Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,64

was not the dumb luck sidekick, but the hero.

“Destroy it. Destroy it. Destroy it,” Michael whispered a subconscious mantra, his throat catching in desperation as he stared at the Bloodstone from across the room. It sat pulsing on the television cabinet, calling to him like a potential lover, offering everything, making promises, clapping blinders on his eyes that prevented him from seeing anything but itself. It was all gratification and no consequence.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He could not deny that he wanted what it offered him. What red-blooded man could resist, anyway? Anything and everything he could imagine and then some, it was all there inside the Bloodstone. Though he knew that the life it offered was fraudulent, that the healing of which it profanely whispered was bondage, that the sensual pleasures on display were paper-thin disguises worn by ancient principalities…

It was the kingdom of the Self, and he would be master, by God, and at last. He would bend no more to anyone other than The Alexander. He would inherit the mantle of his father and surpass him. In every conceivable way. He would crush all opposition, command his thousands upon thousands. He would usher in the final war, and in that obliteration of all that is, he would captain, finally, ultimate peace. There would be stillness. He would rule everything under the blackened sun.

Michael pressed his palms to his head and squeezed. Destroy it…

The wound he bore, that now had spread over his whole chest was raw and red; sickly fingers reached out in purple red spirals, enlarging its territory over his heart, grasping for more, still more. And it ached, wretchedly before, and now beautifully, now that he carried the Bloodstone.

He clawed backward desperately in his mind, but backward was forward and he was really confused. He tried to attain clarity; everything was so fuzzy, so…red.

Red.

Blood red.

I stood in a river of red. The color made me sick. The…water… ? …lapped at my waist, slapping at my belly as if it was trying to beat its way through me. If I had been a pillar of stone, and given enough time, pressure, flow, the sick redness would be content to erode me away into nothing. It had a consciousness of its own.

Why was it always red? Why always this dreaming about blood? I was so angry. I wanted to pull myself up out of the dream by the scruff of my neck, a deus ex machina, but I was powerless here. The redness was cold. Thank God. I didn’t know what I would have done if it was warm. I gagged in my sleep. Yeah, me and nausea go way back.

I looked up, getting my bearings. A black sun, papier mache, was pasted onto the sky above me like a theatre prop. Everything became chilly. No vegetation to speak of lined the shores of this diabolical river. There was only black rock and the putrid stench of death.

This is getting old, darn it. I’m sick of having the same stupid dream and variations. Freud would have had ample material with which to work the alchemy of his psychoanalysis on me, all up in my Kool-Aid and not even knowin’ the flavah.

I looked for my old “friend,” the inevitable cloaked figure, star of all my fantasies, but I did not see him. I then felt inwardly for She, wondering if it was her sparking these dreams…or if it was something else.

“Listen and learn. Everything has a useful purpose, Airel.”

I widened my eyes and shook my head, singing out, “Cra-zy,” like an insane person had just said something to me that was completely absurd and I was going to walk away. It echoed back to me like I was inside an empty cistern.

I tried to walk to the riverbank but my feet wouldn’t move. Great! A river of blood with a quicksand bottom, and I’m sinking into it little by little. “All right, Sigmund,” I said aloud, really addressing She, “Have at it. Tell me what it all means.” But there was nothing.

Does anyone know how to give me a straight answer? First it was Kreios and his cryptic non-answers, and now it was She taking up the mantle of obscurity.

“I guess I’ll just stay here, then. In the river of blood. Sinking.”

I looked more closely roundabout me, looking for whatever it was I was missing—and I knew I was missing something, for crying out loud. I was supremely irritated.

That’s when I saw it.

The black Hell’s-own-kindergarten theatre-prop sun