in turn, undoubtedly saw him, and would probably report back to their superiors that an angel had been “acting in an aggravating manner”. Both sides did this -- followed the other, made the angel or demon exceedingly uncomfortable, tried to goad them into an attack.

  It never worked, though -- neither side really wanted to get into another one of those battles again. After a few thousand years of no combat, both sides had gotten complacent, and lazy. Maybe the One might not approve, but in that case, let Him fight His own war, Daniel thought.

  Still, three demons did not a suspicious activity make.

  This was his third night in Boulder, and Daniel was driving along a stretch of empty road on the outskirts of town, not expecting to find anything but like a good foot soldier in the war, he felt obligated to check it out anyway. He stopped the car at a lookout point -- fifty years ago, couples would have been parked here and kissing -- and got out. Below him, Boulder was a spread of twinkling lights. Above him, the heavens twinkled invitingly behind scads of wispy clouds.

  Home.

  He shook his head to dismiss that thought. Your home was where you fight and die. That was an angel’s life. Sometimes, like now, faced with darkness in all directions and the enormity of eternity, he waxed philosophical -- was it really a life, if he couldn't die?

  Back to business.

  He closed his eyes and let his senses expand to see if he could detect the ethereal glow of demons and their SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES. There was nothing, as he expected. No glow in his consciousness, no activity he could detect.

  In the distance, he could hear the roar of car engines coming his way, getting louder and sliding into a high whine as they strained up the steep incline. He ignored it for now -- he'd left his blinkers on so he wasn't too worried about them running him over the edge of the cliff.

&nbs
p; But just to be sure, he sent his mind towards the sound. And he was surprised by how fast they were moving.

  As he probed a bit more, he suddenly realized that it wasn't just a car moving up the hill. They were street racing, and they were heading right... for...

  Me.

  He opened his eyes just in time to see the blinding glare of the headlights rounding the bend. He was about to take evasive action when he realized that they had seen him, and anything he did now to avoid getting hit would have to kill the drivers if he didn’t want to be interrogated by the police -- and he did not have permission to kill humans. He just had enough time to brace himself for the impact before one of the cars slammed into him, sending his body flying over the cliff.

  Daniel had been amongst humans for several thousand years now, and he counted himself one of the more knowledgeable angels when it came to humans and what they did. Still, there was one thing he could not get used to -- that on this plane, in this space, his wings didn’t exist. He wasted a few precious milliseconds trying to get his nonexistent wings to flap before he realized he was going to have to brace himself for hitting the rocks and trees.

  He might be immortal by normal human standards, but falling three-hundred feet into bedrock still hurt, and the wet crunch of his bones snapping was never pleasant to hear. The car that pushed him over the edge had gone over with him. He opened one eye and saw the wreck in the moonlight, a smattering of burning gasoline and blood smeared all over the rock. He summoned the blood power inside him, forcing his muscles to help reassemble his shattered bones. Daniel could hear, above him, a small crowd gathering, but he couldn't spare the energy to wonder if they had called the police. He needed every ounce of his strength to complete his healing if he wanted to get out of here before anybody else got there and started asking too many questions. It was one thing these humans were good at -- asking questions.

  He had no idea how long the dull thwack-thwack-thwack of the helicopter had been audible for, but suddenly he realized it was very close and he was still not healed enough to go very far.

  He gritted his teeth (on the side of his jaw that wasn't shattered) and tried to crawl for cover, but then he realized that the crowd that had gathered (When did that happen?) above him could see him because they started shouting, “Someone’s alive! Someone’s alive!”