“You would do well to honor him that way. What was his name?”
“Markus.” Elam patted his chest. “I even have a shirt with Markus embroidered on it, so I’ll wear it when I’m in public.”
“Well, then, Markus,” Patrick said, clasping Elam’s shoulder again, “I hope you live as many years with that name as you’ve lived with your previous one.”
Elam adjusted the lantern to expose more of the wick. “What will your name be?”
Patrick folded his hands next to Elam’s. “I chose Robert. It’s a simple name that won’t raise eyebrows. We can’t use Ruth any longer, and Paili couldn’t decide on a new name, so I chose Sarah for her.”
“Sarah? Why Sarah?”
“It was Merlin’s wife’s name. Merlin seemed to die inside when Morgan poisoned his wife, so I wish to honor them by resurrecting her memory. It’s a small token, but it’s meaningful to me.”
“I understand.” Elam leaned back in his chair and sighed. Pain and sorrow had visited the homes of prophets and dragons all too often Merlin’s lost wife, murdered dragons, a threatened pregnant mother and unborn daughter, and now he had to raise another troubling issue that promised more heartache. Elam drummed his fingers on the table. “I met with Sapphira today.”
Patrick’s gaze seemed locked on his folded hands. “You did?” His reply was halfhearted, as if he hadn’t heard Elam’s comment.
Elam pushed the lantern closer to Patrick, trying to awaken his attention. “She saw Gabriel.”
Patrick lifted his head higher. His eyes seemed to flash with a burst of hope. “She saw Gabriel?”
“Well, she didn’t really see him face-to-face.” Elam positioned his fingers to make a frame. “It’s really weird. There’s this portal where she lives. While I had the Ovulum, Sapphira’s portal stretched into a viewing screen, and she could watch me through it. Then, after Devin broke the Ovulum, the screen disappeared. But now the screen is back, and she can see glimpses of Gabriel’s feet and hands and sometimes the tips of his wings.”
“Glimpses of just his extremities? How odd!”
“It’s sort of like she’s able to see what Gabriel sees, like she’s looking through his eyes. Sometimes his extremities come into the picture.”
Patrick flopped to the back of his chair. “Amazing! His eyes have become a cross-dimensional camera!”
“That’s what we guessed, too. But how could it happen?”
“I cannot fathom the reason,” Patrick said, stroking his chin. “I know very little about disembodied spirits.”
“Disembodied? You mean, like a ghost?”
“Certainly not,” Patrick replied, shaking his head. “The ghosts you see in horror movies are an absurd warping of reality. Although every spirit rises from its body, very few are ever seen on the earth. Gabriel is far from a haunting, morbid presence.”
“Do you think he’s dead?” Elam’s voice squeaked. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “I thought maybe he survived, that he’s just in another form.”
“Excalibur transformed his body, to be sure, but he still moves about in our world, so I think writing an obituary is premature.”
“But didn’t the prophecy say he had to die?”
“The prophecy does not use those words.” Patrick withdrew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and flipped it onto the table. “I have read it a thousand times since that fateful day, and there are many ways to interpret its morbid verses. By learning from other events in history, however, I believe we can hope that Gabriel survived. When God directs a sacrifice for the sake of others, isn’t it reasonable to assume that he has also paved the way for a resurrection? God used Gabriel’s sacrifice and the energy from the rubellite to make me human. I believe that such love and power could never end in death.”
Elam slid the paper close and slowly opened it. “So, what do you think Gabriel will do? I mean, he can’t just wander around, can he?”
“When it comes to willingness of heart, Elam, you and Merlin are the only humans I have ever met who come close to Gabriel’s stature. I am sure God will use him somehow.”
“Maybe Sapphira will figure it out. She’ll be watching what he does.”
Patrick wagged his finger at Elam. “It could be dangerous for you to continue meeting Sapphira. Morgan is always vigilant and will track Sapphira to her portal. For her safety and the safety of the children, you should stay in the house as much as possible and only come out through the tunnel exits.”
Elam spread the note out on the table but didn’t bother reading it. The words were already etched in his memory. “I guess you’re right. I’ll meet with her once more and let her know.”
Patrick raised the pendant from underneath his shirt and caressed its pearly white gem. “Ever since I became fully human, I have felt more alone than I ever had before. It’s as though my emotional connection to my dragon heritage departed hand in hand with my dragon soul. With the exception of you and my faithful wife, I feel I have lost everyone I ever loved.”
Elam gazed at the lantern’s flame as it danced atop the wick. “I know exactly what you mean. I still have Sapphira as a friend, but I can’t risk seeing her anymore. You’re the only person I can really talk to, and now we have to part company.” Blinking away tears, he turned to Patrick. “I’ll help you out in the orphanage as long as you need me.”
Patrick clasped wrists with Elam. “May God go with you, Markus. I am glad to have a friend I can trust.”
Gabriel floated in front of a hotel room door and read the numeric script at the side. Room 1178. This was it. After weeks of searching for the slayers, he had finally tracked them down. Maybe now he could end the nightmares his parents had faced for so many years.
He collapsed his body to a flat layer of energy and crept through the crack under the door. After expanding to his normal height again, he stalked toward a pair of typical hotel beds. Each mattress carried a gently heaving lump, two sleeping men with only drapery-filtered moonlight illuminating their forms.
Gabriel hovered for a moment over the first bed, peering at the shadowy profile a dark mustache, a swarthy complexion, but not familiar at all. As he floated toward the next bed, the shadows shifted away from the second man’s face. This was Devin. No doubt about it. Sleeping with his torso exposed, Devin snored lightly, apparently without a care in the world. Attached to a chain and resting on his hairy chest, a sparkling gemstone seemed to inhale wisps of moonlight.
Gabriel edged toward the gem. Somehow, it pulled on his body and drew him even closer. He tried to will himself backwards, beating his wings to create an electrostatic countercurrent, but even as his upper half moved away from the stone, his lower half stretched toward it, stringing his body out in a narrowing line of radiance.
His wings collapsed, and the gem slurped his entire energy field. He plummeted down a rivulet of light, sliding faster than if he were freefalling out of the sky. Tiny pricks stung his elongated body, and the sound of a rushing torrent surged through his mind, numbing his senses. After a few seconds, he pierced a soft black sphere, a jelly-like membrane that slowed his plunge. While floating downward through a chamber of blackness, his body retracted to its original shape and size, and when he finally stopped, all pain vanished, and a gentle hum replaced the noisy torrent.
He looked around the strange dark world and set his glowing hands on his hips. What had just happened? How could a gem absorb his body like that? Slowly willing his feet forward, he tried to move, but with only blackness all around, it seemed impossible to tell if he was making any progress.
Stopping for a moment, he focused his eyes in one direction, hoping to adjust to the lack of light and get his bearings. As he began to recognize the borders of a dark hallway, a glimmer appeared at the end of the corridor, growing quickly. Gabriel tried to back away, but he bumped into a wall.
The approaching light took shape, an old man with a frie
ndly smile. Like his own body, this man seemed completely composed of energy.
“Ah! Gabriel!” the man said. His voice rippled along a thin current of radiance that passed between them. “I’m glad to see you!”
Gabriel floated a few inches to the side. “Uh, how do you know me?” His own voice sounded garbled and strange, like a static-filled radio broadcast.
The man chuckled, jiggling the edges of his field. “A friend of mine told me to expect a boy with dragon wings and that his name would be Gabriel. You’re the first visitor who has fit that description.”
“Really?” Gabriel spread out his arms. “How many visitors do you get in this place?”
“Very few, to be sure, but I would like to dispense with the banter, if you don’t mind.” The man bowed his head. “I am Merlin, prophet of God and former advisor to King Arthur.”
Gabriel shuddered and clumsily returned the bow. “And I’m Gabriel, but you already knew that.”
“You will be surprised at all I have come to know. But before I get to that, I would like to ask you a question.”
“Okay. I’m ready. . . . I think.”
Merlin stretched his arm upward, elongating it to twice its normal length. “According to my estimation, it is around two o’clock in the morning, so since you found Devin, I assume you came upon him while he was sleeping.” He shifted his arm toward Gabriel and draped it over his shoulder. “What did you intend to do?”
“To kill him. He wants to kill my parents, so I was trying to stop him.”
“I see.” Merlin stroked his chin. “How could you kill him in your disembodied state?”
Gabriel lifted his glowing hand and splayed his fingers. “I’ve been experimenting with channeling electricity. I’ve only done it with batteries, and I shocked a couple of cats, but I think I can hook up to an outlet and deliver a lethal jolt.”
“Assuming you were able, what do you think the jolt would have done to you?”
“I really don’t care.” Gabriel rolled his fingers into a fist. “Even if it scattered my atoms to kingdom come, it would be worth it if I could protect my parents from that murderer.”
Merlin nodded. “A reasonable motivation, to be sure, but do you think killing an unarmed man in his sleep is a noble act?”
As Gabriel tightened his fist, it flashed with a crimson hue. “I wasn’t thinking about nobility. I was just thinking about getting rid of a fifteen-hundred-year-old sewer rat.”
“I understand. In cases like this, strong emotions always seem to trump chivalry, so I won’t argue the point.” Merlin raised a sparkling finger. “Instead, I will tell you about your assignment.”
“Assignment?” Gabriel stretched out his arms and wings. “In this place?”
“Oh, no. You will soon be leaving, but I will explain that in a moment.” Merlin melded his hand with the tip of one of Gabriel’s wings. “Because of your status as a disembodied humanoid dragon, for the lack of a better term, you have been chosen to be the guardian of others like you.”
“Are there other disembodied humanoid dragons?”
“I mean other offspring of former dragons. A new one has recently come into the world. Patrick and Paili have had a daughter.”
“How am I supposed to be a guardian?” Gabriel clasped his radiant hands together. “I can’t even use a slingshot.”
“You have already figured out how to manipulate electrical fields. Perhaps you will learn other ways to alter your environment. The key is to figure out how to warn someone of approaching danger.”
“Maybe, but it seems like everything’s against me. My body passes right through the things I’d like to touch, like people or tools or weapons, but I can’t seem to penetrate most walls or doors. That would come in handy.”
“Ah, yes,” Merlin said, nodding. “God’s ways are mysterious, indeed. He seems to erect just enough boundaries to force us to seek the paths he wishes us to find. Experience, however, has taught me that every unexpected wall we slam into has a purpose, though we often cannot fathom it. Even we prophets find the limitations severely taxing at times.”
“But if you’re a prophet, and you’re still stuck in this place, how do you expect me to get out?”
Merlin pointed at a darker area of the chamber. “This gem has an exit channel. If I were to go through it, my atoms might diffuse, but your energy frame was welded together by the Great Key. You see, as the son of Makaidos, you became, in one sense, Patrick’s messiah. Not his human messiah, of course, but you were the sacrificial lamb who purged Patrick’s dragon nature. Because of that, you were able to live again, not in your old body, but in a nearly indestructible new body.”
Gabriel basked in the sparkle of the prophet’s dazzling eyes. They seemed to radiate sincerity and truth. “It all sounds pretty crazy, but I believe you.”
“As well you should.” Merlin laid a hand on his chest. “It is not often you find yourself inside a gemstone talking to a disembodied prophet.”
Gabriel shook his head and laughed. “I can’t argue with that.”
“Now,” Merlin continued, “although you have been a fine conversationalist, I must see you to the gem’s back door and ask you to be on your way. When you leave through the exit channel, you will have to fight against the candlestone’s pull or you will just be reabsorbed.”
“Yeah. I felt like a fly on a frog’s tongue when I came in here, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Merlin raised a finger and stepped closer. “One final exhortation, and I am telling you this as a prophet of God. Since you are a body of light, your greatest enemy is darkness. If darkness envelops you, it will gnaw away at your sanity and threaten your very essence. You will know it is upon you when your body dims or shrinks. If you seek the light, you will have the power to overcome the darkness.”
As the prophet’s eyes pulsed with brilliant light, Gabriel let the words sink in. Finally, he nodded. “I will remember your warning.”
Merlin spread out his arm toward the darkest region of the bleak chamber. “Come now; you must be on your way.”
Chapter 6
Acacia’s Journey
October 31, 1964
Gabriel swooped low over the Glastonbury Tor and scanned its grassy slopes. Only a few tourists lined the path that ascended the famous hill, making it easy for him to check every face closely. Any one of these sightseers might really be a predator stalking Shiloh, Gabriel’s young ward, as she made ready for a celebratory picnic in a nearby copse.
He guided his energy field in front of a tall, slender woman plodding up the hill and hovered a foot ahead of her, floating backwards at her pace. He gazed into her eyes, searching for a sign of an indwelling evil witch. With all of Morgan’s disguises, she could be any female, maybe even a male the grade school boy with the pea green knickers who trudged behind this woman, perhaps, or the hulking brute holding the boy’s hand.
Gabriel groaned. It seemed hopeless. Morgan could even fly in as a raven, and he couldn’t possibly search for a hint of unusual intelligence in every black bird fluttering in the trees. Even if he could identify the dark sorceress lurking nearby, the only electrical device he could use out in the open was the flashlight Shiloh had packed in her basket. Would lighting it up be enough to warn her in time?
He floated down to a small cluster of trees near the base of the hill. Carrying a folded blanket, his young protectorate searched for a suitable place to sit with her parents. When she found a place under the shade of a lush oak tree, he eased close and checked the basket dangling from a handle on her arm. The flashlight lay inside nestled against an apple and a wrapped sandwich.
As she spread out the satin-trimmed blanket, Shiloh’s gold-streaked hair shone in the setting sun, and her sparkling blue eyes flashed. She seemed like an angel, so innocent and pure. Even her gentle laugh as she sat next to her parents revealed a forgivable naïveté. To her, they were Robert and Sarah Nathanso
n, not Patrick and Paili. Though she knew about Patrick’s former life as a dragon, she had no idea that her mother was really an underborn almost as old as the civilized world. Yet, because of the stealthy relocating Shiloh had suffered through in her young life, including a recent, month-long visit to the U.S., she knew they were potential prey for a stalker of some kind.
Gabriel lifted into the air and hovered over their heads, watching the boundaries of their tree-filled haven. The magnificent tor towered above them like a protective sentry and cast a shadow that crept closer to the blanket as the minutes ticked by.
Patrick lifted a camera and pointed it at Shiloh. “Smile, birthday girl!”
Shiloh spread out the edges of her white party dress and flashed a cheesy smile. After the shutter clicked, Patrick laid the camera in Shiloh’s basket and all three settled on the blanket in a tight circle.
Paili set a double fudge, two-layer cake in the center. Fifteen candles lined the frosted perimeter. “I know you didn’t ask for a cake,” she said as she struck a match, “but what’s a birthday without cake and candles?” She cupped her hand around the match to keep the cool breeze from snuffing out her efforts.
As soon as the last candle came to life, Patrick and Paili sang a hurried version of “Happy Birthday.” Shiloh then leaned forward and blew out the candles.
Patrick clapped his hands. “All fifteen in one blow!”
Shiloh pushed back her hair and smiled. “I think the wind helped me.”
A twig snapped. Gabriel floated higher and gazed at a nearby thicket. Nothing moved. Maybe the breeze had knocked down a limb. He edged close to the thicket and peered through the leafy branches of a head-high bush. A man crouched behind it, and a raven perched on his shoulder.
Gabriel zoomed back to Shiloh and swirled his energy over the blanket. The flashlight was still in the basket! He dove inside, stretched his energy into a thread-thin line, and penetrated a tiny hole in the flashlight’s casing. He bridged the battery’s current to the bulb several times, making the light flash repeatedly, but how could they possibly notice? He streamed out again and wrapped himself tightly around Shiloh. Maybe somehow he could communicate the danger from mind to mind.