Airel (20 page)

Chapter XVI

Somewhere in the Mountains of Idaho, Present day

“I need you to try something for me.” Kale lowered his voice, and as I placed the last bite of scrambled eggs in my mouth, I noticed that he had brought a book with him. It looked like it had a thousand pages, and it was leather-bound. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but after time and use the gold had all but rubbed off. 

“Tell me what this is and where to turn.” He pointed to the black bound book, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms across his chest. 

“I don’t understand—what is that and where to turn? That makes no sense.” Kale the killer was losing his marbles. I remembered my grandmother’s old family Bible, and this book looked a lot like it. This one, though, looked ancient.

 “What is this book?” He demanded in a harsh tone. Michael stiffened. 

I wanted to shout back at him for making me play this stupid game. All this ‘you shall know in time’ crap was getting on my nerves. “It’s a Bible,” I sighed, surrendering to the ridiculous. I ducked my chin and hid behind my hair, thanking God I had had the foresight to leave it down today. 

In a softer voice, he said, “Good. Now where do I turn? Don’t think about it; just tell me right off the top of your head.” I could see Michael was feeling the awkwardness as much as I. I put my hand on his arm. He looked at me and managed a weak smile. 

“What are you doing, playing Bible roulette?” 

“Now. Do it now!” Kale commanded.

After I got over my initial shock, I sputtered out, “Fine. Six one—Genesis six, verse one.”

Kale’s face was illuminated with satisfaction. “I was just thinking that. Very good.” He even smiled. He opened the Bible, placed it in front of me, pointed to the passage, and cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and spoke.

“
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
”

The way he spoke the text of the old Bible made me think he loved each word. I saw how gently he touched the pages, how sacred the act of closing the cover together was for him. He set the Bible down on the table and stared at me. 

He seemed irritated with me, and I guessed what he might be thinking. I shook my head, “So what? You read some random passage that means what?” I still didn’t like it.He sighed softly, but I could tell I was missing something important, that he was exercising self-control. My hand was still on Michael’s arm, and I was very aware of it. My heart was pounding; just the feel of his skin touching mine in that simple gesture made me warm all over, and I realized that most of me just wanted to go off somewhere with him so that we could be alone. 

Kale’s voice, velvety, shook me from my reverie. “This story is the only one like it in the entire Bible. It talks about how the angels of God forsook their place in heaven when they saw the beauty of Eve’s daughters. They fell in love. They left paradise to marry and create new lives among mortal man—the sons of Adam. These angels intermarried with the race of men, and their wives produced children. These children were different; immortal. As far as you would consider them, they had what might be called…superhuman powers.”

Overloaded with new information, the tumblers on the locks in my mind all fell into place and sprung open instantly. I struggled to hold on, and the only thing that held me was fear. Inwardly, I had already admitted to myself that I had been convinced, that I was in the midst of a genuine epiphany, but the cost of outward admission to that fact was too great to bear, so I kept it hidden.

Then an even stranger thing happened: Kale chuckled. It was as if he had read my thoughts as all this had flooded in upon me and thought it was amusing. All I could do was sit there and worry about drooling out of my open mouth. 

Now that Kale had my attention, he drove it home. “The half-angel children would grow up normal. Their superpowers were never triggered unless they came into contact with what we call the Brotherhood. Don’t worry; we will get into that some other time. The point is, if these hybrid children never got awakened, they would simply live normal lives, growing old and dying just like a normal man or woman. The verses you picked out for me tell about their origin. I hope you see what I’m driving at—or do I have to spell it out for you?”

My hands were cold. The pit of my stomach clenched tightly, feeling slightly like hunger pangs. My mind replayed for me the night I had cut myself, how I had healed without even a scar to show for it. I thought about the way my skin had become so milky, smoothed out, pure. I thought about my hair; how it was so perfect, so strong—that was decidedly not normal, not—
human
. And now, as if to complete the internal mutiny against my average teenage life, I heard fluttering. Pages of a book. Wings.
She,
in the back of my mind, stood up.

Everything I had ever known, wanted, dreamed, desired, and planned in my entire life was now almost visibly crumbling before me, and I could not stop it. I was furious.

Kale sat silently, allowing me to ponder the information further. Even Michael seemed to be too shocked to say anything. I figured he was putting it all together as well; he had seen enough to make him wonder what was wrong with me. But I couldn’t know what he was really thinking.

Like a shout in the darkness, I heard my name. “Airel.” It was Kale. The killer. The stalker. The kidnapper. “Airel, listen to me. I am not your enemy. I am your friend.”

Chapter XVII

First love. First kiss. First night spent away from home. These are the things that leave their mark on  everyone. These were true enough for me, but there was also the time I almost drowned, the first time I rode a horse, and now there was the day I sat in front of my kidnapper and realized that everything in my once-happy life was all just an illusion.
Congrats, girl, you’re a half-breed, the love-child of angelic aliens and ancient hut-dwellers. Oh, really? Wow, sweet…

I didn’t remember standing up, or even the long walk down twisting stone steps. All I could feel was the long wet grass on my bare feet as I walked through the meadow. 

I felt like I was in a fog, that what I had thought was real turned out to be just a curtain. Now the curtain had lifted, and what was lying in wait behind jumped out and ravaged my mind.
I can’t really believe this lunatic murderer and kidnapper, can I?
I had no way of knowing if what he had told me was true.
But, wait…
I shivered. His last words echoed through my brain, threateningly. I was beginning to understand the meaning of risk—because I was starting to doubt everything I thought I knew.

The end of our conversation played in the large space of my freshly expanded mind:

“How did you know that the story I wanted to read to you was in Genesis chapter six?” he had said.

I had stared at him in utter amazement. “It was a lucky guess,” I had said flatly.

“Was it?” He had raised one eyebrow, a small smile lifting the right side of his mouth. “I was thinking of the book and chapter in my mind. You read my thoughts, Airel. I suspected you might have that gift, among others…”

 “Who are you?” I had nearly shouted it at him, and would have if my voice had not been on the verge of cracking. It’s funny, but I didn’t let him answer me—or if he had, I didn’t remember what it was. I had stormed off the porch, letting my feet carry me where they would.

I ended up sitting in the wet grass in the meadow, glances of which I had stolen so often from my room, from the ballroom. I was a candle burnt from both ends, completely spent. My eyes filled with tears as I felt the dark woods surrounding.
Superhuman?
I was just an average girl. But the things I wanted the most were out of reach, permanently, and they were foolish too. 

I became overwhelmed with one thought, and words fail to describe it even near to what I felt, because it soaked into the marrow of my bones in that moment. What I felt, stronger than anything I had ever felt, what faded literally every other concern into the background including my family, my future, and Michael, was that I had woken up today to find that I was… a superhuman…
thing
… but all I felt was
frail
. My mind was firmly trapped in the difference between the two.

Shoulders shaking and shivering with chills, I sobbed and cried for what seemed like an hour. I didn’t care what Michael or that horrible man thought. What did it matter anyway? What did I have to look forward to? Days, months, years, decades, centuries, lifetimes of loneliness—if what he had implied about immortality was true—and knowing that I was not only different, but also different in a way no one would ever understand. 

Feeling like, at seventeen years of age, I had cried enough tears for many lifetimes already, the ripples in the little pond of my life began to subside. I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, which I needed desperately. 

I looked up at the huge house that was embedded in the mountainside. It was so beautiful. I could see the tall windows that looked out over the lush green valley, and the patio where Kale and Michael still sat. I was glad they let me be alone; it would have been embarrassing to have cried like that in front of Michael. 

But I wasn’t alone.
She
was there with me, and for once, I felt her almost tangibly. I was glad that
She
seemed to show up when I most needed her.
She
helped me think of something I never would have come to on my own:
“You cannot change this. You are who you are. Live. Live, Airel.”

She
was right, of course. I couldn’t change who I was or
what
I was, as my stalker had informed me an eternity ago. I was here for a reason. Maybe Kale knew, or he could help me discover it. As I steeled myself to it, it began to occur to me that there had been times before when my answers had proved to be inadequate. I decided that I had more to lose in sticking it out by myself than I stood to gain by asking for help. It was time to find out why I was here, and I needed to cast aside everything that made me comfortable. 

I returned, ascending the winding gray stone steps, and rejoined them on the fringes of the patio space, awkward and self-conscious. I hid a little behind my hair, sticking my hands in my back pockets, and managed a weak apology. My chair was overturned, just as I had thought, but Kale stood as I approached and righted it, holding it out for me in a gesture of peacemaking. I got the very strong sense that Kale was like a gift from God. It may have seemed like a radical change in my thinking. It was.

I sat down. Still, I had an axe to grind with Kale, especially if he was
indeed
friend and not foe. I decided to cut right to it: “My parents—“

“—Are fine,” he finished for me. 

I wanted to believe him, but I desired proof. I was thrown. All I could manage was, “But—” I didn’t like how these negotiations were going. It was worse than asking my dad for the car keys on a Friday night.

“Airel, you need to learn how to trust me, and how to be patient as you wait for the answers you seek.”

“But what does that have to do with my concern for my parents, for my life?”

He was briefly taken aback, I could tell, but he dodged the question a little. “You may not be ready to see the answers yet. And what good would it do you to see anything that you cannot understand?” His eyes spoke volumes of kindness and empathy.  

I gave up. It was obvious that Kale wasn’t going to tell me anything but what he wanted to tell me, and there was no amount of bargaining that would change that. Which is not to say that I couldn’t try. “Okay, whatever. Just why am I here, then?”

He appeared appreciative that I had changed my tack. “Airel, you are here to begin your training.”

“Training. Like,” I couldn’t help giggling a little bit, “superhero training?”

“If you don’t learn control, you’ll be a danger to everyone around you, including yourself.” He had a hint of a smile on his pale face. I turned to look at Michael, still, in spite of myself, feeling like I needed to be pinched. 

Michael leaned into me. “We should stick together. I think whatever he knows, we need to know. This is uncharted territory, if you know what I mean.” Michael took my hand in his. I could feel his pulse, and I couldn’t help but grin. His heart was beating just as fast as mine was.

I turned back to Kale. “Alright. What do we do first?” 

“‘We?’ ‘We’ won’t be doing anything. Understand, children, Airel needs to be here—as for you, Michael, you’re here for other reasons altogether.”

I was seriously chafed now. “‘Children?’ How dare you.” I mounted my high horse and looked condescendingly at him from it. “Don’t ever call me a child again!” I was so angry at him that I could barely formulate the thoughts in my head, which, I was aware, he would probably be probing. 

He sighed in response. “Airel, your training is to be solo. Michael cannot undergo any of it. Most of it he will not even be allowed to watch. You must learn these things in the quiet of solitude; you must become accustomed to your instruction one-on-one.” He stood and walked to a small, rough table that I had not noticed before, standing by the windows. On it were several books, one of which was the Bible we had been using earlier, and all of which were very old. “Your first course of study will be history.” 

He selected one of the books. It was an imposing looking volume, and me being somewhat of a book junky, although not a history fan, I almost salivated looking at its hidebound cover. He walked it back to the table, and as he did, my mind flooded with what can only be described as destiny. There is no other way to express it.

“Your history, Airel.” His voice was filled with pleasure and pain, and as he said the words he looked at me the way my dad did sometimes, right before he would tell me that he loved me. He placed the book on the table before me.

I looked at it, and I have to admit, even before I ever touched it, the moment felt heavy. I reached out my right hand to the book, to open its hidebound cover. As my hand neared it, it began to feel magnetic to me, as if I could not draw back even if my life depended on it. The tip of my finger rested at last on its front cover, releasing a torrent of sound in my head, a shout of triumph: KREIOS.