Eternity (18 page)

Chapter Forty

“Ruth,” I whispered, at the same time that something momentous happened on the field, causing the crowd to roar. In the din, she couldn’t hear me. “Ruth.”

I poked her arm in an effort to get her attention. She mouthed the word “ouch,” and rubbed her arm. I started to voice my suspicions to her, yet didn’t dare speak very loud. Ruth shook her head in incomprehension.

Pulling my cell out of my bag, I pointed to it. As she reached for hers, I started typing furiously. Then I waited for her reaction.

“The coach is a fallen.”

Ruth read the text and froze. When she came to, she stared down at the field, and then whipped her shocked face in my direction for confirmation. I nodded, and she returned to her cell to text a response.

“Let’s go get help.”

Even without an explanation of “help,” I understood her meaning. She meant that we should seek the assistance of the Light Fallen who were floating around, ostensibly to guard my parents. I knew that they couldn’t do anything at all; they were busy trying to keep my parents safe from other threats. But what were our choices? For the millionth time, I wished Rafe hadn’t left. He would know exactly what to do.

As we got ready to leave to secure that “help,” the crowd got even louder. Ruth took a bit longer than me to gather her belongings, so I glanced down at the field. I was scared to make eye contact with the coach again, even though I wanted to see what the players were doing that had caused such a furor among the fans.

I didn’t see the play, but I saw the outcome. In dismay, I watched as Michael fell to the field from the extraordinary height he’d jumped to in order to catch a pass. He fell hard, so hard he wasn’t moving. I stared as Coach Samuel, or whatever his real name was, raced onto the field to “aid” his injured star player.

I knew, without a shred of doubt, that the coach had no intention of aiding Michael. That whatever play he had ordered—a play that produced a visceral reaction in Michael the moment he heard it—had the explicit purpose of harming Michael. And that Coach Samuel’s ultimate goal in wounding Michael had to involve me in some way.

With a sudden clarity, I understood that Michael had been vulnerable, physically on the field and spiritually for some time. For weeks, the coach had planted seeds of dissension in Michael, nurturing his insecurities and jealousies and doubts and ego with a deft touch. Michael was as susceptible to the coach as he’d been to Ezekiel, although it was a different kind of susceptibility, one so subtle Michael didn’t even understand that it was happening.

Coach Samuel was “what had gone wrong” between me and Michael.

Every fiber of my being—human and otherworldly—screamed to get down to that field to Michael’s side. Knowing that he was in danger was like having my own heart torn from my body. I needed to drag Michael out of this stadium to a place of safety. And I had to get him there before the coach “aided” him any further, by making sure he didn’t receive medical care or, worse, sending him back out onto the field with a major injury.

The moment I stood up and raced out of my seat, the entire crowd reacted to another development on the field and stood up as well. I pushed and shoved past all the gaping fans packed into the bleachers in an effort to get onto the field. As I squeezed through the masses, I saw a couple of medics rushing to Michael’s side.

I couldn’t make a swift escape on foot from the bleachers. Instinctively, my body readied for flight. If I had to reveal my true nature to save Michael, I would do it. Because all this—the innocence of high school football games; the carefree enjoyment of others’ company; even the beauty of a crisp, late fall evening—would vanish if I didn’t save Michael and stop Coach Samuel from triggering the next sign. Whatever it was.

Ruth was behind me. She observed the transformation of my body—the expansion of my shoulder blades and the fierce concentration in my eyes. Having secretly watched me and Michael fly, she knew what I was doing. She held me down so I could not get airborne.

“There’s another way out,” she yelled over the commotion. Pointing to a gap in the crowd, she shouted, “Over there.”

If I ran through that gap, I figured that I might make it onto the field in time. On the other hand, if I raced through the hole, I would leave Ruth dangerously exposed as a pawn in Coach Samuel’s game.

I looked back at her and mouthed, “What should I do? I don’t want to leave you.”

She motioned for me to plow ahead, that she would be fine. I hesitated, but she pushed me onward. With her blessing, I dove through the throng.

It was up to me now.

Chapter Forty-one

I raced into the break in the crowd and down those stairs faster than Rafe would have believed possible on my earthbound feet. I knew my window of opportunity was extremely small. I had to extricate Michael from the coach’s grasp before it was too late.

Pushing past the security guards who were there to control the crowds, I ran onto the field. A swarm of referees and players and medical personnel hovered around the spot where Michael had fallen. I shimmied through a gap, hoping to see an alert Michael in the midst of the masses.

He was gone.

I turned to the referee standing next to me, and yelled, “Where is he? Where is Michael Chase?”

“Miss, you shouldn’t be out here. Guards—” he started to shout, before I cut him off.

Grabbing the referee’s arm, I commanded, “Tell me where Michael Chase went.”

The fight disappeared from his face, and he pointed toward the gateway that led to the locker rooms. “Coach Samuel took him that way, miss. He said a doctor was waiting for them inside.”

I dropped his arm and ran toward the locker room, but not before I banged right into the security guards. Unfortunately, the guards had heard the referee’s call for help. Taking a page out of Michael’s football moves book, I leaped around them with a dose of angelic dexterity, and sped down the long hallway leading to the Tillinghast players’ locker room.

Slowing my pace as I reached the heavy door, I listened for sounds of Coach Samuel and Michael. The hallway leading to the locker room was dead quiet, as the team and staff waited out on the field for word from the coach to resume play. Given that, I expected I’d be able to hear something, maybe the coach’s footsteps as he carried Michael. Nothing.

I pushed open the locker room door slowly. Wincing at the door’s loud groan, I crept into the space and began my search. Although I examined every corner of the labyrinthine room, I didn’t see any evidence of them.

Just as I was about to leave, I heard the thud of a closing door. Where had that come from? I was standing before the only door in or out of the locker room that I was aware of. I sprinted to the area from which the sound seemed to originate and discovered what looked like a closet I’d dismissed on my initial investigation. Kicking myself for failing to check it, I turned the handle and braced myself for the otherworldly force within.

Only dirty mops, shelves of cleaning products, and an electrical box stared back at me. Where were Michael and Coach Samuel? Then I spotted it. In the far corner of the dimly lit closet, I could make out the outlines of a narrow door. Dirt smeared, it nearly blended in with the rest of the closet. Nearly.

I pried the handleless door open with my nails. I entered the opening that lurked behind the door. It was fairly dark, with shallow steps, narrow walls, and a low ceiling. It looked like a tunnel. Was this the often rumored about, though never seen, tunnel between the stadium and the high school building?

Something in me immediately recoiled. I couldn’t explain why, but the notion of burrowing deep into the earth didn’t sit well with me. Maybe because I’d become a creature of the sky.

Despite my revulsion of the deep earth, I propelled myself down the steps into the space. God knows when it had been last used and for what. I had to do it. Michael was somewhere in here. And he needed me more than ever.

Even with the low light from the closet behind me and the occasional bulb on the ceiling above me, I could tell that the tunnel was too constricted for flight. I had to rely on my human skills; yet even then, the passageway was too dark for running. I scurried as fast as I could in the only direction available to me. Forward. Fear took hold, and I started to worry that this was a trap. Had Coach Samuel planned Michael’s injury and this whole escape as a means to lure me to this God-forsaken place?

Within a few minutes, I made out a brighter light ahead of me. The tunnel started to widen, and I was able to pick up speed. I thought I discerned the outline of a figure in the distance. Longing to reach the figure as quickly as possible, and knowing that I still couldn’t fly, I began to attempt a projection.

Through the darkness and my own focused thoughts, I heard a voice calling to me. In my shock and terror, I lost the necessary concentration.

“Ellspeth, the space is too narrow for projection. Please do not attempt it. We cannot risk any harm to you, the Elect One.”

I froze in fear. The owner of the voice knew who I was and precisely what I was. Whoever was behind that voice could tell exactly what I was doing.

I assumed the voice belonged to Coach Samuel, since it definitely wasn’t Michael’s. Who else could it be? I was about to call out, when the tunnel abruptly ended. I stood before two narrow passageways, a dark one to my right and a slightly brighter one to my left. Oddly enough, I saw no signs of Michael and the coach. How had they gotten so far ahead of me?

In my split second of hesitation, in that indulgent moment of indecisiveness, a figure emerged from the darkness of the tunnel on the right. And it wasn’t Coach Samuel or Michael.

“Samyaza sent me,” the figure said, as he swaggered toward me.

Coach Samuel must be Samyaza, I thought. How did I know that name? Then I remembered. Rafe mentioned it when he first told me the story of the fallen and again, when he listed the six Dark Fallen responsible for the end days. Samyaza was the leader of the two hundred angels who descended to earth at His behest to guide humankind, before the angels’ fall. And Samyaza was the holder of the seventh seal.

The figure continued his taunt. “Samyaza thought the Elect One might want some company.”

Chapter Forty-two

“Who are you?” I asked the handsome fallen sauntering toward me, while I tried desperately to keep my voice from quavering.

Even in the dim light, his amber eyes were luminous, and his dark-brown hair lustrous. He was as beautiful as the other fallen I had encountered, although somehow he looked harder and stronger than the rest. Even his clothes—a black leather jacket and boots that had an almost militaristic feel—added to his physical intimidation, not to mention his self-confident swagger. I figured that this smug fallen must serve in the ranks of Coach Samuel, Samyaza I guess I should call him, now that I knew who he truly was.

The fallen answered, “Does it matter, Ellspeth? I’ve been called by so many names over the millennia. When I first arrived on earth, humankind knew me by one name. Since then, I’ve been known by so many others. But my real name is Azaziel.”

“I’ll call you Azaziel, then,” I said distractedly. My words were only my currency to buy time. I needed to assess which tunnel held Michael. And how to get rid of this Azaziel in the process.

“My name is not important, as you well know, Ellspeth. All that matters now are the signs. I’m in charge of the sixth. War was always my expertise,” he said with an unsettling chuckle.

“War?” Some memory came back to me. Something Rafe had said. But I didn’t have time to focus on it. All that I wanted was a few more seconds to determine my course of action.

A distant sound emanated from the brighter tunnel on the left. Michael had to be down there. All I needed to do now was evade this fallen and hasten down that tunnel to Michael’s side. Destroying Azaziel would take too much time, precious minutes that rendered Michael more and more vulnerable.

“Yes, I am responsible for the sixth sign. The revolutions. I will be unleashing war soon.”

Oh no. With a start, I remembered what Rafe had told me. Azaziel wasn’t a minion of Samyaza. Azaziel was one of the key Dark Fallen in the path to the apocalypse. When Michael killed Barakel and I killed Rumiel, the end days timeline had skipped past the fourth and fifth signs to the sixth. We were already at the sign for war.

The knowledge presented me with an impossible situation. I could no longer abandon the task of killing Azaziel so that I could race to rescue Michael. I had to kill Azaziel
and
save Michael or the apocalypse would be upon us. How on earth was I going to do both?

“Samyaza sent me here to impede your progress, to give him more time to prepare for the seventh sign, the final unleashing of our new leader. Our common goal.” He smiled. “As usual, Samyaza underestimated me. He didn’t think I’d try to sway you myself. He didn’t think I’d have time. Fool. He’s always been a humankind-loving fool.”

The tunnel felt like it was tightening around me, bringing Azaziel dangerously close. I needed to get out of there fast, even though I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do. Although it pained me, although it went against the blood tie Michael and I shared, out of sheer desperation, I dashed past Azaziel into the heart of the dark right-hand tunnel.

I felt, rather than saw, the passageway widen as I entered it. I was able to gain considerable speed and force, enough to allow me to lift off the rough floor and into the air. Azaziel pursued me, as I knew he would. Even though flying through the right-hand tunnel took me farther away from Michael, I needed to get some space between me and Azaziel to figure out how I was going to kill a fallen angel whose particular expertise was war. Only then, if I came out unscathed, could I return to my hunt for Michael. If it wasn’t too late to save him.

We soared and ducked and wove through the increasingly convoluted and surprisingly long tunnel. Much to my own astonishment, I felt like I was outdistancing him, until I felt a burning sensation around my ankle. Still flying as fast as I could, I glanced down.

A whip of bright light had coiled around my ankle, and Azaziel held the other end. It seemed the sword of fire could take many forms, particularly in the hands of the creator of war.

Rafe hadn’t prepared me for this.

I reached down to free my ankle, but the cord of light burned my fingertips. I felt Azaziel trying to reel me back with it, like some poor fish on a hook. Although I had no intention of going down quietly, I had absolutely no idea how to unbind my leg.

Without warning, the tunnel emptied out onto a patch of empty countryside. I tumbled down hard upon the ground, and the impact caused the whip to let loose. I stood up and quickly looked around. I couldn’t see the high school buildings anywhere. In the background, I heard the crash of the waves. I wondered where I was.

I had no time to speculate before Azaziel raced out of the tunnel. As I took off in the opposite direction of the tunnel, I suddenly placed the sound and locale. I remembered that, before its recent rebuilding, Tillinghast High School used to sit on a hill overlooking the ocean. This was one of the abandoned playing fields that was adjacent to the high school. I used to play here as a kid.

Unexpectedly, the location gave me an idea.