Michael

by Aaron Patterson

  But how could that be?

  She moved toward him and took him by the arm, ripping his seatbelt off him with her free hand. The vehicle rotated in the air around them, back to front, as she pulled him to her and enwrapped him within her embrace, holding his head tight to her chest as a mother would hold a child, the strength of her arms like a vise, irresistible. Michael returned the gesture, drawing his legs in tight under her, wrapping his arms around her, trying to curl them into a ball.

  The power of the crash, the centrifugal forces involved, flung whatever was loose inside the SUV out through the back and front windows. Luggage and debris flew out the back. And as they came around, Michael could feel the force of the rotation pulling him toward the broken windshield.

  What am I doing, I couldn’t help thinking. I knew the front of the SUV’s roof structure was going to collapse in on us and kill us when we landed. There was no time to think, no time to wonder if Kim or Ellie would live. There was just Michael. I tore free of my seat belt, pushed out of it, and grabbed Michael, wrapping him up.

  His seat belt was like paper in my hands as I ripped it off him. I could feel a new surge of energy pulse through my body as we slammed through the glass of the windshield. It gave way with a loud pop, shattering. There was nothing but open space, water, and glass raining down, up, sideways.

  We were flying for a moment as the force of the vehicle propelled us through the air, but it was short lived.

  My back made contact with the shoulder of the road, gravel ripping my clothes to ribbons. I could feel immense pressure, hear the shivering noise of massive logs splintering in the distance, the sounds of flying metal, dirt, rocks.

  Fire.

  Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER III

  “AIREL—AIREL, GET UP!”

  My eyes flickered. I felt massive pain. I was still holding Michael. He was groaning, coming to, trying to get free. Rain was still pelting us in heavy sheets. I raised my head and looked around.

  Ellie stood over me with her sword in her hand. Kim sat calmly in the middle of the road. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. She was in shock.

  “You need to get up and help me,” Ellie said. “We’ve got a problem.” She was covered with scratches, her blue hair emanating its neon glow in the reflected light of the fire.

  I released Michael and he rolled off me onto his back, gasping for air.

  “Oh my God…ow,” He just laid there in the rain at the side of the road, wheezing and groaning. I gave him a quick once-over to see if any of his injuries were serious. I knew I would heal, but him?

  “He’s fine; get on your feet and get ready.” Ellie said with a hint of irritation.

  I rolled my eyes but I did as she said. I brushed the rubble from my shirt and arms. My back began to itch like nobody’s business, but I figured I was healing and it was a good thing. I turned to Ellie. “Hey,” I said, “how much shirt do I have left?” I showed her my back.

  “It’s sexy. He’ll love it. Now, let’s go.” She turned outward to the darkness, glancing in every direction, looking like a cornered animal.

  “Jeez, keep your shirt on. I was just asking,” I said.

  “You’re stronger than I thought you’d be. I thought you would have died after all that.”

  I shrugged.

  She gave me a half-cocked smile. “Get your sword. We have some demons to kill.”

  “Um? I don’t know where the swords went.”

  “What?”

  “They probably got thrown in the wreck. They’re in a big case, though…”

  She spat on the ground and shook her head. “Great. Just try to stay out of my way and not get yourself done in.”

  If I was getting anything, it was mad. She was acting like I was a weakling. “You’re confusing small with helpless. I’ll be fine.”

  As if in response to my boast, and right out of the fiery wreckage, a large and evil thing approached us. “Okay. That one’ll be yours, then,” she said.

  It used its raven-like wings to shield its appearance from us, probably to protect itself from the flames. Those wings were arrayed with thousands of darkly pearlescent scales that overlapped in patterns, trailing off at their edges to paper thinness, catching in the bursting updrafts of the fire. It stood well over ten feet above my head and its body was as wide as one full lane of road. Its wingspan had to be thirty feet or more.

  It came closer still, folding its wings back slightly. I could see long, powerful arms and short, fat legs that were doubled up like those of a frog. Beneath eyes that burned deep red were crooked jagged teeth that dripped nasty blackness. It spoke in voices that fought each other in timing and pitch, like an overdubbed recording, a doubled-up vocal track.

  “You will die. Give us the boy immediately and we might…graciously…make it quick and painless.”

  I felt movement nearer to me and discovered that Michael was limping to my side, joining Ellie and me. I shot him a look of warning. “Stay back,” I whispered.

  “You,” the demon continued its threats, “are right to fear—we can kill you easily.”

  I wasn’t convinced. I took a step toward the huge beast and it actually leaned back a little. Is it scared of me? Or us? And why?

  Ellie touched my arm.

  I looked toward where she motioned. There were three large men slinking out of the darkness. They were brandishing what looked like military hardware; big guns that shot lots of bullets. I looked back to Ellie.

  “This is gonna be fun. Mind how you go, girl. They mean business.” She left us, stepping toward the three men with her sword raised.

  “Ellie…” I knew we were missing one host and three demon Brothers. “We don’t know where all of them are yet…”

  Ellie turned and glared at me for a split second, then motioned to the massive beast with a nod of her head. “Mind how you go!”

  I guessed that meant to be careful killing the sucker. No time like the present, I figured, and charged, launching myself at its head.

  It was quicker than I thought it would be. One of its wings swept around and clipped me in midair. I bounced off and landed awkwardly, deflected. I stood, clenched my fists and tried to puff my hair out of my face, except it was soaked and stuck to my cheeks.

  I looked to Ellie. She was busy with the three men already, stepping into them, her sword swinging around. I watched as she effortlessly took one of their heads off. He went down like a dropped sack of flour and she did a little pirouette move toward her next victim.

  I had my own problems, though. I faced my foe and tried to remember my training, such that it was. Darn you, Kreios, where are you when I need you? I looked toward Michael. He had found a blunt object for a weapon and had returned to Kim’s side. He stood ready, with his feet apart. Good. He’ll keep her safe.

  There was nothing left for me but the mountain of nastiness that was waiting for me. I turned back to my enemy, sizing him—it—up. I remembered how Kreios had taught me about using hate or love to fuel and augment my abilities.

  Then She spoke up. “Believe in what can be, not only in what is.”

  “Ooooooo-kay,” I said, completely baffled. But something instinctual was rumbling within me, and before I knew it I had taken off running, directly at the monster.

  The thing crouched into a battle stance.

  “Feint,” She said.

  I knew what that was. It was pretending to do one thing while intending to do another in battle. It was a good idea, and might buy me time. I needed to sell it well.

  When I was close enough, within a couple of strides of my enemy, I crouched in midstride as if I was going to leap up at the creature’s head once more. Instead, I intended to slide beneath and try to get behind it.

  It worked.

  The thing rose up slightly and cocked one arm as if to backhand me. I dove into the opening this created, sliding right between its legs on wet pavement. I scrambled to my feet, stomping on and grabbing at one of its wings
, trying to climb up, maybe get to the head, find a weak spot, a way to wound it. Clearly I needed a weapon. Something besides my bare hands. Maybe I can poke it in the eye or something.

  I could feel my energy, my will to fight being sapped as the evil of the Brotherhood drained my power, feeding on it. “Make it short and sweet,” She said.

  The demon twisted and turned, shaking its back, trying to throw me off. I had it with one hand by the leading edge of its wing with one hand. My other hand flailed around for a moment, then came to rest on one of the strange flexible iridescent scales that were like feathers. I yanked on the scale as hard as I could, ripping it out, causing the demon to shriek with rage. It gyrated horribly then, and it was all I could do to hold on. Thankfully, no matter what the thing did, it couldn’t reach me on its back. I felt stupid though, because all I was doing was just pissing it off.

  “Take up the Sword.”

  A picture flashed into my mind. It was the cliff top. The place I had died. Ellie’s words from a few moments ago came sweeping back to me: “Get your sword…” Ellie couldn’t have known, but She certainly did.

  The Sword. Can I make it appear at will? Is that how it happened on the cliff’s edge? Or is there something I’m missing…

  I didn’t have time to deliberate. While I was forming a committee to vote on the issue in my head, the demon was working its own solutions to its problem: me.

  “Hey!” I heard a voice in the distance.

  Michael. I searched for him as the mountain of corrupt flesh heaved beneath me. Michael was trying to get its attention, running toward it with his piece of jagged street-brawl weaponry at the ready. I then realized what was happening: the beast was backing toward the fire. It’s going to try to burn me off! Crap.

  Michael was closer now, running faster. “Hey, reject! Yeah, you!” he swung his weapon as a warning. “I got somethin’ for ya. Come get it.”

  The demon paused.

  “Now!”

  With as much strength and speed as I could muster, I vaulted up onto the demon’s shoulders and clawed as hard as I could, digging deep into the monster’s left eyeball, squeezing, wrenching, pulling. Something burst like a water balloon and a jelly-goo gushed in between my fingers.

  Ewwwww!

  The demon dropped to a crouch and doubled over, howling with pain and rage. I used its motion to get the heck off the ride and run for Michael.

  “Michael, get back!” I ran at him gesturing for him to get back, to move away. “This thing’s gonna be really angry now!”

  The look on his face was priceless. He’s impressed, was all I could think.

  “Come on,” I said, “stay back there with Kim! She needs you!” I wheeled back around to face my foe; I didn’t have time to see if Michael was going to go for it or not. I was running on something higher than instinct now and I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to: the energy drain had stopped for some reason.

  I clasped my hands together as if holding the grips of a sword. It could have been a gesture of prayer too, and I was okay with that as well. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine in my mind’s eye the Sword of Light, about which I had read so much in my grandfather’s book. Listening intently, I kept all my other senses on the alert for my enemy. Enemies, possibly. I exhaled, trying to relax a little, then opened my eyes and looked down.

  “Aaaaaaaaand… nothing.” Darn it. No Sword, not even just a regular sword. Hands still clasped, I eyeballed my monstrous foe as it howled in furious pain and slowly regained its footing.

  Then I heard something absolutely crazy. It was She. “Just pretend.” A flood of images from my childhood flashed into my mind. Playing house with little Kim when we were younger. We were princesses. We dressed up and pretended to be somebody we weren’t. But it was real enough for us as kids. It was actually more real to us in our childhood than reality. I saw what She might have meant by that.

  “Okay,” I nodded and held my clasped hands up at the ready, feeling like a moron.

  The demon was up again, sitting atop its frog-haunches, shaking its head in pain. It leaned forward onto its fists like a gorilla, roaring at me savagely, whipping its wings and stirring up dirty diesel smoke from the burning wreck.

  Then I got a crazy idea of my own. I knelt down on the soaked road in the rain, right in the middle of the destruction, right there with a demon as big as a house in front of me, and began to pray to El. “Just keep Michael away while I do this,” I whispered. I paused, willing myself to be still, to be quiet.

  And then I asked for it: “Get that stupid ugly thing mad enough to attack me, and I’ll split it from neck to loins with the Sword.”

  Neck to loins? When have I ever said anything like that?

  Remaining on my knees, I snapped my eyes open and looked right at the enormous thing I wanted to kill. It was as if I had sounded a battle trumpet; its one good eye instantly locked onto mine, widened in momentary fear and then narrowed into distilled hate.

  So it is me you fear.

  It roared once more and launched itself right at me.

  I stood my ground, on my knees in the rain, my gaze drilling holes in the center of my enemy, my hands clasped around the imaginary grips of my grandfather’s Sword, ready to kill.

  “This one’s for Kreios,” I said aloud, summoning as much love for him as I could muster given how very little I really knew about everything.

  Exploding out in ribbons of light, appearing with great power in my hands, the Sword lit up the night. It caused the falling rain to bow outward around me, encapsulating me in a globe of stillness, light and energy.

  I still didn’t know if I was imagining it or if I had actually called up the Sword. No need to pretend now.

  I looked up. The beast was almost on top of me. The dull bare hatred of its face was now raked aside in the light of the Sword.

  I rose to one knee and jabbed upward as forcefully as I could, into the belly of the beast. Its momentum did the rest, the Sword gliding easily, deeply through demonic tissue, gutting it from neck to loins as I stood there, just as I had prayed. Unspeakable amounts of stench filled the air; I was sure I had killed it instantly.

  It crashed on the other side of me, skidding to a dead stop right about where Michael and Kim had been. I stood up quickly, standing on tiptoes, looking over the split carcass, searching for them, trying to see if they were safe. “Michael! Kim!”

  Their heads popped up just on the other side of the whale-sized beast. “Airel!” Michael said.

  “Ohmygosh, are you guys okay?”

  Michael laughed. “Du-huuude, wow!”

  I blushed. “Where’s Ellie?”

  She answered for herself, off to one side where I had left her. “Right here.” She came walking up to me. “That’s no toy, girl. Just where did you get that?” She was pointing to the Sword.

  I looked down at it just in time to see it fade and disappear. I didn’t look back up at her until after I had spoken, “It belonged to my grandfather.” When I did look at her, the expression on her face was indescribable.

  The huge demon crackled as the rain soaked into its skin, rendering the thing into little bursts of ash with each impacting raindrop. We just stared.

  CHAPTER IV

  I WAS ABOUT TO relax—silly me.

  A trio of smaller demons fell to the earth—zippy little things. They looked like they might have once been children, at least in their faces. Apart from their classically cherubic countenances, though, they bore on every other surface of their bodies what I could only imagine was part of the penalty for their original rebellion in paradise. Sickly looking growths of fungus covered their bodies. Some of the growths were like little tubes, others had caps like mushrooms, others secreted ooze or bursts of black spore clouds.

  I gagged. They moved in twitchy jerks; they were fast. They would be dangerous.

  I quickly tried to assess the situation from a martial point of view. We stood in three separate units; Michael and Kim together on one side o
f the road, me on the opposite, Ellie off to one side. Michael was armed only with his street-brawl weapon, what looked like a piece of pipe. Kim, too, looked determined, brandishing a pistol. It could only be the gun Michael had flashed when we first met Ellie at the burned-out school.

  As for Ellie, she stood off on one side of the road, forming the point of our little triangle. She was armed with her sword, but she also had slung the shoulder strap of some massive firearm over her shoulder. She had no doubt commandeered it from one of the three men she had just killed. The three fungus demons stood twitching like squirrels in front of her on the opposite side of the road.

  Whether it was She or the Sword’s power still ebbing through me, I knew that the way we were positioned was better than trying to get into one big defensive circle and face outward—at least this way, in order to totally take us out, these three evil little things would have to split up.

  But as I scanned the scene, I saw movement in the darkness. “Ellie, behind you!” I shouted.

  She wheeled, sword at the ready.

  A huge man, over seven feet tall, strode out of the darkness.

  Ellie backed off as he approached, joining Michael and Kim, which pissed me off. I couldn’t understand why, one, she didn’t stand her ground; two, why once again she basically sold me down the river and left me on my own with the strongest enemy; and three, why she had to be close to Michael, darn that woman, I’m going to hurt her, and frickin’ soon.

  “You dat one we come fo’,” said the giant man, addressing me with his thick accent and wide, insane-looking eyes. He sounded native African or Caribbean, and his arms were like trees, the massive stubby branches of them his hands and fingers. His skin shone like the blackest bronze in the light of the burning wreckage behind me, which was starting to die out in the unrelenting downpour.

  I looked him over, searching for chinks in his armor. A thick red vertical line had soaked through the fabric of his t-shirt, from his clavicle to the buckle of his belt. I figured I had just killed his Brother. I was happy to provide that service. He held a short sword loosely in one hand, a big gun in the other. “It’s H&K and you don’t want to taste that medicine,” She said, and I made a note for trivia night, saying a little prayer that I would live to see happy times again. Will this not end?