Daughter of Gods and Shadows (19 page)

“No. No, that's not going to happen,” he said, reassuring her. “You're too strong for that. You'll use the Omen, all of the Omen, to defeat the Demon and then…”

She turned to him. “And then? The bond is eternal, Tukufu. Once a bond has been made, it cannot be broken.” Tears streamed down her face. “I do not want this. I do not want to lose myself to this but I fear that I will. What will happen then?”

“She was as afraid as Eden after that first bond, Khale.”

“You need to show Eden the truth of what's happening in her world, Guardian,” Khale challenged. “Turn on the news and make her watch. Power up the Internet and let her see the destruction that's already begun here. Hiding her away from it won't make it go away, because eventually that devastation will bring itself to your doors.”

If Khale wanted to believe that he was keeping Eden secluded here for her benefit, then let her believe it. The truth was, he had been keeping her here, away from the distraction of everything going on around them, for his own selfish reasons. It was a fantasy he had had and lost when he first made his oath to Mkombozi, a fantasy that included just the two of them, alone.

Khale turned to face him and stretched out her T-shirt for him to read.

DENIAL
IS
A
RIVER
IN
EGYPT

“I wore this one especially for the two of you today,” she said with a weak smile. “Sakarabru underestimated the power of the Redeemer before, but I guarantee you, he won't make that mistake again.” She swallowed. “No one, not even the other Ancients loyal to me, believe that Eden can do this. Until she survived this bond, I didn't either,” she admitted. “She needs to make the next bond, Guardian, and she needs to do it quickly. The time is here, Tukufu. It's now.”

Khale didn't wait for him to respond before she transformed into a butterfly and fluttered away.

*   *   *

An hour after Eden had left him and Khale, Prophet finally went inside the house. Eden was just coming out of the shower. He pulled a remote control out of the nightstand drawer near the bed and pressed a button. A large flat-screen television ascended from a hidden compartment at the foot of the bed, and he turned it on.

Together they watched in horror as he flipped through channel after channel of news coverage reporting chaos and deaths happening in cities around the world.

“Link
ö
ping, a small town in Sweden, has been overrun with these … cannibals, for lack of a better word.”

“Military forces in Washington, DC, are in the process of setting up a fortified perimeter around the city, creating a sanctuary for those who are uninfected with the virus. However, orders have been given to shoot to kill on sight and if anyone tries to penetrate barrier walls without proper authorization.”

“Experts say that he stands at least nine feet tall, but what he is … He appears to have some sort of influence, if you will, or control over those infected with the virus. They flock to him like rats to the Pied Piper.”

Major corporations had fallen. Bodies littered the streets; homes and businesses burned, all while Prophet and Eden had been here at his place, like birds in a nest. Neither of them said anything for several minutes after he turned off the television. There was no hiding from this. There was to be no running away from it. And they no longer had the luxury of time.

“Mkombozi never told me what it was like.” Prophet finally spoke, breaking the heavy weight of silence in the air. “I just watched her change.”

He tossed the remote onto the bed between them.

“She said that she could feel what he felt. The Omen forced her to know his mind intimately. In the beginning it scared her, but eventually she understood it,” he said solemnly. “And she started to shut me out, Eden.”

She looked so small and so vulnerable, still wet and shivering in that towel wrapped around her. But the fate of the world rested on this young woman's shoulders, and no one or nothing could stop it. What scared him most of all, though, was the thought of what would happen to her, even if she succeeded in defeating the Demon.

“The bond is eternal, Tukufu. Once a bond has been made, it cannot be broken.”

He had made an oath to this woman thousands of Earth's years ago, and it was a oath that had surpassed death, destruction, time, and space. She didn't look like his Beloved from Theia, but he knew better than anyone that she was her. The oath wouldn't let him make the mistake of committing to another.

“I've waited four thousand years for you,” he said, humbly.

Finally, Eden looked at him, and he melted under the weight of those beautiful brown eyes of hers, as if he were falling prey to them for the first time, all over again.

“I failed her, Eden,” he confessed. “It was my job, my sole purpose in life to protect her, even from herself, and I failed to do that.”

She started to come to him, but he held up his hand to stop her.

“It's said that a Guardian will follow the one he's sworn himself to, to her death.” Prophet shrugged. “I could have done that, and I would have, except that I knew that I didn't deserve that honor. I deserved to have to live without her. It's been an empty life. I've lived it half full, but it's no less than I deserve.”

She looked at him as if she felt sorry for him, and it pissed him off.

“Don't you dare.” He shook his head in frustration. “Don't pity me.”

“I'm not. I … I just…”

“I will not make the same mistakes with you that I made with her.” Prophet locked gazes with Eden. “And I won't let you make the same mistakes she made. You will not shut me out, Eden. You will not turn away from me, and you will not leave me behind again.” He was nearly shouting. “I want to know everything. You tell me every damn thing that's going on in you, with you, to you. Details. I want fuckin' details so that I can know how to be here.”

She nodded, but he wasn't convinced. He studied her, this human, twenty-four-year-old woman, filled with her insecurities, her stubbornness, and her awkwardness. She was not as graceful as Mkombozi had been, not as tall or as confident in who she truly was at the core of herself. This world, and perhaps Rose and Khale, had been guilty of trespassing on her life when they had no right to do it, but she had a role to play, and the first Omen had seen to it to pull her into this game. If she'd had a choice before, that choice had been removed from her.

“I can't help you with the Omens, Eden. They are your burden, but know this”—Prophet took a deep breath—“you are mine.”

He needed some air, fresh air, as far away from the ground as he could get beneath him. He needed to fly.

 

SPITTIN' GAME

In the normal course of things, changing a flat tire would be of little consequence to a man. Forty-two-year-old Joe Huey worked feverishly to get that old pickup truck back on the road and into Morgantown, Pennsylvania, where he belonged. He'd have been the first to admit that he'd been an idiot, and that it had been his own stupidity that landed him in this mess, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere on this lonely dirt road. All he wanted to do was to hurry up and get home. Joe had been gone for nearly a week on a fishing trip and hadn't caught a damn thing worth cooking and eating.

As he struggled to get that last lug nut loose on the wheel, he heard a noise coming from the open field on the other side of his truck. He stood up and stared hard into the brush across from him but didn't see anything. It was probably just a rabbit or maybe a fox. Or it could've just been the wind. He decided that he was just being paranoid and went back to changing his tire.

He finally got that last lug off, removed the flat tire, quickly mounted the spare, and hurried to tighten the lugs. Joe was nearly finished, and relief started to set in, knowing he'd be back on the road again in no time. As he stood up, he heard a noise again coming from the field. But this time, he did see something. A tall dark figure of a man stood maybe a hundred yards or so away from him. Whoever he was just stood there, staring back at Joe and standing still like a statue.

“Hello?” Joe called out apprehensively. Maybe the man was lost or needed help. Joe swallowed, hoping that's all it was. “You need help out there?” Joe asked, and waited for the man to respond, but he didn't say a word. Suddenly, he began to move, slowly, toward Joe's truck. Joe resisted the instinct to panic. “What do you want?” No answer.

Joe moved over to the driver's side door and tried to pull it open and then realized it was locked. He frantically searched his pockets for the keys, but then he looked inside and saw them dangling from the ignition. The man in the field had started to run. Joe grabbed his tire iron and ran in the opposite direction, disappearing into the thick wooded area on the other side of the road. Branches slapped him across the face, and he tripped several times and stumbled forward at full speed, refusing to let himself fall. He didn't have to see the man to know that he wasn't far behind. Joe could feel him, and he felt the ground echo with the heavy pounding of the man's footsteps, taking one for every two of Joe's.

The space between them pushed hard against Joe's back as the man drew closer. Joe's lungs burned from running faster and longer than he had in years. His heart banged hard in his chest, and a merciless cramp coursed his side. But in his hand, he held on tight to that tire iron. Joe gripped it, knowing that this was the only weapon he had and that he was going to have to hit that fucker upside the head with it.

Joe's legs began to give out on him, and the man was closing in fast. In desperation, Joe Huey stopped, reared back that tire iron, and, as he turned, swung it hard at the man's head, half a step behind him. His eyes widened with astonishment and his arm froze in midair as the beast, at least two feet taller than he was, towered over him, caught him by the wrist, and with a twist of his own, snapped the bones in Joe's arm. His fingers loosened their grip on the tire iron from the agonizing pain surging through his arm, and it fell to the ground at his feet with a thud. Joe yelled and was forced to his knees on the ground by the giant, who reached down and grabbed hold of Joe's bottom jaw and pulled.

*   *   *

One man's glassy-eyed gaze fixed unblinking up at the black sky. The other stood there amazed by the fact that life in the Pennsylvania woods went on like it always did, without so much as a hiccup or a cough. A man's soul was gone from this world, and the world didn't seem to give it much thought. Toads croaked and crickets chirped uninterrupted. A light breeze passed by calm and soothing, and he couldn't help inhaling deeply to take in as much of it as he could.

Chapman rose up from the ground like a spirit and then closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He spread his massive shoulders and moaned, satisfied at the fullness in his belly. Blood soaked into his hair and skin and filled his nostrils. His jaw ached from tearing flesh from tendons and bones, but he felt more energized and renewed than he'd felt in a long time, ready to pursue his mission with an invigorated purpose. He had promised his master that he would find the reborn, and he would.

The best he could figure, Sakarabru was some sort of demon or fallen angel, or someone who talked in riddles about things that didn't make any sense, but Paul listened and he watched, and soon he came to understand that nothing in this world was as it appeared.

Most people didn't like the looks of him, and when he walked down the streets, they ran from him. He was a big man. Bigger than he was before he was remade. Paul now stood close to seven feet tall, and weighed maybe 350 pounds of solid muscle. Paul's heavy shoulders were as big and round as bowling balls, damn near, with a massive head and neck that reminded him of a big tree stump. It was all in there together, packed tight. His chest was broad, his back strong, but all that narrowed down into the kind of torso most men would envy. He looked odd, even to himself, but it suited him.

Paul was a bloodhound. He was a general and now he was a hunter. There was nothing or no one he couldn't find when he went looking for them. Well, Sakarabru wanted him to find the Redeemer, and Paul had set out to do just that.

“I want her dead.”

Paul had to find her to kill her. The Djinn led him. Djinn were sort of like Genies, but they didn't live in a bottle and they didn't wear cute pink harem-girl outfits. Most of them looked like shadows, whispering directions to him that would lead him to her.

“
Go South,
” one of them had whispered to him moments before he'd come across the guy with the flat tire.

Others had warned him:
“Beware the Guardian.”

Paul had no idea who or what a Guardian was, but he pushed on without hesitation because the Demon had commanded him. Paul no longer had a will of his own. He lived for Sakarabru and blindly obeyed his every word. Pleasing him was the only thing that mattered to Paul. Proclaiming Sakarabru as the sovereign had taken away his pain. Swearing loyalty to him had given Paul unimaginable pleasure, which he looked forward to every time he laid down his head to rest.

Lilith was her name. And to have her, all Paul had to do was make a wish.

 

DREAM WEAVER

Andromeda was like a thread weaving her way through time and space, connecting aspects of each to the other. It was said that no one could be in two places at once, but that was false and a lie. At any given moment, she could be in five: the past, present, future, and someone's idea of heaven and of hell. Her sense of being transversed in confusion and chaos, and it played out where her screams should have been.

“We shall overcome. Like my page and Khale hid her good. Too—save us God of hosts! Aye! He who is and was and all and all!”