by A. L. Mengel
Things seemed to quiet for the moment.
There was no longer the sound of explosions. The fire that was burning was starting to die down. The embers were still hot; they were still bright red, a brilliant orange, but there were no flames.
“And what of her? Where did she go? To save Claret?”
One of the ancient immortals, an old man with a stark white beard down to his knees, looked onward. The old man shook his head. “No, no. To where she went, Claret will never be. Claret will forever be gone and never will return. Forever damned for her sinful curses.”
“So where is she then?”
The old man sat back and stared ahead at the horizon. The smoke was starting to clear, revealing the meadow ahead, the flames gone. “My son, you will understand soon. In time. But for now, what you see is a meadow. Once with a cloud of smoke and flames, and those flames were burning for so much time. And causing so much torment. But the meadow will bloom once again. For that, I am certain.”
“So she is gone forever?”
He smiled, as he looked towards the clearing horizon. The daylight was just starting to finger its way through the parting smoke and dust, as when the smoke rose towards the sky, the first beams of sunlight fingered their way to the dirt below.
“No, my son. She is just starting her mission.”
For Mehki
2004-2015
THE END
The Story Continues in War Angel
The War Angel
A NOVEL BY A.L. MENGEL
“I am the last of my kind.”
“My ancestors have all died and gone from this world, and now, alone, I stand in the center of the hilltop and look upwards towards the sky. It is still dark, angry, burning with crimson red. The painted wisps, the black clouds race across the heavens above me. But as I look down, over towards the barren earth, I see the result of her crucifixion.”
And then there was silence.
Then the sound of stones rolling down a hill as the sun beat down above with ferocious intent. “Take her,” he said. His hair, I remember, was stone white. But that’s all I remember about him, I was so weak with dehydration. “Take her to the bowels. To the dungeon. Chain her up. And give her water. She is near death. We must keep her for the trial. No food. Only water. Go now!”
I laid against rough stone, my eyes watching the door. It remained closed.
*~*~*
She sat back and closed her eyes.
There was a fire in a pit in the center of the holding cell that reflected a warm, orange glow on her cheeks. Such a contrast to the stark contrast of chilling “Many years ago, there was a man who wore a hood, and he rose from the bowels of the earth. A personification of evil. He wiped out my race. Everyone who I had ever known. And relied upon. Everyone…gone.”
“How did he do it?”
She shifted and reached for her wine. “He carried a decanter. And he cast a spell.”
The fire crackled against the silence of the room. She opened her eyes, and saw him writing in a brown, leather bound notebook. “So have you heard me?”
He looked up without a word and nodded.
She waited a few moments, then continued. “I’m the last. I can be assured of that. We were wiped out. Clean. And then, I was forced to embrace a life of solitude.”
“So were you…” He set the book down and looked over at her. “Do you realize that this city – this metro area – this huge area, has no need for you?”
She looked down at her drink. She nodded back and forth. “I have considered that, yes.”
*~*~*
Emaleth cried for three days and three nights.
The sun set on the fourth day, and there was an insurmountable feeling of dread that overcame her; she parted the curtains and looked out the window. The same threes rose from the yard, the same garden reached out towards the mountains on the eastern side of the house.
But she had been gone for too long now.
Emaleth paced across the floor, as the cold stone made the soles of her feet dusty. “Where are you? What are you in my life?” She looked up the ceiling. “Are you my tutor?”
There was a scuffle outside the door, and it interrupted her trance. The clapping of hooves across the dirt outside, running from her right, to the center and left and then off into the distance.
Something different occurred outside of the Ponce de Leon. Anthony and Doug walked silently into the lobby and stopped at the door. Anthony looked over at Douglas, with worry awash in the lines across his face. “I don’t think it happened,” he said. “I think we are okay for now. But I can assure you – we will need to investigate outside.”
*~*~*
The chair creaked as she craned her head back towards the screen door behind her. She turned around in her chair, staying seated. “Need me in there, Henry?” she called in her deep southern drawl.
But there was no answer. She returned to her washing, took a few more strokes, and stopped again.
She turned again in the creaky old wooden chair. “Henry?!” she called, louder and more insistent this time.
No answer again.
Laying the wet clothes down on a towel, she dropped the washboard in the basin and wiped her hands on her apron. It was time to go inside and see what Henry was up to.
The screen door creaked as she opened it slowly, giving way to a silent house. Even as she bent her head inside the door and strained to listen, she did not hear anything but the ticking clock nearby in the kitchen.
She peered inside and waited for the blackness to clear and her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the foyer.
“Henry, I’m gonna come up and see what she is doin’.”
She called up through the winding stairs, which rounded the foyer and the spokes in the railing, like fingers of dark wood posed as bars in front of expansive oil paintings of the owners of the mansion that reached upwards towards the darker cranberry colored walls of the second floor.
A door handle from the second floor clicked open, a door creaked open for a moment, and then silence.
“Henry?” she called again. “Do you hear me?”
The squeaky door slammed. Heavy footsteps followed, moving towards the edge of the dark wooden railing, as Mary looked up at the clear crystal chandelier as it shook from the rumbling of the footsteps.
Henry dashed down the stairs, his bight white eyes contrasting his very dark skin, his eyes open as wide as saucers, his light brown button shirt covered in bright red blood.
“I’m leavin’!” he yelled, taking steps two at a time and jumping down to the foyer, shaking the chandelier as he did so. Mary grabbed his arm and stopped him just as he placed his hand on the knob of the front door. He turned his head to face her. He paused for a moment, breathing heavy, his mouth partly open and salivating, eyes still wide and the look of fear on his face.
“What is goin’ on up there?” she asked, determined for an answer.
Henry grabbed her hand, ripping it off his arm. “I am not staying in this house!” And he stormed through the door, and ran out to the backyard into the coming sunlight. Mary stood and watched him run past the dead garden, farther off to the edge of the garden towards a path that led towards the mountains.
Mary shook her head, let out a deep breath, closed the door, and turned her attention to the upstairs. She wondered why Henry might act like this, but she was concerned about Emile.
“Emile?” she called once she got to the foot of the stairs. “You alright up there?”
There was no answer.
She ascended the stairs, each one creaking under the weight of her foot as she did so; her determined methodical course of taking each step, one by one, ate at her sanity. What was Henry so upset about? The calm, quiet, normally reserved man had just stormed past her down the stairs, running for the door in a desperate attempt to leave the house and the woman upstairs who he loved and served so loyally, the woman who he was so close with that he agreed to deliver her child.
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sp; Mary reached the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway, past the numerous photographs and paintings to the last white door at the end of the cranberry colored walls, shut tight with no sound coming from it.
“Emile?” she called one more time, craning her head to see past the edge of the wall.
Still no answer.
The floorboards creaked as she moved towards the door in the silence of the early morning; the new and infant light permeated the hall from a nearby window, but that light did not deter Mary’s rising fear any more than the silence added to it. So many days before, she had walked the distance from the top of the stairs to the door of the master bedroom so many times in so little time. The distance on other days seemed so insignificant. Today, it seemed almost insurmountable.
But she made it.
After a series of methodical creaking steps and racing heartbeats, she stood in front of the door, and she held her breath for a moment, moving the side of her head close to the door, listing in an effort to hear anything that might give a clue.
Silence.
“Emile, I’m comin’ in,” she said quietly and carefully, as she turned the squeaky doorknob, the concern showing on her face. “I hope you’re ok cause I’m comin’ in right now.”
*~*~*
The sun rose silently on the eastern side of New Orleans. And in the city, on the blocks of lowered steel shudders, and the street sweepers cleaning the streets of the French Quarter, as the yellow warmth of the early morning sun approached, there was a certain tranquility over the city. It could have been the usual post weekend party stupor, or it could have been the time of day when those consumed in deep thought were active. But to Natale, there was a certain liking to that time of day. And then, when he grew tired of the New Orleans mornings, he chose to move to Miami. But before that, he traveled by steamship, across the Atlantic, to Cherbourg, and then, by train, to Lyon.
There was one in Lyon – a Darius Sauvage – who had been living there, who was the perfect specimen. The select choice. And there, in Lyon, he would stay, until the deed was done, and until prophecy was fulfilled.
I thought that I would be watched over. Someone would come with me. Walk the path, protect me, lead me through the torment. But that isn’t what happened. I foraged the path alone. I was not afraid. For I knew that you were with me. You were always near. My War Angel.
“There was a certain day. A morning filled with brilliant sunshine. I remember it so well. When I first saw you.”
The light shined toward the bedroom. Delia shielded her eyes. “Are you here for me? To take me away? Drag me to Hell?”
There was a silhouette of a man against the brilliant white light. “No,” he said. He moved closer to the bed, but did not come into focus. “Do you know what is your destiny? Do you realize what you have been chosen for?”
Delia paused for a moment, and looked down at the covers. She focused on her hands, noticed the bulging veins, the dark age spots, and the spiny fingers. “I cannot do this task you ask of me,” she said. “I may be immortal but look at my age. I cannot do what you think I am destined to do.”
The man moved closer to the bed, and sat down, still a dark silhouette against the shining sun. “You have been selected,” he said. “Do you not think that you can overcome the physical limitations?”
Delia thought of Paris. Of the days past, in the Vaudeville days. She saw the same hot, bright lights shining in her face, she could still see her feet dancing across the same dusty, wooden stage. “It was many years ago that I was so energetic.”
The man stood and turned towards her. She looked up at him. He was surrounded by the brilliance of the sunrise. “Don’t you see what you are meant for? Don’t you understand your calling? You spent years – centuries – protecting evil. Now it is time for you to forage for the better good.”
COMING SOON FROM PARCHMAN’S PRESS
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© 2015 Parchman’s Press, LLC
Mengel, A.L.