Against the Fallen

by Devin Lee Carlson

  In answer, a body partially covered with sand lay facedown in the backyard. Strands of blonde hair fluttered in the breeze. My heart sank. Overlooking my welfare, I raced over to see if she was alive. Fearing the worst, my fingers probed gray withered skin for a pulse. No life left in Julia’s body. I knelt beside her with a hand placed firmly on her back. Tearful eyes scanned the horizon for clarity. If Turian had known what the future held, then he deliberately condemned her to this fateful end.

  Hatred swelled, shoving grief aside. A few days had passed since my last visit. The endless horizon reflected my torment—desolate bitterness. Acid burned my throat as I examined her for evidence of how she perished. Visuals of the ruthless way Abyss attacked Ariane seized my gut. Like my sister’s wound, someone had ripped into Julia’s throat, her body drained of blood.

  Balled fists mashed the sand next to her arm. I paused long enough to inspect the appendage. Her left fist clutched a wad of paper. Gently, with respect, I pried open fingers stiff from rigor mortis to remove the note. It read:

  Brian: Turian warned me that I was in danger. He could no longer risk coming here to arrange future visits. I wrote down when you were to meet him next on the back of this note. Be care—

  By the scribbled text, she had written the note in haste. Turian’s warning had come too late. I flipped it over and memorized the place, time, and date: Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh on October 30, ten pm last year. My brow furrowed as the events of that night replayed like a movie trailer, skeptical I had read it right. The note offered not a hint how to travel back in time.

  “Aye, that’s it,” I said. My raspy voice startled me, breaking the deadened silence. When I last visited, Turian boasted about his ability to travel time inside the portal. Fine for him, but how does one manipulate time, never mind fathom the dimensional shifts of portal travel? Desperation smothered logic. I flipped both sides of the note, hoping Turian left a clue.

  On the back, under the date, Julia had doodled an odd-shaped jar. I squeezed my eyes shut to concentrate. Strawberry sweetness. The cookie jar. The one Julia used to store sweets.

  Engaged in hyper-speed, I freed the tangled sheet from the fence and cocooned it around her body. I fetched a shovel and dug a deep grave in less than a second. My actions slowed as I eased her body into the ground and whispered a few words. Not a tear shed, I shot again into hyperdrive to fill the grave in. Julia deserved better. Come hell or heaven, Turian would pay for his negligence.

  My mother laid to rest, I dashed inside the house straight for the kitchen. Darting eyes scanned the ransacked room for the cookie jar until it focused on the shattered fragments littered across the floor. Ants skittered all over the crumbs of sweet cakes. A scrap of paper was hidden halfway beneath a shard of shattered porcelain.

  For certain, the Malakhim detected my entry into the portal and would show up any moment. I read the note, grateful for simple instructions. Dial the arrow symbol and summon a memory at a certain point in time. Unheard of—nothing came that easy. I froze, my brain cells racking to recall what happened on October 30 of last year.

  Snap! It came to me. The night before the Halloween ball, the night I met Sabree, and the same night the leech drank my blood. Where would we be if I had stopped him?

  An earsplitting squeal followed by a muffled rumble interrupted my thoughts. No longer alone, I leapt to my feet and peered out the kitchen window. In the same spot where the portal had expelled me earlier, a winged humanoid charged through an opening double in diameter. I crouched low and almost missed seeing the winged female emerge soon after. These beings could be the ones who pursued Turian and now me.

  The desire to escape urgent, I dialed a direct flight into the past, confident my trail would be lost in an alternate time. I vanished the moment the woman entered the house.

  “Brian, wait,” she called too late.

  3 3 3

  A corkscrew funnel sucked me into a wormhole. Without wings, I spun out of control until my feet slammed against solid ground. Teeth rattled even after my calves absorbed most of the shock. Dazed, I reached for the nearest shrub to steady myself and dug both sneakers into the turf to stop from falling off the cliff’s edge. My hand latched onto a thicker branch for extra security.

  The shock of the slingshot journey via time transference left me unsettled; however, the woman who had called me by name made my head swim. This had to be the same uneasy sensation that almost knocked me on my ass a year ago, on the night a wave of vertigo gripped me during the trek up Arthur’s Seat. I blamed the queasiness on rationing the anti-vamp pills. Now I knew better. Composure gathered, I glanced at my phone and whistled. Three minutes to spare before Turian arrived.

  “So, you received my message. Figured out how to travel time.”

  I lost my footing again. Somehow, Turian’s abrupt entrance had gone unnoticed. Unwilling to trust him, I stepped away from the edge. “Aye, I’m learning on the fly. Time travel’s easy peasy.” Ariane’s favorite saying started to rub off on me. However simple, one question baffled me more than others: how did one travel into the future without knowing which event or memory to select? Even scarier, conjure one that had not happened yet. Somehow, Turian had managed to master the science.

  Still fresh in my mind, the visual of my mum’s body sickened me. Shot the excitement of meeting my mentor to hell. “Julia’s dead. The bastards drained her dry. You knew they’d kill her, didn’t you? You expected to see me here tonight. Which is why you’re here. We’ve both been here before, perhaps more than once.”

  Turian’s brow furrowed as he spoke in a calming tone. “Your frustration is duly noted. No amount of time manipulation can change what’s meant to be, and as you have learned, the temptation is unworthy of the risk.”

  “I thought of going back to the night Sabree drank my blood but changed my mind.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aye, I remember everything that happened this very night.”

  Turian eyed the amulet. “Numerous times, Sabree never drank your blood. You let it happen once too often, fearful it might change the future. If you fought against him, perhaps we’d never meet, or you’d never find the amulet. Beware. The final trial is a bitch. I rarely offer a clue—take it or leave it.”

  “Final trial? Clue? Clue to what?” The man’s babbles made little sense. I cleared my throat. “How can you be so sure?” Doubts ping-ponged from ear to ear as dates, events, and what-if scenarios bombarded my mind. Had I altered time after all? If so, I cared less, preferring the course I had chosen above all others. My pessimistic attitude imagined a fate worse than the one that might befall us if I stayed on course.

  “Time is flexible. It bends to the user’s will,” I said. Bitterness slathered my tongue, making me gag on the words. “I engineered this projected course and will live with the consequences. I refuse to change it.”

  “You will, eventually. But, son, don’t blame me for Julia’s death.”

  “Son. Aye, I figured that out. Julia is our mother. Did you cut her throat?” Several sidesteps edged me farther from the cliff. The flames in Turian’s eyes threatened the intention to push me off.

  “It doesn’t matter who killed her. She’s dead and dead she must stay. Do not interfere.” Turian flicked his hand at the cliff as if to toss the significance of her life over the edge. “Fear not, we will meet again in the distant future.”

  Rising emotions on the realization of her death choked me. “Bastard. She never hurt anyone.”

  “An insignificant creature, the frail human never knew she was with child.”

  How could this narcissistic freak insult her while she lay dead? I vowed he would somehow pay. To hide my lethal intentions, I changed the subject. “Did I travel 3,000 years in the past when first I met you and Julia?”

  “No, I met her 3,000 years in the future. I brought you and Ariane into the past to hide.”

  “Bullshit!” My fists clenched to hide unbridled resentment. “You’re nothing but a cru
el manipulating snake. What if I warn her? Will I cease to exist?”

  His eyes aflame, Turian roared in answer. “Never make light of your abilities. I have entrusted you with unfathomable powers. You are more than just my son. Unlike Ariane, you carry the genetics required to travel time and roam the portal worlds. None of the Malakhim or the Fallen possess this code. So much of what we do, or choose to do, navigates beyond our control, be it fate or a higher power. Even with the ability handed to us, our choices are not always our own.” His message delivered, Turian glanced in the direction that had me spellbound. “What do you see?”

  “Chaos,” I muttered without revealing the details. My skull throbbed as a tsunami of Northern lights reeled toward the crags. The death-delivering neon-green wave of spiraling flames consumed my entire line of sight. Dread and failure consumed my being. The ability to escape, flee anywhere into the past to alter the events of time could salvage my soul. Travel back to prevent the deaths I caused. However, the uncertainty of changing the future or history long before I existed would forever torment my conscience.

  Instead, I disclosed secrets that troubled me since birth. “I’m haunted by events of traveling back in time and forward again by will alone, long before I found the amulet. At first, I thought they were psychotic episodes or nightmares—”

  A foul curse echoed across the crags. Turian’s eyes widened and might have fallen out of their sockets if he shook his head any harder. “Impossible, unless…” Flames smothered his dark eyes. “Damn the heavens. The battle between father and son has already begun.”

  “Battle?” I wrapped my fingers around the twig I had broken off from nearby brush and snapped it in half. “So, it’s true. My attempts to destroy you are not imaginary. They’re full-blown reality.”

  Turian’s wings fluttered. “Your small mind could never comprehend the paths I took to manipulate this meeting,” he growled. “Both time and dimensions must be altered to tolerate my influence.” He paused when I took a step toward him. His features softened. “My coupling with Julia defied all—the union grossly forbidden—grossly staged by a monstrous being. You, not Ariane, are the by-products of human, anti-Malakhim, and the demigod, Athorsis, who intervened. You will meet him soon enough. Good-bye, Brian.”

  “Anti? Athorsis? A demigod? Wait! I have a few questions...” My breath caught as I hollered at empty space. Turian vanished. “Bloody hell.” I twirled in place, my gaze centered on the stars overhead. “How do I get back? Back to my future?” The park empty, void of hikers, no one heard my outburst. Good fortune decreed that people rarely walked the crags late at night. Just oddball time travelers like myself.

  As I stepped away from the cliff, my mind raced with uncertainties. Number one—how would I return to my future? Maybe leapfrog back to the future one-step at a time. Why not time travel to the night I found the amulet. The same night Sabree followed me to the catacombs, confessing how Ariane had attacked him like a wildcat. By uploading into my future self, I could speed steal Sabree’s ring and give it back to him after I returned to the future as proof that I time traveled. Would the strategy work?

  As before, I dialed the amulet to the arrow and envisioned the night I followed Eric to the entrance to the catacombs. Again, the jolt of leaving my body from the past and this time slamming into the one in the future nearly knocked me off my feet. “It worked!” I called out, catching my balance if not the outburst. I fought the urge to leap into a happy dance.

  Eric grunted, “Quiet.”

  “Sorry,” I whispered, leaning against the brick face to peer around the corner. The alley submerged diagonally across from where we stood. The narrow passage descended sharply into an abysmal hole. Disappeared into the catacombs beneath the city.

  “This is it,” Eric announced.

  I closed the distance between us. Sabree and Ariane trailed behind. As soon as the time transference wore off, I sped off, melting the soles of my sneakers and polishing the cobblestone with rubber tread. A sonic boom thundered behind me as I shot past Sabree and spun a U-turn around Ariane to zip by Sabree again. His hand frozen in time, my fingers wrapped around the loose-fitting bloodstone ring and pulled it off. I reduced velocity until his frozen stance sped up to bending in slow motion.

  Sabree yelped, the typical high pitch exclamation low and drawn out. He stooped over a storm grating in search of his ring.

  Without delay, I dashed to the original point of materialization and set the dial for a future jump. Uncertain which event to choose, I racked my brain until all thoughts centered on a time after I leapt into the portal that morning. Out of habit, I always checked the contents of the refrigerator around dinnertime, so I envisioned an imaginary instance on the eve of July Fourth.

  My eyes squeezed tight as I trusted intuition to land me into a future never experienced and not hurl me into an infinite cosmic wormhole. The time lost between morning and afternoon, wasted time, raised little concern. Big mistake. Nothing like erasing my existence during those ten hours.

  6

  BLAST FROM THE PAST

  A s soon as I leapt out of the time portal, my body slammed into a refrigerator. Unlike the last few times, I didn’t merge into my past or future body, but it sure felt like I had become one with the fridge. The roar between my ears pounded as I eased away from the stainless doors.

  Somewhat stunned, I took in the surroundings. Which jokester moved the fridge next to the door? I rubbed my eyes. The counter backsplash popped with color, cayenne glass tiles instead of neutral beige. The center island sat more to the left, closer to the cabinets. Then a bolt of realization hit me dead on. This wasn’t my kitchen.

  A girl screamed, followed by shattering glass. A young man’s voice reached my ears. “What the—”

  “Who are you,” I asked them. “Do you live here?”

  “You lost, mister? Of course, we live here.” The teen glanced at his sister as she ran outside. His eyes darkened. “You’d better have a good explanation for being in our kitchen. Mom and Dad are outside. All I have to do is yell.” A slight hiss escaped his lips.

  “Time jumped?” I asked myself. “Wrong dimension.” Definitely more than one, but what if Ariane and I didn’t exist in this dimension. Something had changed, because we never bought this townhouse. I gestured the teen with a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry, I won’t stay long. Just curious.”

  “You don’t make sense.”

  “I traveled back in time without knowing how to return to the present—my present. Instead of picking a time before I entered the portal, I returned to a future, ten hours ahead, to a time I never experienced.”

  “Are you an alien?” The kid scratched his head. “A time traveler?”

  This weird setting knocked me into a time and apparently a dimension I had never existed in, giving me the option to choose dimension, universe, time, or whatever. “Better return to my dimension before anything goes wrong.” I ignored him when he asked how. First, I had to find out if Sabree existed in this dimension. My mind emptied of all distractions to seek him out. No bites. Not one sensation of his existence. What about my sister? My mind reached for her next. Nothing.

  The mystery somewhat solved, I waved good-bye to the youngster and dialed the amulet. This time I visualized breakfast, the moment I stuffed the first spoonful of frosting into my mouth. The dull events of moving my belongings into Sabree’s townhouse before I had entered the portal topped this unbearable hell. The father ran in and cried out when my body faded.

  Once again, the familiar sensation of sailing through the time continuum returned. By setting the amulet to the arrow symbol, the portal remained closed and my wings dormant. The journey carried on as if I had never entered the alternate dimension. Seconds away from my destination, the wormhole compressed in size until it popped. I slammed into my past body and in doing so, the can of frosting along with the ring flew from my grasp and tumbled across the kitchen floor.

  Sabree smacked into my back and yelped in surprise. “
Watch it! I almost spilled my tea.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at the metal object near his feet. “Hello, there,” he crooned. “My ring—you found my ring. Wait a minute...” His eyes narrowed until they formed slits. “I lost this down a sewer grate in Scotland.”

  “Or so you thought. I yanked it off your finger.” Sabree’s blank stare and curled upper lip made me laugh. Good to be home, although the relief was short-lived. I choked on a swallow that went down the wrong way. I palm-slapped the side of my skull to purge it of what-if cobwebs and time continuum physics. Laughter rolled in my belly.

  “What?” Sabree asked.

  “Let me tell you about my day.” I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and led him into the living room. “A blast from the past and back to the future all in one morning.”

  Other than discovering the ins and outs of time travel, the portal trip offered positive and negative lessons. Definitely a learning experience. Turian revealed squat. Our DNA consisted of anti-Malakhim and human and, low and behold, he said I harbored mystery DNA from some monstrous source. Archangel? What about Ariane? What if my venture into the wrong dimension distorted time? Or was is supposed to happen? The tragic element of the trip was Julia’s death, our mother.

  7

  TROUBLE TRAVELS IN THREES

  L istening to the time travel fiasco starring Turian, and then to Brian stealing his cherished ring, Sabree postponed the trip to Greece. Since Ariane left to work in the lab, he confessed to Brian instead of her about his meddling with the Caderen. He agreed to watch the fort, insisting Brian take the Jag out for a spin and ditch it somewhere. The natural course of events changed because Sabree skipped the visit to Athens.

  Alone in the townhouse, he almost dropped his glass when the door buzzed, still unaccustomed to the neighborhood’s security system. He misted to the security touchpad at the front door and eyed the image of the Sandalwood’s Guardhouse, their caller ID listed below it. “Hello?” Sabree said into the intercom. His lips nearly kissed the speaker.