Michael: The Mark (Airel Saga Book Four)

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 beam 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 one suffered an injury, the other one did as well.

But the demon mind was a powerful thing; sometimes in the individual, it could produce unforeseen anomalies. Some of the Brothers were strong enough to will their way out of mortal danger. Those were a rare breed, and what few were able to flee to more hospitable parts of the world did so—to the west.

In reality, though, that was a mere deferment, a trifle. There was nowhere for the Nri Brothers to hide, no matter what temporary allegiances they might make. The full force of that which worked its way through the tower was striking the Nri with duplicative effect all over the city. Not since the early days had such a thing been seen under the sun. It was reverberating through the atmosphere in tremors, signifying the beginning of the end—that terrible reality that all fallen angels had denied for millennia.

The angel Kreios was ushering it in. And El was beginning to assert Himself.

***

NWABA COULD FEEL IT now—it was unmistakable. For the first time in thousands of years, his fear became genuine again. It was a flash in the pan, fleeting, but still, deny it as much as he might, he could not tell lies to himself. Such a thing made fools of the sane—he would not cross over.

If this is indeed true, he thought, if El is beginning the final judgment ... He stalked the floor of the penthouse living room, his resplendent, shimmering white form, both hideous and beautiful, covered in scales as well as skin, a lizard with human face, a fully intentional contradiction in terms, designed to be an affront to truth and beauty. To El Himself.

What shall I then do? He mulled over the possibilities.

If the list of possibilities was narrowing, he would eventually be left with two choices. These two choices every fallen angel had known from the time the manifestation of El had fulfilled all prophecy. Before that they could only guess, but now they knew—they could either fight or die.

For thousands of years, they had chosen to fight. Still in rebellion, a third of the host, the full number of them that had chosen to rebel and cast their lot with Lucifer, had for thousands of years been fighting a war of mitigation. Though they had failed to defeat El at every point along the way, still they fought, they resisted. They knew they were doomed to lose. That was why they fought. That was what made their cause ultimately moral, ultimately just.

They fought against the great heavenly tyranny, and at heavy cost. So many of their number had been snatched off to eternal punishment over the centuries, and so few were now left.

Nwaba's anger kindled afresh as he thought of the Sons of God. They too were fallen. Yet El favored them. They claimed to leave Him for love, for women. But the Nri at least had just cause, rights, they worshipped their own morality. They occupied the high ground, and for this reason the Brotherhood would never stop hunting down and killing the Sons of El. Not until they were all dead.