Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,107

the unusual sight. No. Those are not birds.

No, indeed. They looked like bats, more like. But there was some trickery going on, some sleight of hand, some manipulation of the willing.

There were only two possibilities. One was that the bats were flying low, perhaps no higher than two hundred feet above the ground, and that their wings beat slowly, not enough to keep them aloft. The second solution was that he was not seeing bats at all. He was seeing a hundred enormous demons, their wingspans not mere inches across but whole yards, beating in time against acres of atmosphere, and they were flying considerably higher.

The dark cloud moved west, against prevailing wind, out to sea as the sun set. It was a new wrinkle, and it pulled upward at one corner of Kreios’ mouth.

CHAPTER XVIII

Somewhere over the South Atlantic, present day

I KNOCKED LIGHTLY ON the doorframe.

Hex looked up and back at me and smiled. “Come on in.”

I ducked into the cramped space. There were more lights and buttons and screens than I had ever imagined. I climbed into the empty seat to his right as delicately as I could manage, scared to death I would accidentally hit the self-destruct button. After everything that’s happened so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one.

“Are we getting bored?” Hex was relaxed.

“No,” I said, unsure of what else to say. I looked out ahead of us through the windscreen into the darkening sky. There were clouds peppered below in the distance, the vast dark sea beneath them, an endless backdrop.

“Pretty soon the stars will be out. Have you ever seen the stars from up here?”

“No.” I was really struggling for words; I felt my heart constricting in my chest. I was worried about Michael.

“Well…pretty soon you’ll see them. We land soon. It will be something you can never forget.”

“Are we there yet?”

He laughed. “As I said, soon. Maybe we start to descend in twenty minutes.”

I was glad about that. Michael probably needed a hospital. I pushed the fear down and looked around at the cluster of controls. There were screens with complicated readouts on them, gauges, levers, buttons, knobs. “How do you keep it all straight?”

Hex laughed. “Lots of practice! It appears to be worse than it is. Look, the altimeter says we’re cruising at forty thousand feet. Airspeed, here, indicates mach point eight. And here,” he said, motioning toward the handlebar thing, “that’s called the yoke. You have one too,” he said, pointing to the one on my side.

I shrank back from it slightly, afraid I would inadvertently crash us. Still, it was really cool and I looked out the windows into the darkness, trying to see land. Ahead, way ahead and down, I could just barely see pinpricks of light through the clouds near the horizon. It must be Cape Town.

Hex went on, “Pull back and we go up. Push forward and we go down. It is easy!” He smiled broadly at me.

“Easy, huh.” My eyes swept over the truly bewildering array of information and controls. I couldn’t see how anyone could fly a plane.

“Just like a car, but we move in three dimensions, not two.” His accent got thicker. “De Wright braddahs, dey tink of dis. Veeeery smart, dem.”

I flashed back to the rain-soaked accident on that Oregon highway. The big African I had killed had talked with the same accent. Far from being charming, as it might have been to someone more innocent, it chilled me. I looked out the window to the right and saw a cloud below us. It was different from the others; it was dark and moving in the wrong direction. The other clouds were all moving slowly front to back as the plane rocketed forward. The dark one was moving with us. That’s weird.

I glanced at Hex and he shot me a big smile.

I heard a noise from the back. Maybe Michael is coming around. I turned to look. I saw only that, if anything, all was not well back there. Michael hadn’t moved, but Ellie and Bishop were entangled in what appeared to be some kind of wrestling match. No, check that. It’s a fight!

I looked back at Hex, a smile still plastered on his face. That’s when it finally hit me that we had been completely set up.

The Brotherhood.

No sooner had I thought it when Hex’s sharp and massive elbow collided with my temple. I collapsed. The lights were going out.

“You cannot hide from us,” Hex said, and then everything