by Lumi Laura
CHAPTER 51 The Pearly Gates
As they struggled back through darkness toward the Chateau, the girl gradually become aware of her own identity and wondered whom she'd pulled out of the Underworld, hoping it wasn't someone she'd regret liberating. She kept urging the woman forward, trying to gain distance from the Hellmouth.
"Stop!" the woman, said. "I'm ill." Her stomach retched. She burped loudly, projectile vomited, and leaned over gagging with chunks of human flesh hitting the ground. Alex left her to her heaving and just held her, stroked her grease-filled hair and waited for her to finish.
Gradually, Alex came to her senses, and she saw the woman beside her was indeed Velinar. Velinar didn't yet know her, so severe had been her submission and conversion. Alex spotted light from the Chateau and headed toward it. Velinar stumbled and fell. Alex reached to help her.
"Alexandra? Is that you?" Velinar asked.
"We're safe, now that the cave collapsed."
"How did you find me?"
"I didn't. I just wandered onto you."
Velinar rose to her feet, and they struggled forward. The grease and grim seemed to dissolve of its own accord the farther they got from the entrance to the Underworld, and Velinar was beginning to resemble the woman who bit her in what seemed so many ages ago. In fact it had been only a little over a year. Here in vampire psychic space, time didn't seem to be linear. Jaklin had said of her initiation that she trained for years with the Amazons.
Alex looked back one more time and saw two souls emerge from the pile of rubble, both struggling and leaning into each other to stand. She squinted into the darkness for they looked familiar. Could it be?
"Help me, Missy," called Mikhail, "for Jaklin has gotten herself injured."
"You're in worse shape than I am," said a quarreling Jaklin.
Alex flew into their arms. "Never should you have done that. Don't you ever consider the risk?"
They turned back to Velinar who was still struggling to stand.
"Speaking of risk... You might think twice too, Alexandra," said Velinar.
Alex turned on Jaklin and Mikhail. "How could you two possibly be here?" she asked. "You didn't leave Andra's soul alone in the Chateau. Did you?"
"Of course not," said Mikhail. "But you should have seen what happened after you went back to get Velinar. The Gates of the City of God burst open and a flock of angels flooded out. They couldn't cross Acheron, but they hovered over the edge of the bridge and leaned forward to see where you were going. From among them, one stepped forth who was greater than the others. It was a man with no wings standing among angels. He crossed the bridge, opened the door, and I swear to you, Missy, he had tears in his eyes. He had given up hope. He took little Andra from me and would have gone back through the door and across the bridge to the City of God leaving us standing there, but little Andra, small as she is, pounded her tiny fist in his chest until even he turned back to us.
"Go," he said. "God will be with you."
"But who was he?" asked Alex.
Velinar knew. "It was Catalin, of course. He's always meddling."
"We ran," said Jaklin. "We ran as we've never run before. We'd watched closely where you went and knew the vicinity of where you disappeared. We found the entrance, and down we cascaded. And yes, we had bitten off more than we could chew. For, once down there, we had forgotten who we were, why we were there, and were being pulled into the multitude, but then you and Velinar came out of the darkness and we recognized you and we recovered. Although we had no weapons, we fought back the forces of Hell, Missy, and then we all came back up the stairs."
"And yes," said Mikhail, "Jaklin was amazing."
She punched him.
By the time they reached the Chateau, Velinar had recovered. She said, "This will not be the end of it. You must realize what we've done."
"So be it," said Alex as they entered. "It is the end of appeasement. We shouldn't be in the business of buying peace by allowing atrocities against God's divine creatures."
Catalin was inside babysitting Andra. When Alex saw Andra again, she seemed confused. "What is her soul doing here anyway? Please tell me that she didn't die."
"No," said Catalin. "Children's souls stay in Heaven until they are fully anchored to the real world. Obviously, Andra's soul is still firmly planted in Heaven, but she's very much alive in your world."
Alex took Andra from Catalin. There in psychic space, Alex wasn't cold, and little Andra clung to her like a leech.
Velinar addressed him. "We've awakened something from the Depths of Despair that would have been better off left sleeping," she said.
"Mingling with mortals and the Undead is bound to have unsavory consequences. We'll all pay a price." Catalin shook his head and looked terribly dejected.
"Why should we expect repercussions?" asked Alex.
"It's the physics," he said.
"Evil is like entropy," added Velinar. "It just keeps coming."
"At least you're saying 'we' now instead of treating us as a subspecies," said Mikhail.
Velinar stood at the open door before the bridge to the City of God. "Come with me," she said, and they followed Velinar out of the Chateau and across the bridge. On the other side, the angels gave a great cry of thanks and glory to those who had saved their beloved Velinar.
Velinar tried to take little Andra from Alex, but Andra would have none of it. Velinar said, "Well, perhaps just a little farther. You can't go through the Gates, but just this once, stand before them."
Once among the angels, they fluttered about the three heroes touching them with their hands, their wings causing great gusts of divine air to swirl about them.
And they walked to the Pearly Gates before the City of God and they swung open. And then Jaklin and Mikhail kissed little Andra, and she hugged her mother's neck and kissed her and hugged her again, and allowed Velinar to take her from her mother although her face wrinkled and she cried.
Velinar with the soul of Andra in her arms and Catalin in tow passed though the Pearly Gates with the angels following close behind, and just as they were closing, they got a peek inside. Alex had seen it all before in a dream, but even for her, it was an astonishment. What they saw and those they saw inside was so far beyond describing that even in all the years to come when Alex would try to voice a word to chronicle what they had seen, tears would fill her eyes, her voice would crack and her two companions could only shake their heads yes, they knew, for they had seen it too.
CHAPTER 52 Seraph at Shadowrise
Alex, her two companions and great grandmother couldn't wait for the mountain snow to melt, so they could resume their hikes of the previous summer. Sure, skiing was fun, but the baby, hearty as Andra was, would need another year before Alex and Catherine would feel comfortable taking her up in the gondola in the cold wind.
Catherine and Daniel were married after only two months of courtship. They couldn't get enough of each other and didn't want talk of their intimacy to spread beyond the family without ritual sanctioning. They learned two weeks later that Catherine was pregnant, which set not only them in a dither but also the World of Vampires, having reopened the question of whether immortality was really worth giving up a human life.
Now that summer was in full swing, they'd been up the mountain on day hikes to the unusual rock formation called the Sphinx, a natural Carpathian sandstone replica of the one in Egypt, but in miniature. They liked to watch both sunset and Shadowrise from up there, leaning against the Sphinx while eating their evening meal before starting back down to Sinaia. They frequently returned after dark using their enhanced vampire night vision. They considered it a challenge that served to bind them as friends. The three vampires would guide the human couple through the darkness and venture into the night shadows to discuss philosophical issues — the nature of evil was a favorite topic — and wonder the ways of the world. Occasionally, Catherine would invite a vampire friend of many years standing, one of intellectual proclivity, or simply a comical charac
ter, to spice up their experience.
So it was that one evening they were up at the Sphinx watching the glowing last lip of a magnificent sun burn itself out at the western horizon and shadows rise up from the valley below to darken the Eastern Carpathians, when they saw on a nearby mountaintop a dark figure spread its cloak as if to become a bat and fly off into the heavens. But in the air above, they saw another object materialize, a winged creature, too large to be an eagle or other denizen of the heavens, descending rapidly. As the dark shape spread its cloak, the angel spread its gold and silver wings to stop its descent and hoover. A lightning bolt struck from the angel to the dark shape, but instead of it crumbling, the angel itself lost strength, fluttered for a second, then plummeted to the ground.
Alex heard a clap of thunder and a long train of echoes off the mountainsides.
"Is that Alu?" asked Mikhail.
"Couldn't be," replied Jaklin. "And that winged creature?" She started to run.
Down the slope they went, and once at the saddle between hills, up the other side. Jaklin and Mikhail were in the lead with Alex carrying little Andra following and Catherine and Daniel struggling to keep up.
Alex saw the dark shape disappear over the ridge as she approached the fallen. She and Jaklin bent over the creature lying on the ground. It was a person, but unlike any they'd ever even imagined. It was phosphorescent, casting its own glow in pale twilight.
Alex noticed the sweet, metallic smell of ozone mixed with burnt creature flesh. The angel had black singe marks across her chest. Alex heard a humming noise and looked up into the clouds at a thousand wings that fluttered over them and quickly disappeared.
Alex held the divine being's hand and consoled it as it took what proved to be its dying breaths. Its glowing wings folded and seemed to dissolve into its back. Slowly, it lost its internal light and became human.
"It's a seraph," said Catherine, once she arrived.
"The war... has begun," the seraph said.
"What war?" asked Jaklin.
The seraph did not respond.
"Who was that?" asked Alex.
"The Great Evil has been turned loose upon the world."
TO BE CONTINUED