Shaun put his hand on her arm and her knees nearly buckled. She couldn’t take much more of his presence. She was on the verge of collapse – mentally and physically.
“You should have called for an angel,” Shaun said. “There is no need to bloody your own hands any longer.”
“I just... Need sleep,” she said, her voice wavering noticeably.
Shaun paused but she didn’t know what he was doing. Her only hope was to keep her eyes closed. Keep them shut and maybe she had a chance.
He kissed her on the top of her head and said, “Of course, dove. Take all the time you need.”
Without waiting for more of a prompt, she opened her door, shoved Talla inside with her foot, and closed herself in her room.
What was she doing? She opened her eyes and reached for the doorknob. The night was still young for lovers and Shaun needed her by his side. Why did she just push him away?
Talla growled and snapped his teeth at her. Alexandra studied the beast and remembered feeding him dry pasta as they trudged for miles through the wasteland. She recalled the smell of wet dog and the moment she, Talla and Koneh shared in the back of the wrecked delivery truck.
Tears rolled from her eyes. “Talla,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
As Shaun distanced himself from her room, her mind grudgingly cleared. No longer did she wonder what course of action she needed to take. She realized she needed to leave. Next time, she might not be able to resist him. Next time, she could become lost forever as Saint Alexandra in service to Nebu and the Church.
She packed her remaining belongings into her worn backpack and listened at her door for several hours. When she was certain nobody was on the floors below her, she crept from her room and down the stairs.
Not fast enough for her pounding heart, she put the tower behind her and moved to the edge of town. Due to the constant expansion she was able to easily find an unfinished section of wall to slip through and into the razor-rocks she knew so well. The mud gave way to stone and she was on her way towards the nearby gates of Eden.
She decided to give the gates a wide berth and she climbed upwards and outwards. She found the rock gully where she last conversed with Lilev, but the area was empty. Deciding it was as good a spot as she could hope for, she made camp.
“No fires for a couple of nights,” she said as Talla curled next to her.
They huddled in the chilled darkness until the first hints of orange light glowed in the cloud-filled sky.
“Let’s see if we can find ourselves a cave,” she said as she packed her blankets into her backpack.
Then, she froze as a rock dropped softly nearby. It came from the opening into her gully. She knew she wasn’t alone.
Marco appeared in the opening, pistol drawn and aimed in her direction. He pushed his fedora off his head and it hung on his back from a string around his neck.
As he produced a second pistol from under his duster he said, “Going somewhere, mi amor?”
Though she had her hand on the grip of her own weapon, she knew she wasn’t quick enough. Four long meters separated them and she’d seen Marco’s expertise in the past. He would gun her down.
“Just getting some air,” she said, but she knew he wasn’t buying her act. He knew her too well, an advantage Shaun didn’t enjoy.
“I believed in you,” he said.
She recalculated the distance and asked, “What changed?”
“I came to my senses,” Marco said. “Shaun and Nebu had some power over me, but not anymore.”
He pointed his weapon lower and Alexandra drew her sword.
Bang!
Thunder echoed in the gully and smoke erupted from the barrel of the revolver. Then, Alexandra’s knee felt like it shattered into a million pieces. She dropped to the ground and clutched her knee. Her sword clattered on the rocks and Talla yelped as he scurried behind her backpack.
Groaning, she tried her best to staunch the flow of blood. She gritted her teeth against the pain and tried to keep her eyes on Marco. He pointed the other pistol at her head.
“Talk,” he said.
“Go to hell.”
He smiled. “I told you it’d be a shame to blow away one of your beautiful kneecaps.”
Memories of his attempted rape stung her as viciously as his bullet.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, trying to buy herself some time.
“I want to know everything,” Marco said. “Why come to Babylon and do the things you did? Why pretend to be Guadalupe? Whose side are you on?”
Blood poured through her fingers and she was starting to feel dizzy.
“Side?” she said. “I’m not on anybody’s-“
“Oh, come now,” he said. “We both know you opened Eden. Not that pretender in Babylon. I’m not stupid. I know what Derechi told me and I know who Shaun really is.”
She blinked and asked, “What?”
“Are you sayin’ you don’t know?”
She knew. Of course she knew. Her dreams tried to warn her and she ignored them. The time for hiding from herself was over.
“Iblis,” she said.
Marco nodded. “Si.” He stepped closer and re-emphasized the fact he had a gun pointed at her head. “So, tell me. Whose side are you on?”
She tested her leg but only pain waited for her when she tried to move her knee. If she could get him to lower his weapon, perhaps she could block the pain long enough to stand and make her move.
“Don’t,” he said.
Then again, perhaps not.
“Dammit, Marco, I’m not on anyone’s side! Shaun was doing something to me too, controlling me. I had to get out of there.”
“That’s it?” he asked.
Not willing to divulge anything about Lilev, she said, “Yes! At least until I could figure out what to do next.”
He pulled his gun back and said, “Was that so hard?”
Now was her chance but she didn’t act. Marco wasn’t her enemy and she knew it as clear as the pain in her knee. For the first time since he abducted her, she wasn’t afraid of him. As crazy as the truth was to swallow, he wasn’t the monster she once envisioned in her mind.
“I’m going to kill Nebu,” Marco said.
“What?”
He pulled a cross from under his shirt and kissed it.
“I was weak in Tampico,” he said. “And Brasilia. But I have faith. God spared me from the demons who wanted to flay me after failing them. I’ve been told many lies about you, Alejandra. But this I finally know: you are on the side of good.”
She closed her eyes and allowed what she already knew in her heart to process through her mind.
What? Marco wasn’t in service to Iblis? He was acting under his own free will? Did he somehow find his faith after everything he had gone through? Was it even possible? Recalling her own transformation, she believed it could happen.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Just as she was about to open her eyes, the sky cracked with thunder again. She flinched but felt no pain. Was she simply dead, in a place of nothingness? Had Marco’s bullet through her head done what other bullets failed to do? Would she now rejoin Koneh, Father Callahan and Erzulie in Eden? How could she have so grossly misjudged Marco again?
Then, something thumped to the ground and she heard rushed steps.
Alexandra opened her eyes to find Marco on the ground, his face twisted in a mask of agony as he gasped for air. Via crouched on his back and plunged a curved knife into his spine, causing him to twitch violently.
This was her moment.
She rose on her good leg and scooped her sword from the ground. Pain erupted in her knee but she knew her survival rested solely on her ability to ignore it. Stumbling as she lunged, she buried her sword through Via’s chest. Blood arched from the witch’s back and spurted from her mouth as both women tumbled backwards, off Marco and onto the unforgiving rocks.
Alexandra’s body vibrated with waves of pain and she laid still for several long moments.
“Told you,” Via said, her voice strained. “Find you.”
Alexandra rolled to her stomach and began to crawl towards Marco. If he wasn’t dead, maybe she could save him.
“Gaia cannot be stopped,” Via said, choking on her own blood. “The Crone… Have… Her revenge.”
Alexandra altered her course to crawl towards Via.
“Crone? What do you know of the Crone?” she asked.
Via smiled. “Destroy you… Destroy Eden. The Earth will return… Return-”
“Return what?”
Her eyes wide and mouth gaped, Via passed as she drowned in her own blood. Moving again towards Marco, Alexandra contemplated how Via could know the Crone. Dreams? Was she merely an agent to the Crone’s plan to destroy Eden?
When she had gotten as far as she could manage without losing consciousness, Alexandra put her hand on Marco.
He was gone.
She rolled onto her back and watched the roiling orange and black clouds.
“Why?” she asked. “Why send this girl after me?”
The sky churned and kept its selfish hold on the sun.
“I demand an answer!” she screamed.
For a moment, she thought the clouds parted, but she was likely on the verge of blacking out. Dark spots threatened to obscure her vision and her head felt like a cinder block.
“Because you gave power to that accursed place.”
The Crone was there, but Alexandra couldn’t see her.
“And because you leave me no choice,” the Crone said. “I must take your power for myself to use against this place you call Eden. Time is short.”
“You led Via to me?” Alexandra asked.
“She was to be my vessel, yes,” the Crone said. “And now I must find another candidate.”
“Candidate?”
“To do what you refused to do,” the Crone said. “Destroy Eden.”
“So the Earth can heal. I remember.”
“More than that, child,” the Crone said. “Your mind cannot possibly comprehend the vastness of the cosmos nor the soul. You think yourself intelligent and wise in what you call science. You are but a speck; I am but a grain of sand compared to the myriad of forces and realities that comprise the everlasting All. And now your foolishness has doomed me as well. Their beacon is lit. They will come.”
“Beacon?” Alexandra’s mind was sludge, but she remembered the word from Father Palusa’s altered Bible. “Eden will be their beacon?”
“Is that not what I just said?”
Of course! That puzzle Alexandra failed to assemble while alone in the wasteland snapped into perfect alignment. Father Palusa wasn’t calling Eden a beacon for humanity, he was issuing a warning. Lilev said eternal forces beyond her comprehension could use Eden as a doorway to Earth. Father Palusa and the Crone called Eden a beacon.
Alexandra only had one more piece to fit into place.
“Elah created Eden as a conduit to these other things you speak of?” she asked. “Like a highway between whatever else is out there? And he’s been using it to come and go for eons?”
After a long pause, the Crone said, “Perhaps you are not as limited as I first thought. Yes, Elah controlled the doorway.”
“And he left it open on his way out?”
“Yes. Your crude analogy is fitting.”
Her head still spun from the pain, blood loss and strange new knowledge. Now that she was faced with these ideas, however, they seemed less odd. If myths, religion and magic were real, then they must have come from somewhere. Since there was little evidence on Earth, her analytical mind told her the Crone’s words may contain truth.
As outlandish as that truth was to her modern mind, it made some sense to her.
“And your part in all of this?” Alexandra asked. All curiosity gone, she just needed to secure as much information as she could.
“Like you, I am a being of this world,” the Crone said. “I was here in the beginning, and I shall be here in the end. Through all this, I am life’s caretaker here. This is the role I have chosen for myself, and this is what I failed to do by allowing Elah his foothold. Now that Elah is gone, I work to set it right.”
“Mother Earth,” Alexandra breathed.
No answer came.
Alexandra attempted to make sense of everything as she examined her completed puzzle. She may not have all the why’s, but she felt like she had a complete set of what’s.
What to do with them? she thought.
Like before, everything revolved around Eden. It was a beacon in more than one way. If her feelings while in Eden were true, Lilev wasn’t insane and the Crone truly was Earth incarnate, then Alexandra had no choice.
“The Earth must heal,” Alexandra said.
The Crone moved into her field of vision and stared into her. “Are you ready to do what must be done?”
Alexandra nodded and felt a new strength well up inside of her. The knee was a distant itch. She rose to her feet and sheathed her sword, all the while gazing upon the light which escaped the gates of Eden over the nearby ridge.
Elah’s work would be undone. If not by her hand, then she would see it finished before her final breath. For the first time in her life, her path was unobstructed. Her unique DNA wasn’t put into place to be the judge of humanity. Instead, she was intended to judge humanity’s last god.
And she found His creation unfit for continued intrusion upon this world.
Chapter 27
Alexandra and Talla found a cave to wait out the next day and night. If Marco’s gunshot was heard in Babylon, she’d be safe from angelic patrols underground. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she gathered Talla in her arms and shared his body heat.
She kept her knee limber by stretching it every few hours. The mangled bones scraped together and her tendons felt as if they were going to tear free. However, she trusted her body would heal itself and she refrained from inspecting the wound. It was too dangerous to light a fire or venture outside during the light hours.
Sleep came restlessly and only in short bursts. On the next night, under the cover of darkness, Alexandra limped her way back to the rock gully. She heard voices as she approached and she drew her sword.
“It is only I,” Lilev called from the rocks. “Put your weapon away, Godslayer.”
Alexandra stepped into the candlelit area and gasped when she recognized the scene from her dream. Everything was exactly the same, down to the chalice where Lilev used a pestle to grind something into powder.
“Put that on and lay down,” Lilev said, nodding her head towards a dark bundle of cloth.
“I need to die to get back to Eden,” Alexandra said, unmoving.
“I know, girl. Put on the robe and lay on this stone table. We have much to discuss.”
Alexandra stepped to the garment and said, “How do you know?”
“You told me in Babylon. Or, rather, Saint Alexandra told me through her memories in a panicked babble. Put it on.”
As she stripped from her jacket and fatigues, Lilev continued.
“Your memories made sense,” the demoness said. “Suicide won’t get you in, nor will trying to kill you in the conventional manner. As you know, you are made from superior material. We would have to mutilate you beyond recognition – like they did the Christ. You could always will yourself to mortal death, but I’m not sure you have the mental capacity.”
Alexandra pulled the robe over her head and shivered in the chill nighttime air. In her dream, she was naked under the robe and she guessed that was the intention here.
“So, we’re just going to have to get creative,” Lilev said. “Climb onto the rock.”
“Creative?” she asked as she laid herself flat on the tabletop rock. “What about Iblis? You said you could break the shackles?”
“This will do more than that, I assure you.”
Lilev began to draw symbols upon Alexandra’s face, arms and legs with a charcoal rock.
“I can seve
r your soul from your body for a very short period of time,” Lilev said. “And, in that time, deliver a fatal blow.”
Just like her dream.
“But that is suicide,” Alexandra said. “I’m choosing this.”
Lilev held a clawed index finger aloft and said, “Aha, but it is not. Your body will immediately begin to repair that mortal blow. You will survive, once your body heals itself. So, you know you will not die.”
Alexandra nodded. “Not suicide. I’m not going to die.”
“Not permanently,” Lilev said. “While you are momentarily dead, however, your soul will be in Eden. Hopefully with enough time to destroy the place. You are here, so I can only assume you have come to grips with what I have told you?”
She locked eyes with her unusual ally. “Eden must be destroyed.”
“And all your loved ones who reside within?” Lilev asked. “You have made peace with their fate as well?”
She blinked. No, she hadn’t. Destroying Eden meant annihilating her friends. Koneh. Father Callahan. Her mother. Everything within Eden would be erased permanently.
Lilev snorted. “You’d better decide, girl. I cannot do this if you are unwilling to make that sacrifice. I will wait a thousand years for the next Mih’darl.”
“The next one?”
“Every thousand years, give or take,” Lilev said, “another is born who has the power to destroy Eden. It is a failsafe, if you can excuse the crude term.”
“Another…”
“There have been many like you,” Lilev said as she finished with the charcoal markings. “Imhotep of Egypt had the power to heal. Jesus of Nazareth was named the Christ. Too many to name, and many more dead before they realized their gift. I have sought them all and only you have recognized the truth. So, tell me now, Alejandra of the Mayan Expanse – are you ready to fulfill your destiny?”
If she destroyed Eden, she would never see Koneh again. Though tragic, she knew her responsibility was larger than her own wants and desires. Her new world had taken everything away from her. Like a bottomless pit, it consumed and consumed without ever filling. If this was to be her destiny, she decided she’d find another way. There must be some alternative she was missing, some other way to keep her loved ones safe and protect her world from whatever waited beyond Eden.
Babylon (Eden Saga Book 2) Page 26