Heaven's Eyes

by Jason A Anderson

  Straining against the flood of bodies moving against her, Helann tried hopping a couple times to get a clear view over the heads of her classmates, which seemed to have reversed their movement en mass. “I can’t tell what’s going on,” she called back to the other four in the group, all of whom preferred to linger several steps back from the crowd’s main throng.

  Before anyone could offer an opinion, the sea of humanity parted to their left and a small group of teachers emerged from the pulse of students, carrying a ramshackle stretcher between them.

  Pol, Brenden, and their girls had a perfect view of the body on the stretcher. It was the mangled corpse of a fellow classmate. The amount of rich crimson drenching the body easily drowned out his pale blue school uniform. Gutted from navel to his throat, at first glance the jagged edges and viciousness of the act suggested an animal attack.

  “We think it may be a pit-boar attack,” one of the teachers explained as they pushed through the crush of newly arriving students.

  Brenden ignored the groan of feigned astonishment from Helann and managed to block out the more subdued reaction of Danae. As Claudia turned and pressed her cheek against his shoulder, he automatically put his arm around her. Something about the way the young man’s ribs were spread wide open, exposing a hollow torso, as well as the empty, oozing eye sockets struck a chord inside him. “What do you think? Animal attack?” he asked Pol, who also seemed distracted by the torn, savaged body.

  Shaking his head, Pol replied, “Looks more like ritual murder to me.”

  Nodding, Brenden stepped up beside his team leader. “I think we’ve got the proof we’re looking for. How much longer do we have to wait, before we can make a move?” He didn’t even try to mask the anxiousness he felt.

  Pol turned, catching Brenden’s attention and nodding for him to follow. “No idea,” he replied, leading the five of them into the sprawling school’s main hall.

  In an attempt to keep the students from panicking and gloss over the tragedy, the academy administration made the students adhere to their regular daily schedules.

  An hour later, Brenden and Pol were walking in silence with their fellow students down the hall of one of the large ancillary buildings used for combat training. Before they reached the exit, the entire building shook from the deafening concussion of a massive explosion going off nearby.

  Brenden found himself slammed against the wall, Pol only managed to keep his footing through luck. Most of the others were tossed around the confined space like scattered chess pieces.

  Meeting Pol’s knowing gaze, Brenden stated the obvious, “That can’t be good,” and the two SoulChasers rushed for the exit as fast as circumstances allowed.

  Pushing through the metal door frames, tempered glass crunching beneath their feet, Pol and Brenden made it outside and surveyed the pandemonium of panicking students that raged across the quad. Off to their left, thick, roiling flames enveloped the main gymnasium. Before either could comment, both SoulChasers ducked as three secondary explosions rattled the gym’s lightweight entryway roof, belching thicker black smoke and adding to the orange inferno.

  Then, amid the cacophony of chaos and destruction, a bright light suddenly appeared before Brenden and Pol. A moment later, the image of a man seated in a throne-like chair carved with intricate runes thrust forward from the center of the light. It only took him a heartbeat to become completely visible to the two SoulChasers.

  “Pol, Brenden, the time has come to proceed with your retrieval,” said the man, who may have been looking right at them, but it was hard to tell given the dark spectacles that shaded his eyes.

  “Understood,” Pol agreed, even as the Chronologist retreated back into the light, chair and all. Then the light itself paled out.

  Pol yanked the small auto-pistol from the waistband at the small of his back. “You heard the man,” he said, sliding the upper rail back on the pistol to make sure it was loaded. “You check the quad. I’ll check ground zero, see if she’s there. If you find anyone, radio me on channel 7.” He pulled two earpieces he had swiped out of the Communications room from a pocket and handed one to Brenden. The other he fit into his right ear, tapping it to activate it.

  Brenden nodded. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll be together.”

  Without hesitation, Pol struck out across the quad, dodging students, teachers and Security alike.

  The vast wave of students fleeing from the raging flames engulfing the gymnasium and its adjoining annex building, caused a flood of humanity that Pol struggled against. Trying to get as close as he could to the tragic scene, he wasn’t sure where he was going or what he may find. Through the crush he pushed, relying on the steady pulse of energy of the SoulStar in his pocket.

  When he finally stood before the burning wreckage of the gymnasium, something instinctual urged him to turn and begin circling the smaller structure annex building; a power greater than he now guided him.

  The chaos surrounding the burning buildings kept anyone from noticing Pol as he ducked and wove his way around to the skeletal remains of tall, metal scaffold stanchions. In his two weeks on this planet, Pol had never understood the purpose of the scaffolding; his best guess, the leftovers of some abandoned renovation or expansion to the gymnasium annex. Teetering and swaying now from the heat and damage they had sustained, at the moment they served no other purpose than as a danger to anyone nearby.

  He found her there, mostly buried by brick, mortar, and some of the heavy scaffolding.

  Blood coated Danae’s lips, dribbling down both cheeks to the asphalt ground where she lay. In her hands, she gripped the silver goblet, still encrusted with the blood of their most recent sacrifice.

  In astonished silence, Pol worked his way through the debris, careful not to dislodge anything that could harm him.

  “Draek?” she called out. Her voice gurgled from the blood caught in her throat. This caused a round of coughing that wracked her entire body, spraying crimson streams across her school uniform and red mist into the heat-saturated air.

  “I’m here,” Pol called out to her as he reached her side. Her eyes didn’t seem to track properly, scanning the sky, the destroyed building nearby, anything but him. “Danea!” he called out to her. “I’m here!”

  Hearing her name, Danea brought her gaze to bear on the SoulChaser and saw him truly for the first time. “You’re not Draek, are you?”

  Understanding how close to death she was, Pol could only shake his head. Inside, he pressed down on the rising despair he felt toward her. His compassion warred with his common sense.

  “What’s your name?” she choked out.

  Meeting her gaze, Pol gave her his name.

  “SoulChaser?”

  A nod from Pol...

  More coughing ensued and Danea tried to speak at the same time. “Helann said... you’d come for... her. Didn’t be..lieve her.”

  Gauging that Danea’s injuries wouldn’t allow her to stay lucid much longer, Pol gently – yet firmly – guided her chin in his direction so that he could make complete eye contact. “Where is she, Danea?” he asked, hardening his voice to give it a bit of an edge. “I need to find her before she can hurt anyone else.”

  Danea tried to shake her head, but Pol wouldn’t let it move. “Didn’t want to hurt anyone. She promised...”

  “I know what she promised, but she lied. And now you’ve killed at least one person... probably more.” His voice now held no compassion or pity, despite her obvious pain.

  A shimmering off to his right, beyond the fallen gridwork, caught Pol’s attention. From nowhere a beautiful, exotic looking woman walked into existence. Her black hair was pulled back in a severe queue at the nape of her neck; her dusky skin peeked out from beneath a tight, black, shapely body suit and leggings that fit from her waist to her knees, shrouded by a billowing black cloak. Cra
dled in her left arm rested a six-foot-long wood staff, engraved with intricate runes, each connected by stylized carved ivy. The engravings on the staff pulsed with an orange and red luminescence, as if the staff burned inside with a flame even hotter than the one destroying the buildings behind him. But it was the object that adorned the top of the woman’s stave that caught his attention. A curved silver blade, gleaming as if with a life of its own, left no question in Pol’s mind about the woman’s Calling.

  “Madam Reaper,” Pol greeted the beautiful woman.

  With a slightly tilted nod, the Reaper replied, “SoulChaser. I didn’t expect you to still be here.” Her voice seemed to echo in his mind as much as in his ears.

  “I’m not quite done,” Pol explained, suddenly feeling like a little boy caught playing outside before finishing his chores.

  Taking a slightly higher tone, like crystal chimes in a light breeze, the Reaper said, “Get what you need, then be gone. There are many here that require my attention, thanks to the SoulStar in your pocket.”

  A flicker in his peripheral vision drew Pol’s attention. A second exotic woman stood there – shapely, with skin like fresh cream and hair more brilliant than the sun on the horizon. One Reaper didn’t worry Pol, but two – possibly more – couldn’t be ignored.

  Pol returned his attention to Danea, who seemed captivated by the presence of the woman with the scythe. “I see you,” she managed to gurgle. Her wheezing breath now sounded like she breathed through water.

  “Danea, I need to know where Helann went,” Pol demanded as firmly as he dared.

  Her eyes fluttered for a moment, then Danae turned her gaze to him. “I never could deny you anything,” she whispered and despite himself, Pol blushed. The intimacies that Danae and Draek shared had nothing to do with him, and yet he felt his own secrets exposed by her simple declaration. “She took the girl out to the graveyard,” the young woman replied. With a flop of her right arm above her head, she managed to point in the direction of the military facility’s mechanical junkyard.

  Despite the terrible atrocities he was sure Danea had participated in since being spiritually seduced by Helann, Pol couldn’t help himself... he leaned down and kissed Danea softly on the forehead.

  Standing, he turned to the Reaper. “She’s all yours,” he said, then made his way out of the cramped space.

  Without looking at Pol as he passed, the Reaper agreed, this time with a voice hard as granite, “Yes, she is.”

  The unforgiving tone in the Reaper’s voice almost caused Pol to shiver as he struck out across the browning grass field between the school and the “graveyard”.

  In his time here he hadn’t taken the time to find out what the administration officially called the many, many acres of discarded military equipment left out to rust away into oblivion. He and Brenden had searched the graveyard once, as part of their area recon in the early phase of this retrieval, but he found his own memories lacking and the host’s lingering memories woefully inadequate. All he could do now was let the SoulStar be his guide as he navigated through the stacks of old communication equipment, scrapped automobiles, and hulking shells of abandoned aircraft. It didn’t take long before he felt hopefully lost, yet he persevered, the SoulStar urging him forward. The path he traveled took him further and further from the military academy and deeper into the winding maze.

  The long shadows began playing tricks with his vision and he nearly balked at a turn that his mind told him would only end in a dead end; but denying the guidance of the powerful relic was something he couldn’t do, so he followed its prompting and turned to his right. He came to an immediate halt when he realized that the turn had brought him to the open clearing at the graveyard’s heart.

  There, looking as if she had waited all day just for him, stood Helann, holding onto the right wrist of a young girl. The rogue’s casual demeanor set Pol on edge.

  Still, he hesitated.

  Since Helann held the girl’s arm in one hand and concealed her other arm behind her back, Pol could only guess what she held there. He was certain that had it been only the two of them, it wouldn’t have mattered. He could’ve charged in, taken whatever damage she had planned for him and inflicted enough of his own to force the rogue soul out of the poor young lady, Beverly’s, body.

  The presence of the young red-headed girl complicated things for him. As if to aggravate the situation, Helann called out sweetly, “How does it feel to be standing before a General of the next Eternity War, SoulChaser?”

  Caught off-guard, Pol replied, “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know, yet?” Helann took great pleasure in this revelation. “The Eternals think this is merely a flare up of rogue activity. What they don’t know is that this is only for starters.” She shook the girl’s arm, jostling her around like a rag doll. “Don’t tell me this little girl is going to keep you from doing your duty, SoulChaser.”

  Before he could respond, Pol sensed motion beside him, immediately confirmed by a soothing, deeply resonating voice that said, “Worry not, SoulChaser. We are here. Jean Archer is under our protection.”

  Without looking, Pol nodded his acknowledgment to the spectral Guardian, who then placed a gentle hand on the SoulChaser’s shoulder. For a brief moment, Pol glimpsed the mortal realm through the angel’s sight. Before him, haloed by near-white light, twelve persons stood, ringed around little Jean Archer.

  “What’s wrong?” Helann demanded now, breaking into Pol’s reverie.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Pol grunted in response, dropped Danae’s knife into his palm from where he’d concealed it in his right sleeve, and dove forward.

  Anticipating the move, Helann tried to drag Jean out from behind her, intending to use the child as a shield, but to her immediate astonishment, the girl couldn’t be budged.

  Two swift steps later, Danae’s knife was loosed from Pol’s hand and much to Helann’s astonishment it hissed forward and fully embedded itself in her left shoulder with a thump!

  Without a word, Jean took advantage of Helann’s injury to wriggle free of the rogue’s grip and scamper on all fours into one of the many makeshift tunnels of huge machine parts that catacombed the graveyard.

  The impact of Pol slamming into Helann threw her to the ground with a grunt, dislodging the small object she’d held concealed behind her back. It bounced and rolled several feet away; Pol only recognized it peripherally as a “biologicals only” grenade.

  Pol rolled Helann onto her back and straddled her abdomen, one knee on each side of her.

  “Enjoy your little victory, SoulChaser,” Helann spat at him. “It’s a hollow one. This won’t even pause the tide that is coming.”

  Pausing despite his training, Pol said, “What do you mean, slag?”

  But Helann just began to laugh, a cackle that looked surreal coming from the gentle face of the “girl next door”.

  The rogue still laughed, blood spilling openly from the knife wound.

  Filing her words away for later consideration – and hoping that Helann had set the grenade’s timer with enough seconds for little Jean to make an escape – Pol withdrew the SoulStar and placed it against Helann’s chest, one of each of the relic’s four pronged feet touching its corresponding point of upper and lower sternum and the inside edge of each breast.

  Helann gasped as the SoulStar’s clear center stone began to swirl a luminescent green.

  In the sky above, strange multi-hued lightning flashed and coalesced in the cloudless blue.

  With a final shudder, Helann’s host’s eyes bulged for a moment, then went dim and lifeless.

  A satisfied nod and grab for the SoulStar were the last things Pol managed before a yellow flash beside him caused the world to erupt with heat and a moment of intense pain.

  When Brenden burst onto the scene several seconds later at a fu
ll run, the smoke and heat had already dissipated, revealing the original clearing in the center of the equipment graveyard, not a living thing in sight.

  Chapter 2

  “Black and White”

  The driver’s door to the black Corvette Stingray closed with a satisfying “thunk” and Jake Andrews turned his attention from the sleek sports car to the cream and tan Mediterranean-style mansion before him. The faceted brick drive beneath his feet circled a beautiful, landscaped fountain. Beyond the clear, sparkling water waited a large set of doors finished in dark mahogany; a single European column flanked each side of the entry. Above the doors, a half-circle window arched toward the sculpted porch roof, accentuating the height of the front colonnade.

  Glancing at the rest of the massive home, Jake raked his fingers through his short, auburn hair. He could only wonder, “Am I in the right place?”

  He knew his own home was deceptively sedate, considering the roller-coaster his life had been over the last few years. Maybe, he thought, Chaz Black prefers to retreat to someplace peaceful, after the wild showmanship he exercises on stage.

  He could hear the soles of his imported Italian leather boots click against the flagstones as he glanced at one of the open garage bays, exposing the unmistakable front end of a classic 1960s Corvette, and approached the front doors. Before he reached them, they swept open.

  Not sure what to expect, Jake didn’t recognize the man that greeted him with a welcoming smile. His voice was deep and resonant as he said, “I see you found the house alright.”

  Only then did Jake realize that the shock rocker Chaz Black, the biggest name in the theatrical rock’n roll industry, stood before him, his hand outstretched.

  Unable to mask all of his astonishment, Jake grasped the older man’s hand, saying, “Sorry, you caught me off-guard, Chaz.”

  Chaz laughed, a rumbling that echoed up from deep in his chest. “I get that a lot,” he said with a warm smile, then noticed the car in the drive. “Nice ride. Rental?” he asked and held the broad door open wide.