Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) (19 page)

TWENTY-SEVEN

My Dear Little Star,

I didn’t think you’d be able to wait very long to open this letter. By now, you’ve learned that your mother and I did not leave to go on a normal research trip. I’m not exactly sure what you’ve been told about us, or the work we’ve been doing in secret. I can’t explain it to you in the brevity of a letter. Nor can I explain it to you in terms you may even understand at this point in time.

What I am certain of is that your life is about to become extremely difficult. You will be met with scorn, and perhaps even shunned, by those who are now closest to you. There is one piece of advice I can give that I’m confident will help alleviate some of this difficulty.

Whatever anyone tells you about your mother and me, you must denounce us. I cannot fathom what you will be told, but I can assure you they will be lies designed to hide the truth. Not specifically the truth of our departure, but a bigger truth your mother and I have only just begun to understand.

But, I repeat, you must denounce us. You may have to do it publicly. You may have to do it for the rest of your life, but you must never let anyone know about this letter or my instructions.

I don’t even know if one day you’ll begin to believe the stories created to explain our absence, or even if you’ll be able to forgive us for the pain we know we are causing you right now. But, it is for your protection that we decided to leave you behind. Where we are going is no place for an innocent child.

I know you may believe you are old enough to handle anything. But, we are not willing to risk your safety given the road ahead of us.

I love you more than anything in this world, and it is because of this love that I’m doing what I feel is necessary to make a better world for you and, one day, for your children.

I do hope that one day you’ll understand what we’ve done and understand why we did it.

Be strong, my Little Star. Your mother and I will love you forever and, if God is willing, we will meet again.

With all the love in my heart,

Your father,

Matthew Chapel

TWENTY-EIGHT

The first time she had read the letter from her father was just one day prior to discovering that her parents had been labeled as Dissident sympathizers, traitors, and terrorists.

It was also the first day she had seen Silas Graham outside the clinic atmosphere where he had worked with her father. Graham and her father had been good friends. She was hoping that he had come to look in on her as a favor to her parents, or a kind gesture from a quasi-uncle.

However, his visit ended up being anything but pleasant. It was the first time Evangeline had seen him since his eye transplant after the Dissident attack on the clinic. Those dark blue Angel eyes had elevated her hopes of good news and kindness. Those eyes that had once conveyed love and understanding now made her fear for her life.

“Your parents are presumed dead,” he began with a hint of contempt. “Their belongings were found among the debris of a known Dissident safe-house.” Graham sat across a table from Evangeline with his hands in his lap. He made no gesture that could have been misinterpreted as kindness.

In the deepest, darkest recesses of his heart, Graham hated Matthew Chapel and everyone associated with him. That included his thirteen-year-old orphan. Not even her youth and innocence could shield her from his hateful fury.

“We haven’t sorted through all the evidence as yet, and their bodies have not been positively identified, but we’re confident it’s just a matter of time.” Evangeline sat there, staring at him in disbelief.

For months, family friends and her parents’ coworkers had poured compassion and comfort upon the Evangeline. In time, comfort turned to sympathy, and sympathy turned to pity. In a few short months, pity turned to suspicion as more and more circumstantial evidence came to the surface, undermining everything she thought she knew about her own parents.

Their mysterious trips to foreign medical conferences became fodder for Olympus gossip. Her parents’ alleged secret lab became a hot news topic for over a week. At the time of her cold and heartless interview with Graham, the most recent story circulating was of a photo that suggested her parents had been meeting with known members of the Dissidents in secret.

The photo was the final scandal. The family who had been caring for Evangeline called the Department of Family Services and had her removed from their home the same day. Officials in the DFS placed her in a group home and no one from her old life would return her communications. She felt discarded like a reeking old shoe. She had been living in the group home for five months when Graham paid her a visit. He wanted to tell her the news himself.

Ever since the authorities had told Graham that Matthew was part of the Dissident movement, his anger about his injuries from the explosion boiled over. He had no way to lash out at Matthew or even Elizabeth, so he focused his rage on their orphaned daughter.

Evangeline just sat there, staring at her hands, listening to Graham fume, but she did not hear half of what he was saying.

She was fighting back a monsoon of emotions that she did not want anyone to see. Her grief was the most poignant contestant fighting for the center stage of her mind. She had liked Graham as a child. He used to be funny and playful when she had visited her father at the clinic. The man that sat in front of her was not the same Silas Graham that had offered her candy and would pretend her father did not know about it. That Silas Graham had disappeared in the clinic explosion.

A monster had replaced that Silas Graham. She felt his malicious glare in her direction. His spite towards her had dashed any hopes of finding a single friend in the tragedy she called her life. The battle inside her mind was fierce.

She felt betrayed by her father for leaving her to fend for herself after he allegedly committed the heinous acts she heard about on the news, anger towards her mother for choosing her spouse over her child. She longed to have her parents hold her; tell her it was all a mistake and that everything will be all right. She felt the fear of being all alone in the world that her parents would never come back with a miraculous story to explain it all away and make it better. She just wanted to be a normal, happy thirteen-year-old girl. The torrent of emotions crashed on top of one another like a tsunami breaking against a sea wall.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Graham spat as he leaned forward across the table, demanding she justify her own existence based on the actions of her parents.

Evangeline’s attention returned into the room. With all fondness for Graham vanishing into the past with her childhood memories, she felt nothing but loathing for the monster before her. His need to avenge himself against the injuries Matthew and the Dissidents had inflicted upon him bordered on madness.

Evangeline said nothing while she scoured her brain for a response. She hated blind-sided confrontations. She wanted to retreat into the cathartic sea of her own sorrow over the loss of her parents. Then she remembered the letter.

It was a tether of hope. It was the fragile thread that could tie her to the parents she knew to be good, kind, loving, and honest. It was the anchor her heart needed against the hurricane of pain tearing at her soul. She took a deep breath, and then spoke to Graham without looking him in the eye.

“My parents were fools,” she choked out with a sob. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she felt the keen sting of betraying the memory of her parents.

“What did you say?” Graham said in disbelief. He leaned in closer, fixated on Evangeline’s expression, hunting for any sign of deception. Evangeline looked up and stared back into his eyes with a hardness of her own.

“You heard me!” she screamed, raising her eyes to challenge his. “My parents were fools!” Graham’s eyes squinted with suspicion as he watched Evangeline brushing away her tears.

“They asked me to come with them. They told me they were going to talk to members of the Dissidents, but they didn’t know if they were going to join or not. They told me they’d be back in a few days to tell me what they decided. That was the last time I ever spoke to them.”

Evangeline could not hold back the sorrow any longer. She cradled her head in her hands and wept, as the waves of heartache wracking her body while she sat before Graham, vulnerable and small.

His countenance seemed to soften. He stood up and walked around the table to stand behind Evangeline. He placed his hands on her shoulders and gave them a soft squeeze. His hands shook with her shoulders from the violent, muffled sobs that continued to escape her lips s. She sat there and allowed the flood of emotion to come as it pleased, permitting him to keep his hands resting on her shoulders. As much as she hated him in the moment, she was not going to be turn away any comforting gesture she could get, no matter how meager, how shallow.

He squeezed her shoulders once more as she gulped a deep breath. She wiped the tears from her cheeks as Graham sat down in the chair next to her. His spiteful glare had vanished from his face as he focused on her eyes. The next four words that he spat off his tongue would define their relationship for the rest of her life.

“I don’t believe you,” he said with cold menace in his voice.

TWENTY-NINE

Just before sunrise, Jack woke up to find Evangeline asleep, curled up next to him in their bed. He felt lucky to have found her, a woman who was as beautiful as she was intelligent. Unlike most women he’d known through his life, she understood his quirky sense of humor He acknowledged he was not the generic alpha-male - he strong, masculine type - most women on Olympus seemed to be attracted to. Although, he had long discovered Evangeline was not like most women.

When Jack had been a child, people assumed he was shy because he did not say much, but when close friends surrounded him, he was talkative and well spoken. Prone to being quiet and reserved, he preferred the solitude of intimate conversation to a noisy crowd of socializers.

As he grew older, he gravitated to a career with computers and technology. Designing Artificial Intelligence did not require pointless communication or group dynamics to create a successful outcome. He could create worlds in his mind and bring them into reality through his programming codes. The prank teddy bear he had reprogrammed to interact with his parents became his first friend, an undemanding friend that did not engage in pointless, idle conversation just to avoid uncomfortable silences.

For Jack, silence was comfortable. Endless, nonsensical chatter made him uneasy. If it were not for his yearning for that comfortable silence, he would have never been drawn to Evangeline on the fateful night they met at the restaurant.

He had been sitting inside the restaurant booth, gazing out the window, when into his vision entered a woman of stunning beauty.

Jack recognized the other woman at her side, his old classmate, Tishia Dunbar. He had heard that Tishia and Sam Lennox had gotten married, so he was not surprised to see her touting a round, pregnant belly. Sam and Tishia had not been married long, but Tishia had always said she wanted to have a family as soon as possible. Several years had passed since Jack had been in school with Tishia and Sam; he wondered if she would recognize him, and if she would introduce him to her lovely friend in the violet dress.

Jack had been at the restaurant with the other co-founders of Ground Zero, celebrating the success and first anniversary of Olympus’s most popular SimCom.

When the divine woman came through the door with Tishia, he was entranced in an instant. Her long, dark hair, full lips, and her curvy figure mesmerized him. Jack swallowed a lump in his throat, aching to do something that was against his quiet and withdrawn nature; he wanted to talk to her. Beautiful women usually brought Jack nothing but rejection and grief. However, something inside him whispered that this woman was different. This woman would be special.

To keep himself from staring he turned his attention to Tishia. Tishia was pretty, but not Jack’s type. A lack of attraction between them had eliminated the awkwardness Jack always experienced around good-looking girls, so a friendship with Tishia had been easy and uncomplicated.

Even as one of the most popular girls in school in the LTZ, Tishia had also been one of the most considerate. She had never intimidated him and he had never worried about impressing her. She had been very social when they were younger, always in the midst of a large group of girls, chattering away like the hens on the farm where he grew up. A crowd of boys demonstrating their bravado, Sam Lennox being among them, had always followed her group.

This was the precise kind of social situation that Jack always felt awkward and uncomfortable in, so he just kept to himself, content with his own company. On occasion, one of the other girls in school had tried befriending him. If she were interesting to talk to, they would become friends and spend time together. However, once the girl realized there was no romantic chemistry, their friendship would fizzle out and he would once again find himself alone in his own company.

Jack would miss having someone to enjoy deep conversations with, but he preferred solitude to an uncomfortable relationship just to avoid being alone. The confusion and self-consciousness he felt around beautiful women was a never-ending source of anxiety, pushing him further into himself as he grew older.

Games. The typical Olympic woman was all about playing relationship games, and Jack had no desire to prove himself to win affection. And all too often when he would try engaging an attractive woman in a meaningful conversation, she would either giggle, not understanding what he was talking about, or switch the topic to something more trivial like celebrity gossip or fashion.

Beyond the games and mindless jabber, Jack was confused why beautiful women always seemed to be talking about their shoes.

Jack knew Evangeline was different from the others as he observed them from across the room. Tishia’s group of friends, all of whom were very attractive, chatted away like a flock of geese. The word gaggle popped into Jack’s mind. It caused him to smile without thinking about it. Evangeline stood on the outskirts, focusing her attention on one of Tishia’s friends at a time, donning a polite smile as she talked. Even Jack could tell the woman in the violet dress was the newcomer to the group.

Jack had all but forgotten about his friends. They had finished their meals before he realized he had been staring across the room for the better part of an hour.

Jack heard the sounds of fingers snapping in the distance and the mumbled sound of his name calling to him. “Earth to Jack… Hello? Jack, are you coming?” Jack turned his attention to the three men staring at him at the table and found them with amused smiles spread across their faces.

“I’m sorry, Jacob. What were you saying?” he answered with unregistering eyes on his oldest friend, Jacob Wells.

The man sitting next to Jacob, the newest and youngest partner named Christopher Bennett, cupped his hands around his eyes. “Jack has left the building,” he laughed, “He’s been replaced by captain tunnel-vision.” Christopher turned his head as if he was looking through binoculars. “And I can see why.”

Jack’s face flushed to match the tomatoes had removed from his sandwich and left on his plate. His eyes darted back toward the vision across the room and an embarrassed smile spread across his lips. Jacob cleaned his hands with his napkin with a low chuckle. “Jack’s not going to be joining us at Second Sight tonight, boys. I’ve seen that look before and he’s about to do something I’ve only seen him do once before.”

Christopher turned his imaginary binoculars on Jacob. “What’s that?” Jacob watched Jack out of the side of his eye playing with the tomatoes on his plate with a fork, pushing them around like a hockey player on an ice rink.

The third man at the table, the oldest of the quartet named Ethan Oliver, looked down at the display on his armband. “Are you coming or not, Evans?”

Jack’s eyes returned to the beautiful brown-haired woman standing next to Tishia, ignoring anything else that existed in his world.

Christopher leaned toward away from Jack. “Let’s just leave. I’m curious to see how long it takes for him to notice we left him with the check.” He whispered with giddy smile.

A few moments later Jack turned his attention back to the table to find it empty. His eyes darted around the restaurant in search of his companions until he spotted them outside, waving at him through the window as they walked down the street, slapping each other on the back. They turned and disappeared around the corner before he realized what trouble his absent-mindedness had brought him. With a frustrated shake of his head at his own lapse of attention, he motioned the waiter he was ready to pay the bill.

With a wave or relief, Jack remembered his partners were going to an avatar bar after dinner. They had convinced him to come along because he could not give them an adequate excuse to decline their invitation. Jack did not understand the appeal of the avatar scenes, places where people plugged themselves into virtual reality to socialize with others through a stylized caricature of themselves.

It was ironic, Jack thought. His friends were great guys, good looking and intelligent, who preferred to meet women through a false identity, a well-crafted fantasy, instead of in real life. He did understand the appeal, though. Anonymity protected them if there were no sparks with other participants. They could walk away unscathed, trying again and again, hoping that one day they would meet someone else with whom they could try to hit it off.

Jack continued watching from across the room while he waited for his bill to be processed. The majority of the women had moved toward the bar where a group of men had their eyes glued to a sporting broadcast. He noticed the women who gravitated to the bar were the ones without wedding rings. The few that stayed behind were certain to be married, wearing flashing rings or displaying their own protruding baby bumps.

The beautiful brunette remained at Tishia’s side, and Jack’s heart picked up speed as he observed she did not have a ring on her finger. The smaller group continued chatting among themselves. Jack guessed they were talking about pregnancy and belly sizes by the way they motioned to each other’s stomachs; issues that were well outside the scope of Jack’s experience and interests. Jack noticed the longer the pregnancy conversations drew on, the quieter Evangeline became. She put on a polite smile, but there was a sadness growing in her eyes.

Just then, Evangeline glanced over at Jack as if she could hear his thoughts. Her eyebrows furrowed at him, and he could see she felt uncomfortable receiving the attentions of a strange man. Tishia saw the look on Evangeline’s face and followed her gaze. When Jack and Tishia’s eyes met, a huge smile spread across her face and she started waving at Jack to come over.

He scooted out of his booth and walked over to where Tishia and her brunette friend were mingling, encouraged by Tishia’s excited waving, yet unnerved by the beautiful woman’s scowling expression. He extended his hand to Tishia to offer his congratulations on her marriage and impending family when she crushed him in a sudden embrace.

“Jack, it is so good to see you!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you since you were accepted to that tech academy up here!”

Jack smiled; the Tishia he remembered seemed unchanged, still as cheerful, kind, and sincere as ever.

Jack’s cheeks flushed red. He did not enjoy being the center of attention, above all in front of beautiful strangers.

“Yeah, it’s been a while.” He shrugged as he tried to keep from closing in on himself. He pointed to her rotund belly with one hand as he hid his other hand in the pocket of his pants. “Congratulations! Sam’s a lucky guy.” Jack pushed down his instinct to flee and focused his attention on his old friend.

“Thank you so much,” she beamed with a gentle pat to her belly. “You remember Summer, Rebecca, and Brianna from school, right?” she said, gesturing to the other women surrounding her. Jack looked sheepish as he scanned the faces of the women who were now staring daggers at him.

“Um…not really, no,” he said, reaching out to take each one by the hand. He immediately regretted his answer. Each of them shook his hand and bore a false smile. Now he remembered. These were the kind of pretty girls who had intimidated him in school, the popular girls who thought they were above everyone else, dispensing sneering glances, and superficial smiles to everyone, even their supposed friends.

Tishia’s lovely friend stifled a giggle as she watched the exchange, enjoying the inadvertent humor in his honesty. He looked like a little animal that wanted to retreat into his shell and hide. As the outsider, she could read the hostile glares of the other women, which at first were irritated at Jack’s intrusion and then sharpened into loathing that Jack did not recognize them. Evangeline had not known it at the time, but Jack was a rising star for his creative ideas and these has-been women were still living in the LTZ, deluding themselves with stories of their own glory days.

Formalities over, Jack turned his attention from his former classmates and he faced Evangeline as she masked her amusement. Tishia’s eyes darted between her old friend and her new friend, recognizing   the attraction written all across Jack’s face.

“Jack,” she said, sparkling at the idea of setting up two of her friends. “This is Evangeline Chapel. She was the commanding officer of my squad for the last several months off-world while I was still active-duty.”

Tishia continued. “Captain,” she said, and then withered under a stern look from Evangeline. “Sorry! Evangeline! Old habits,” she shrugged with an apologetic smile. “Evangeline, this is Jack Evans. We went to school together. He was my math tutor until he moved to Olympus. He is the sweetest and smartest guy I know.” She nudged Evangeline with a conspiratorial smile. “He may even be smarter than you.”