URIEL: The Price (The Airel Saga, Book 6) (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (4 page)

JOHN CLEARED THE GROUND level of his house quickly. He found no one and nothing, so he crept up the stairs, looking for enemies. It wasn’t exactly fun, it wasn’t what he might call enjoyable, and yet somehow he only really felt alive when his life was at stake. I guess that’s what led me down this path in the first place. The typical version of the American dream just wasn’t ever enough for me. I always knew there was more, as if I was meant to live a different life.

Voices resounded in his head, accusing voices that told him he never really loved his wife and daughter, not if he always felt the need to go off and play tough guy all over the world. Clearly he loved the job more than the home life, and it had shown in his actions. He wondered if he’d ever given them enough of himself. Would they say, now, that he had loved them with everything he had in him? Why do I feel like having a wife and a child was a mistake, as if I was going against my own convictions?

More voices piled up guilt and regret and shame, telling him the only thing that had ever satisfied him had been this, stalking killers and thugs, making illicit deals in dark alleyways with unscrupulous men, selling power to the power hungry. The fact was, he was hungry for power too. He was addicted to it.

He peeked into the guest room, gun first. Nothing. Nothing under the bed, nothing in the closet. He felt like he was going through the same motions, the same drill he used to perform for Airel when she was only five or six, checking the room for monsters. See, sweetheart? Nobody’s in your closet. There are no bad men in this house.

What was it that drove him to pursue this life? Why had there been so much secrecy over the years? It was like his own family didn’t even know him, not really. Why was he so driven toward risk, toward grappling with rough and monstrous men in dark places?

Maybe it’s just in my blood—that’s all.

Was that it? Was it something inevitable, something he had inherited?

As he came back into the hallway at the top of the stairs, his ears pricked. What is that? He couldn’t place the noise he heard. He thought it was coming from Airel’s room—the last place he wanted to find something, the last place he wanted to see—but he didn’t know what the sound was. He shook his head and trying to get a clear thought through his brain. He double-checked that the safety was off on his 12-gauge and walked toward the source.

There it is again. It sounded like someone choking. John swallowed. The door to Airel’s room was open a crack. He was sure he had left it closed. The light from the moon, so out of place in this powered-down electric suburbia, washed out into the hallway. Shadows moved in its beams. Somebody’s in there.

John’s pulse quickened to a thunderous gallop, nearly deafening him as it pounded through his ears. He stood six feet away from the door to his comatose daughter’s bedroom, thinking of his next move. He brought the butt stock up and crooked it tightly into his shoulder. He looked down the barrel as he raised it, drawing a bead on the door at just below head height. He couldn’t control his breathing; his aim was inconsistent, bobbing up and down. He laid a finger across the trigger. He was ready.

But he wasn’t ready for this.

“Cross,” came a hissing whisper from inside the room.

It chilled him right down to his toenails. He felt the great tug of fear pulling him backward palpably, urging him to flee. “Step out in the hallway, bastard,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

The door edged a little toward the jamb the way it would when there was a sudden differential of air pressure in the house, like when the heat kicked on. Movement. Shadows in the darkness. And a smell of rottenness.

“Come out!” John commanded.

The door, which opened inward toward the bedroom and which was not a cheap hollow core but rather a solid pine slab, now exploded through the jamb into the hallway, ripping off its hinges. The intruder followed immediately and he was a big boy, towering over John by at least a foot, maybe more. It was hard to see details in the dark.

He raised the muzzle of the Mossberg and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash revealed something impossible. It was all black, unclothed. Its mouth—such as it was—was full of fangs. And it had a tail. He saw all this in the blink of an eye. This wasn’t a man. It was something straight from hell.

CHAPTER VI

Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, Present Day

KREIOS AROSE, MILLIONS OF thoughts pouring through him. He felt as if he would run in mad circles until insanity finally took him, and then . . . what? El! Where is the end?

Ellie would not listen—no one would listen.

“All these books,” he said, looking at the piles he had amassed, “and not a single answer.” He shoved the stacks over, kicking the table legs, scattering things in all directions. He knew of her Mark, had spent days going over and over his books to find a way to save her. But there was nothing. Now she had left again and he had other matters to attend to, but his anger flowed through him and he left it unchecked.

Impulsively, he stalked to the door of his closet. The bare concrete room. The Threshold. He would not stand by and do nothing. His hand seized the doorknob and he wrenched it open without pause, keeping his eyes brazenly open. There was no need for him to focus any more intently than he already did upon the destination; he was of single purpose.

Cain.

The door did not show some otherworldly scene. It did not open upon the woods near where Cain had dwelt for so many thousands of years. It did not reveal the Keep of the Damned; it did not link to Sheol. It merely revealed a clean emptiness, a space much like the plain concrete room Kreios had built as a covering for this thin place.

And there was Cain, in the flesh, sitting on the floor. He bowed to the Angel of El, tucking his chin to his chest.

“Cain. It is time.”

Cain looked him in the eyes.

“Release your dead upon the earth.”

Cain hesitated. “What of the seal?”

“Release your dead, worm! Go forth! Do not spare. Kreios commands you.”

A change came over the countenance of the man Cain, and his eyes dimmed to full pitch black. “It will be as you say.” He did not issue another word, and in the next instant, he was taken away.

Kreios closed his eyes and quietly shut the door. He had not heard the command from El. He had not, as Cain had confirmed by his obvious question, been granted the authority to do as he had commanded him to do—the seal of which Cain had spoken was still intact.

This was not the time. But he had done it anyway, and now there was no stopping it. What Kreios had done was willfully out of order, and he knew it. His grief had mastered him, if only for a moment.

What will it cost?

He could feel it—the souls of the dead were rising through every thin place on the face of the earth. Would they now go forth? Would these who had unjustly killed before wage a just war upon the Brothers, those whose dark kingdom had enslaved them? Would Cain fulfill his final purpose now?

Surely he would.

Surely.

CHAPTER VII

Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, Present Day

MICHAEL FOUND THE HATCH to the tunnel leading to the place he once feared—the underground house Kreios built long ago, the place where he once fell in love with Airel, the place where he betrayed her, and the place where she died. It was a lifetime ago, as if a dream, yet coming back here seemed like the only thing to do.

“Hello?” he called to the empty room. A fire crackled in the hearth, indicating that someone had been here.

Thundering, Kreios flew into the room and pinned Michael to the wall a few feet off the floor. Michael was taken aback and Kreios glowed, white eyes flaming. “What do you want here, son of the damned?”

Michael struggled, but it was of no use. “I need your help . . . why are you so . . . ?”

Kreios lowered Michael and returned to his normal appearance. “Michael, I—” He took a few steps away and stared into the fire. It was dark outside, and snow was falling in huge, tumbling flakes.

“I talked with Ellie—”

Kreios spun around. “When? Why did you not stop her—where is she?”

Michael held up his hands. “This was a couple of days ago, and no. I don’t know where she is. I was hoping she was here.”

“Continue.”

It was Michael’s turn to be angry. “Where were you? Airel is in a coma and you hide here? She needs you, Kreios, or did you forget that she’s your granddaughter?”

Kreios lowered his head. “I should kill you for what you will become. But there are other matters . . .”

“No, there is Airel. No other matters, not the end of the world, not some stupid Bloodstone—only Airel. I’m leaving; I have no choice. Who will be here to make sure she’s safe? Not you, apparently.”

“She is safe enough. As long as she sleeps, no harm will come to her.”

“And how do you know that? Some angel power or something?”

Kreios did not respond.

“That’s what I thought.”

“It calls to you Michael, does it not?”

Michael suddenly felt naked. The angel knows too much.

“You are growing weak. It is written all over you, boy.” The angel snorted. “What will your decision be?”

Michael pretended not to be alarmed, but it was mostly for his own pride. If Kreios knew of his mental problems of late, there was no telling what else he might know. “I have an idea of how we might be able to destroy the Bloodstone, but I need your help.”

Kreios dropped his hands. “Speak.”

* * *

Elsewhere…

IN MY DREAMS, I walked among the crumbling foundations of a building made of stone. It had been burned and was still smoking, its roof and doors—all those things that made it a place of safety—consumed and converted to smoke and ash and carried off to eternity by the winds. Most of its walls had been thrown down but some still stood, spaces for once-beautiful panes of colorful glass now empty, gaping open into the gray netherworld outside.

As I looked on, time revolved around me, and the ruins cooled and the floors in the building rotted and fell and decayed. From their detritus, from the ash of those fuels which had refused to fully burn but had instead fallen directly into the center of the building, I saw tender green shoots pushing up through the black ground.

The place felt vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know why.

The sun pierced through a high round window that had been cut into the gable. There was no glass to restrict the life-giving warmth of this beam of sunshine. Like a fountain of life and warmth, it flowed down and around the leaves and stems and roots of the green shoots, caressing them and urging them upward into itself.

The walls were taller than I had first thought. The destruction was not as complete as I had imagined, and the building these foundations had been designed to hold could have been immense. If only . . .

Then I noticed an open space off to the side. There, resting against one wall, were large shards of mirror. They leaned at all angles, their reflections showing in one piece, the sun; in another, the gray skies; in another, the blackened stone of the walls. As I approached, most of them reflected bits of me.

I drew nearer and could plainly see that each reflection was different. Each one showed a different me—I was an infant with lots of dark brown hair, dozing in my father’s arms. I was a little girl wearing a sundress in the kitchen with my mom and she was making jam, the smell tart and bright. I was a scared freshman walking to class on my first day of high school, hiding behind my long brown hair, my arms crossed over a thick American history text. I was the pariah who had just buried her best friend. I was the girlfriend of Michael Alexander.

Darkness stole in. There was subtraction, and I felt loss for the first time.

Looking around, I saw that the plants were there, but they were still. They had gone mostly dormant and dead brown. The sun hid itself above and beyond the clouds. The walls around me were dry and cracked; they looked as if they might topple over in a stiff breeze.

I suddenly understood why this place felt so familiar to me. This building is my life. And it was in ruins.

I looked back to the mirrors now, and the strangest thing was happening. The whole assembly began to rotate like a pinwheel in the wind, and I understood that each of these versions of me had fallen short of El’s plan for my life. The pinwheel became a saw blade.

I began to gasp for air; I fell to my knees.

The spinning mirrors now started to rotate independently, a jagged kaleidoscope showing millions of versions of me, of Airel, the invisible girl, now reflected and on display as she truly was, no masks, no lies, and no illusions. Just me. Just me and everything I had done and missed in life. I felt like an utter failure.

Then the kaleidoscope sped up and became merged into one image: It was me—it wasn’t me. It was like me—it wasn’t like me. Perhaps I was like it—maybe that was more accurate. It was masculine, it was feminine, it was neither. It was a presence.

I was very still. I was filled with more fear than I had ever felt before; I was filled with joy to bursting. She?

“Stand.”

I stood, slowly. “Who are you?”

“You already know.”

I was silent, my mind flitting like a bird from one branch of thought to another—school crushes, funerals. Weddings, family trips, my first loose tooth. Relationship drama. Grades. Seasons. I realized that I was only one of many created beings for whom everything had slipped out of control. This happened to everyone. It was normal. Intentional. Part of the design. How could that be part of the plan? Isn’t it imperfect? Flawed?

“Life under the sun is found in places like this, Airel. The flaws serve the truth by bearing witness to just how true Truth is. Mountains are mountains not just because of themselves, but because of the valleys that show their size, scope, and grandeur.”

I soaked in this. “But I feel so inadequate. Like such a failure. If I could have had more time . . . I could have done more. I could have been more.”