by L. A. Banks
He turned the reins over to the child and fired several warning shots from behind Azrael’s wings. Every brother was now standing on a carriage roof, balancing and shooting, picking demons off one at a time in awful explosions, while Azrael’s blades left scorched earth and cinders. At the water’s edge locals screamed and fled as the carriage drivers dismounted and rushed to the small, unofficial dock and climbed onto a motorized fishing boat.
“Yalla, yalla,” the lead driver called out, urging the group forward.
One of the other drivers slapped the horses on the haunches to send them dashing in runaway carriages, then ran to help the boat shove off. Half-falling, half-thrown, Celeste hit the deck with the others as they pulled away from the dock.
“Light this water up, gentlemen,” Azrael said, breathing hard and scanning the shoreline.
Immediately, Isda, Bath Kol, and Gavreel stood wing to wing facing the water while Azrael and the others watched their backs. Bowing their heads, the angels that faced the water began to get a blue-white glow along the edges of their bodies and wings. Soon that eerie light spilled down onto the ground and into the water, sending a blanket of what seemed like a glowing current over it, which just as suddenly disappeared.
Bath Kol turned with Isda and Gavreel and nodded at Azrael. “Done. It’s hot.”
“Thank you, now let’s move this team,” Azrael said, staring at the frightened but willing men in the small craft.
“It’s all right,” the boy said, watching the panic and fear in his uncle’s eyes. “We should go now.”
The boy’s uncle only mutely nodded, clearly too overwhelmed to protest or ask questions at the moment. But the second the boy’s uncle stepped back, the warriors advanced and boarded his vessel. Time was of the essence. They couldn’t wait until the frightened men adjusted to what was going on—they had to move.
After quickly jockeying themselves into position, the brothers huddled in the center of the boat, creating a safety ring around the women and the boy.
“My uncle, he sees. He knows,” the boy said. “I told him the Mu’aqqibat, the protector angels, would avenge my older brother’s death.”
The brothers retracted their wings to the wonder of the men driving the boat. The child was in awe, but his uncles were completely freaked out. One man was on his knees weeping, the other was prostrate. Only the boat driver kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the rushing current, too overwhelmed to speak. The boy went to Azrael and hugged him tightly around the waist.
“These bad men hurt everybody. My uncles must pay so much to them to drive—now they will have no work and must hide because they helped you. They could do nothing when they took Daoud but beat their chests and hide their wives and anyone that big man might take to make Daoud talk. But Daoud told no one where he hid the gold and glass.”
“You saw it?” Azrael said, stooping down to look into the child’s eager eyes.
The boy nodded. “Yes, he showed it to me in the water and said the lady who glows within can see it, too, if she holds my hand.”
Celeste moved to the child and squatted in front of him, then looked up at Azrael. “From the mouths of babes …”
“And with the innocence of a child.” Azrael stood and addressed the weeping men. “Please, stand. You bow only to the Source of All That Is. But I will help you for you have surely come to our aid.” He reached into his pocket and gave the men each a large handful of cash. “Keep one bill off this and it will always multiply for you. You family will know vast abundance; your wives, children, and parents will be safe always.”
“You must come to the village in Aswan,” the boat driver said. “You must please come to bless our houses there, the Nubian village is so poor and the people there are so good. We need protection. This place were we are is just sixty miles from Sudan—you know what has happened there?”
“Az,” Bath Kol warned, “we are getting off mission, bro.”
“No, it is all part of the mission,” Azrael said calmly.
The child nodded. “You can meet your boat tomorrow when it arrives in Aswan. But you come now to the village where the old grandmother who sees is. Daoud came to her and to me. I know what the gold book looks like, she knows where it is. Then tomorrow you get back on the big, big boat. But no demons come into the village because she puts down many prayers. Not even big man comes there because the people there fight fiercely … it is our home. In Edfu, it is different. We are overrun.”
“The boy speaks the truth,” the boat driver said, wiping tears from his face. “Come, please, this is an opportunity of a lifetime for us to serve you; the thing of legends. Let us offer angels our hospitality and a meal and a place to sleep for one night among us.”
Chapter 16
Celeste sat with her arm around the solemn young boy who’d identified himself as Abdullah while the small fishing craft plowed through the water en route to Aswan. Deep melancholy filled her with every one of the child’s breaths. Soon she found herself stroking his thick, dusty hair as he snuggled against her for human touch, clearly starved for that, too. The others on the boat watched the dynamic, then allowed their gazes to drift along the distant shoreline, as though watching her and the boy dredged too much emotion from their souls.
“I wish you had come before,” the child said suddenly, looking up at her with wide eyes. “My father, he had the sickness, my mother, too. They died. But Daoud took good care of me and my sister—he was studying to be an imam. He was friends with the priest who had come to help people who were sick.”
Celeste nodded, unable to speak for a moment past the lump in her throat. She knew the child was referring to the ravages of AIDS, which had left entire villages devastated and so many children orphaned. Just looking into his small face, she remembered losing her own mother at a tender age. But then she’d had Aunt Niecey until she was well grown. This poor child didn’t even have that secondary mother figure. Only his uncle.
She hugged him harder, knowing her arms weren’t wide enough to circle the globe and to heal all the tragedy within it. But she wished with all her might that she could do something about the one happening to this one small boy and his family.
“The boy is sick, too,” the boat’s driver said in a weary voice. “The priest came to our village with people and medicine—this is why my brother Daoud worked side by side with him across beliefs. The old man was a Christian, we are Muslims, but we are all human.”
“My uncle Kadeem is good to me,” the child said. “We are still family.”
Celeste could feel her heart pounding harder within her chest as she turned to Azrael and stared up at him. The other brothers and the women in their group looked at Azrael and their sad eyes asked the same question: Could he do it?
The women sitting beside Celeste slid down the white wooden seating so that Azrael could sit next to the boy.
“You are very brave and very strong, even at your age, Abdullah,” Azrael said, landing a hand on the boy’s back.
“I am not afraid to die,” he replied proudly, and sat up straighter. “I have seen others die before me. I will see my parents and my brother and all of the ancestors, if that is Allah’s will. So the bad men cannot make me afraid.”
Azrael nodded. “You have the spirit of a warrior.” He closed his eyes for a moment and slowly his hand began to glow blue, then that light covered the small boy’s back. “Only if it is Allah’s will can we help people, Abdullah. Do you understand?”
Abdullah nodded. “Yes,” he said solemnly. “Daoud told me that we cannot know the mysteries sometimes.”
“No, we cannot,” Azrael gently. “Even I have difficulty accepting that sometimes.”
Azrael shared a look with Celeste, then turned away. In that moment she knew he couldn’t heal the boy, and her heart quietly shattered for them both.
“But we all live forever anyway,” Abdullah said with a calm shrug. “In heaven it is much better than where I live now, so I am still happy. We do live forever, right?”
“Yes,” Azrael said. “You will live forever.”
Maggie stood up and walked to the edge of the boat, turning away from them; Gavreel went to her and put an arm around her and looked back at Azrael with a silent plea in his eyes. When Azrael removed his hand from the child’s back, the emotions strained to a breaking point on the boat. Aziza closed her eyes as Bath Kol turned away toward the water. Melissa slowly laid her head down against Paschar’s chest, while Isda jumped up on the bow and gave everyone his back.
Azrael stood slowly and went to the side of the boat alone. Gazing out over the water, his serious profile reminded Celeste of the ancient pharaoh carvings in black granite. The muscle in his jaw pulsed as he stared at the other passing vessels, then turned slowly to look past the shoulder of the demoralized boat driver, who seemed to understand that Azrael had done all that he could do.
But when a battle-ax slowly materialized in Azrael’s fist, the brothers sprang into action, rimming the boat, trying to see what he saw.
A fast-approaching military vessel sped toward them with several men aboard, yelling at the smaller boat. Ka-deem released a curse, but then stopped the engine.
“These are Egyptian police,” Kadeem said, then spit. “They are Arab, not Nubian, and this is apartheid here that people don’t know. This was part of why people gathered in Tahrir Square! Even after the protests, old ways die hard, and the corruption goes on! This is what you don’t see on the American news. But we all have lived this for years.”
“Put the ax away, brother,” Bath Kol warned quietly, going to Azrael’s side. “This is just some human bullshit. Do not smoke a mortal by accident.”
Azrael opened his hand and the ax disappeared.
“We have to pay,” Kadeem fumed. “They see Americans on my boat or heard of such on my fishing boat, and they think I am poaching tourist business. I don’t have a license to ferry tourists to the monuments or even to my own village! I can only fish. I cannot have friends. I must pay these bribes they will ask. This just lines their pockets and not a penny goes to the actual government. They have moved my people farther and farther south, flooded us when they built the dam and made us move without a care about our lands—now these bribes! Nothing is free—not the land, not the water … soon not the air!”
“Rest easy, brother,” Azrael said with a frown. “Some things I can fix. This is one of them.”
“Stop, stop!” an officer yelled, pulling his military speedboat up beside Kadeem’s fishing trawler. “You have no authorization to carry commercial passengers!”
“Asalamu alaikum,” Azrael said, looking at the lead officer hard. “I’m not a commercial passenger. I’m here visiting my family. I am Daoud’s brother from far away, and these are all my family. We are here because we heard he died.”
The officer glared at him. “Daoud had no rich American family.”
“Solve his murder and you might find out what resources the man had that you don’t know about,” Azrael said in a booming voice as he leaned into the officer. “Extort my brother Kadeem here, and you will see just how unhappy we all are that Daoud lost his life in an untimely matter.”
“We had nothing to do with any of this unfortunate business,” the officer said, backing up.
“No, but you turned a blind fucking eye to it,” Isda yelled from his position up on the bow. “A lot of t’ings can happen in the dark, bro—police officers go missing sometimes, too, mon.”
“Have you threatened me? I am the law!”
“No!” Azrael shouted, his eyes turning blue-white as he pointed upward toward the sky. “The Source is the Law! Be gone and never bother my brother or his family again!”
Terrified officers bumped into each other as they stared into Azrael’s supernatural gaze. They pushed down on their vessel’s throttle full force, speeding away, leaving Kadeem’s boat bouncing in their wake.
“What did you show them?” Kadeem said, laughing and amazed. He glanced around at the group, not having seen Azrael’s eyes from his position behind the tall warrior’s back.
“I showed them their own mortality and what hell looked like from the inside out,” Azrael said.
Isda jumped down off the bow. “It’s just a little something that he does.”
Forcas entered the perfume shop and glanced around. The salesman immediately ran to the back to summon Nazir. An unnatural wind lifted Forcas’s long, silken tresses and full-length, black leather coat, so out of place in the arid Egyptian heat. Guards and customers alike stopped and stared as Forcas proceeded to the back of the shop without waiting for an invitation or escort.
Nazir ran out of his back salon, trying to block Forcas from barging in on his most recent customer. “Wait, wait, come to my private office.”
Forcas grabbed Nazir by the front of his cotton shirt and slowly closed his fist, then held up his hand to paralyze the approaching guards.
“You did not follow my instructions,” Forcas murmured through lengthening fangs. “You were to be our eyes and ears and to simply watch them. But you got greedy and allowed that fat fuck, Omar, to try to abduct them? What was your petty little scheme—to shake them down and to get paid twice? Watch them as well as extort one of them for a hefty ransom?”
“No, no, I assure you—”
“Cease to speak before I rip out your tongue.” Forcas leaned in closer. “Did you invoke the demons for such a task or did they simply seek an opening in your loyalty and seize the opportunity?”
“Demons?” Nazir wheezed, his eyes bulging as he gazed at Forcas’s extended incisors. “I do not do sorcery! I am a businessman.”
Forcas smiled and released the man. “Of course you don’t, but you’ve already made a deal with the devil nonetheless.”
The tables blew over in Omar’s Stone Works as Forcas walked through the front door. Gale-force wind knocked icons off the shelves, scattered receipts and papers off Omar’s desk, and made the men working in the stone quarry yard cover their faces with their forearms.
“Emerge, demons!” Forcas ordered, and waited as Omar’s body began to tremble and then convulse.
After vomiting green bile all over himself and the floor, Omar threw his head back, and the veins in his thick, meaty neck, temples, and eyes bulged as he opened his mouth and a large, slimy figure the color of bog silt climbed out of his mouth. His human shell dropped to the floor like a discarded skin sack in a grisly pool of blubber and blood. The faceless, slimy entity that had abandoned Omar’s body then slowly began to take shape from its previous sluglike form. Gnarled teeth and claws appeared first, then a sunken face and red-glowing eyes emerged from the darkness of its hunched and twisted form.
The entity sneered as others climbed out of the bodies around it, leaving the humans unconscious.
“You summoned?”
Forcas thrust a dripping burlap rice bag forward. “A message from Asmodeus.”
The entity cautiously accepted the bag and dumped the contents on the floor. He hissed and the others joined him as Nazir’s head hit the floor with a thud and rolled to a stop at his feet.
“Attempt an abduction of our property and my orders will be to replace this bastard’s head with yours. As a general warning, and just in case anyone gets any insane ideas or has any delusions of grandeur—do not even think about using the tablet for your own legions. The sarcophagus is ours—the body within it is Nephilim. Any attempt to get the tablet to raise your own armies or to negotiate with us because you have acquired the tablet before us will result in war. You may have the numbers, but never forget that we have a nuclear device on our side—the Dark Lord.”
Three hours into the voyage, Kadeem slowed his engines and began navigating his boat toward a small, dilapidated dock. Immediately children rushed over with vendors and camel drivers, but he and his brothers shooed them away in an agitated flurry of Arabic.
Standing off a bit and watching the strange foreigners with wary curiosity, men in long, one-piece, loosely fitting cott
on didasha robes seemed dejected that no wares would be sold. Women scowled at Kadeem, holding handmade beads and bracelets that could have been sold to the many foreign females on his boat. But the children giggled and smiled, peeking around the backs of every angel brother and then running away.
The brothers passed uneasy glances among themselves.
“Is something wrong?” Bath Kol asked Isda under his breath as they climbed off the boat and jumped onto the wooden dock.
“I don’t know, but it’s like they can see our wings,” Isda replied quietly.
“I thought we were cloaked, even back in the recent firefight. Normal mortals shouldn’t have seen that,” Azrael said in a low murmur as the children oohed and aahed. “Only Kadeem, and his brothers and the boy.”
“Pure innocence will see the unseen,” Gavreel said quietly. “These children haven’t been exposed to anything beyond their village, and they obviously believe in us.”
“They want you to put your wings out for them,” Abdullah said with a wide smile. “They know you have them, they want to see how they come out of your backs.”
Azrael stooped down. “That might give their fathers and mothers heart attacks. Not such a good idea.”
“No, it won’t. It will make the people fight harder to keep your secret and to help them have courage.” The child looked up into Azrael’s face and touched his cheek. “You worry so much.”
Azrael stood, visibly shaken by the child’s words, and went to stand with the brothers as the last member of their group debarked from the vessel.
“Messages and signs are coming from this child. Abdullah says we should show the people in the Nubian village our wings so they’ll not only help us on our quest, but also protect our secrets and fight our enemies if their village is laid siege to by forces of evil.”
The brothers stepped in closer, conferring, and Celeste elbowed her way into the center of their all-male group with the other women.
“I think you guys should do it,” she said, challenging their stony gazes. “These people need hope, and their faith is so strong. They believe and they would rather die than betray the Light. That’s something the darkness didn’t count on. The dark side looks at people like this as weak and frail, but their spirits are unwavering. They’re literally dirt-poor and still can’t be swayed by bribes or loss of life. How else would Daoud have kept his secret here so long? They literally had to drag him away from his people and threaten to raze the entire village if he didn’t tell, but they would never give him up.”