Aerie f-3 Read online

  Alastor crashed into the long, wooden work-table, practically ripping it from the granite wall. The box fell, and he watched it open, spilling its precious contents as he slowly turned to face his attacker. The armored intruder stood perfectly still, his cold, predator’s gaze watching him.

  A terrible numbness had begun to spread from his chest, traveling to all his extremities. Alastor gazed down at his body gone to seed with the sweet indulgences of humanity, and saw the pommel of an ornate knife sticking out from the center of his chest. His strength suddenly leaving him, he watched helplessly as the ax of fire fell from his grasp to evaporate in a flash before it could hit the floor.

  “What… what have you done to me?”

  The fearsome figure shrugged its shoulders of metal. “Pretty little symbols etched into the metal of the blade,” he said, drawing the same symbols in the air with his finger. “Symbols to take away strength—to make you easier to kill.”

  His legs no longer capable of supporting his enormous mass, Alastor pitched forward atop his wings. The aroma of their rot choked his senses, and he was overcome with a crushing sense of loss.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to them through the plastic cover. He felt his body being turned and gazed up into the disturbing visage that straddled him.

  “How?…” Alastor slurred, the magicks carved upon the knife blade affecting even his ability to speak.

  His attacker reached down, taking hold of the knife that protruded from the center of Alastor’s body.

  “How?” the attacker asked, gripping the hilt.

  “How did … how did you find me?” Alastor gasped.

  The figure standing over him again began to laugh, that horrible sound of a demented child. “Find you?” it repeated, exerting pressure on the blade, cutting down through the flesh and bone of the fallen angel’s chest. He completed his jagged incision, then extracted the blade and replaced it somewhere beneath the layers of his armor. “We did not need to find you,” the Powers’ servant said as it dug the fingers of both hands into the wound. “We knew where you were all along.”

  Alastor closed his eyes to his inevitable fate, focusing all his attention on the rapid-fire beating of his heart. It reminded him of the sound of flight, of his beautiful wings as they beat against the air.

  And then what Alastor had sacrificed so much to keep was stolen away as the visage of death clad in scarlet tore his still-beating heart from his chest.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Can I take your order, sir?” asked the cute girl with the blond ponytail and a smile wide enough to split her face in two.

  Aaron Corbet shook himself from his reverie and tried to focus on the menu board behind her. “Uh, yeah, thanks.” he said, attempting to generate interest in yet another fast-food order. His eyes were strained from hours of driving, and the writing on the menu blurred as he tried to read it. “Give me a Whopper-with-cheese value meal, and four large fries to go.”

  Aaron hoped the four orders of fries would be enough to satisfy Camael’s strange new craving for the greasy fast food. Just a few days ago the angel had given him a song and dance about how creatures of Heaven didn’t need to eat—but that had been before he sampled some of the golden fried potatoes. Angels addicted to French fries, Aaron thought with a wry shake of his head. Who’da thunk it?

  But then again, who could have predicted this crazy turn his life had taken? he thought as he waited for his order to be filled. The angel Camael had become his companion and mentor since Aaron’s realization that he was born a Nephilim. He remembered how insane it had all sounded at first—the hybrid offspring of the mating between a human woman and an angelic being. Aaron thought he was losing his mind. And then people he cared about started dying, and he realized there was much more at stake than just his sanity.

  Aaron turned away from the counter and looked out over the dining room. He noticed a couple with a little boy who appeared to be no more than four years old. The child was playing with a blue plastic top that he must have gotten as a prize with his kid’s meal. Aaron immediately thought of Stevie, his foster brother, and a weighty feeling of unease washed over him. He recalled the last time he had seen his little brother. The seven-year-old autistic child was being dragged from their home in the clutches of an angel—a soldier in the service of a murderous host of angels called the Powers. The Powers wanted Aaron dead, for he was not just a Nephilim, he was also supposed to be the chosen one spoken of in an angelic prophecy written over a millennium ago, promising redemption to the fallen angels.

  At first it had been an awful lot to swallow, but lately Aaron had begrudgingly come to accept the bizarre twists and turns that life seemed to have in store for him. Camael said that it was all part of his destiny, which had been predetermined long before he was born.

  The child had managed to make the top spin and, much to his parents’ amusement, clapped his hands together as the plastic toy careened about the table top.

  The prophecy predicted that someone very much like Aaron would be responsible for bringing forgiveness to the angels hiding on Earth since the Great War in Heaven, that he would be the one to reunite the fallen with God. It’s a big job for an eighteen-year old foster kid from Lynn, Massachusetts, but who was he to argue with destiny?

  The spinning top flew from the table and the little boy began to scream in panic. Again Aaron was bombarded with painful memories of the recent past, of his foster brother’s cries as he was stolen away. “I think I’ll keep him,” the Powers leader, Verchiel, had said as he handled the little boy like some kind of house pet. Aaron’s blood seethed with the memory. Perhaps he was some kind of savior, but there was nothing he wanted more than to find his brother. Everything else would have to wait until Stevie was safe again.

  The child continued to wail while his panicked parents scrambled to find the lost toy. On hands and knees the boy’s father retrieved the top from beneath a nearby table and brought the child’s sadness to an abrupt end by returning the toy to him. Though his face was still streaked with tears, the boy was smiling broadly now. If only my task could be as simple, Aaron thought wearily.

  “Do you want ketchup?” he heard someone say close by, as he turned his thoughts to how much farther he’d be able to drive tonight. He was tired, and for a brief moment he considered teaching Camael how to drive, but that thought was stricken from his mind by the image of the heavenly warrior in the midst of a minor traffic altercation, cutting another driver in two with a flaming sword.

  Aaron felt a hand upon his shoulder and spun around to see the girl with the ponytail and the incredibly wide smile holding out his bags of food. “Ketchup?” she asked again.

  “Were you talking to me?” he asked, embarrassed, as he took the bags. “I’m sorry, I’m just a bit dazed from driving all day and…”

  He froze. His foster mom would have described the strange feeling as somebody walking over his grave, whatever the hell that meant. He never did understand the strange superstitions she often shared, but for some reason, the imagery of that one always stuck with him. Aaron missed his foster parents, who had been mercilessly slain by Verchiel, and it made his desire to find his brother all the more urgent. He turned away from the counter to see a man hurriedly going out a back door, two others in pursuit.

  The angelic nature that had been a part of him since his eighteenth birthday screamed to be noticed, and senses far beyond the human norm kicked into action. There was a trace of something in the air that marked the men’s passing as they left the store. It was an aroma that Aaron could discern even over the prominent smells of hot vegetable oil and frying meat. The air was tainted with the rich smell of spice—and of blood.

  With a polite thank-you he took his food and left the store, quickly heading to the metallic blue Toyota Corolla parked at the back of the lot. He could see the eager face of his dog in the back window. Gabriel began to bark happily as he reached the car, not so much that his master had returned, but that he had return
ed with food.

  “What took so long?” the dog asked as Aaron placed the bags on the driver’s seat. “I didn’t think you were ever coming out.”

  Being able to understand and speak any form of language, including the vocalizations of animals, was yet another strange manifestation of Aaron’s angelic talents, and one that was both a blessing and a curse when it came to his canine friend.

  “I’m starved, Aaron,” the dog said eagerly, hoping that there would be something in one of the bags to satisfy what seemed to be a Labrador retriever’s insatiable urge to eat.

  Gabriel also loved to talk, and after Aaron had used his unique abilities to save the dog after a car accident, the Lab had suddenly become much smarter, making him quite the dynamic personality. Aaron loved the dog more than just about anything else, but there were days that he wished Gabriel was only a dog.

  “I’d really like to eat,” he said from the backseat, licking his chops.

  “Not now, Gabe,” Aaron responded, directing his attention to the large man sitting with his eyes closed in the passenger seat. “I have to speak with Camael.” The angel ignored him, but that didn’t stop Aaron from talking. “Inside the restaurant,” he said. “I think three angels just went out the back door and…”

  Camael slowly turned his head and opened his steely blue eyes. “Two of them are of the Powers; the other, a fallen angel”—he tilted back his head of silvery white hair and sniffed, the mustache of his goatee twitching—“of the host Cherubim, I believe. I was aware of their presence when we pulled into the lot.”

  “And you didn’t think it was important to say anything?” Aaron asked, annoyed. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for. They might know where Stevie is.”

  The angel stared at him without emotion, the plight of Aaron’s little brother obviously the furthest thing from his mind. With Camael, it was all about fulfilling the prophecy—that and finding a mysterious haven for fallen angels called Aerie.

  “We have to go after them,” Aaron said forcefully. “This is the first contact we’ve had with anything remotely angelic since we left Maine.”

  Gabriel stuck his head between the front seats. “Then we really should eat first. Right, Camael?” he asked, eyeing the bags resting on the seat. “Can’t go after angels on an empty stomach, that’s what I always say.” The dog had begun to drool, spattering the emergency break.

  Camael moved his arm so as not to be splashed and glared at the animal. “I do not need to eat,” he snarled, apparently very sensitive to the recent craving he had developed for French fries.

  Aaron opened the back door of the car and motioned for Gabriel to get out. “C’mon,” he said to them both. “We have to hurry or we’ll lose them.”

  “May I have a few fries before we go?” the dog asked as he leaped from the car to the parking lot. “Just to hold me over until we get back.”

  Aaron ignored his dog and slammed the door closed, anxious to be on his way.

  “Do you think this wise?” Camael asked as he removed himself from the front seat of the car. “To draw attention to ourselves in such a way?”

  Aaron knew there was a risk in confronting the angels, but if they were ever going to find his brother they had to take the chance. “The Powers answer to Verchiel, and he’s the one who took Stevie,” Aaron said, hoping that the angel would understand. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t at least try to find out what they know.”

  Camael moved around the car casually buttoning his dark suit jacket, impeccable as always. “You do realize that this will likely end in death.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Aaron said as he turned away from his companions and followed the dwindling trail of angel scents into the dense woods behind the fast-food restaurant.

  No matter how he tried to distract himself, Verchiel found himself drawn to the classroom within the St. Athanasius Orphanage where the prisoner was held.

  Standing in the shadows of the room, the angel stared at the huddled figure feigning sleep within his prison, and marveled at how a mere cage of iron could contain an evil so vast. Verchiel would destroy the prisoner if he could, but even he was loath to admit that he did not have the power to accomplish such a task. He would have to take a level of satisfaction from the evil one’s containment, at least for now. When matters with the Nephilim and the accursed prophecy were properly settled, then he could concentrate on an appropriate punishment for the captive.

  “Am I that fascinating a specimen?” the prisoner asked from his cage. He slowly brought himself to a sitting position, his back against the bars. In his hand he held a gray furred mouse and gently stroked its tiny skull with an index finger. “I don’t believe we saw this much of each other when we still lived in Heaven.”

  Verchiel bristled at the mention of his former home; it had been too long since last he looked upon its glorious spires and the memory of its beauty was almost too painful to bear. “Those were different times,” he said coldly. “And we … different beings.” The leader of the Powers suddenly wanted to leave the room, to be away from the criminal responsible for so much misery, but he stayed, both revolted and mesmerized by the fallen angel and all he had come to embody.

  “Call me crazy,” the prisoner said conversationally as he gestured with his chin beyond the confines of his prison, “but even locked away in here I can feel that something is happening.”

  Verchiel found himself drawn toward the cage. “Go on.”

  “You know how it feels before a summer storm?” the prisoner asked. “How the air is charged with an energy that tells you something big is on the way? That’s how it feels to me. That something really big is coming.” The prisoner continued to pet the vermin’s head, waiting for some kind of confirmation. “Well, what do you think, Verchiel?” he asked. “Is there a storm on the way?”

  The angel could not help but boast. His plans were reaching fruition and he felt confident. “More deluge than storm,” Verchiel responded as he turned his back upon the captive. “When the Nephilim—this Aaron Corbet—is finally put down, a time of change will be upon us.” He strode to a haphazardly boarded window and peered through the cracks at the New England summer night with eyes that saw through darkness as if it were day.

  “With the savior of their blasphemous prophecy dead, all of the unpunished criminals of the Great War, driven to despair by the realization that their Lord of Lords will not forgive them, will at last be hunted down and executed.” Verchiel turned from the window to gaze at his prize. “That is what you are feeling in the air, Son of the Morning. The victory of the Powers—my victory.”

  The prisoner brought the mouse up to his mouth and gently laid a kiss upon its tiny pointed head. “If you say so, but it doesn’t feel like that to me. Feels more special than that,” he said. The mouse nuzzled his chin and the prisoner chuckled, amused by the tiny creature’s show of affection.

  Verchiel glided toward the cage, a cold smile forming on his colorless lips. “And what could be more special than the Nephilim dying at the hands of his sibling?” he asked the prisoner cruelly. “We have spared nothing in our pursuit to destroy him.”

  The prisoner shook his head disapprovingly. “You’re going to use this kid’s brother to kill him? That’s cold, Verchiel—even for someone with my reputation.”

  The angel smiled, pleased by the twisted compliment. “The child was a defective, a burden to the world in which he was born—that is, until I transformed him, forged him into a weapon with only one purpose: to kill the Nephilim and every tainted ideal that he represents.” He paused for dramatic effect, studying the expression of unease upon the captive’s gaunt face. “Cold?” Verchiel asked. “Most assuredly, for to bring about the end of this conflict I must be the coldest one there is.”

  The mouse had defecated in the prisoner’s hand and he casually wiped it upon his robe of heavy brown cloth. “What makes this Nephilim—this Aaron Corbet—any different from the thousands of
others you’ve killed over the millennia?”

  Verchiel recalled his battle with this supposed savior, the ancient angelic sigils that covered his flesh, his ebony wings, the savagery of his combat skills. “There is nothing special about this one,” he sneered. “And those of the fallen who cling to the belief that he is the savior of prophecy must be shown this.”

  He remembered how they battled within the storm he himself had conjured, weapons of heavenly fire searing the very air. It was to be a killing blow; his sword of fire poised to sever the blasphemer’s head from his body. And then, inexplicably, lightning struck at Verchiel, and he fell from the sky in flames. The burns on his body had yet to heal, the pain a constant reminder of the Nephilim, and how much was at stake. “With his death,” Verchiel continued, “they will be shown that the prophecy is a lie, that there will be no forgiveness from the Creator.”

  The prisoner leaned his head of shaggy black hair against the iron bars of his prison as the mouse crawled freely in his lap. “Why does the idea of the prophecy threaten you so?” he asked. “After all this time, is absolution such a terrible thing?”

  Verchiel felt his anger blaze. His mighty wings unfurled from his back, stirring the dust and stagnant air of the room. “It is an affront to God! Those who fought against the Lord of Lords should be punished for their crimes, not forgiven.”

  The prisoner closed his eyes. “But think of it, Verchiel: to have the past cleared away. Personally I think it would be pretty sweet.” He opened his eyes and smiled a beatific smile that again reminded Verchiel of how it had been in Heaven—and how much had been lost to them all. “Who knows,” the prisoner added, “it might even clear up that complexion of yours.”