Aaron felt Vilma shiver in his arms and pulled her closer, gazing into her wide, dark eyes. “It’s going to be all right,” he whispered, holding her tighter.
“Is she hurt?” Gabriel asked, sniffing at her body.
Vilma writhed and her shirt rose up to reveal the angry burns on her belly.
“Oh, my God,” Aaron said, starting to panic. “Somebody help me.” He looked frantically at the people around him.
Lorelei moved forward and placed a hand on Vilma’s brow.
“He hurt her … tried to trigger the change,” Aaron said. “There are burns on her stomach and I … I think she’s sick.”
“I’ll take her from here,” Lorelei said, and gently began to pry the girl from his arms.
“Will she be okay?” He didn’t want to let her go.
“She’s been with Verchiel,” Lorelei responded coldly as she removed her dungaree jacket, wrapping it around the shivering Vilma’s shoulders. “I can only guess what that monster has done to her.”
Lorelei began to lead Vilma away, and Aaron reached out to take hold of her arm. “Thank you.”
She turned slowly to look at him; there was fear in her eyes. “Does that mean that you owe me?” Lorelei asked.
Aaron nodded as he let go of her arm. “Anything.”
“Don’t let them down,” she whispered. “They’ve waited so long—sacrificed too much—to have it all taken away.”
He had no idea how to respond, but Lorelei had already turned and was leading Vilma away. “C’mon, honey, let’s see about getting you fixed up.”
“Aaron?” Vilma suddenly protested.
He was going to her when Gabriel cut across his path. “It’s going to be just fine,” the animal said to the girl, and the expression on her face told Aaron that she could understand the dog as well as he. Gabriel stretched his neck and nuzzled her hand lovingly. “We’ll go with Lorelei and she’ll make you feel better, you’ll see.” Gabriel looked back at Aaron. “I’ll go with her.”
Aaron nodded in approval and watched the threesome proceed down the street, Gabriel chatting reassuringly all the while. If only he could have the same level of confidence as his dog. He thought of Camael, who had yet to return, and icy fingers of dread took hold of his heart. He had to go back, back to Ken Curtis to help his friend. He turned to Belphegor. “I have to leave again; I have to help Camael.”
He unfurled his wings, but pain shot through his body, driving him to his knees. His head throbbed and the stab wound in his shoulder was bleeding again, he could feel the snaking trail of warmth beneath his shirt.
“You need to rest,” he heard Belphegor say evenly. “You’re no good to anyone now.”
“But he needs help!” Aaron said, fighting to get to his feet.
“Camael can take care of himself,” Lehash barked. “He’s fought many a battle without your help, Nephilim. You’ve done enough.”
Aaron stared across the street at the gunslinger and Belphegor. Their faces were blank, insensate, as if they’d used up their lifetime allotment of emotion long ago. But it was in the faces of the others, the citizens, that he saw what he was responsible for. They milled about, eyes darting here and there, waiting for answers, waiting to have their fears put to rest. He could feel the anxiety coming off them in waves.
“I couldn’t just leave her,” he said to them. “I had to do something.” He managed to get to his feet and lurched toward them, his angelic trappings fading as he drew closer. “I’m so sorry. It seemed right at the time, but now I …” He felt his strength wane and he suddenly sat down in the street, burying his face in his hands. “I just don’t know what to think.”
An aluminum chair leg scraped across the concrete sidewalk and he lifted his face to see that Belphegor was standing. The old fallen angel handed his nearly empty glass to Lehash, who stared at it with contempt. “Hold on to this,” he told the constable, and moved toward Aaron.
It hurt to think. It felt as though Verchiel had touched his brain with a burning hand; his thoughts were a firestorm. There was so much he had to do—so much responsibility. Why did he have to be the Chosen One? he anguished. In his mind all he could see were the faces of those he had failed: his mom and dad, Dr. Jonas, Vilma … Stevie.
“They … he changed my little brother into a monster,” Aaron said, gazing up into the elderly visage of Belphegor. “How could they do that to a kid?” he asked desperately as he ran a hand through his tangle of dark hair. “How could a creature of Heaven be so cruel?”
“Verchiel and his followers have not been creatures of Heaven for quite some time,” Belphegor replied. “They lost sight of that special place a long time ago.”
“Why can’t he just leave me alone?” Aaron asked, the weight of his responsibilities beginning to wear upon him. “Why does it have to be this way?”
Belphegor sighed as he looked up at the early morning sky above Aerie. “Verchiel’s still fighting the war, I think,” he said after a bit of thought. “So caught up in righting a wrong, that he can’t accept the idea that the battle is over. There’s a new age dawning, Aaron.” Belphegor slowly squatted down, and Aaron could hear the popping of his ancient joints. “Whether he likes it or not.”
Aaron looked into the old angel’s eyes, searching for a bit of strength he could borrow.
“And you’re the harbinger,” he continued. “Whether you like it or not.”
“But I’m responsible for ruining this,” Aaron said, motioning toward the neighborhood around them. “Verchiel and his Powers are probably coming here because of me.”
“Looks that way,” Belphegor said, calmly straightening up. “But we never expected it to be easy.”
Lehash left the crowd of citizens and came to them. The constable’s eyes had turned to dark, shiny marbles in the recesses of his shadowed brow. “Is this how he’s going to save us?” he asked Belphegor, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. “Crying in the street? I always expected that a savior would have more balls than that, but I guess I was wrong.”
It couldn’t have hurt worse if Lehash had pulled out his pistols and shot him again. The constable’s words cut deep, and Aaron felt the power of angels surge through his body again. The sigils rose up on his flesh, his body afire as he leaped to his feet, his wings of shadow propelling him at the angel who had hurt him so.
“Do you want to see balls, Lehash?” he asked in a voice more animal than man. A sword of fire had materialized in his hand, and he stood ready to strike.
Lehash had drawn his golden guns. “Show me what you’re gonna do when the Powers come for us, Nephilim,” the gunslinger demanded, his thumbs playing with the hammers of his supernatural weapons. “Show me how powerful you are when they start to burn us alive.”
Belphegor stepped between them, placing a hand on each of their chests. With little effort, he pushed them both apart. “This isn’t going to help anything,” the Founder of Aerie said, giving each a piece of his icy stare. “There’s a storm coming, and no matter how much we rail against it—or one another—it doesn’t change the fact that the rain is going to fall.”
Aaron felt it at the nape of his neck, a slight tingle that made the hair stand at attention. He turned to see that something was taking shape in the air across the street from them.
“Camael?” Aaron asked, starting toward the disturbance.
Belphegor grabbed hold of his arm. “Wait,” he demanded.
Aaron pulled away, certain that it was his friend who had returned. Camael’s wings spread wide to reveal him, and Aaron gasped at the sight. The angel clutched his stomach, blood flowing from a wound to stain the streets of Aerie. Camael pitched forward as Aaron ran to him.
“It comes,” he heard Belphegor say in a foreboding whisper at his back. “The storm comes.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
There was so much blood.
Aaron cradled the body of the angel warrior in his arms, feeling Camael’s life force ebbing away. He was reminded o
f that horrible day he had knelt in the middle of the street holding a dying Gabriel. He had never wanted to feel that way again, but here it was, as painful as the last time.
“I can do something,” he said to his friend in an attempt to rally some confidence not only for Camael, but also for himself. Aaron reached deep within, searching for that spark of the divine that would allow him to save his mentor as he had his pet.
Camael took Aaron’s hand in his. “Do not waste your strength on a lost cause, boy,” he said, his grip firm, but weakening.
Aaron held the angel to him, gazing in mute horror at the stab wounds in his friend’s back. One was a blackened hole characteristic of a heavenly weapon’s bite, but the other showed no sign of cauterization and bled profusely. “We’ll stop the bleeding and you’ll be all right,” he told his friend, pressing his hand firmly against the wound.
Camael shuddered, and a fresh geyser of dark blood sprayed from the wound. The blood was warm, its smell pungent. “It will not stop.” He struggled to sit up. “The enchanted metal and Verchiel’s sword,” he strained, “I fear it was a most lethal combination.”
“Lie still, we can—”
Camael still held Aaron’s hand and rallied his strength to squeeze it all the harder. “I did not return to have you save my pathetic life,” the angel said, the intensity of his stare grabbing Aaron’s attention and holding it firm. “I never considered that the prophecy would apply to me … that I could be forgiven.”
“Stop talking like that,” Aaron said, dismissing the fatalistic words of his mentor.
Many of the citizens who had gathered in front of Belphegor’s home now stood in a tight circle around Aaron and Camael, watching the drama unfold. One of the men stripped off his T-shirt and offered it to Aaron to use as a compress against the angel’s bleeding wound.
“I’ve saved many lives in my time on this world,” Camael reflected. “But I don’t believe it will ever balance the scales against the lives I took as leader of the Powers.”
“How can you be sure, Camael?” Aaron asked in an attempt to keep his friend with him, to keep him focused. He gestured at the circle around them. “Most of them wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
Camael looked at him with eyes that had grown tired, eyes that had seen so much. “Deep down I knew that it was wrong, but still I kept on with the killing, for I believed that it was what He wanted of me. How sad that it took the writings of a human seer to force me to come to my senses.” He laughed and dark blood spilled from his mouth to stain his silver goatee. “Imagine that,” he said with a weary smile. “It took a lowly human to show me the error of my ways.”
Aaron chuckled sadly. “Yeah, imagine that.”
The angel warrior’s body was suddenly wracked with spasms of coughing that threatened to shake away what little life there still was in his dying frame. Time, as it always seemed to be, was running out.
“Is he going to die?” one of the citizens, a girl probably only a few years older than Aaron, asked. There were tears in her eyes, and in the eyes of all present. He could not bring himself to answer, even though the inevitable seemed obvious.
“That is the burning question of the day,” Camael answered, looking at Aaron. “Will I die here on the street of the place I sought so long to find?” He pulled Aaron closer as he asked the question, the source of the strength that had allowed him to return to Aerie. “Or might I actually be forgiven?” the angel asked wistfully. “Only you have the answer.”
Aaron could sense that his friend’s time was short. “Shall we find out?” he asked Camael, reaching down into the center of his being to find the gift of redemption. It was there, waiting for him as he imagined it would be. He called forth the heavenly essence, drawing upon it, feeling its might rise up and flow down his arm into one of his hands. The facility to redeem danced upon his fingertips, and Aaron looked compassionately to the angel that had shown him the road to his destiny. He wrestled with feelings of intense emotion: sadness, for he would not be seeing his friend again, and great happiness, for Camael would be going home.
Camael began to pray, his weary eyes tightly closed. “Have mercy upon me, O God. With the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my offenses.”
Aaron brought his hand closer, the power contained within glowing like a small sun.
“Cleanse me from my sins. For I acknowledge my offenses, and they are ever before me.”
His touch lighted upon Camael’s chest and Aaron felt the energy of his special gift swell and begin to flow from him. This was it. “You are forgiven,” Aaron declared as his hand eerily slipped beneath the flesh of the angel’s breast.
Camael gasped, his body arching as Aaron let go of the force collecting in his fingertips, releasing the power of redemption inside him. The angel’s flesh began to fume. The skin grew brittle and fractured as the human shell that he had been wearing since his personal fall from grace began to flake away. Camael writhed upon the ground, like a snake sloughing off its skin, as the glory of what he once had been was revealed.
There came a jubilant cry of release, followed by a dazzling flash of brilliance, and Aaron instinctively turned away, the flash of the angel’s rebirth blinding to the earthly eye. Aaron listened to the gasps and cries of awe from those that had gathered around them, and he turned his gaze back to the latest recipient of his heavenly gift.
Awesome, was all Aaron could think of as he watched the beautiful, fearsome creature floating on wings seemingly made from feathers of gossamer and sunlight. Camael’s hair moved about his head like a halo of fire. His flesh was nearly translucent and he was adorned in armor that could easily have been forged from the rays of the sun. The angel noticed him then, and Aaron finally understood the enormity of his responsibility. As he gazed at the magnificent entity before him, he knew it was his right and his alone. He was the One, and this was his burden and his joy.
“It must have been something,” Aaron said to the transformed Camael, thinking of a time in Heaven before the strife … and wondering how it would be now when his friend returned.
“Maybe it will be something again,” Camael said in a voice like the surge of ocean waves upon a beach, and turned his attention to the open sky above.
Aaron prepared himself for the being’s ascension, but the angel seemed to hesitate, as if something was preventing him from moving on. “What’s wrong, Camael?” he asked him.
“I … I do not wish to leave you with the burden of this responsibility,” Camael said, longingly returning his gaze to the sky above him.
“I’ll be fine,” Aaron reassured him. “This is how it’s supposed to be.”
The two again exchanged looks, and Aaron could see that the angel was torn.
“Go, Camael,” he said in a powerful voice that he hoped brimmed with authority. “Your job is done; it’s time for you to go home.”
With those words, Camael spread wide his wings and began his ascent to a world beyond this one. His wings of light and fire stirred the air, filling it with the gentle sounds of the wind. Aaron could not help but think that it sounded like the voices of small children singing.
“Say good-bye to Gabriel,” the angel said. “I do believe I’ll miss him.”
“He has that effect,” Aaron replied, and watched the glimmer of a smile cross the angel’s blissful features.
Then Camael turned his full attention to the yawning space above him, raised his arms to the sky, and in a flash of light that seemed to warm Aaron to the depths of his soul, the angel that was his friend was gone.
Aaron stumbled back, the beauty of Camael’s ascent still dancing before his eyes. He was on his own now, but he knew what needed to be done.
The Nephilim turned to face Belphegor and Lehash and was astonished to see that the citizens were kneeling on the street behind them, heads bowed in reverence. “What’s all this?” he asked.
“They know the truth now,” Belphegor said, a smile tugging at
the corners of his mouth.
“Son of bitch,” Lehash growled as he pulled the worn Stetson from his head. “You are the One.”
Aaron walked toward Lorelei’s house, wondering about Vilma’s condition and how Gabriel would take the news of Camael’s passing. At first meeting, the angel and the dog hadn’t really gotten along, but recently, a strange, begrudging friendship seemed to have developed between the two.
He chanced a casual glance over his shoulder to see if he was still being followed, and sure enough, a sizeable number of Aerie’s population trailed a respectful distance behind. Lehash, in the lead, politely tipped his hat. Aaron knew they were there because they believed he was something special—something many of them had been waiting for most of their lives—but the adoration made him uncomfortable. He wished they would admire him from their own homes.
He headed up the walk and climbed the few steps to the front door. As he pulled open the screen, he noted that the crowd had stopped at the street, watching him from a distance.
“I’ll be right here if you need anything,” the constable confirmed, taking up a guardian’s stance at the beginning of the walk.
Aaron waved and stepped into the small hallway inside Lorelei’s house. To the right was the living room. Vilma was lying on the overstuffed couch. She was asleep, her limp hand resting on Gabriel’s side as he sat near her on the floor, resting his chin on the edge of the sofa. Lorelei sat at the edge of the rickety coffee table, applying tape to a bandage on Vilma’s exposed stomach.
“Hey,” Aaron said as he came into the room. “How’s she doing?”
Gabriel lifted his head from the couch to look at Aaron. “Hello,” the dog said.
Lorelei finished her ministrations and gently pulled Vilma’s shirt down to cover the dressing. “The burns were pretty bad,” she said, packing up her supplies. “Looks like Verchiel had a good time with her,” she added, jaw tightly clenched. “I’ve cleaned and dressed them using some special oils to help her heal faster. Physically, I’d say she’s going to be fine.”