Alade (Irunmole Saga)

by Jean-Marc Akerele

  I am not sure how much time had passed before I regained consciousness. I found myself lying on my back and staring at the pretty lights that were swirling above my head, and judging from the pain that my entire body was in, I knew that something extremely large and powerful had hit me very hard. I could not move my body an inch, but my eyes were able to follow the terrifying vision which stood before me, blazing power and glaring at me with fury from a form that was no longer human. It shifted from color to color and seemed to collapse in on itself and expand constantly, as if something within it was fighting the confines of a form ill-equipped to contain its might. I was scared, no let me rephrase that, I was terrified, and I felt myself held tightly in a vice which I knew would crush me if I once again misspoke. I looked up at it, humbled, and it finally opened its terrible mouth to speak, and out of it oozed Raziel’s voice, harsh and filled with the promise of pain. “Don’t try to struggle Alade, for I have immobilized you for your insolence. Be content that I went easy on you. Fuck off? How dare you! Do you have any idea what I am? Do you have any idea who I am? I have watched over you since before your birth, I have sacrificed so much to keep you safe you ungrateful, petulant, ill-mannered boy! But I see that in your self-imposed exile you still have not learned a thing. Now ask your three questions and do not test me, for you will need all the tools you can get to survive the coming storm. Ask them and ask them quickly, for your doom approaches. Right now, even as we speak, men are coming here to break you. Prepare yourself.” And with that she released me. Pain was coursing through my body even as all of what she had said was running through my brain, but the survival instinct which was so strong in me fixated on the last part of what she had said, rushing to the window and carefully looking outside. “Who is coming for me?” I demanded. She looked at me with trepidation and sighed saying, “Now you have two questions left you silly fool. Who do you think is coming? Your former clients have already made arrangements to protect their secrets and you are a loose end that they cannot have lying about. Oh, don’t worry, they are not coming to kill you, but when they are done with what remains of your life you will wish they had. Ask me another question.” I asked the question that every fiber of my being felt it had to know, that had been waiting in the room for me to enunciate all along. “So,” I started tentatively, “Raziel is your name but that does not tell me anything. Who or what exactly are you?” “Since you are now using your brain correctly,” she replied, “I will answer your question.” She collected herself, sighed mournfully and said, “I am the avatar of the Goddess Yemoja who presided over your birth, I am the incarnation of the Goddess who gave form to your soul, and I am the messenger of the Goddess to whom you have belonged, even before you were born. You belong to her and in the end when you call out to her the power she has seeded deep within you will answer and bring forth from you the darkness that will now begin to consume you. But first you must taste it, this darkness; you must be fully immersed in it so that you may understand your role in her world and in yours. She will watch you die most painfully in order that she may ensure you are reborn as the Destroyer you are.” I was shaken greatly by what I had just heard, for this was not what I had hoped to hear and I could only nod my head as I felt the truth of her words and the ancient bond that existed between us. I exhaled deeply, and turned to face her again and quietly asked my final question. “Why must this be?” I asked somberly. She regarded me gravely for a moment, smiled and then let out a beautiful and musical laugh for a long moment before finally answering me. It was obvious to me that the question had amused her but still she was picking her words carefully, as if deciding what she could or could not tell me. When she finally answered she spoke in a whisper saying, “There is something growing within you, something that thrives in that darkness, that desolate place where only you can go, where you must go so that you may return with power and the balance may be once more restored to both our worlds. The hunger that you will learn to cocoon yourself in will feed a growing madness within you, a deep despair and this will make you strong and the dark seed within you will blossom. But enough, we are out of time. Do not forget what I have told you. I must go now; men have arrived to take you away.” And then once again she was gone.

  This sucks, was the only thing that kept running through my head as I sat handcuffed to a chair in the Department of Justice building in downtown Washington D.C., looking at the list of trumped up charges that these stupid fools in ill-fitting, off the rack suits were parading in front of me. It wasn’t that I was afraid the charges because I knew they represented the opening salvo in a war of attrition which had been launched against me earlier on today. I was sure my enemies would not overplay their hand yet because they needed me to play out mine first so that they could take everything from me in one fell swoop as soon as I revealed them, and Brian, who I am sure was hiding in the wings, needed to be sure that he had stripped me of all my secrets and all my power before he could ever feel safe. But nonetheless, whether I was sure that I would be walking out of here as a free man or not, there is still something intimidating about being escorted in handcuffs and going through federal processing deep within the fortress of a federal building. Shortly after Raziel had said her final words to me, FBI and Department of the Treasury agents broke down the door to my condo and without a struggle on my part (I knew better), took me into custody on RICO charges. I watched with dismay as they tore apart my sanctuary, ravishing and raping every nook and cranny in my beautiful home until all that was left was a stripped, broken and bare shell. All my computers, all my files, my three safes and even the sheets on my bed were taken for evidence, though why they needed my sheets I do not know. The drywall was pierced and torn open; my cabinets torn apart screw by screw; and they did all of this with a quiet efficiency and industry that bordered on supernatural and with no malice whatsoever emanating from these agents as they did their jobs efficiently. When they were done with my home they turned to me where I had been sitting cuffed behind my back guarded by two female agents and put me in an unmarked government car to take me to be processed. That is why I was looking across a scarred table at three agents, who from what I could gather from the inquisitive looks on their faces, were waiting for a response from me. What was it they had asked me? Oh yeah, they wanted to know what I thought of the charges which had been lodged against me against me, so I looked up at the one closest to me and laughed, saying, “You agents must be joking. You will never indict me on even the least of these charges and you know it. You are fishing for something and I am simply the bait, not the river monster that you are really searching for. We both know that you are fully aware of what I do for a living and because of this I represent an opportunity, to look through a window into the lives of the untouchable men who you would so love to prosecute and lock away for a very long time. But you are too late because the sharks are already circling me having tasted blood and very soon there will be so little left of me that even if you do manage to indict me on any of these charges it will make no difference to me. My time in this world is almost done.” At that point, the agent sitting quietly in the back the room suddenly stood up and approached the table. He studied me for a moment before calmly offering me his hand to shake (which I did), introduced himself as Special Agent Reeves and soundlessly sat down at the table with the other agents already there, whose names I could not recall. I took a good look at him. He was a well-groomed Mediterranean looking man of medium height, well-groomed and obviously in excellent shape judging by the confident way he moved and the quiet economy of his motions. Though his suit was of the same poor quality as the other agent’s, he wore it exuding a quiet competence that the others sorely lacked. I was intrigued, sensing immediately that he was the most dangerous of the three and by necessity he would be the one that I would deal with. He seemed to weigh his words carefully before he spoke and when he did, it was in a pleasantly resonant bass voice that he asked me “Mr. Akeju, are you so sure that your time is done?” I looked at him care
fully, shocked by the strangeness of his question, which was so different from those of his colleagues, but knowing in my gut that he somehow already knew the answer to those questions and more. “Gentlemen,” I said defiantly, “Let’s not do this please. It has been a long day and I am exhausted. You guys have already destroyed my condo in front of me, and now you are going to begin the tedious process of some calculated psychological assault whose tactics are designed to break me by throwing all sorts of asinine and strange questions at me in the hope I will let slip something important or at least useful to your purposes. But you will find that I am a completely different sort of animal than you are used to dealing with and though I am sure many have said the same thing before me I assure you your strategy will not work on me, so why not just cut to the chase? Why am I here? It is not really to answer for a RICO indictment, because despite the shadowy nature of my business, it is still very legal, which you all know. So once again I ask you why I am here and what do you want? I don’t believe it is me you are gunning for, I believe that you have another agenda and that is why there is more than one agency represented here in this room. The time for plain speaking has come gentlemen.” The three agents looked at each other and something unspoken passed between them and suddenly the two other anonymous agents got up and left the room, leaving me alone with Agent Reeves. We studied each other from across the table, politely acknowledging each other’s presence but saying nothing. After a few minutes, Agent Reeves took a deep breath and spoke. “We do not have much time alone, so let us speak freely. You have made powerful enemies, Alade, I can call you Alade?”

  “Sure,” I replied mildly.

  “They will destroy you; indeed, it is most certainly their maneuvering that got you into this predicament.”

  “You’re saying that they can influence the Department of Justice, that they can manipulate the FBI?”

  “That is exactly what I am saying and even you yourself know this to be true.”

  “What do you want Agent Reeves?”

  “It is something that I know only you can give to me.” “What the hell does that mean? And you are so certain of that? I can see that you’re a confident guy, but what makes you think that I have anything to offer you and even if I did what makes you think that I would do such a thing? Your world is anathema to my world, Law and Order versus the Chaos of sensuality, emotion and creativity, all the things that you and your fellow agents would stifle and lock away.” Suddenly, he looked up at me sharply and I saw a change come over him and for the first time throughout our conversation, he smiled a smile, a terrible smile.

  “Alade,” he said, “can you not tell that I, much like you, am also a very different sort of animal?” I tensed as I began to feel a growing frisson of energy, a deep pulse of something otherworldly, and for the first time since I had turned my back on my Gods and all the skills that their service had once blessed and cursed me with so long ago, I looked at the man before me with my ase, sensing that something was very odd about him and steeling myself for a possible assault. I used the power that I had run from and suppressed for so long, a power that had begun to reawaken in me from the moment Raziel had held me in her eyes and I saw what he had been hiding from me. This was a man bound to a higher power just as I was, but unlike me he was fully human and his power was a wild and chaotic energy that hurt my eyes as I studied his potent aura, very different from the serenity of ase. He had been chosen and had embraced his service wholeheartedly and because of this his strength was immense, which explained his confidence and more importantly his power. Raziel had said that I needed to wallow the darkness that threatened me, that I had to suffer in it. Could this man sitting before me explain why? He too, was bound to another power that was constrained by no rules and no limitations, for this man was an avatar of Esu, the God of Chaos, fully bound and merged with his God and the knowledge shook me to the core. Why was he here now, in this room with me? I could feel the power moving within him, see it seething throughout his form yet somehow, I knew that he was not a threat to me and that despite the appearances here, he had been sent to help me.

  “You see it, don’t you, Alade?” he said. “You can sense the power in me, twisting and turning, flowing through me deeply bound to my blood and to my spirit. I am like you, my brother, we are the same, creatures created and bound for service to our respective Gods, though in your folly and madness you rejected your destiny and now here you stand as a result, about to break, about to fall. I am not here to prosecute you for these humans, nor am I here to save you from the enemies who are closing in on you. I am here to give you a message and to give you hope. You will make it through this ordeal if you listen.” He looked at me carefully, studying my face and features as if memorizing them, and then he spoke. “By the time you are released from here your bank accounts, including all the secret ones, will be empty. Those people who you believe to be your friends will turn their backs on you and shun you, so you will find no relief through them. You have no home anymore, your condo has been seized, your credit has been ruined, your cars impounded and even your lovely and expensive clothes are gone. You have nothing, not even your cell phone with the many contacts therein, it was taken as evidence. You will leave here with the contents of your wallet, your watch, your jewelry and the clothes on your back, but even with these few valuables where will you go? Who will you turn to, for now you have no one, and nothing to give anyone if you did have someone? You cannot even afford to pay that high-powered lawyer who you have kept on retainer because despite his exorbitant retainer fee, he will demand more payment for the risk he will be taking in defending you. I cannot answer these questions for you, my brother, but the message I am to give you will help. I was instructed to tell you that you must kill the old Alade. For you to rise up again you must descend into the world of darkness where your enemies will deliver you, a world that the old Alade will not be at all equipped to survive in, but survive it you must and survive it you will. Destroy Alade so completely that even you will no longer be able to answer to that name. Wallow in your new abode, in its darkness and brood upon your vengeance against those who broke you, for it will make you stronger, so strong that when the time is right, you will break free of that place and with your release you will bring a dark knowledge back into this world that is so out of balance. You must rise through the dregs, fight your way through the ranks, defeat the legions thrown up against you and become a power in this darkness so that one day you can return to this world as the Destroyer that it so desperately needs.” He held out his hand to me gravely and once more we shook hands. Before letting go, he looked deeply into my eyes and whispered, “Be strong, my brother, for there are many who will stand against you. Never forget that.” Then he got up without another word and left the room. The two anonymous agents returned to their previous places as if nothing had happened, sat down, and arranged their notes. The one closest to me, as blond as a human could possibly get without being an albino, looked at me with his piercing blue eyes blazing with his hunger for the things he knew I was hiding and said, “Let us begin.”