Michael: The Mark (Airel Saga Book Four)

Chapter III

Arlington, Oregon—Present Day

"AND THE LORD PUT a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him..."

I pored over this verse in Genesis 4, just one page before the one to which Kreios had guided me what seemed like an eternity ago. I was stunned at how much the Bible said, and with so little. The trouble was, what did it all mean? I was reading by the light of my Tracphone in the darkness of my hotel room, having grabbed the Gideons' copy of the Bible out of the nightstand.

I had no idea why I had turned absentmindedly to this page. I was just sitting there reading it when it jumped off the page and grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.

Oh, Kreios ... I really, really miss you. I wished more than anything then for my grandfather to come home to me. And home—at least as I had always thought of it up to that moment of my life— was now simply wherever he was. It's not that I didn't care about or miss my parents. I didn't have the luxury of time enough to reflect on them or what they might be thinking, how they might be worried about me. Truth be told, I was trying to avoid that subject. It was too painful, too far out of my control.

I was a prisoner again. A prisoner to circumstance. It sucked. Is life really like this? Just all kinds of crap that happens to you? Or does a girl get to make a choice every now and then?

She crowded into my mind. "But you've already made all kinds of choices..."

True enough. The realization made me hurt unbearably.

I was completely frazzled and confused and lonely and in need of somebody stronger than me. Though the tears threatened the edges of my eyelids again, I was sick of crying, sick of being carried along, sick of abdicating, sick of this slimy acquiescence that marked me somehow. And I supposed all of us, really, bore some kind of mark.

But I hated labels. I hated that my favorite books, for instance, had to be categorized as this or that or the other thing. Why couldn't they just stand alone on their own merit? Why did life lump everything together? "Grrr," I said to the lame hotel room painting hanging above the mirror.

Kim, snoring next to me on the bed, stirred a little, but didn't wake. From across the room on the other bed came a voice: "Date went that well, eh?"

"How 'bout you shut your face, Ellie," I muttered, with more than a little menace.

No reply.

I continued: "Or I'll come over there and finish the job I started when we first met." I was so peeved. How was anything about Michael and me any of her business? I just wanted her to go away. As I brought my knees to my chest and dropped my head into my folded arms, I willed her to go away.

But then the bed moved and I looked up reflexively. I jumped a little. She was sitting there right in front of me, on my side of the bed. How did she get over here so quick, so quietly? "Whadda you want?" I spat.

"Girlie, I was going to ask you the very same thing."

"Stop calling me that."

"Calling you what?" she asked in her insufferably cool accent.

"What gives you the right to poke your nose into everybody's business? And then act like nothing's happening, calling me by pet names. You're not my mom. Lay off."

"Sorry, girlie, it's just who I am."

I could tell she wasn't going to stop irritating me. It was too much fun for her. "Look, I'm not enjoying the game, okay? So bug off."