Broken Wings: Genesis (6 page)

Blond spikes tipped with black
showed around the corner before the rest of the face. The tension fell away. It
was Chaz. I stood up and took a few deep breaths to slow my pounding heart.
When I looked up, the kid was coming around the corner with a concerned look on
his face, his eyes darting from my Companion to the bloodied man and back
again.

“Yesh, did you––?”

I shook my head and took a step
closer to the unconscious man. “No. I found him this way.”

“Who is he?”

“Now
that
seems to be the
question. I’ve never seen him before.”

“Then how––?”

“How about holding back on the
questions while I check him out?”

Chaz opened his mouth and shut it
again without another word.

Since the man was unconscious, I
took advantage of a full probe with my non-physical senses. The level of power
I had first sensed was still evident. There was nothing evil about the man, not
in a demonic sense anyway. But there was definitely something wrong. It was
nothing I could put a finger on. He felt familiar, but not. There was a
struggle going on between his physical and metaphysical self––like they kept
wanting to separate, and yet stay together at the same time. I had been around
death before––that last moment of life where the spirit separates from the body
and leaves to wherever it may be headed for the afterlife. This wasn’t the
same. My confusion must have shown in my face.

“What’s wrong, Yesh?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,
kid. Let’s get him inside and see what we can find out.”

“Are you sure it’s okay––?”

I stood up the rest of the way and
tucked my Companion back into place. “No. But it’s probably the only way we’re
going to get any answers without having the guy die out here in my hallway.”

I unlocked the door to my
apartment and swung it open. Chaz and I turned as one to get the man situated
between us. We worked well as a team. At least I got a clue on where all of the
blood was coming from now. It was oozing out from beneath the jacket covering
his back. Chaz moved toward the couch once we got inside the door, but I shook
my head.

“No––I want him in the bedroom.
There’s more room to lay him out.”

The kid looked at me like he
didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue.

Once inside the bedroom door, I
moved to hold the guy up against the wall. “Run and grab the extra shower
curtain from the bottom drawer in the bathroom, will you?”

Chaz helped me get the man propped
into a place where I could hold his weight up by myself, and then ran to do
what I had asked. Just because I wanted to lay the guy out, didn’t mean I
wanted to ruin the sheets and mattress of my bed. Looking back across the
apartment, I winced at the trail of blood we had left behind. That was going to
involve a bit of scrubbing. I hoped the blood came out of my living room throw
rug.

The kid was back quick, ripping
open the box and shaking out the plastic curtain as he came. He tossed the box
on the floor and spread the curtain out on the bed. It didn’t cover the whole
surface, but it was enough, as long as we were careful about it. He came back
to help me move the man the rest of the way into the room.

“I need him sitting up first.” I
told Chaz as we juggled the dead weight between us to the bed. “We need to get
his clothes off so I can see what the problem is.”

“You got it.”

A few minutes later, we had the
guy lying face down on the bed in nothing but his briefs. We were both staring
at his back, perplexed.

“I don’t see––” Chaz started and
then moved in to look closer. I sat down on the bed, just as confused as he
was. Blood was seeping slowly out of the man’s back, but it looked more as
though it were oozing out of his pores in strips. There were no physical wounds
that broke the surface of his skin that would give cause for the bleeding.

“What’s happening to him, Yesh?”

I shook my head and leaned closer,
running my hands just above the surface of his skin. “I have no clue. Get me
some wet cloths to clean this up?”

Chaz was back out of the room in a
flash. He was good that way. He might be annoying sometimes, but he was the
best I could have asked for in an assistant. Especially a self-appointed assistant
I had never asked for in the first place. He kept a cool head in a crisis and
did what I asked without question. It was the in-between times when I couldn’t
always get him to shut up. But I dealt with my issues. It was a small price to
pay for good help.

The man moaned and turned his head
toward me. His eyes were still glazed with pain. I tried to put on my best face
of reassurance, but I really wasn’t good at it.

“Hold in there, fella.” I tried
for a smile. My bet was that it looked more like a grimace. “We’ll see what we
can do for you, but I need you to keep still.”

He stared at me for a long moment
before nodding. Even that small movement seemed to cause him a lot of pain. I
adjusted my position to get closer to his upper back, where the majority of the
blood seemed to seep out of his skin. I heard Chaz in the doorway behind me and
I went to reach without looking for the cloths I knew he would have ready.

Something caught my eye and I
moved my hand instead toward the neck of the man on the bed. With his face
turned toward me, it had brought a raised mark into view on the right side of
his neck. I looked closer. It appeared to be runes of some kind, but not quite.
The markings looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. I frowned,
reaching out to run my fingers over the surface. The man jerked as though
burned and his voice rasped a warning in my ears.

“Don’t––”

But it was too late. Blackness
slid across my vision, the room fading away around me.

The sound of the man’s warning was
muffled to my ears, distorted. It sounded far away from wherever I was now. And
wherever I was, I didn’t like it. The terrain had a vague, familiar feel to it.
Damn. It was a dreamscape. Is that why the guy had felt so familiar? Was he the
dream stalker I was after? Morpheus had mentioned separate and distinct
personalities––was that the separation I had felt?

Somehow the answer didn’t feel
right to me. This was––different. I wasn’t ruling it out, but dream stalkers
were generally cowards in their physical form. They didn’t walk up to a tracker
and bleed at their doorstep. I really didn’t need these kinds of complications
right now.

I looked across the dreamscape.
The sun was setting as a backdrop to an incredibly delicate, impossibly real
crystalline city. The buildings were all dark. The last rays of dim light
peeked over the rim of the horizon, ready to cast the city into the dark of
night. It wasn’t a complete darkness. A pale shadow of indigo blue washed the
dreamscape around me in an ethereal glow. It was just bright enough to keep
full darkness at bay, but not the sick feeling in my stomach. I knew this
place. And I was pretty certain I wasn’t going to like being here.

A slight tug at the edge of my
conscious awareness tried to pull my attention in another direction. I wanted
to avoid looking, but knew I had to. I turned my head and there it was. A gate.
It was amazing, and intricate. It was beautiful, and yet it sent a stab of fear
rushing through me. I
did
know this place. It wasn’t just any dreamscape.
It was the place I returned to time again. The place that left me sitting up in
bed with a cold sweat covering my body. This was the place of my nightmare, the
one I’d had for years. But it wasn’t in bits and pieces. This was the full
deal. Only this time I wasn’t living it, I was watching it, like looking into a
fishbowl.

To look at the gate as an object,
it was as ethereal as its setting. It was a large, slightly elliptical,
mirror-like surface standing vertical and flat. The frame surrounding that surface
was a bas-relief of soft shapes and colors. It reflected everything––the last
light of the sun, the indigo hue of the twilight world, and it was constantly
moving and shifting––reshaping itself in front of my eyes. It made my head hurt
to watch it, but I couldn’t turn away. The surface, by contrast, was flat and
motionless. It reflected nothing and showed nothing.

But something was there, just on
the other side of the deceptive, calm surface. A chill went through me and I
shivered. I didn’t have to know what it was. What I did know, and felt with
every fiber of my being, was that it was wrong. It was very, very wrong.

My attention went to the base of
the gate––in part because there was something moving, but mostly because I
didn’t want to look at the wrongness beyond the surface of the gate. I could
feel it reaching out, sensing and probing. I didn’t want it to notice me.

Two figures stood before the gate.
Both were facing each other. And both had wings––amazing, delicate, beautiful
feathered wings that spread from their backs.

The smaller of the two was using
those wings to hover off the ground, bringing her to eye level with the one
standing in front of the gate. She wore a dress of many layers, deep oranges,
reds and golds. It was almost like the color of fire, but not quite. The many
pieces of material didn’t so much move like flames as they did the petals of a
multi-colored marigold wrapped around her body. Her wings were the same color,
the hues weaving in and out to display a picture, like feathered butterfly
wings. Her long, loose golden curls framed a cherubic face that was animated
with playful pleading.

The other one stood with pride
before the gate. Long, dark hair was braided over one shoulder to hang almost
to her waist. The delicate feathers of her white wings took on the subtle hue
of the indigo light around her. They contrasted the color of her
clothing––dark, fit and tight, the dress of a warrior. It was her face that
really caught my attention. It was a strong face, marred with tiredness.

I knew that face well. I looked at
in the mirror every day. My face stared out from the form of the winged
creature. Of course, I should have known that. In my nightmare,
I
was
the one that stood before the gate and dealt with what was coming. This was the
first time I’ve ever watched what happened from a distance. If I had a comfy
chair and some popcorn, I could sit back and watch the show. Only this wasn’t a
popcorn-type movie. It was a lean forward on the edge of your seat and call out
to warn the dumb, blonde cheerleader not to go into the basement-type of movie.
As though my thoughts cued the sound guy, the voices faded into my awareness,
the curtain rising on the middle of the opening scene.

“So do you think you can come with
me to the observatory tomorrow?” The cherubic girl was dancing in the air with
restrained excitement.

“We’ll see, Arianna. But it looks
doubtful.”

“Please, Ithane. Puh-leease––”
Arianna’s wings were twitching back and forth anxiously. “The Council makes you
work too much. You never get to do anything any more.”

For the first time, since I’d
never had the chance to watch from a distance, I saw what I never did when the
pieces flashed through my nightmare. A ripple appeared on the surface of the
gate. It was so subtle that it was easy to miss. The winged warrior standing
guard in front of the gate missed it. The annoying little cherub distracted
her. If I had been sitting in a theater seat, this would’ve been about the time
I’d be digging my fingers into the armrests.

 
“I know, Arianna. But the timing is not good.
The Council seems to think––” Ithane stopped, shaking her head. “Never mind. It
does not matter. I cannot go anywhere until the Council gives me leave.”

The cherub crossed her arms with a
petulant pout, stomping her foot ineffectively in the air.

“They’ll never let you take a
break. Not as long as
he
––” Her eyes widened. “They really think
Lucifer’s gonna try again, don’t they? And soon
—
or else
they’d let you go.”

“Stop, Arianna. You know we no
longer speak the name of the Morning Star. And you know I cannot tell you
anything—”

Lucifer? As in the big, bad,
himself? This was getting weird. Maybe that’s why I never remembered the whole
sequence of the nightmare. It was a little too surreal to wrap my mind around.

From my vantage point, I could see
what Ithane didn’t at first. The cherub had stopped paying attention to the
guardian. Her attention, as was mine, focused on the surface of the gate. The
ripple had grown, a repetitive constant movement starting to push forward,
bulging from the flat surface. Ithane caught the look of horror on Arianna’s
face and looked behind her, catching sight of the mass trying to push its way
through.

“Holy Mother—“ the guardian
cursed, whipping around to face the gate.

I knew my own look of fear matched
Ithane’s. I could feel it. I had experienced this many times before from the
viewpoint of the guardian. And I knew what would come next.

Ithane regained her senses
quickly. She set her stance, preparing to fight against the enemy coming
through the gate. Her feet spaced solidly apart at shoulder width, she raised
her arms and spread her fingers, calling for the power.

Two energy nodes, set on pillars
half the height of the gateway, sprang to life. Violet-white lightning energy
crackled in the air, rapidly building in strength. When the nodes could not
contain the power any longer, it shot out, directly at the heart of the
guardian. Ithane’s body went into spasms with the force of its entry, but she
held her ground. She swayed as it filled her, bathing her body with the light
of its power, glowing from the inside out. Wow. She was
good
.

Her form filled with the
violet-white light, spreading its way through her body. Multiple lines of the
energy shot out from the palms of her hands and fingertips. Her fingers
immediately started curling and she moved her arms and hands, weaving the
separate lines together. The flows took form with her intent, a woven pattern
of energy. It was as though a cloth were being woven of light, a blanket to
cover the surface of the gate.