Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,127

was out at this late hour as I glanced around. I just focused on the clothes.

A towel, another towel, some cargo shorts…I rummaged like mad. “Yes!” I said a little too loudly. I had found a white button-up top. Sure it was a little too big, but for crying out loud it would work for now and that was all I cared about. I quickly shrugged into it and then, grabbing the cargo shorts, barefooted my way back to my little cubbyhole. I buttoned up the shirt—it was way bigger than I had originally thought, but a quick knot in the bottom hem fixed that problem.

I crossed my fingers as I pulled on the cargo pants.

I giggled. They were about a foot too long and just as wide. I pulled the drawstring as tight as I could and cuffed them up to my knees. I looked like a refugee, but I was thankful at least for clothes to wear.

A burst of laughter shot out over the boardwalk, knifing through the night. It spooked me, but I realized it was just a bunch of people partying into the wee hours of the morning in their room, the balcony door wide open. They hadn’t seen me.

I turned up the path toward the café, trying to act like I belonged there.

My hair felt slimy and gross, but I was once again a girl. It felt awesome.

Now to find help.

I stumbled a little; my head was spinning. My stomach growled. Okay, first things first: I desperately need something to eat. “All right, She. Whatchagot?”

CHAPTER VIII

Cape Town, South Africa, present day

NWABA UTTERED GUTTURAL CLICKS, a language of the damned, of the fallen. He stood in the center of the circular room, the fire ringing its perimeter augmented now, the flames enlarged and intense, licking ever higher at the tops of the walls. The eight red-winged creatures hanging above echoed the ritualistic song, amplifying its effect, the three Anti-Cherubs issuing forth upside down with exhortations in unknown tongue.

In the center of the floor below, the body of Kim lay on the slab. Mr. Emmanuel, now robed in black, read incantations from an ancient book. John the bait man, still unconscious, was now suspended directly above Kim’s body by chains that descended from the black hole in the ceiling.

Outside, thousands upon thousands of Nri demons deposited their hosts on the roof and then clustered upon the building like an ant hill, crawling downward on its obsidian glass surfaces, penetrating through every aperture and crack to its interior, trembling with caustic delight at the prospect of conquest.

The master had issued the call to arms. That hadn’t happened for a thousand years.

Inside the building, now just one floor below the penthouse, the angel Kreios stood nearly omnipotent, in submission only to El. He awaited instructions.

Then in the middle of the night, as a closed door suddenly opens upon a new way—a path anticipated by faith—Kreios understood what he would do. El had made sense of his vendetta for revenge on the Brotherhood; He would make sense of this new thing as well.

Kreios was off like a shot, a bolt of pure lightning.

He pierced straight through the remaining structures that remained overhead, into the sky. The report of his flight was visible for miles around. He flew straight up, the trail he left behind pure white light.

Nwaba’s pathetic little ritual was thrown into chaos as the building shook. The demons on the ceiling chattered nervously, the bait man swung to and fro in his chains, and even Mr. Emmanuel was flustered in the reading of the incantations.

The three Anti-Cherubs wasted no time. They scurried back through the opening in the ceiling, gone. Gone.

Nwaba shrieked his displeasure and rage to the four winds, issuing immediate orders to seek and destroy the angel Kreios. What Brother could bring back his head would be promoted to second in command.

The swarming frenzy of Nri demons that had shrouded the skyscraper in a surging mass of hideous activity now peeled off like wasps, following the trail left by the angel.

I found part of a sandwich on one of the outside tables in the café, which, by the way, was what Bertha’s was; a restaurant. I had assumed it was some kind of clothing store, given how cryptic She had become.

My mouth watered as I looked at the half sandwich. I looked around like a thief before wolfing the whole thing down. I figured I could be grossed out later. My body was reminding me of