Fallen Angel of Mine (16 page)

Did all of the torches screw with
memory?

The ball of nerves pressed harder into
her guts. She might pass out and wake up without a single memory of
the events inside this room, though she had to say it had been
awfully boring up until now.

The statue shimmered.

Elyssa stared at it, unsure if it had
actually moved or if the torch flame before it had simply played a
trick on her eyes. The black pedestals to either side of it
crackled with white and black sparks. Jagged bolts of plasma arced
into an invisible shield around the statue, looking much like one
of the lightning globes she'd seen at a novelty shop in the Grotto
once.

All at once, the jagged arcs
dissipated, leaving the room with the faint odor of ozone. The
statue seemed different too.

Elyssa almost shouted when
the statue blinked its eyes. Except it wasn't a statue. It was a
woman. And as the woman smiled at her, Elyssa realized she
knew
this
woman.

And so did Justin.

Staring down the barrel of a glowing
magic staff didn't seem a prudent way to prolong my life. I dove
behind the old man's truck as the young man shouted at me. A female
voice joined in the shouting. Someone cried out in pain.

I risked a peek and saw a dark-haired
girl beating the young man with the bristly end of a broom. His
staff no longer glowed and he was, in fact, now using it to shield
himself from the girl. She looked close to my age, her skin a deep
copper hue. For a brief moment, I thought she might be Nightliss,
come to rescue me from this madness, but aside from a similar skin
tone, her big brown eyes were round and without the exotic slant of
Nightliss's.

"
Senor
?" she called, looking at me.
"Please come out. My brother is
stupido
."

The young man fired back at her in
rapid Spanish, his face tight with worry.

"I'm not dangerous," I said, more for
his sake than for the girl's.

"What is your kind?" the girl called
back in her heavily accented English.

"If I tell you, promise not to freak
out?"

She quirked an eyebrow. "What is 'freak
out'?"

"Don't go
loco
on me." Ah, one more
useful word dredged from my meager Spanish database.

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"
Si
, I promise you."

I stood up, still keeping the truck
between myself and the angry man with a sorcerer staff. His sister
might not want to protect me after my next revelation. "I'm
spawn."

She sucked in a breath, pressing both
hands to her cheeks. Her brother apparently understood English
because his jaw dropped a fraction.

"Oh my god!" the girl exclaimed and
squealed.

I prepared myself to run as the young
man lowered his staff and stared at me.

The girl rushed over and grabbed me by
the arm. "Are you hungry? What is your name? I cannot believe this
is happening!"

"Huh?" I said as she dragged me toward
the house.

The young man spoke with the old one
who nodded sagely at whatever he was saying.

"Um, you know what spawn are, right?" I
asked the girl.

"Of course! You are related
to demons. We have been waiting on this day for so long." She took
a deep breath and regarded me with her big eyes. "I am so sorry. I
forgot to, how you say, introduce ourselves. I am Lina." She
pointed at the young man. "This is my brother, Alejandro, and our
grandfather,
Senor
Eduardo Romero."

I gave them each a nod. "I'm Justin
Case—err, Slade."

"And you are the one we have waited
for?" Alejandro said, hardly a lick of an accent in his English but
a whole lot of doubt weighing down his words.

"I had no idea you were waiting for
anyone," I said.

Eduardo spoke in what sounded like a
scolding tone and Lina looked embarrassed.

"I am so sorry, Justin. You must be
very tired, judging from how filthy and smelly you are. Please use
our washroom in the hall. You look close to my brother's size so I
will get you a change of clothes."

I looked at my hands. Rust, mud, and
grime coated them and lodged beneath my fingernails. Dirt crusted
my ragged jeans and my ripped shirt. I probably looked like a
zombie. A very fashionable one. "Yeah, a shower would be great," I
said.

I followed her down the hall to the
bathroom. It was a mid-sized affair with a large claw-foot tub
squatting atop what looked like a painted concrete floor. A hand
shower hung from a hook above the tub. Lina vanished down the
hallway and returned a moment later with a towel and a change of
clothes.

"Thanks," I said, before shutting the
wooden door and sliding the locking bolt into the frame. The water
wasn't exactly hot, but it felt great to remove the layer of muck
off my body. My hair had gone stiff with mud and other grunge from
my swim in the river, profuse sweating, and, of course, a healthy
dose of plain old dirt.

Alejandro's clothes fit reasonably
well, though he was a bit shorter, and the jeans hovered a fraction
above my ankles. The aroma of food tickled my nose as I emerged
from the bathroom. I followed it to the kitchen and found Lina and
Alejandro cooking and chatting before the stove while their
grandfather rocked in a creaky wooden chair, smiling and drinking
green juice. He said something in Spanish and nodded at
me.

"You look much better," Lina said as
she sprinkled shredded meat over a flat piece of bread. "And your
smell is not as bad."

"Not
as
bad? Do I still reek?" I wished
fervently for deodorant.

She laughed. "No, I mean you
do not stink. My English is
un poco
rough."

"It's actually really good," I said as
my stomach growled.

She smiled wide. "Thanks."
She waved a hand at the small wooden table in the center of the
floor, brought a plate over, and set it on the table in front of
me. "I hope you like
arepas
and
empanadas
."

I salivated just looking at the food.
"I'd eat just about anything right now."

"Please, go ahead."

I didn't need to be told twice. I dug
in and finished about the time the rest of them joined me. They
ate, speaking in a mix of Spanish and English about the weather and
other inconsequential things until my curiosity smashed through my
impatience like the Kool-Aid man.

"Why were you so excited to see me? I
don't usually get a great response when people find out I'm part
demon."

Alejandro glanced at his sister a
moment before answering. "We are no ordinary community."

"So I gathered. You're obviously a
sorcerer. And your English is too smooth for someone so far from
any countries where it's the primary language."

"Yes. I went to an academy in the
United States. English is the preferred language of the Overworld
Conclave anyway, so even if I had gone to school elsewhere, I would
have learned it." He took a sip of his juice. "Our town is made up
mainly of Arcanes. We're here to guard El Dorado and make sure noms
don't stumble into it."

"That place is a deathtrap," I said. "I
barely made it out alive."

"Our grandfather said he found you
wandering from the only road leading there. When you told us you
were spawn, it seemed clear you were the one spoken of in a
foreseeance almost eighteen years ago."

My brain perked up at the mention of a
foreseeance. I wondered if it was another foreseeance about me, or
4311. The pages Underborn had given me were fragments of
Foreseeance 4311—all he'd been able to collect since most of the
foreseers were either dead, crazy, or both. The assassin had also
told me those who were behind the upcoming catastrophe had
systematically destroyed all copies of the foreseeance. I didn't
know what to believe, but I'd seen enough weirdness since
discovering my demonic origins to take more things on faith
nowadays.

"Are you referring to Foreseeance
Forty-Three Eleven?"

Alejandro shook his head and looked
questioningly at me. "This is Foreseeance Forty-Two
Nineteen."

"Do you have a copy?" I
asked.

"Several in fact." Alejandro pushed his
chair back and stood, reaching for a book atop the pantry shelf
behind him. "After the original copy was almost stolen by a rogue
vampire, our city council decided it would be wise to keep multiple
copies of it and any other foreseeance."

"You have records of other
foreseeances?"

He shook his head. "Only three or so.
True foreseeances are very rare. Some among us believe foresight
occurs when a major future event causes ripples across time, not
only affecting the future, but also triggering the most sensitive
mediums among us in the present. Others think it is because
foreseers detect a pattern of events in the present which lead to a
certain outcome."

"Like when a bunch of kids are forced
to fight gladiator battles to the death, one of them will
eventually rise up, overthrow the government, and fall in love
along the way?"

Alejandro laughed. "That's a pretty
far-fetched series of events, but I suppose it could
apply."

The theories he described
were novel, making not only scientific sense, but also appealing to
my inner nerd. Sure, magic was cool and all, but I still had a hard
time believing it was actually real, even with all I'd been
through. Anything related to time travel or seeing the future still
seemed too impossible to believe. But I supposed it was possible if
something caused a huge splash in the future of the space-time
continuum, it
might
send shockwaves to the past. Still, there were plenty of
paradoxical situations that might apply.

"Is there any such thing as little
foreseeances? Like if little Johnny is going to have explosive
diarrhea, would something like that pop up on the
radar?"

"Oh, it has happened before," Lina
said, an amused smile lighting her face. "But only because the
foreseer knows the person."

Alejandro nodded. "It's a very tricky
skill."

"Are you familiar with Foreseeance
forty-three eleven?"

The brother and sister looked at each
other and then shook their heads. Whoever wanted 4311 out of
circulation had done a good job so far.

"This is Foreseeance forty-two
nineteen," Alejandro said. "The Arcane Council assigns an official
designation once it has been vetted by peers and deemed
genuine."

"What does it say?"

Alejandro opened the book he'd
retrieved, pulled a slip of yellowed paper from within, and
unfolded it. Even from my position, it was clear the cursive script
was not in English so I didn't ask to see it. The writing filled
the entire page, and I ached to understand what it meant. My
Spanish teacher would have been so disappointed in me.

"I will translate as accurately as I
can," Alejandro said, "but do not expect the entire thing to make
sense."

"As if these things ever do," I said,
thinking back to the snippets of Foreseeance 4311 I had in my
backpack.

Alejandro took a sip of his
drink and began. "
No, young one! Do not go
into the light, for your path lies in darkness and shadow. The
light and the dark battle but it is the gray which threatens to
overcome both until there is no more light and no more dark, and
only the murk between the two. Through gloom will the old masters
return, their savage hunger slaked by the harvest of our
world.

"
But
hope rides fragile wings, for I see the young man in his tattered
clothes and filth as he flees the victims of light. And he may yet
survive this and emerge from the city of shadow. And if he does, he
will find you, guardians. He will appear on your doorstep and
reveal his demonic nature for he is half again divided of the
immortal world. You must welcome him and tell him though the light
has robbed love from the heart of his beloved, hope is never lost
and must never be lost if his choice is to prevail in the unmaking
or remaking.
"

Alejandro looked up from the sheet.
"That's it."

Lina slid a sheet of paper over to me
where she'd written a translated version.

I puzzled over the words again and
again. They seemed to apply to me, especially beginning with how I
showed up here. After all, the forsaken place I'd escaped from was,
by any definition, a city of shadow. How those dark creatures in El
Dorado were the victims of light, I had no idea. They'd seemed more
like servants of the dark. But the last part sent a shard of glass
deep into my heart.

…
though the light has robbed
the love from the heart of his beloved…