Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,122

felt weird to be surrounded by water and not be able to drink. By now my body was beginning to consume itself, and that wasn’t good because there wasn’t much there to begin with. And this was a mission I had undertaken with no option for failure or incompleteness. Both of those would be permanent if they occurred. So I kept on swimming and floating, floating and swimming, trying to make some kind of progress.

By degrees I would occasionally look up and see that I had moved across the bay and had indeed made progress. The mountains that ringed me in were growing larger on one side. Unfortunately, due to currents and waves and wind, it looked like I was taking the long way. The shore that had looked so tantalizingly close at times was sliding by alongside me. I wasn’t going to get to land that way. But it did appear I would do so eventually, given my path up to now. The only problem was, if I gauged the distance right, I was only halfway there.

Oh, this is so much fun. I should write home and tell them all about—I couldn’t go there. No way. I could not allow myself to think about home. But it all came crashing down on me anyway, yet again. I missed my parents incredibly; especially my dad for some reason. I missed Kreios. I wished all the crap that had happened to us would just go away forever and leave us in peace. It rained down on me, isolated and alone and drifting in the void.

One hundred fresh Nri demons, sent out on supplemental orders by the lieutenant, circled the skies over False Bay. They were looking for prey, looking for—if it came to that—remains. The master hadn’t specified.

They had started at the island though, which he had specified. They had scattered seals and seagulls to the water, scooping some of the seals up and ripping them apart in midair for sport. But there were no humans on the island.

Reportedly there had been three of them, at least according to what little had been communicated through the ranks. But if there were indeed three, there were no longer any. They were either gone or dead.

The master would not be pleased with that report.

As a result the detachment flew sorties all over the bay, throwing caution to the wind, ignoring normal protocol and rules of engagement, even allowing themselves to be seen and heard, observed by some citizens, fishermen returning home in the dark.

But it was clear to the lieutenant from the moment they had discovered the island was unoccupied: the three had slipped the net.

CHAPTER V

BASED ON HOW LONG it had taken me to get to where I had been at the halfway mark, I had crudely estimated that I might make landfall by dawn. That is, if I wasn’t eaten by sharks, seals, the Loch Ness monster, stung by jellyfish, run over by a gigantic ship that didn’t know to look out for crazy girls swimming in their underwear in the dark, or even some rogue demon that had been watching and waiting.

The life of a half-breed. So exciting.

But at last, I finally looked up to see not an abstract far-off cluster of light representing some unreachable town or city, but genuine individual lights and shapes and buildings and cars. Even a train went by, its light swinging a wide arc over me in the bay, and I could hear its horn sound off. I gave a muffled cry of hope.

I swam. Kicking and paddling, I moved my arms and legs with purpose. This was the finish line, and I would make it.

Cape Town, South Africa, present day

If the building had been observed from the street it would have appeared that the lights within were being snuffed one floor at a time from the ground upward. It was not some bizarre atmospheric fog or smoke from some impossible fire. It was just nothingness. Taking over. Moving methodically. Quick. Unexplainable.

The presence that stalked floor by floor through the skyscraper citadel was killing off host after host, and by extension stalking the Nri Brothers—the demons who were still, as of this moment, scattered across the principality engaged in their own mischief. Though the Nri were powerful, being bound by the superstition they so willingly exploited to advantage, they also could not escape its consequences. Their subscription to the religious tenets of ancestor worship created a very strong bond between Brother and host: if