Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,53
the torch-lit underground chamber, dodging fists and sword thrusts and stepping over freshly made corpses. Black stench hung chokingly in the air as demon after demon expired, leaving behind heavy wet ash.
Kreios gritted his teeth through it, suddenly taking a blindside strike across the jaw from a clawed hand. He recovered quickly, vengeance fueling angelic adrenaline, sword held vertically to one side with two hands, point up.
A thin and wiry creature stood before him sneering. “You have no idea what you have started! This is just the begi—”
Kreios’s blade stabbed quickly up through the soft tissue of the thing’s throat, piercing deep into its rotted brain.
“Shut it,” Kreios said.
The eyes rolled dead in their sockets, arms twitching as Kreios withdrew his blade and pushed the body aside.
“Who is next!”
CHAPTER XI
By the Columbia River, present day
MICHAEL TRIED TO SLEEP.
But the act of holding Airel in his arms kept his mind racing, his heart slamming in his chest. He pulled her closer and felt her shiver as she warmed to the heat of his body. Soon she was in deep sleep, her breathing coming in soft rhythmic waves.
He closed his eyes at last, the gentle rocking of the train making his eyes heavy.
Ancient memories—none of them his own—twisted into his thoughts. It was a curse, the Brotherhood, and its influence could never be undone. When a man bonded with his Brother, especially in Michael’s case, and mostly because of his father, an impartation took place. The burdens were his to bear the rest of his life. He could smell the blood-soaked earth of each battle, feel each wound as the host of the Bloodstone died and was reborn. His link to the line of demons that had gone before came with memories that did not end.
Michael was yet very young, but in his heart and mind he was ancient and full of regret. This he had never wanted, and it had never, of course, been disclosed to him. It wasn’t in the brochure. But it was truer than truth itself. It was tearing him apart.
The train rocked back and forth like a boat on choppy seas. It was both soothing and uncomfortable to him. He could relate though. It was like the train wanted to go somewhere on its own, but was trapped on the tracks. With every lurch it tried to jump the rails. His life was on rails, too, he felt. He thought of El, considered praying to Him again, maybe asking Him for answers.
“Sacrilege.”
He opened his eyes.
Ellie was there, standing over them, staring at him. Watching.
He stifled a spasm; she had scared him.
“We need to talk.” It was her voice, but inside his head. Her lips weren’t moving.
“Are you reading my mind?” he whispered.
She rolled her eyes. “No, you plonker. Come on.” Ellie gestured for him to come along with her.
“Oh,” Michael whispered. “Just a sec.” He felt like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar or something, like a kid on his way to the principal’s office. As deftly as he could manage, he wriggled out from his interwoven reclined position with Airel. She stirred a little and then rolled away, nuzzling into the crook of her arm and settling in, snoring softly.
“Well?” Ellie was already headed somewhere, moving through the maze of crates and beckoning him to follow. “We’ve got things to discuss, just you and me.”
Michael dutifully followed, though as he began to wake up and become more aware, more present, he began to ask more questions of himself. He wondered if perhaps he might have been smarter to have grabbed at least one sword back there at the site of the crash. He felt capricious for having trusted Kim with his late father’s old 1911 Colt .45—the pistol he usually carried concealed but had failed to retrieve from her after the scuffle and the chaos back there at the scene of their stupendous wreck. After she had shot that big dude. He had to admit, it was possible that he was walking himself right to the gates of the slaughterhouse, with Ellie the butcher.
Ellie had climbed an ascending stack of crates like stairs, crawled along the tops for a bit and then lithely dropped down inside what Michael assumed was an empty space in the midst of them. He followed.
When he got to the edge of the crate tops, he looked down to see Ellie, hands on hips, looking up at him. “Come on down, demon boy. I won’t bite. Hard.”