Michael: The Mark (Airel Saga Book Four)

Chapter XX

Somewhere Over the South Atlantic—Present Day

IT WAS LIKE WE were shot out of a cannon. Everything around us was completely dark, and if it was difficult to hold on to both Michael and the parachute in the confines of the plane, it was seriously close to impossible while falling through the sky. All the problems I had inside the plane were now magnified: it was louder, harder to breathe, more physically demanding, and I couldn't see because I couldn't open my eyes.

She said, "Let Ellie help you." It was a good thing I had ample warning because before I knew it, Ellie was shouting in my ear again. Something about getting the parachute on. Clumsily, I gave her one arm at a time as she helped cinch everything up. This is insane. The straps were either big enough to bundle me together with Michael or there was an extra set. I didn't care about details—I just wanted the madness to end.

I worried that we were going to hit the ocean at any minute, that I wouldn't see it coming. It was really bizarre that my number-one instinct was to see it when it came. Now that there was at least a parachute, though, everything should have balanced out. But it didn't.

She was going berserk in my head, Ellie was shouting, the wind from our descent was debilitating.

I forced my eyes to open. My tear ducts were emptying themselves in the fierce wind and my vision was blurry. It didn't help that we were falling through the last dying embers of the sunset, either; it was almost pitch black.

Except for a weird cluster of light off to one side, that is. As my brain tried to process this new information, I became sick with fright: I was looking at the city lights of Cape Town. From like, thousands of feet above it. I could see the outline of the coast of South Africa below, but it wasn't directly below. It was below and far away. We were going to fall into the ocean.

Ellie shouted something into my ear again, grasped something on the front of me and then pushed off violently, yanking hard on the straps as she went. "Hey." I shouted in total impotence, the pelting wind sucking all the volume from me. And then I realized something new. Ellie had pulled my ripcord.

It was like hitting pavement. Or maybe like getting your arms ripped completely off. Whatever the case, the chute opened above and Michael and I were saved. I realized how thankful I needed to be for all that had happened at Ellie's hands. I couldn't have held on to Michael if I had wanted to. I was very glad to have him strapped to me.

I looked around me, trying to orient myself by the lights of the city and what remained of the sunset behind us. Below, I saw Ellie's chute deploy in a bright red and white flume, filling with air, arresting her descent as well.

I breathed a sigh of relief and wept silently to myself. This is totally crazy. I can't believe Hex and Bishop. Is Michael okay? How do we get out of this one? Are we going to just crash into the ocean? Who will save us then?

I looked out to the horizon again, glad for a moment's peace. A bloom of white and orange erupted far below us. That was the plane. It just crashed into the ocean.

Then something flew by me. Something big and dark. Dark. My mind returned to the dark cloud I had seen from the cockpit before everything had gone horrible.

"Get ready," She said.

***

Cape Town, South Africa—Present Day

IT HADN'T TAKEN LONG at such a late hour for Kreios to drive the little Toyota bakkie from Muizenberg to Cape Town's business district. He had parked about a half a kilometer from the building.

It was a major landmark, one of the tallest in the city. The ruse was that the company drilled for, refined, shipped, and bought and sold speculative shares of oil. And that provided its masters with the resources they needed to ply their real trade. Kreios knew it all; how could he not? The wicked hands at these controls belonged to fallen angels with whom he had once dwelt in paradise. Before all the stars fell.