URIEL: The Price (The Airel Saga, Book 6) (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (7 page)

Like most dreams, when I woke I had a hard time remembering exactly what had happened. It was more feeling than memory. There was a small stone house, a book—but not my Book. It was The Book. She talked to me as if she were a real person, standing beside me in the form of a little girl.

I saw my story overlaid with hers. “I am in every part of your life, Airel. I love you, and your mistakes and triumphs are mine too.”

I still didn’t understand what it all meant. What am I supposed to see?

I saw the earth made of ink, the people of paper. All were born and plunged into the blackness, but not all had to remain living in the darkness.

I felt as if I’d been walking the earth as a ghost ever since Stanley had plunged his sword into my heart. I was out of order; my life was artificial.

But how . . .?

“Your Book, as is the same with all the Books, was never intended to be used as anything other than to tell the unflinching story of your life, warts and all. That is why it is so dangerous, so powerful. But when Michael wrote in it, he changed the proper order.”

I thought about this. You mean that when he wrote in my Book, he overruled the story in The Book?

“Michael’s actions changed everything, Airel.”

You mean nothing I lived was real?

“Tell me, if reality is an illusion, how real can it be? Michael took something from you that you hadn’t offered to him. And yet you did not resist. Not even then.”

I wanted to weep. Was none of it real?

“Oh, it was very real. That is why the consequences will be so heavy.”

This is why I’m here. This was why everything was falling apart. I was supposed to die that day. Drown. What Michael had done, he did in his grief, out of love, but he set things in motion no one could have predicted.

What do I do?

“Forgive.”

I don’t understand.

“Forgive him, forgive yourself; stop letting the past rule over you. This is why you are here, Airel. To let go of the things that hold you back so when the time comes, you can do what you were born to do.”

CHAPTER XIII

Amsterdam, Present Day

JOHN CROSS MANAGED TO bribe his way onto an international flight to Europe. That had been too expensive, leaving him cash poor and not sure how he was going to get to Dubai. He sat in the terminal at Schiphol in Amsterdam, nursing a migraine from the cigarette smoke, and frustrated to be in this position. Dubai was one of the last fully functional urban centers in the world, and the only contact he still trusted lived in Dubai.

He’d had enough time to make a decision. The attack at his house had happened a week ago now, and he wouldn’t sit by helplessly to await his daughter’s death. His wife was lost to him, grief overtaking her—and some guilt, to be sure–so it was either sit around or find some answers. He was not good at sitting around.

There weren’t that many people milling about. Schiphol was traditionally a very busy place, but today—and probably lately, John mused—it was a shell of itself. The only people travelling these days were those with means or connections or both. Weirdly, all of them seemed to be smokers. I’ll never really get Europeans. The more things change . . .

Meanwhile, the world had changed, and, it seemed to John, irrevocably. Nearly a billion people—these were the best estimates—had perished in the Great Pacific Quake and the Global Tsunami, which, coincidentally, had happened on the exact same day the dragon dinosaur demon showed up in his daughter’s bedroom.

Oh, what fun we had.

John suffered a twitching shiver at the memory of it. The big one had a head, sure. But its face was in its abdomen. That’s why all those head shots were so ineffective, but the body shots had taken it out. What chilled him most was that the beast’s face was human. Well . . . vaguely. The smaller one had vanished except for a pile of ash in the living room. John wondered if the thing was dead or on the run.

When he had calmed himself enough to examine the reason of the home invasion—because there was always a purpose behind violence of any sort—he didn’t have to search Airel’s room very long until he’d found it. A little black book, under the mattress—right where he’d hidden his own most valuable treasures as a youth. It was volume III of The Book of the Brotherhood, and when he first read those words, the claws of fear raked across his heart, tracing veins of ice deep and fast.

These assailants had been one military unit—albeit demonic, which he wasn’t sure he could believe even now. Had they had come to retrieve this book? Why Airel had possession of it in the first place really puzzled him, though. What had she gotten herself mixed up in? The Alexander boy had something to do with it, surely.

But of course he opened it. Who wouldn’t? Huddled in a corner of his daughter’s bedroom, pulse pounding like a scared little boy, the corpse of a demon in the hallway, he had read. In five minutes, the necessary connections fired across his synapses and he knew that PILLBOX had set him up on a suicide mission in Glasgow to retrieve the most powerful talisman under the sun—the Bloodstone.

John didn’t fully understand it all, and upon reading the book, he’d found opening up before him yet another set of problems he had to address. They had tried to kill him twice now. Airel was involved too, evidently. They should have kept her out of it—or at least kept him out of it. Either way, he could taste blood. Self-defense was altogether a different flavor than fatherly rage, though.

After having had a week to mull things over and do a little of his own research, John decided that Dubai was the place to start. He would meet his contact—he did not inform him of the visit; some things were better to do without announcement—and then retrace his steps to find out where the Bloodstone went and who was trying to kill him. Airel was in a coma because of all this. Someone is going to pay.

He glanced at his carryon. The book was tucked away in there safely. No need to get it out right now and read it; he had already read it ten times at least. The dirty compulsion was strong, though. I need a cigarette myself, come to think of it. John looked around the lounge. There was a man seated across from him who was smoking. He had an expensive look to him. “Hey, buddy. Bum a smoke from ya?”

The man looked up. Annoyance flashed across his features, but he reached into his suit coat pocket and fished out a blue pack of Gauloises anyway. “Oui. Vous voilà.”

John stood and walked to him, taking the proffered cigarette from the Frenchman’s casual hand. “Merci.” He stooped as the Frenchman lit it for him. He stood, took a long drag, and nearly choked. That’s really strong.

The Frenchman smirked acidly at him and shrugged. “Liberté tojours.” His shoulders bounced once or twice in light mirth.

John turned back toward his seat, giving him a limp salute. “Vive la France, buddy.”

The Frenchman gave a not-impolite little snort. “Americain, yes?”

John sat. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“What brings you to the continent?” he asked, his English actually quite good. “Business?”

John thought about it before answering. “You could say I’m seeing the sights. I’m on my way elsewhere.”

The Frenchman took a drag and then exhaled. “Ah.” The hand with the cigarette traced an arc in the air before it came to rest at his side.

What is it with the French? They do everything with artistic flair.

“Than it is business.”

“You’re reading me like a book. Well . . . you might as well know the title. Name’s Jim.” Hey, close enough. Maybe he’ll buy it.

“Pierre-Henri.” Pierre stood and then reached to shake John’s hand. “Pleasure. May I?”

John moved his carryon aside. “Oui. By all means, please.” He took another drag and felt nauseated. Perhaps this is the price of a friend. “And you? What brings you to Amsterdam, Pierre?”

Pierre looked at him with a flash of caution. “It is business, mon ami.”

“Good.” John nodded, “So we’re both just a couple of bull salesmen.”

Pierre laughed.

Yes, John thought, friend-making strategy 101. He could usually get a laugh out of someone. Perhaps he could get more out of “Monsieur Moreau” or whoever he was. “So you headed home now?”

“Oh no, no,” Pierre said. His face became darker now. “No, frère Jim, I can never go back there. France is on fire, as I am sure you know.” He took a drag. “I flee to safer climes.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” John said. “So is it Dubai, then? Or Stockholm?”

“Dubai, Jim—you are very smart. Not everyone knows this. It is one or the other now, is it not? And I am afraid my Swedish is not so good.” Pierre smiled, and it was tragic.

John was struck in that moment. His conscience was unusually wide awake. “Pierre, I gotta shoot straight because I feel like I can trust you. There’s something in your eyes that tells me you’re a quality person. I’m just not sure who I can trust these days, so I lied to you about who I am.” John extended his hand once more. “John Cross.”

“Ah,” Pierre said, shaking his hand. “I see.” His face registered that gears were meshing behind the scenes and that he was thinking things over. “Your business in Dubai—it is very serious, is it not?”

“Yes, Pierre. It is very serious.” John considered things for a moment. “Thanks again for the cigarette.”

“You like?”

“No, it was horrible.”

Pierre belly laughed at this. “This is true; they are terrible. I’ve been meaning to give them up for years now.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the adjacent ashtray. “Today is the day.”

John stood. “Buy you a drink to celebrate?”

Pierre stood as well. “Oui, monsieur. We shall trade one vice for another. You will pay dearly, though, I must warn you. I do not take lightly this offense of you talking bad about my Gauloises. These are a French institution, very nationalistic.”

“Two drinks, then. At least.” John clapped him on the back as he grabbed his luggage and they walked. The tiniest part of him, that which was still unsullied and uncynical, had truly made a friend in Pierre, truly liked him. The other ninety-nine percent, though, was busy calculating how and when to make the most use of this new potential asset.

* * *

JOHN AND PIERRE SAT and talked over vodka martinis at first, switching to club soda—over here they called it “sparkling water”—pretty quickly. John told Pierre he was searching for information about a collection of rare books. He told a story about his own recent personal tragedies involving his daughter, but most of it was a lie. He wasn’t going to trust anyone anymore. He knew better—this was business.

He let Pierre talk, gave him enough information to keep him talking, and then found that Pierre’s situation was similar to his own. He had lost his two sons, about college age, in the riots that had swept France in months prior. His boys had joined a revolutionary militia and been killed in action near his home just outside of Lyon. His wife hanged herself in the closet days later. She had seen too much, and Pierre was, like John, a man with little to lose anymore, save his life.

Pierre was a man with resources, and it wasn’t long until John realized that his new friend was his ticket to Dubai.

“I want you to meet someone when we get to Dubai, John. He’s a man of means. I believe he can help you. I’ll even flip for the airline tickets.”

John set his glass on the table and leaned back in his chair. “Helping me with my obsession? No, I won’t have it. I hate to be a tagalong, and you paying for my ticket is too much.”

Pierre waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Nonsense. Times are hard, with the earthquake and so many millions of people dying. The world is on fire, John. We need to band together, to help a friend. Besides, I’m good at reading people, and you, John Cross, are a good man.”

Hook, line, and sinker. “Thanks, Pierre. This means more than you’ll ever know. And like I said, as soon as we get in, I’ll pay you back. The man I’m seeing owes me, and he’ll make it right.”

“It will be what it will be. Now, this man I want you to meet, he is someone who knows things, knows of this book you speak of, I am sure of it. I really think he can direct you to the right people at the very least. It’s all about who you know, John.”

John lifted his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

CHAPTER XIV

Arabia, 788 B.C.

PIANKHY DID NOT BELIEVE the first few reports as they came to him, but eventually he had to turn aside from the command of his forces and investigate. “Sea monsters in the forest; it is absurd.” He was more than a little angered by these rumors because in the end, it was just another distraction from the battle, from inevitable martial glory.

But he could not ignore them. Too many trusted lieutenants had reported these things. The looks on their faces—stark fear—were most compelling.

He stalked over scorched earth to the rear, the areas where his legions had trampled on their way to the breached walls of Ke’elei. The battle had reached a turning point; all that lay ahead was the mop-up, the final kills. And now he had to divert his all-too-valuable attention to look into children’s tales.

“There, my general,” a lieutenant said. “It writhes.”

Piankhy looked below them to a clearing where his officer pointed. Indeed, there it was, tentacles slashing out in a large radius, its head as big as three chariots side by side—a beast from the depths of the sea, sickly pink, glistening, terrible. Beneath the monster sprung up foamy fountains of seawater, lifting his men from their feet, drowning horses, and tilting the battle in favor of the sea gods. Piankhy now felt for the first time in his life the tangible seizure of terror. It was a stricture about his throat. His eyes began to water as he said, “Are there more?”

The lieutenant replied, “Yes, my general. Many.”

* * *

URIEL COULD NOT KNOW it as she involuntarily spread every molecule of her power throughout the substrata, but there would be unintended consequences for what was happening. She did not know what had manifested in her son, Qiel, how potent his gift was—especially when motivated by fear and revenge.

She did not know, for instance, that her son had drawn near, that he was close to losing control. But even if she had known it, there was nothing she could have done to prevent what happened; she was a puppet on a string. This she would nevertheless lament in the centuries to come and blame herself above all others—if Ke’elei were to fall, the powers of darkness would need to conjure up the perfect storm. She helped to provide it.