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Cassiel squirmed, struggling to sit up. “The…the space was cramped and there was blinding smoke. Please…”
The music from the church below came to an end and the murmuring of prayer began.
“So you bring me nothing of the half-breed?”
Cassiel pushed himself into a sitting position. A dark fluid began to seep from around the wound’s stitching as his movements pulled them taut. “The fire…it was burning out of control and Camael was already present. There was little we could do…”
The piteous words of his soldier enraged Verchiel almost as much as the monkeys’ attempts to speak with God drifting up from the ceremony in the church below. Verchiel reached down to Cassiel’s wound and dug his fingers beneath the stitching.
Cassiel screamed.
“Silence,” Verchiel spat as he tore the thick, black thread away from the angel’s flesh.
How dare they think they can speak to Him, he thought, revolted by the worshippers praying in the church below. If the Lord God will not speak with me, then why do they have the audacity to believe that He would listen to their pathetic chatter? Verchiel thought, perturbed. He cast aside the surgical thread and bits of torn skin that dangled from it.
Cassiel lay silently writhing upon the floor, his wound now gaping wide, and weeping.
“You failed me,” Verchiel growled as he picked Cassiel up from the floor and held him aloft. “And I do not deal well with failure.”
The organ played again and the monkeys were singing. Why do they insist on doing that? he wondered. Did they believe that the discordant sounds from their primitive mouths would please the Creator, He who had orchestrated the symphony of creation?
Cassiel flapped his wings as he struggled in his leader’s grasp. “Master Verchiel…mercy,” he wheezed.
Verchiel needed to hear something other than the animals’ wailing below, something that would calm his frenzied state. Holding Cassiel by the throat, he reached out and grabbed one of his soldier’s wings.
“Please…no,” Cassiel pleaded.
Verchiel took the delicate appendage in his hand and began to bend it, to twist it. The sound was horrible—sharp—as the cartilage gave way beneath his grip. The angel was screaming, begging and crying to be forgiven for his trespasses.
Verchiel let Cassiel drop from his hands. The angel sobbed, his wing twisted at an obscene angle.
“Administer to him,” Verchiel barked, knowing that the healer was listening from the shadows, waiting to serve. “Disappoint me again, and I’ll tear them both from your body,” Verchiel instructed Cassiel as he turned his back upon him.
He had decided to be merciful; it was what the Creator would have done.
Aaron was dreaming again.
An old man with a milky white eye is using a pointed stick to write on a tablet made of red clay.
Aaron looks around at his surroundings. Where the hell am I? he wonders. He is in a single-room structure, a hut, and it appears to be made out of straw and large mud bricks. Primitive oil lamps placed around the room provide the only source of light. It stinks of body odor and urine.
The old man is deathly thin, his hair and beard incredibly long. There are things living in the wild expanse of his hair. He finishes a symbol on the clay tablet and slowly raises his shaggy head to Aaron.
He points the writing instrument and in a guttural tongue he speaks. “It is you I see in the future—you I write of now.”
The bad eye rolls obscenely in the right socket, and Aaron ca
The old man reaches down with a skeletal hand covered in a thin, almost translucent layer of spotted skin and turns the tablet so Aaron can see—so he can read.
Gazing down at the primitive script, Aaron knows what the man has written. It is a prediction of some kind, something about the union of angel and mortal woman, creating a bridge for those who have fallen.
What the heck does that mean? he wonders. He starts to speak but stops, interrupted by screams from outside the hovel, and something else.
The old man stares at him and slowly brings a hand up to cover the bad eye. “Go now,” he whispers. “You have seen your destiny. Now you must fulfill it.”
Cries of fear are moving closer, and there is another sound in the air—a now familiar sound that fills him with dread.
The pounding sound of wings.
Aaron came awake with a choking gasp. His heart raced and his body crawled with nervous perspiration.
He could still hear wings flapping, and then they were silent.
Gabriel, lying beside him atop the covers, had also awakened and was staring at him.
“Did I wake you, boy?” Aaron asked groggily as he reached out from under the bedclothes and stroked the dog’s head. “Sorry, bad dreams again.”
As he patted the dog he felt himself begin to calm, his pulse rate slow. Gabriel was as good as a tranquilizer.
The dog licked his hand affectionately. “The old man was scary, wasn’t he?” Gabriel said, nuzzling closer.
“Old man? You mean Zeke, Gabe?” Aaron asked, eyes begi
The dog turned his gaze to him. “No, not Zeke,” he answered, “the old man in the dream. He scared me, too.”
It hit him with the force of a pile driver. Aaron struggled beneath the sheets and blanket into a sitting position. He reached over and turned on the bedside light.
“How do you know about the old man in the dream, Gabriel?” Aaron asked, terrified by what the answer might be.
“I dreamed it,” the dog answered proudly. His tail thumped happily. “I have different dreams now, not just ru
Aaron leaned back and let his head bounce off the wooden headboard. “I can’t believe this. You had the same dream as I did?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Why did his eye look like the moon, Aaron?”
Aaron felt as though he were on a roller coaster, perpetually plunging farther and farther into darkness, picking up speed, with no sign of the horrific ride’s end.
And there was nothing he wanted more than to get off.
“Please make it stop,” he whispered.
Gabriel crawled closer and lay his chin upon Aaron’s leg. “It’s all right, Aaron,” the dog said devotedly. “Don’t be sad.”
Aaron opened his eyes and began to pat the dog again. “It’s not all right, Gabe. Everything is spi
Gabriel pushed himself into a sitting position and pressed his butt against his master. “I was hurt very badly and you made me better,” the dog said with a tilt of his head. “Are you upset that I’m…different now?”
Aaron looked his best friend in the eyes and shook his head. “No, I’m not upset about that. Matter of fact, that’s the only thing about this business that I’m willing to get used to.” He reached out and stroked the side of the dog’s head. “It’s everything else—the bizarro dreams, the stuff Zeke’s been telling me…”
He leaned back against the headboard again and sighed with exasperation. “I don’t want this, Gabriel. I have enough to worry about. I have to finish high school with a decent enough GPA to get into a good college.”
“GPA?” the dog questioned. “What is this GPA?”
“Grade point average,” Aaron explained. “Doing very, very well in my classes at school.”
Gabriel nodded in understanding.
“All this crap about angels and Nephilim—I don’t care if it’s true, I just can’t deal with it.” At that moment Aaron made a decision. “I’m go