Michael: The Mark (Airel Saga Book Four)

Chapter XX

He decided on a direct course of action. Something bold, impetuous. He would see how many he would have to kill before the Nri Infernals noticed.

As he walked along the sidewalk at the front of the building, he looked inside the massive lobby through the glass. There was a lone security guard at the enormous desk, which rose like a sailing ship's quarterdeck above the lobby. Beyond it were the main elevators, eight of them.

The guard's head jerked up as Kreios neared the main revolving doors. Slowly, as the truth descended upon his features, the guard's face went white with abject fear.

Kreios carried with him no natural weapon. It wasn't his appearance that had given the guard cause for fear. It was simply that Kreios, now fully aware once more of his body of work over thousands of years, was in close proximity now. And when El's Angel of Death was upon the doorstep, what happened next was inevitable. Final.

The guard stood and began to tremble like a frightened child. Some of his trembling was due to the fact that his Brother was ripping out of his flesh, becoming fully manifest.

Kreios stopped at the revolving front doors, of which there were a pair. Their partitioning panes of glass were arrayed at ninety-degree intervals along their axes of rotation and extended out from there in a radius of at least eight feet, all glass.

Inside the glass façade there was the security desk, set up like a fortress, a command post in the midst of the lobby, and behind that were the elevator cars.

Kreios turned to face his objective. He saw beyond the glass, the polished tiles, the electronic surveillance and security measures, the steel-reinforced concrete. He saw, much like he had seen on the night of the original Passover, not just that there was no signal of atonement on the "lintels," such as there were. No, indeed, not only was this building not excepted from him, it was covered with sign upon sign and symbol upon symbol of its effrontery to El, the enmity it not only represented but embodied. It stood as a monument to itself. It was therefore precisely identical to Lucifer, which was intentional on the part of its masters.

Kreios widened his stance, bending at the knees, and removed his hands from the pocket of his hoodie sweater.

***

Somewhere Over the South Atlantic—Present Day

"RESERVE CHUTE." IT WAS cryptic even for She. But it soon became clear.

The dark cloud, a.k.a. a huge cluster of freaking demons, was swarming. They were coming out of nowhere. They were everywhere, swooping in, through and around us at all times. Meanwhile. Michael and I were just hanging there in the sky, a punching bag, a dangling bull's-eye.

I could tell one of them was bigger than the rest. Worse, it was hounding me. I could feel it circling us, feel the massive bursts of air pressure from its wings, and I caught glimpses of its hideous shape as it passed under me.

In one fell swoop, all the cords holding us to our parachute were cut. We were falling again. And though I couldn't see much, I could see enough to know that we didn't have much time.

My first reaction was stark fear. But something within me rose up and protested against it, told me I was tired of it already. I became contemptuous. That was the only word for it. Letting go of Michael, fully trusting the straps for the first time, I held out my hands.

This stabilized our flight, sending us on a straight trajectory. I scanned what bits of the sky I could see. There were dark shapes flitting everywhere. I couldn't see Ellie's chute. I assumed she too had been cut loose. I also could not see the jerk that had sent us plummeting again.

I quickly realized that I could steer by shifting the position of my limbs. If I put my feet together and held only one arm close to my body, my outstretched arm produced drag and we spun in a barrel roll. Using this newfound trick, I wheeled us clumsily around to face the heavens. I squinted, trying to see, looking around desperately for my prime offender.

I wanted something from it. A wing would do. Perhaps a leg as well.

My mind pulled into wild abstractions, I digressed from this macabre list of menu items to my last conversation with Hex. Have you ever seen the stars? They are beautiful up here. It was true. Though I was hurtling to the earth at probably hundreds of miles per hour, strapped to my boyfriend, no less, I had to admit it. The stars were beautiful.

But there was a massive hole in them. A vacuum of light. And it was getting bigger. Or nearer.

"Come on," was all my mind could produce from my lips as the Sword of Light blazed forth, coming to my hand, ready for battle. In its piercing acetylene light. I saw the menacing outline of my enemy.