Chapter 16
I walked back home to Andrew's house around mid-afternoon. I couldn't wait to hear Holly lecture me about stupid it was to go after my sister. She was probably going to give another one of her talks about how, during the apocalypse, it was everyone for themselves.
Maybe Holly was right — perhaps the two of them were the only family I had left in this ruined world. As I wandered down the empty streets, it occurred to me seeing a human face — any human at all — would have been a relief at this point.
As I got to Andrew's house, I couldn't believe my eyes. The front door to Andrew's house was wide open. The garage door was empty. My dad's car was gone.
No! She wouldn't just leave me!
For the longest time, I just stood there unblinkingly. This couldn't be happening. They wouldn't just evacuate without me. But the scene before me spoke of a different story. The doormat had been knocked off the porch and was sitting on the lawn. Unopened junk mail laid strewn over the front steps. I stood there and stared even as the wind blew some abandoned paper plates and garbage bags over from the neighbor's yard.
The entire street was empty of people, and my friends were gone as well.
I reached into the pocket of my oversized jeans and found Dr. Lemeris's card. She said I could call her if I needed a place to stay. Any of the military officials walking around would have a working phone. I felt a hard lump growing in my throat. I didn't want to go back there to those sterile tents full of medical equipment.
More than that, I felt horribly betrayed. The two of them left me while I was unconscious and stole my father's car. Some friends they were. How could I have treated them like family? I was desperate with grief, and I had trusted them like an idiot.
In a fury, I kicked one of the overturned garbage cans but only succeeded in hurting my big toe. I clenched my fists and grunted with all my might at the open front door. Then, I took several deep breathes and reluctantly — slowly placing one foot ahead of the other, I grudgingly headed back to the boardwalk.
Everything was a lie. Holly wasn't into me. She just wanted my car. As for Jack, he didn't come running downstairs last night to keep us from being turned into vampire food. He was just worried the car key would end up wedged between some vampire's rotten teeth.
I was so wrong about everything. I had been so naïve to trust the two of them. People never change. I thought back to that time in middle school when someone nicked my Keroppi wallet from my backpack as I waited to buy a firecracker Popsicle from the ice cream truck. When I got to the front of the line, I reached into my bag and realized my money was gone. I asked if anyone had seen it, and the popular kids all laughed at me. Of course, they knew where my money had gone. They just thought I was the creepy loser who sat on the bleachers during gym class.
Holly had nicked my car just as her friends had nicked my wallet. I was the fool who fell for the same trick twice.
As I walked, I thought back to what Dr. Lemeris told me about rebirth. Heck, if I ended up falling into the ocean and becoming a vampire — I'm going to haunt those two to the ends of the earth.
As I walked, I saw the granny from earlier sitting at the window. She was still stroking that rifle in her hands as she rocked back and forth in a chair on her porch. I hadn't noticed before, but now I saw she had cataracts in her eyes, and her mouth was missing a set of dentures.
"The world is ending," she said to me. "And the devil shall roam the earth."
"Excuse me?" I asked.
"Satan has escaped from his bottomless pit. He walks among us."
It was just demented babbling, but I was upset. I snapped back at her. As I opened my mouth to insult her, nothing came out. This always happened when my emotions took over. I was terrible at coming up with insults on the spur of the moment.
As I stood trying to think of what nasty names to call her, the woman reached up and pointed her knobby finger at me.
"You're cursed," she said with a laugh. "We're all cursed here." In shock, instead of delivering a witty but biting insult, I backed away like a scared little girl. I didn't know what led her to make that creepy judgment on me. Of course, my ratty oversized t-shirt had seen better days, but surely she didn't have to call me the Son of the Morning.
"You know there are some who say that the devil fell from heaven because of his sympathy for humanity."
I spun around at the sound of that voice. For a crazy second, I had hoped it was my friends. Nope. It was a stranger. It was just a chubby woman who was putting the finishing touches on packing up her luggage into her SUV. Even though that little lady didn't look like she would be much of a defense against a vampire horde, I breathed a sigh of relief to see another sane human on these deserted streets. "Maybe, we could use some help now, whether it comes from heaven or hell, Mrs. June."
"Mrs. June?" I asked and gestured to the crazy old crone holding the rifle."
"Yeah, she's lived here on this street forever," the woman with the SUV said. "She was an old religious bat before the Alzheimers got to her. Then again, maybe she's having a moment of clarity today."
"I don't know why anyone would give a gun to a woman who sees ghosts," I muttered.
"Don't worry, I'm sure she didn't remember to load the gun," the woman said with a laugh. "Then again, frankly, at this point, we're all seeing ghosts, aren't we?"
"Yeah," I replied with an unsettling laugh. I didn't like this woman who had come to my aid. It was hard to trust anyone driving a battered, dented old car with tinted windows. It looked like the kind of car one used to kidnap little children in bad cartoons. "You didn't see two teenagers driving by recently in a black Honda, did you?"
"Actually, I did. It was a young boy with brown hair and a pretty girl wearing an old blue sweater, right?"
"Yeah! Yup, that's them!" I said a little too eagerly. Maybe they hadn't abandoned me after all. If this woman saw them, perhaps they were still close by. "Did they just leave? Which direction did they go?"
"They went in the direction of the beach."
"Thanks!" I said and prepared to sprint toward the boardwalk. The lady reached out and grabbed me by the arm.
"Wait a second; it was about an hour ago."
"Oh," I said as my face fell. If Holly and Jack had an hour head start, they could be anywhere by now.
"I can give you a ride," the woman offered. "I'm headed in that direction."
I bit my lip. I didn't trust her, but it was either go with the mysterious lady with the unmarked van or sit down next to Mrs. June and wait for nightfall. Maybe the old granny could spare another one of her play-guns.
"If you want to catch up with them, we need to hurry," the woman said, reassuringly. I recalled what my mother used to tell me about getting into cars with strangers, but I had no choice. My mother was always the cautious one. And now she's a member of the vampire horde, so a lot of good her advice would do me. As I got into the car with the woman and buckled my seat belt, I noticed a badge with a scorpion on it sitting in the cupholder. The woman saw me staring at it.
"I work for Qarinik," she explained and turned the badge around so that only the leather side faced me. "My name is Patrice Deritus. We're an organization like your friends, the Levarsi. We're equal but opposite, you could say. Everyone who's still left in Miami at this point is either here because they're obligated to be. Either that or they are clinically insane like that old lady there."
"How did you know I was with the Levarsi today?" I asked. Patrice smiled at me as she started up the car.
"I know who you are, and I know you have the KoRi cells in your heart. Don't worry; there are hundreds of you around the world who live with those cells in your bodies. It's not a big deal."
"And yet you know who I am," I said, carefully. I was starting to think we didn't meet by accident. "Do you recognize all of them when you bump into them on the street?"
"No, just you."
"Why?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"YES!"
"I guess it won't hurt to tell you. It won't make a wink of difference at this point. The plots of man are no match for the will of heaven, as we like to say. You've shown up on our radar because there's a powerful man who is very interested in you."
"Who?" I demanded. For a second, my heart skipped a beat. Could it be someone who knew my father? Could he be looking for me?
"It doesn't matter. The most powerful man on earth is no match for the might of angels. You've been seeing a boy in your dreams, haven't you?" She asked. "I was fiddling around with radio waves earlier, trying to catch the news. It was by luck that I intercepted a call earlier today that said as much. Be careful of that boy that you see when you close your eyes. He doesn't have your best interests at heart."
"Why should I believe anything you say? People have dreams all the time. You could be bullshitting me."
"The boy in your dreams, his name is Jadueriel. Call him by that name the next time you see him. He'll answer to it. You'll see."
"So what if he does? What difference goes it make?"
"The difference is that he's the key to ending the Blight Rain. Talk to him, you'll see. "
I folded my arms over my chest and sighed. I wished it wasn't taking the woman forever to navigate this overloaded car around all the abandoned cardboard boxes and old furniture that littered the streets. My head hit the ceiling of the car as she went into a pothole. On the road, I saw a pair of boy's sneakers tied together at the laces which were sitting beside a deflated basketball. For some reason, those artifacts made me think of the boy from my dream. Although he had the body of a boy, his green eyes reminded me of an ancient being. He was definitely the very embodiment of the term "old soul."
I believed Patrice when she told me the boy in my dream was an angel from the beginning of the world who had come back with a grudge against humanity — against me.
"What does he want with me?" I finally asked. "Why is he appearing in my dreams?"
"The key isn't why he wants you," Patrice said without taking her eyes off the road. "The question you should be asking is — how do you make him stop?"
"Okay, how do I make him stop?" I parroted, mimicking her nasal voice just to annoy her. It didn't work. I saw her pull a cigarette out from one of the cup holders and place it between her lips without lighting it.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" She asked. "You can crack open a window if it bothers you."
I shook my head, but I cracked open a window anyway. It was an old habit. After I had my surgery, the doctors said I should be extra careful with my health. Now, as I stared at this landscape of death down Martin Luther Blvd, I wondered why bother?
"Smoking is bad for you, you know," I finally muttered to remind her that I had asked a question that she had yet to answer.
"Is it? Patrice asked with a laugh. Her turkey chins bounced up and down as she did so. I didn't like her, but at least she looked like she had less a stick up her you-know-what than Dr. Lemeris did. "I wouldn't know. I'm not a doctor like your Levarsi friends. I'm more interested in myths. Speaking of which — have you heard the myth of Nüwa?" Patrice asked.
"Yeah, she's a goddess," I muttered. Sitting back and staring into the distance, I remembered my mother showed me pictures of the goddess standing on a hill in her hometown of Handan City. She was made of white stone and had long, draping sleeves. I thought she was beautiful until I saw a picture of her with the body of a snake.
"It's rather lonely to be a goddess," Patrice said as she stopped the car by a streetlight. I wondered why she bothered since there were no other cars on the road. Then, I understood and rolled my eyes. At a time like this, Patrice had paused to light her cigarette. I couldn't believe she was leisurely smoking her cigarette when it was just a few hours until nightfall. "I can only imagine how lonely to be cursed with immortality. Isn't there that saying in Chinese about old as the earth, long as the sky? I guess she is one of the few people who truly understand how long forever is."
I scoffed. "That's an ironic thing to say at the end of the world. It must be nice to have too much time when the time for humanity is running out."
"True," Patrice said and nodded. She tapped her cigarette over her windshield and sighed. "That's why I like to smoke. It reminds me to enjoy the time I have because it's not about living the longest, but about enjoying the life you have left to live. I suppose somewhere out there; there is a goddess who agrees with me."
"Is this supposed to make sense?" I asked, tapping my fingers on the door handle impatiently.
"Okay, if you want me to get to the point, I'll tell you. According to legend, Nüwa and her husband were responsible for the creation of all of humanity after a great flood. According to the story, they had a child, and that child was cut into tiny pieces to create all of humanity. There is another version of that story that says that she created humans out of the mud and the ones she created with the most care, were gifted with special powers. In another version of the story — and this one I like most of all — these humans were charged with guarding the soul of her husband in a cavern. That cavern was called Aemon, and her husband's soul was linked to an artifact called the blade of Nüwal. Whoever finds that weapon will serve as a vessel for that ancient god's soul."
"So you're saying the young man with the raven black hair in my dreams, he was one of the special gifted ones? Somehow, he wandered into Aemon on a whim, and how he's the vessel for the soul of a god?"
"Yes," Patrice said, "And Jadueriel is after the Levarsi now. The Levarsi is descended from an order of priests who worshipped the goddess of creation. It is only in modern times that they've started to call themselves 'scientists.' As for the goddess of creation — call her Orienne or Ishtar or Isis — these are all just names. What's important is that the rift between Orienne and Jadueriel is the source of these floods. He won't stop until he finds her. Some even say, the two of them never agreed on the fate of that child that was born between them. They say Jadueriel's been biding his time all these years. Now that he's found himself a human body and can leave that cavern he was imprisoned in — he's plotting to kill all of Orienne's children. He's coming for us all — starting with the Levarsi."
"So, he's after me because of these cells?" I asked. "Because the Levarsi implanted these cells in my heart."
"Yes," Patrice said. "But don't worry. I'm sure you won't go down without a fight."
"How can you be so sure?" I asked and snorted.
"Because, you've survived this long with those things inside you," Patrice said. "You've waged war your entire life against those invaders inside your body. Now, you just need to fight a war with an invader here on the outside. Piece of cake, right?"
I laughed at her ruefully. Yeah, it was going to be as easy as swallowing a piece of crumbly, salty mooncake to kill a god. That is — even if he was trapped inside a human vessel. I thought back to the boy I had met. If he was also the prisoner of a foreign being, maybe I could reason with him.