“They already have,” Aaron said, feeling the power come alive within him. It was like the world’s biggest head rush, and he braced himself, not even trying to hold back its coming.
A crowd of citizens had started to gather, coming out of their decrepit homes as if drawn by the potential for violence. Aaron could see their nervous glances, hear their whispering.
“I knew he’d be trouble.” “Him? He’s not the One—I can’t believe anyone could be so foolish as to think that.” “Lehash will put him in his place.”
The sigils emerged on Aaron’s flesh, and he let his wings of solid black unfold. He heard gasps from the gathered, and even Lehash seemed genuinely taken aback as Aaron stepped past the constable and into the street. The citizens were in awe. He could see it in their eyes—or maybe it was something else they were seeing, he decided, as he heard the sharp click of twin gun hammers being pulled back from behind.
Aaron reacted purely on instinct; there was no inner struggle, no attempt to keep the power at bay, he simply let it flow through him, guiding its might with a tempered hand. He spun around to face his potential foe, a feral snarl upon his lips. With a thunderous clap of sound, one of the gunslinger’s pistols belched fire made solid, and it hurtled across the short expanse to burrow beneath the soft flesh of the Nephilim’s shoulder.
Aaron fell backward, a scream upon his lips as he hit the street, his mighty wings cushioning the fall. The pain was bad, and his left side was growing numb as he lay gazing up at the early morning sky. Aaron knew that he should get up—for Stevie’s sake, for Vilma’s—but he wasn’t sure he had the strength to do so.
The citizens’ murmurs sounded to him like a swarm of bees roused to anger by a threat to their hive. Lehash stood over him, smoking pistol still in his grasp. There was cruelty in his steely gaze, a look that said so much more than words.
“Look at you,” he said in a whisper meant only for Aaron’s ears. “Can’t even save yourself, never mind us.” The gunslinger stared down his arm, down the length of his golden weapon. “How dare you fill their hearts with hope and then rip it away. Haven’t we suffered enough without the likes of you?” Lehash came closer. “I should kill you now.”
Aaron lay still, his gaze locked on the barrel of the pistol that hovered above him ominously like a black, unblinking eye. Lehash’s finger twitched upon the trigger, and the Nephilim’s mind was assaulted with the brutal images of war. He again saw the Morningstar walking among his troops, laying his hand upon them, giving something of himself to each and every one. And he witnessed them in battle, fighting for their master’s cause—dying for their master’s cause—and he was filled with their purpose, with their power and strength.
The sigils on his body suddenly burned as if painted with acid, and Aaron sprang up from the street, a cry of rage from somewhere deep inside escaping his lips. The gunslinger fired, but this time the bullet did not find its target. Aaron lashed out with one of his wings, swatting the weapon from the constable’s grasp. “No more guns,” he commanded, grabbing the fallen angel’s wrist and violently twisting his arm so that he dropped the second of the golden guns.
Aaron looked into the constable’s eyes and saw that something new had taken the place of steely cruelty. He saw the beginnings of fear, but he did not want that. Effortlessly he hurled Lehash away. All he wanted was to save the people he loved.
Lehash landed in the street about six feet away, scattering citizens that had gathered there. A hush had fallen over the crowd, and they watched him in pregnant silence. Belphegor came forward to help Lehash as sparks danced in the constable’s hands. Aaron tensed, a weapon of his own ready to surge to life.
“No,” Belphegor commanded in a powerful voice.
Lehash stared at his superior, confusion on his grizzled face.
“Let him go.”
Lehash’s eyes went wide in shock. “You can’t do this,” he sputtered. “He’ll bring Verchiel and his bloodthirsty rabble down on our heads for sure!”
Belphegor raised a hand and closed his eyes. “You heard me, let the boy go.”
From across the street Aaron met Belphegor’s eyes and a jolt like electricity passed through his body.
“If you’re going to go,” Belphegor said, “then go now.”
Aaron found it difficult to look away from the angel’s intense gaze. Am I doing the right thing? he fretted. Doubt crept into his thoughts, but then images of Vilma and the still-missing Stevie filled his mind, and it didn’t matter anymore if it was right or wrong. He had to go. “I’ll come back,” he said as he spread his wings.
“I hope you do,” Belphegor replied, a scowling Lehash at his side.
Aaron took one final look about Aerie and saw Camael, Gabriel, and Lorelei heading toward him. He wanted to tell them what he was doing—what he had to do—but he didn’t want to stop, unsure if he would have the courage to recommence if he did. They would have to understand.
The image of his destination fresh inside his head, Aaron folded his wings about himself and was gone.
* * *
“Maybe he didn’t see us,” Gabriel said forlornly.
But Camael knew differently. He had looked into the boy’s eyes before he departed.
The fallen angel had known that it was only a matter of time before the violence in his life again reared its ugly head and his brief respite would end. It had been pleasurable while it lasted.
“What’s going on?” Lorelei was asking an older woman whom Camael recognized as Marjorie. He had saved her from one of Verchiel’s hunting parties sometime in the 1950s, and she still bore a red, ragged scar upon her cheek to commemorate the Powers’ ruthless attack.
The woman wrung her hands nervously, staring off in the direction from which Aaron had departed. “He’s gone,” she said, her voice filled with concern. “There was a fight, and then he left us.” Marjorie looked past Lorelei to Camael. “Is he coming back?” she asked pleadingly. “Can you tell me if the Chosen One is coming back?”
Lorelei turned to him as well, as though he might have some special insight into the situation unfolding.
“Let us find Belphegor,” Camael said, ignoring the women’s plaintive questions, and continuing down the street, Gabriel close at his heels.
The citizens of Aerie were abuzz, and as he passed, their eyes caught his, frantic for answers to assuage their fears. A hand shot out to grip his arm and Camael stared into the face of Scholar. He believed his true name to be Tumael, once a member of the host called Principalities. He was wild eyed, as anxious as the others around him.
“Do you know where he’s gone—the boy?” Tumael asked nervously, his grip tight with desperation. “We have to get him back … we … we can’t let him walk away from us, Camael. Do you understand the importance of what I’m saying?”
Camael knew exactly, but until he found out what had happened, he could offer no words of solace. “Belphegor. I need to speak with him.”
The fallen angel pointed toward a house not far from where they stood.
“Come, Gabriel,” Camael said to the dog that waited obediently by his side.
They approached the home, catching sight of Lorelei disappearing into the backyard. As they rounded the corner of the house, they were met by voices raised in panicked fury. Lehash and his daughter were in the midst of a heated argument, arms flailing as they railed against each other. Belphegor was across the yard, removed from the commotion, examining the branches of a young sapling.
“Why don’t you go and talk with Belphegor,” Camael told the Labrador at his side. “Maybe he can tell you where Aaron has gone.”
Tail wagging, Gabriel trotted toward Aerie’s Founder, while Camael turned his attention to the angry constable.
“You,” Lehash growled, raising an accusatory hand as Camael approached. “This is your fault!”
“Lehash, stop,” Lorelei pleaded.
“Would anyone care to tell me what has happened?” Camael asked, carefully wat
ching Lehash’s hands for signs of his golden weaponry.
“Your Nephilim will be the death of us all,” the constable spat, fists clenched in barely suppressed rage. “Filling all their heads with foolishness … we’ll see how much of a messiah they think he is when we have Verchiel’s soldiers breathing down our necks.”
“Dad, please,” Lorelei said, again trying to calm him. She touched the sleeve of his coat, but he pulled away roughly.
“Is that what this is really about, Lehash?” Camael asked. “Your lack of belief?”
Lehash scowled. “Don’t matter what I believe,” he said with a sorrowful shake of his head. He glanced over at Belphegor and Gabriel. “Don’t matter what any of us believes. Verchiel will have what he’s been waiting for—a good whiff of Aerie, and that’s all the son of a bitch will need to destroy us.”
“Where has Aaron gone?”
“To rescue a friend—a female—from Verchiel,” Lehash explained. He smiled, but the expression was void of any humor. “With the scent of where he’s been these last weeks clinging to him like cheap perfume. Should have just handed a map to the Powers, get the slaughter over with all the quicker.”
The fallen angel pushed past, his piece said, Lorelei close behind. Her eyes briefly touched Camael’s. “I’m sorry,” she said, and he wondered if she was apologizing for her father’s behavior, or perhaps giving her condolences for what they believed to be Aerie’s inevitable demise.
Camael joined Belphegor, who was leaning down to pet Gabriel.
“Aaron’s gone to find Vilma,” the dog said, tipping his head back so the old angel would scratch beneath his throat. “She’s the one he talks to on the computer sometimes.”
“I believe that she, too, is a Nephilim.” Belphegor spoke as he obliged the animal’s wants. “Her angelic nature cried out to him as he was exploring his own.” He stopped patting Gabriel, much to the dog’s disappointment, and turned his attention to Camael. “Verchiel has her.” He looked out to the neighborhood beyond the yard. “It’s truly amazing how quickly things change, Camael,” Belphegor said with a wistful smile. “You never really see it coming; it’s just suddenly there, the eye of the speeding locomotive bearing down upon you.”
“You could have stopped him,” Camael said. “Or you could have found me and I would have—”
Again Belphegor smiled sadly. “It doesn’t really matter that he’s gone.” He began to stroll from the yard, Gabriel and Camael following at his side. “Change is coming to Aerie, and whether it be the machinations of prophecy, or just plain fate, there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Aerie’s citizens were still milling about the street, their gazes haunted.
“They can sense it as much as you and I,” Belphegor said, gesturing at the crowd.
He stopped in the middle of the street and closed his eyes. With a soft grunt of exertion, his wings sprang from his back, sad-looking things of dingy gray and missing feathers. “Join me for a moment,” he said, motioning for Camael to follow as he launched himself into the air, the wings, surprisingly, having the strength to lift him.
“Wait for me here,” Camael told Gabriel, his own mighty wings sweeping from his back and taking him heavenward.
“Like I have a choice,” he heard the dog mumble as he ascended.
It was early morning, the sun just starting to rise above the horizon, illuminating the dilapidated neighborhood below.
“Take a good long look, Camael,” Belphegor said, gesticulating with a hand to Aerie beneath him as his wings pounded the air. “For soon, it’s all going to change.”
Camael looked below, at the run-down houses, the cracked and untended streets, the high barbed-wire fence that encircled it, and felt the pangs of something he had not experienced since he first left heavenly paradise on a mission of murder. He had not had a home—a true place of belonging—in countless millenia. The troubling thought of losing this one filled him with great sorrow.
And then, hovering above the neighborhood, the former leader of the Powers suddenly knew what was required of him. It was his way of giving thanks to those who had accepted him into their community, despite his loathsome past.
Camael would do everything within his strength to see that Aerie lived on, and may Heaven have pity on any who dared try to keep him from his task.
Aaron had recognized Vilma’s location in the vision almost immediately: the red metal lockers, the cracked plaster walls painted eggshell white, a handmade poster that should have been taken down months ago asking for canned donations for a Thanksgiving food drive. He opened his wings to an empty parking lot, for it was still quite early in the morning, and gazed at Kenneth Curtis High School. A pang of nostalgia spread through him; memories, both good and bad, flooded his thoughts.
As he crossed the lot to the redbrick-and-concrete building, his wings receded and the fearsome marks upon his flesh faded. As an afterthought, he willed himself invisible, not wanting an early riser to see him going into the building, and call the police. He climbed the steps leading to the large, double doors, thinking of how much his life had changed in such a brief amount of time. A little over a month ago he had been a student here, a senior, preparing to graduate and begin the next phase of his life. The next phase happened all right, but not how I would have planned it. He reached the top of the stairs and pulled on one of the doors. It was unlocked and his flesh tingled with the sensation of caution.
The smells of the old building wafted out to greet him. He remembered his first day at Ken Curtis. He hadn’t wanted to return for a second, but he did, and each day he went back, it got a little easier. He also recalled the first day he had seen Vilma, and with that recollection came the realization of how much was now at stake.
He stepped into the school, and the door closed gradually behind him. Ahead, standing near the doorway of the principal’s office, stood an angel. He was clothed as Aaron had come to expect: dark suit, trench coat—as if he’d just come from a funeral—and in his hand he held a flaming sword.
Expecting a fight, Aaron created a weapon of his own and felt the strange symbols return to his flesh. It was amazing how easily the transformation came now. Maybe I’m finally getting the hang of this thing, he thought absently.
Instead of brandishing his weapon, the Powers’ soldier turned away and approached a set of swinging doors. With his free hand he pushed one side open and bowed his head.
Aaron cautiously proceeded down the hallway toward the doors, the angel watching, quelled anger in his dark eyes. But he remained silent, still holding the door for him. Aaron strode through defiantly. He could feel the angel’s stare upon his back, cold and murderous, but did not give him the satisfaction of turning to meet his gaze. More angels emerged from the classrooms along the hall, motioning with a flourish of their flaming blades for him to proceed past them.
At the top of the stairs leading down into the basement, another angel waited and gestured for him to descend. Of course he had to descend; his brain raced. Wasn’t that one of the first things he had learned in freshman English? That the protagonist must always descend to confront what plagues him before his victory and eventual ascension.
As with the others in the corridor behind him, the angel warrior at the stairs said nothing as he passed. Aaron went down the steps to the first landing and chanced a look back. The angel was watching him, a cruel smile on its thin, bloodless lips. “Catch you on the way back,” Aaron called. He had no idea what the Powers had in store for him below, but he wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of believing he was afraid.
He continued down into the basement, the illumination thrown by his flaming blade lighting the way. The air below was thick with the smell of chlorine, and at the foot of the stairs he stopped, trying to decide if he should head toward the school’s pool or the gymnasium.
It didn’t take long for another of Verchiel’s soldiers to appear and motion him toward the gym. Aaron had never particularly enjoyed phys ed, and foun
d it strangely fitting that the Powers would summon him there. His teacher had been a jock from way back and didn’t much care for anyone who wasn’t on the football team. “Abandon hope all ye who enter,” the Nephilim muttered as he walked through the door and into the gymnasium, the strange and disturbing vision of angels playing a game of shirts-versus-skins basketball running through his head.
But those images were soon dispelled. The room was dark, red exit signs and the swords of the angelic army that awaited him providing the only light. Aaron felt his heart sink, even with the essence inside him. How can I ever hope to fight so many? They were everywhere: on the bleachers, perched atop the basketball rims, and up above in the girder-latticed ceiling. They reminded him of pigeons, only these birds were far more dangerous.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” said a voice that made his flesh tingle as if covered with ants.
Immediately Aaron felt the wings on his back begin to stir. On cue, a group of angels atop the bleachers stepped aside to reveal Verchiel. He was reclining in the wooden seats, as if watching a game, the unconscious Vilma lying beside him. Aaron was disappointed to see that Stevie was not there as well. His pulse quickened as his wings sprang from his back. This is it, he thought, and the power inside him writhed in anticipation. The Powers’ leader watched him with eyes like shiny black marbles, and Aaron noticed that the angel’s face still bore the angry scars from their first confrontation back in Lynn.
“Let her go, Verchiel,” he said, raising his blade of fire. “She’s done nothing to you. It’s me that you want.”
The Powers’ leader gazed with disgust at the unconscious young woman. “That is where you are wrong, animal,” he said in a voice filled with contempt. “My problem has grown far larger than you.” He touched Vilma then, a gentle caress with fingertips that glowed like white-hot metal, and she cried out in pain.
Aaron surged forward, wings spread wide to lift him into the air, but something moved in the periphery of his sight, something that was beside him before his brain even had a chance to react. It lashed out at him, a gauntlet of metal connecting with the side of his face, sending him crashing to the slick wooden floor in a heap.