Doubt

by Anne-Rae Vasquez

  Yaffa turned, faced them and asked, “Who wants to join us to find out the truth?”

  Walid looked over his shoulder at his friends, who seemed to be shrinking in their shoes, before stepping forward. “I will join.”

  Harry stepped forward, and said, “I’m in!”

  “Count me in,” Serena said.

  Rinaldo replied, “If they go, I go.”

  Harry said, “Leave Cristal here. She needs to rest.”

  Yaffa shook her head firmly. “No, she is necessary.”

  She pointed at Gabriel, and said, “He must come, too.”

  Gabriel looked around and pointed at himself, saying, “Who, me?” He turned to Kerim, his eyebrows arched.

  Yaffa nodded. “We watch you every day. You and Kerim are conspirators.”

  Gabriel said, “No, not me. I’m just a gamer. I’m not a terrorist.”

  Kerim shot him a glare, his nostrils flaring. He whispered in Cristal’s ear, “Can you stand?”

  She said, “Yes, I’m feeling better now.”

  He gently lowered Cristal to the ground, and then offered his hand for her to grab, helping her stand.

  He reached up and held her face in his hands, searching deep into her eyes. “Cristal, do you believe in kismet? A pre-destined moment, where fate steers your life? In a direction you never meant to go. Where reality takes a back seat to what only your heart appears to know?”

  Her heart filled with a warmness she had always yearned to feel. She had never heard such beautiful words before.

  “Kerim, that sounds like a poem. It’s so beautiful.”

  He smiled, his grey eyes softening. She could see tiny tears sparkling in the corners.

  He said, “It’s a song I wrote for you. When we get out of here, I promise I’ll sing it to you.”

  She swallowed hard, tears welling in her eyes. “Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?” There was an ache in her heart, and the pain felt like it was being twisted like a dagger.

  He kissed the tip of his finger and then placed it on her lips.

  “Believe in me and never doubt. Promise?”

  She gulped, unable to say anything. Hot tears streamed down her face.

  Why does this feel like you’re leaving me? I can’t live without you.

  “Promise me,” he whispered, his eyes were probing hers while his fingers stroked the tears away.

  Finally, she agreed and said, “I promise.”

  “Very touching. For an innocent man, you bleat like a martyr. Let’s get moving,” Yaffa called out.

  Kerim gave Yaffa a dirty look. With his fists clenched, he took a step forward. Cristal could feel her heart racing.

  Don’t do anything crazy, Kerim!

  Yaffa raised her gun and pointed it at him. “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”

  The other agents followed suit and leveled their weapons.

  “Cristal is staying here,” Kerim said in a low voice. He reached out his hand and guided Cristal towards Raffe.

  The agents raised their guns.

  “Kerim!” Cristal cried out as she stumbled into Raffe’s arms.

  She frantically looked over at Serena and Rinaldo, praying that they could do something, anything to stop this. Counting the number of agents that surrounded them, along with where they were positioned, and the weapons directly pointed at them, she realized that they were outnumbered and couldn’t win this battle.

  Not surprisingly, it was Harry who stepped forward.

  “Kerim, let’s just all go together,” he said.

  He placed his hand on Kerim’s shoulder.

  “We will prove that you and Gabriel are innocent. And we can deal with Yaffa later.”

  Kerim gave him a blank stare, his body tensing. He shoved Harry’s arm off his shoulder.

  “Leave me alone,” he said. Reaching for his Lucky Strikes, he mumbled, “I need a smoke.”

  Yaffa’s face tensed and squared off.

  Cristal’s mouth dropped open.

  Oh, sh*t! She thinks it’s a gun!

  “Yaffa! Stop! It’s just a pack of cigarettes!” Cristal cried out. She tried to run, but Raffe wouldn’t let her go.

  Gabriel must have seen Yaffa’s reaction, too, because he rushed towards Kerim, and shoved him out of the way.

  Shots rang out. Bap! Bap! Bap!

  In horror, Cristal watched Gabriel crumple to the ground as the bullets pierced his body. Kerim and Harry grabbed him before his head hit the pavement.

  “Gabriel!” Their screams echoed in the air.

  “Raffe, I demand you to let me go!” Cristal cried out.

  Raffe blinked and released her arm. He stepped back and let her pass. With a burst of adrenalin, she sprinted towards Gabriel’s motionless body. Serena and Harry were kneeling down beside him and trying to revive him.

  She flung herself down on the ground, kneeling into the pool of blood that was pouring out from underneath his back. She scanned his body to see where the exit wounds were. She saw three bullet holes in his chest. The voice of her CPR coach rang in her head.

  Focus, Cristal. Remember the ABC’s of CPR. Check Airways, Breathing, and Circulation.

  Her training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation was keeping her calm. No air, no breath, but there was a shallow pulse.

  Good. He’s still alive. Hang in there, Gabriel.

  She blew into his mouth and pumped his chest.

  Breathe, dammit, breathe.

  After thirty compressions, he still wasn’t breathing. The weak beat of his pulse earlier had kept her hopes up, but to her shock, there was no more pulse. Serena knelt down beside her grabbing Gabriel’s wrist.

  “Keep going, Cristal,” she said.

  Cristal began pounding on his ribs in desperation.

  Beat! Come on, beat for me!

  She slammed her fist into his chest over and over. Serena shook her head to indicate that there was still no pulse.

  “Gabriel! Don’t! Don’t die on me!” Cristal said.

  After a few minutes, she realized that it was too late. Her body was shaking, and her energy was spent.

  “Cristal, he’s gone,” she heard Serena say quietly.

  “Nooooo!” she screamed, with her eyes looking up into the dark purple sky. “How could You take him?”

  Like a mad woman, with hands that were soaked in Gabriel’s blood, she shook her fists at the heavens. She demanded an answer from a silent God.

  “Cristal, please don’t,” Harry said.

  His voice sounded broken. He wrapped his arms around her as she moaned into his shoulder. Suddenly, her body shivered, and she felt herself sobbing from her delirium. She opened her eyes and saw Walid and the others standing around, watching.

  Cristal pushed Harry’s arms away and stood up, numb with grief.

  Where was Kerim?

  She looked over and saw a group of agents standing next to their vehicles. The sight of those bottom-feeding sharks made her heart pound so hard in her chest that she felt like her ribs were going to crack.

  “Cristal!” Kerim called out.

  She turned and saw him being held by two agents, while waiting for another agent to open the door to the vehicle.

  “Kerim!” She called out and ran towards him. That’s when Yaffa stepped into her path with her hand extended out and signaling for her to stop.

  “Stay back, girl. You don’t want to be arrested, too,” Yaffa said with a sneer.

  “Murderer!” Cristal screamed, as she felt every cell in her body begging to snap Yaffa’s neck.

  She imagined all the ways she could destroy her, when to her surprise, a bolt of energy from inside her body blasted out from her hands. She assaulted Yaffa’s lard ass over onto another agent.

  Cristal looked down at her hands in amazement at what had just happened.

  Holy crap, did I do that?

  Cristal bolted over to Kerim, and she threw her arms around him. The two agents who had been holding him must have been freaked out with w
hat they just witnessed, because they released his arms and stepped back without question.

  “You can’t leave. You can’t,” she said, sobbing into his shoulder.

  Kerim kissed her on the cheek, saying, “Cristal, please stop crying. It rips me apart to see you like this.”

  Her chest was burning as if flames were torching her body from the inside.

  Keep calm, she told herself.

  All of a sudden, a high-pitched sound blasted through the air. The ground began shifting in violent waves, ripping cement and uprooting trees. Kerim reached down and grabbed her around her waist and started to run.

  The fear she felt earlier was replaced with an incredible calm, as if she were only an observer watching the chaos around her. Everyone was scattering and looking for cover.

  Serena and Rinaldo ran to the van; the agents scrambled to a building across the street. Walid’s friends crouched beside the wall.

  Harry, on the other hand, was standing motionless, staring at her with a sad look on his face. He couldn’t be her protector anymore.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Now what?

  Cristal turned and found herself looking into the barrel of Yaffa’s gun.

  Chapter 28

  Beginning of the End

  THE GROUND BENEATH THE agent’s feet rose and fell, but Yaffa looked determined to ride the waves like a skilled surfer.

  “You are no longer grounded. Gabriel is gone. You’ve unleashed your powers. The powers you have are beyond what you can imagine. You must trust yourself,” her father’s voice said in her head.

  “I said stop this or I will shoot!” Yaffa’s words came out like a shrill cry.

  Was Yaffa threatening her or begging for her life?

  A gunshot filled the air. She heard the bullet whip past her ear.

  An incredible force shoved Cristal, throwing her body twenty feet into the wall. She landed on the ground. Her shoulder was bruised, but the rest of her was relatively unharmed. When she stood up, she was shocked to see Dr. Saeed standing in front of her.

  “Dr. Saeed?” she asked. She heard a crash as giant chunks of the wall came down around her.

  “Cristal!” Kerim and Harry were running towards her, dodging pieces of the falling wall and jumping over the ground-swelling waves.

  She glanced up and saw Raffe standing beside her, facing Dr. Saeed.

  “Leave her alone,” Raffe growled.

  “Come with me, Cristal,” Dr. Saeed said, motioning to her.

  “No, Cristal! Don’t listen to him!” Harry screamed.

  The ground shifted violently, causing Dr. Saeed to fall backwards.

  “Dr. Saeed!” Cristal cried.

  She tried running towards him, but her legs wouldn’t budge. They were planted to the ground, the energy shooting through her body up into the sky.

  Dr. Saeed stood up and was trying to steady himself when Harry tackled him, sending him back onto the ground. They wrestled as the ground rippled around them.

  Dr. Saeed flung Harry, thrusting him up in the air like a sack of potatoes before slamming him into the wall. In the blink of an eye, Dr. Saeed bounced up from the ground effortlessly. His body rotated in a fluid-like motion, and he began running, although it looked more like flying, towards Cristal.

  But it wasn’t Dr. Saeed, although it resembled him in appearance. This thing’s eyes were glowing an odd neon yellow color; its body was transparent, and its mouth opened revealing a row of two-inch long fangs.

  What in the hell?

  She tried to lift her legs to run, but the magnetic energy from the earth held her down.

  Dear God!

  As if to answer her prayer, a gust of wind brushed past her. Raffe had transformed back into the winged being and was flying towards Dr. Saeed at a speed faster than a shuttle preparing for liftoff.

  “I command you to stop,” Raffe’s voice bellowed.

  The vibrations from his words caused more tremors in the ground.

  “You can’t use that cheap parlor trick on me,” the dark spirit said in a voice that sounded almost robotic, deep and guttural with a hollow screeching echo in the tone.

  All of a sudden, the dark demon spirit whipped out a black tail about six feet in length and lashed at Raffe’s head. Raffe reeled backwards, obviously hurt by the blow.

  So he isn’t invincible after all, she thought to herself.

  Raffe quickly regained his balance, stretched out his wings, and his arm reached behind him for something. To her amazement, he drew out a sword—a sword she would have never imagined existed. The shaft had ornate symbols emblazoned on it; the blade forged out of pure white energy was the length of Raffe’s wing with rays of light gleaming from the edges. Holding the sword forward, Raffe hurtled towards the demon, plunging the blade deep into its chest.

  A howl came out of the demon’s mouth, a horrific sound not from this world—a terrifying shriek that made the hairs on Cristal’s arm stand on end.

  The demon spirit morphed back into Dr. Saeed’s human physical body and plummeted to the ground. As the human body of Dr. Saeed lay motionless on the ground, she watched a dark shadow rise from it, twisting and writhing in agony.

  Raffe waved his sword up in the air, not showing any mercy. The dark shadow demon shrunk back in fear, before turning and slithering down into a large jagged crack on the sidewalk.

  The ground expanded and upheaved, before sending fierce tremors in all directions, north, south, east, and west. The great wall behind her was now a mountain of dust.

  Harry appeared in front of her, his face pale as a white sheet.

  “Cristal,” he said. “Kerim isn’t who you think he is. You have to believe me. You can’t trust him.”

  “Stop it, Harry,” she said, overwhelmed and exhausted with what she had just witnessed.

  Harry took a step closer to her, his blue eyes clouded with shadows.

  “Listen to me. I just watched this video that Gabriel sent me before he died. He took it when he was still in the van. It’s Raffe and Kerim discussing how they were going to eliminate you.”

  “I said, stop it! Nothing you say is going to change how I feel about Kerim.”

  “Then, I won’t talk,” he said as he shoved his phone to her. “Here, watch for yourself.”

  On the screen was a video of Raffe and Kerim. They were having a deep discussion outside the van. The video must have been taken before she had been lifted up to the tops of the fortress walls, because she could see herself in the background talking with Walid.

  Raffe was speaking, but it was in Hebrew, so she couldn’t understand a word.

  “What does this prove? So they’re talking,” she snapped at him. “You know I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

  This is unreal! Trapped in a pillar of uncontrollable energy and having this ridiculous conversation with Harry.

  “If you want to help, figure out how to make me stop this!” she yelled, pointing at the light blasting from her body.

  Didn’t he care that she was standing here emitting energy like a nuclear power station gone wild?

  The force inside her was funneling up to the heavens from the top of her head and down to the bowels of the earth from the bottoms of her feet.

  Where are you, Kerim?

  Harry stepped to the side and she saw Raffe, who had metamorphosed back in human form, with Kerim standing beside Dr. Saeed’s body. Raffe was waving his arms and yelling in Hebrew, while Kerim was shouting back at him. Suddenly, Dr. Saeed’s body sat upright. He was looking around as if he was in a daze.

  Okay? Now, what’s going on?

  Raffe raised his arm with a clenched fist, as if ready to pulverize Dr. Saeed until Kerim’s hand caught his arm.

  “The demon left the body. You can’t hurt the human,” she heard Kerim say.

  Raffe sneered. “He signed his life away to the devil when he wanted to find the secrets of immortality. This pathetic piece of sh*t doesn’t deserve to live.”
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  Abruptly, Harry turned to her and asked, “Wait a minute, do you understand what they’re saying?”

  “Of course, I do,” she said.

  After the words left her mouth, she realized that Kerim and Raffe were speaking in Hebrew.

  “I don’t get it. How come I can understand them?” she asked Harry.

  Harry came closer, his body inches from hers. He grabbed her hand and held it tight. “I don’t know either, but I think maybe you always were able to learn languages quickly. You just didn’t know how to tap into that part of your brain.”

  “Seriously? It can’t be that simple.”

  Harry swiped his phone and turned it back to her. “Oh yeah? Watch the video and see for yourself. I bet that you understand what they’re saying now,” he said.

  “You know, I could say you’re crazy but after all that’s happened today, anything is possible,” she replied. “My father spoke to me in my thoughts. He said that Gabriel’s death unleashed my hidden powers.”

  “Your father said that? You know what, that makes absolute sense! Gabriel must have been like a ground wire in an electrical outlet. Before he died, he somehow prevented you from accessing your powers,” he said.

  “Or, he helped contain the energy from going out of control, like what’s happening right now.” She pointed to the beam of light blasting through her body.

  Harry held his phone up to Cristal. “Are you ready to watch now?” he asked.

  Cristal took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, show it to me.”

  The video started playing from the beginning. It sounded like Raffe was lecturing Kerim.

  “Do you remember now? You were sent here to stop her. Not to fall in love with her. When you were changed into human form, we archived your memories and implanted fabricated memories into your human brain. This is the only way our kind can successfully infiltrate humans.”

  Holy crap! What is he talking about? Cristal thought to herself.

  Kerim began speaking. “I am remembering now. The Almighty sent me to stop the dark spirits from entering our spiritual realm,” Kerim said.

  He speaks so strangely, she thought. It doesn’t sound at all like the way he talks to me. But maybe it’s just how my mind is translating this. It’s like I’m a Hebrew as a Second Language student and my brain is processing what they’re saying too literally.