Climbing free of the pile of stones, the man ascended a bank and, at the top, looked again at Alric as water began to rise and flow.
Half of the severed flag floated by, the water soaking it to darken the colors before it was pulled under and gone.
“Alric. Alric!”
The beat sounded again. With a blink, the thickness cleared. Alric’s view shifted, wavered, and he was there still, with Lance, who was looking a little panicked.
Glancing around as he stabilized his breathing, he was glad to see that no one else had seemed to notice the grip of the vision. “I’m alright. Uh… God shows me things. I was just seeing… stuff.”
The words were out before he realized he was telling one of his secrets. Anxiety made him tense as he waited for Lance to react.
Lance leaned forward, his voice quiet with concern and curiosity. “What are you talking about? Like, you’re a psychic?”
“No,” Alric replied fervently. “I don’t think so. I have dreams… sleeping and awake.” He hesitated, remembering Makar with a bullet hole in his head. “Well, actually, one of my… visions… has come true.”
“Visions?” Lance crinkled his eyes, shook his head. He rubbed a hand hard over his forehead, like one did when they had a headache. Then abruptly, he slapped his hand down on the table and peered at Alric, a determined gleam molding his face. “You’re totally weird, dude, but I have this crazy, muddled, mud-filled mess in my stomach that I really feel is telling me I gotta’ hang with you.” His head wagged again. He twirled a finger around his temple. “I’m crazy. You’re crazy. All of this is crazy. But, dude, I was watching your face while you were…” He spiraled his hand in the air at Alric. “Wherever you were, and well… I believe you.” He said the last words like he wasn’t sure he believed them at all. “I mean, I don’t really know what’s going on in my head right now, but…”
The flicker of light he’d seen before behind Lance sparked again. Wavered. Alric knew he wasn’t seeing something that wasn’t really there this time. A shaft of darkness hit the light and it pulsed, pushing the darkness away.
Lance’s face crinkled again, a confused mash of emotions playing with his features. “I don’t know why I’m even saying this, but crazy or not, you’re stuck with me for a while.”
Lance lifted a hand in the air, held it there, frowning. Alric almost laughed. Lance did not look happy about his decision at all and the hand he held hovered in the air seemed to be waiting for direction. “You sure?” Alric asked.
“Well, dude, I guess I should ask you if you want me to stick around, right? Can’t just invite myself along. My mama would slap me upside the head for being presumptuous.”
Alric did laugh at that. He blinked back sorrow, remembering the last time he had laughed, struck by how little time had passed since then. He couldn’t imagine anyone slapping Lance in any way. The man was bulky with muscle, tall, intimidating with his scattered tattoos, dreaded hair, and black clothing.
“Maybe your Mom would be proud you’re following your gut?” he suggested.
Lance made a face. “You never met my Mama, dude. Won’t. She’s gone now. Let’s get going before I come to my senses and talk myself out of it. We’ve got a boat to catch.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alric blinked his eyes open, groggily looking up out the window. He sat up in the back seat, glancing at Lance in the driver’s seat. This wasn’t the first time an abrupt turn had awakened him.
They’d been driving for most of the day, only stopping twice to grab food and hit up a bathroom. They weren’t taking main roads and Alric hadn’t been able to figure out if Lance actually knew where they were going or if he was winging it.
Granted, he’d slept through most of it, but the SUV’s GPS system hadn’t once been lit up that he’d seen, nor had he seen Lance have a phone in his hand at all.
Foggy with exhaustion, Alric watched run-down buildings fly by as they passed through a small town that looked like it was dying from what little care the businesses were getting.
There were more weeds than grass, more graffiti than clean paint, more boards on the windows than glass. Still, people were visible, living in what they knew.
A woman carried a bag out of a convenience store, unfazed by the vulgar language spray painted on the outside wall. A man leaned into the open hood of a car, chatting with another man who stood waiting like he had all the time in the world.
He didn’t. None of them did.
Frowning at the thought, Alric shifted restlessly in his seat.
“Places like these, you can get lost in,” Lance said from the front. “When you need to hide, dude, you find a town like this.”
Looking away from the sight of a man smoking on a bench, a small paper bag clutched in his free hand, Alric focused on Lance in the rear view mirror. “I would think it would be dangerous in a place like this. A stranger?”
“Nah, dude. They don’t care. You keep to yourself, they’ll leave ya alone. It’s all about presentation. You stroll in wearing a suit, yeah, they’ll all notice you.”
Lance flicked his hat back a bit on his head, squinted at Alric in the mirror. “You put on clothes a little too big, a little grungy, leave some stubble on your chin, don’t make eye contact. Don’t walk like you mean it. Presentation. That’s what’s important. You figure out how to blend in.”
“This works anywhere?” Alric hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about his future. He hadn’t thought he would have one. He hadn’t thought about where he would go, what he would do. He was glad that he had squirreled money and formulas away. Maybe a part of his brain had convinced itself he could gain freedom.
He had enough money that he could decide to be whoever he wanted to be. Except he didn’t know who that was. Scientist was his label. Outside of that, he really wasn’t sure any more.
Flocks of details for theories and conclusions he hadn’t garnered yet flooded his mind and he blew out a breath, anxiety tightening his chest.
“See, dude, you think too much. It’s all over your face. You gotta learn to disguise that. Look a man in the eye so he won’t know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. That’s how you stay alive when people like Xis are after you.”
The town faded away behind them as Alric thought about Lance’s words. Empty stretches of browned grass and crumpled-in buildings skimmed past.
He wondered what was happening at Xis. What havoc his disappearance had reaped. Were they looking for him, or had they decided he wasn’t important enough to bother with?
Alric thought of Eve, and wondered if she knew that he was gone. He pressed a hand to his chest, rubbing it over his heart. He dug his nails into his chest, the guilt at leaving her behind closing his airway. He swallowed hard, releasing a long breath. He couldn’t hold onto that.
“You alright?” Lance asked, concern shading his eyes in the mirror.
Alric nodded. “Just thinking about a friend I left behind.” Remembering what Lance had told him about the little girl he had extracted before, he leaned forward. “What happened to that child you rescued?”
Shoulders lifting, Lance wagged his head. “I’m just the middle man, dude. Last I knew she was on her way to America. They changed her name. I’m sure she’s fine. From what I gathered she was really important.”
“Why do you say that?”
Alric grabbed the door to stay steady when Lance took a sudden turn to the left.
“Probably nothin,
People talkin.’ I don’t know much about the stuff that gets tossed around at that place. It was some weird terminology I never heard before.”
“Scientific terminology?” Alric wanted to know. There was a reason Xis was running experiments on people and tracking DNA.
“Yeah. There was a name they used for her. Man’s name. Uh, hold on, it was common. Dude, it’s uh…”
“The David Profile?” Alric asked, even though he was already sure.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s it!
You know what that is?”
Alric shook his head, sinking back against the seat.
“No, not yet.” He had to find out. Alric felt very strongly that it was a significant piece of the puzzle he’d found himself a part of.
“Lance, what do you know about Afion Heth?”
Lance snorted, bared his teeth. “Devil himself!” he exclaimed fiercely. “He dupes people!” His eyes shot up to meet Alric’s in the mirror for a second. “Did you know he runs Xis?”
Alric nodded. “I did, yes.”
The vehicle shuddered over a pothole. “Here’s the thing, dude. Afion Heth is like a parasite. He bites people and they do what he says. See, because they depend on him for life. Once he gets his claws in, they’re owned.”
Lance swore when a wheel bumped over another hole. “I’m no average Joe, though. I know things the general population does not. They love him. Think he’s like this great dude making change for the better. No. Nope, nope, and nope.”
Lance slapped his palm twice against the steering wheel. Alric wasn’t sure if it was directed at his dialogue about Afion, or the state of the road.
“Let me just summarize what Afion is doing: he’s starting a war,” Lance spat. “All his talk about ‘freedom for the people’ is BS.”
“Here in Russia, you mean?” Alric asked.
Lance shook his head. “No, dude. Everywhere else. Russia is his domain. He lords over it like a god. He’s spreading his tentacles and invading under cover. You know he’s got Mongolia, Turkey, Chad, the Ukraine. World doesn’t even know it, but they are his.”
“Got them how? He can’t take over without anyone knowing.”
Lance’s thick eyebrows shot up. “Oh, dude. See… you can implant someone without it being common knowledge. Afion knows military strategy. He’s smart, and I can say that even if I can’t stand the man. He’s got his serviceman right where he wants them, and all it’s gonna take is one word, and boom.”
“Boom,” Alric repeated. He felt nauseous. He could see exactly what Lance was spelling out for him. He wanted to disbelieve, but his mind rejected the possibility. He’d met the man face-to-face. He was dangerous. Calculating. Ruthless.
“So how do you know he has those countries?”
“Told you, I do things. Eron is one of my… suppliers, let’s say. Of jobs, I mean. But I’ve got other contacts. I roll when the money comes in. I make myself invisible and secrets spill like water.”
Alric was disturbed. Afion had graced more than one of his visions, all of them bloody and filled with death. Hearing Lance was making them all seem like omens of things to come. With Makar’s fulfilled death fresh on his soul, it terrified him that everything Lance was saying was perhaps not far from happening.
He had more questions, but didn’t ask them. He needed time to filter his new knowledge and bring his heightened anxiety level down.
War. The David Profile. Prophetic visions.
The taste of freedom was barely whetting his appetite and it was under threat. One more question that he couldn’t put off getting an answer for surged forth in his mind. “Where is the boat taking me, Lance?”
“The United States of America, dude.” Lance grinned.
Fear pressed in hard for Alric. Lance had no way of knowing the details of his last vision. Unable to speak from shock and fear, Alric closed his eyes and pushed back into the seat.
If Lance was right, if the vision was a warning, they were about to place themselves right in the middle of a country that Afion had infiltrated and was about to destroy.
He was lost in scenarios. He prayed that he was wrong. His vision of the way Makar had met his end could have been a fluke. It was the only one that had come true, after all.
He was unaware of Lance pulling off the road and into the cover of trees.
He slept, his mind scrambling for yet more answers that he did not have. And feared.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Birds singing woke him and Alric stretched out his cramped body, blinking into the morning light. He lay still, looking up at the branches moving gently in the breeze outside of the window.
His stomach growled at him, and his bladder was what prompted him to finally sit up and reach for the door handle.
Lance grunted as the door swung open. “‘Bought time you woke up,” he said from the front seat, his voice gruff, suggesting that he’d only just awakened himself.
He exited the car after Alric climbed back in, yawning as he folded himself into the driver’s seat. “Let’s find some coffee,” he said as he started the SUV and threw it into gear.
Lance didn’t offer much conversation. Alric didn’t mind. He wasn’t feeling much better than he had been the night before.
Lance repeated the same winding trajectory of the map in his head.
After breakfast Alric settled into the front passenger seat.
“Safer in the back,” Lance suggested with a rise of his brows.
Alric buckled his seat belt, signaling his decision to stay where he was.
Lance shrugged. “We’ll reach the boat today, get a change of scenery.”
“And you’re getting on it with me?”
“Told you I was going with you, dude. Haven’t changed my mind.”
“Did Eron tell you anything about me?” He wasn’t sure if Eron knew anything about him, but he was curious.
Lance shook his head in answer. “Had your pic. Was told where to run the van off. That’s it.”
Alric was tired of secrets. Tired of not having a friend. Over having no one to trust. If Lance was making himself his designated bodyguard, he wanted him to know everything before he made the decision to follow him to what could be their death.
He hesitated, examining his emotions, wondering if it was the wrong choice. “So I think you should know some things about me,” he began. How did he say it? Explain it? He would sound crazy.
“Spit it out, dude. You’re weird, I already know that. Don’t think you can shock me. I have seen plenty in this world.”
“Right,” Alric acknowledged. He was pretty sure Lance hadn’t heard what he was about to disclose. “I have bones on my back that most of the population of the world does not have.”
“So you’re deformed?”
“Hm, no.”
Alric rolled his shoulders. Did he voice the conclusion he’d only recently come to? One he hadn’t fully determined he believed yet?
“They’re just extra bones.”
“Okay, dude. Doesn’t matter. I won’t treat you any different.”
Taking a deep breath, Alric plunged on. “I think I might be an angel and the bones are going to be… wings.”
“Oh. Kay. That is weird. What makes you think these bones will be wings? I mean I don’t see how one could logically come to that conclusion. Do they have bendy parts? Like bird wings?”
It was a good question. Alric felt like an idiot. The small bones on his back couldn’t support wings. He clenched his jaw.
He recalled himself in the line of seven as wings rose up behind them all.
Trust yourself, he admonished himself silently.
“Look, Lance, I don’t know if I’m being stupid or not. I saw myself with wings in one of my visions. And not just me. Six others. And one of them is still a captive at Xis.”
The vehicle shifted right as Lance steered around a sharp curve. The SUV tires straightened. The dash showed that they were covering the asphalt at sixty miles an hour. Lance said nothing. His foot found the brake with a half-stomp as they careened to the left around another curve before accelerating back up to the same speed.
“This might take me awhile to process, dude. It’s way weirder than I thought it was going to be.”
Alric nodded, turning his attention to what was outside the car. It did sound crazy. He couldn't really expect anyone to believe him without seeing the proof, and whipping his shirt up in the car seemed a little dramatic. Even if he did, there was nothing there now but the bones.
<
br /> They stopped at a diner for lunch and Lance seemed far more interested in his french fries than conversation, so Alric left him alone. The man was either going to believe him, or not.
They weren’t back long on the road when Alric saw seagulls circling and smelled the salt in the air. It brought trepidation and relief.
They were greeted with friendly smiles from those milling about the dock that led to the boat.
It wasn’t a passenger boat like Alric had expected. “We’re just cargo,” Lance explained as they were led on board and each were shown to crew quarters below deck.
“Feel free to mill around guys while we finish loading!”
Lance motioned toward the stretch of concrete on land. “I’ve gotta get you some supplies. I’ll be back before we push off.”
Alric watched from the deck as Lance made his way back to the SUV. The crew joked with him as he passed. They all seemed familiar with each other and with Lance. He wondered if Lance would come back or if the silence after his revelation meant he had just lost another possible friend.
Thinking it easier not to let regret take hold by standing and watching for Lance to possibly return, Alric found what seemed like a safe place to watch the group of men go about their business.
There had been no sign of Lance when the boat eased away from the dock. Alric was on his own. He determined to send a message to Eron in America. He’d get ahold of some money and find a place to hide for a while.
The water was beautiful. The nausea that rolled in his stomach with the boat was not. Alric had never been on a boat before and retreated to his cabin, miserable.
He hoped the nausea wouldn’t last. He didn’t want to arrive in America weak and depleted. Things felt like they were happening quickly since he’d left the confines of his cell in Xis, and he wanted to be ready for whatever was coming next.
If he had to stand on his own, he needed to be strong. To stop running from things that made him uncomfortable and face them head on.
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