Michael: The Mark (Airel Saga Book Four)

Chapter IX

I STOOD ON THE ground slack-jawed, looking at something impossible.

A bolt of pure light, evidence of heaven, shot straight up into the sky.

Kreios.

I spoke my grandfather's name in awe: "Kreios."

When I first saw him blasting through the atmosphere on a trail of light, my heart took to flight as well. I remembered his training, that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Indeed, love was all I could feel when I saw my grandfather. It was an awesome thing to see him take to the skies.

I let the waves of emotion roll over me. I allowed my heart to roam free in the excitement of knowing that my grandfather was still alive, that I might soon be reunited with him, that he might soon learn the truth about me—that I, too, was still alive. I had to get to him.

I realized then in my reverie that I had closed my eyes.

I opened them to discover that I was more than twenty feet above the pavement.

What the heck?

Thankfully, She interrupted my alarmed thoughts. "Concentrate."

I obliged, wide-eyed. I thought of the last thing I could remember before I found myself hovering above the street. Kreios. I was thinking about seeing him again. Our reunion. I stared at the horizon, at the vertical line described by my grandfather's incredible flight through the air.

I glanced down. I was now more than one hundred feet above the ground, in the darkness of the predawn sky. Whoa. My mind calculated things I hadn't needed before. It made accurate tallies of altitude with a glance, brought me trajectories and g-force loads and sharpened my vision incredibly. While I was taking it all in, She interrupted me again.

"Change of plans. Kreios needs you more than Michael does right now."

I was a gigantic question mark inside. What?

"Use the Sword. Defend your family. Airel, you were born for this. Awaken."

Something inside me took hold. It was beyond thought or explanation. It just was. The word she used—Awaken—was perfect. I felt like every part of me, both human and angelic, once mere averages and mostly asleep, were now wide awake and aware of everything in my environment.

Wideawake. That's what I was. It struck me that there simply was no such thing as coincidence anymore.

My eyes, once wide with new realization, now narrowed into the hard countenance of the warrior. Whatever had happened, She was dead right. I could do this.

I concentrated on one thing: speed.

If I could have seen myself, I might have fainted. I was starting to come into my own. The awakening process, much different from mere activation, had given me my wings. I couldn't see them, but I could feel them. With that change had come new powers of observation, like altitude and airspeed over ground, stuff like that. But I had also gained a new set of eyelids. It sounds gross, but they were cool. They slid down to protect my eyes from the sheer force of the wind rushing against them in flight. They were a little like those nighttime driving glasses, only far cooler and much more useful. They sharpened my sight, protected my eyes, illuminated everything.

I was definitely coming into my own.

I focused on where I needed to be, straight ahead ten miles and about twenty thousand feet straight up. I set my jaw and leaned forward.

I was gone, out of there.

***

THE SPEED I GAINED came quickly. Before I knew it, I was passing five hundred miles per hour and still accelerating. I was going to go supersonic. I looked ahead, toward Kreios, trying to concentrate on flying. Flying.

A few seconds later there was a big boom, and everything went quiet. I was outrunning sound itself.

I stole a glance backward. Behind me was a trail of pure blue light.

***

KREIOS WAS BECOMING DESPERATE. He was getting very close to the edge of what he could handle. He would soon plummet to the earth, out of control, easy pickings for the Nri vultures. He closed his eyes and fixed his heart completely on El now.

"Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him."

Kreios flamed out. He was out of energy, spent. He curled up and fell. It would not be long until the Nri intercepted him and tore him to pieces. There were no questions. There was no why. Whatever happened now would happen, and he would be at peace with it.

With this thought, shadows closed in upon his mind. He thought of his beautiful wife. He had told her thousands of years ago that they would be reunited. He longed to fulfill that promise. Perhaps now...

***

I WAS GETTING CLOSE. I could see clearly from one mile away that Kreios was falling. It looked like he was out of control. What is he doing?

"He needs your help."

Kreios tumbled as if unconscious. A skinny demon with wings much too big for its body took a swipe at Kreios, grabbing him for a moment. I gasped and watched as he tossed my grandfather like a rag doll to another demon, much larger, who then turned back toward the earth.

I knew what to do. If my grandfather was a fearsome warrior, so was I. If he had killed his ten thousands of demonic infidels—which I knew from my own study was a word that meant "unfaithful"—then I too could, and I would. I thought of the Sword.

It sprang instantly to hand.

I opened my mouth to shout. The battle cry that came out shook the very skies. It was a shriek terrible to witness, sounding like a hawk diving for the kill ...only I was ascending into the midst of a black cloud of Nri demons.

"This is the entire Nri horde," She said.

They should have thought twice, I responded.

I did not see the masses of Nri wings and talons, just Kreios. He was my grandfather, he needed me, and I would not let him die.

On my first pass through their airborne mob, I sent one hundred and forty-two of them to hell.

I circled back around for more.

Kreios was still in the grip of the demon who had last grasped him—only most of that demon was gone. All that remained of it was a severed leg. The Sword was doing its job. The limb burst into ash, and my grandfather was free. But still falling.

Now at twenty thousand feet up, before Kreios fell to his death, I had quite simply a crapload of demons to kill. I faced the Nri horde alone, the Sword blazing in my hand.