Reckoning

CHAPTER FOUR

Aaron stepped out of the community center, the lingering sensation of his transformation still causing his flesh to tingle. He remembered a time not too long ago when a change from his human form to the angelic would have caused him nothing but pain. Now it had become almost second nature, the two halves of his being, opposite sides to the same coin.

He took a few calming, deep breaths. The air was surprisingly cool, despite the fact that April was almost over. Yes, there had been some warm days, but it seemed that winter was having a difficult time abdicating its seasonal seat of power.

Gradually he began to feel the tension leaving his body. Aaron never expected being a savior was going to be easy, but he wished that the citizens of Aerie would give him a chance to figure things out at his own speed. Decisions as gravely important as what to do about Verchiel just couldn’t be rushed. There was too much at stake.

“Damn,” said a familiar voice from behind, and Aaron turned to see Lehash approaching. “Guess you gave them a little somethin’ to chew on,” he said, a big smile spreading across his usually dour features as he motioned with his thumb toward the door behind him.

“They made me mad,” Aaron said, sounding trite and not at all proud of his reaction.

“No kiddin’,” Lehash said with a rumbling chuckle. “Wish Belphegor was here to see you put old Atliel and his cronies in their places. It would’ve made him happier than a pig in slop.”

Aaron chuckled as well. “I guess it’s not how you’d expect a messiah to act.”

The angel withdrew a thin cigar from inside his duster pocket and lit it with the tip of his leather-gloved forefinger. “Hell, boy, you put Verchiel down for the count and get us back to Heaven, you can act any way you damn well please.”

Sensing that they were no longer alone, both Aaron and Lehash turned to see the citizens leaving the community center. Atliel and his cronies stood to the side of the building’s entrance glaring at them.

“I think somebody’s gettin’ the hairy eyeball,” Lehash said, sucking on the end of his cigar and blowing a cloud of smoke up into the air. “And I don’t think it’s me.”

“What do you think I should do?” Aaron asked the gunslinger, his voice at a whisper. “Should I apologize or just let it go?”

The fallen angel rolled the cigar around in his mouth. “Personally, I’d let ‘em stew, but then again, I ain’t no messiah. You’re gonna haf’ta do what you think is right.”

Aaron’s foster dad had taught him that nine out of ten times it was easier to apologize and move past the problem. Tom Stanley had been a good man and a wonderful father, and Aaron missed him very much. He decided he would honor the memory of the only father he had ever known by doing what he would have thought was right.

Aaron moved around Lehash and walked toward the gaggle of fallen angels. “Look, I’m sorry for my behavior in there,” he said with genuine sincerity. If he was going to be their leader, he guessed that it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to see that he knew he wasn’t infallible and could admit when he was wrong. “Things have been kind of crazy for me and I just wanted to—”

“Is it true what they’re saying?” Atliel suddenly interrupted. “I thought it was only a wild rumor, but seeing you in there, the anger you wield, I can almost believe it to be true.”

His three companions nodded their agreement.

“I don’t understand,” Aaron said. “What rumors are you talking about?”

Atliel looked to his brethren for support and then back to Aaron, bolstered by their admiration. “That you are the son of the Morningstar—the spawn of Lucifer,” he spat.

Aaron didn’t know how to respond. He knew what he had been told, but he couldn’t yet bring himself to believe it. “I … I’m not sure that…,” he stuttered.

“See how he responds,” Atliel said to his comrades. “It is true that we are to be delivered to salvation by the progeny of the monster who led us to our fall.”

Lehash moved forward, a pistol of heavenly fire glistening gold in his gloved hand. “That’ll be enough of that, brother,” the law of Aerie said, stepping between the Nephilim and the group of angels.

“It’s okay, Lehash,” Aaron said quickly. “They’re right in their concern. How are they supposed to trust the son of the Devil to lead them to salvation?” he asked quietly as he turned away. Though he had no desire to, and had been avoiding it for days, Aaron Corbet knew that he had to confront the mystery of his heritage before he could finally assume his role as Aerie’s savior.

Vilma mistook the sudden wave of panic as another example of the angelic essence awakening, but as she and Gabriel entered the ranch-style house she shared with Lorelei and Lehash, she remembered that this was senior finals week at school. The feeling was sudden, like an electrical jolt, and her entire body broke out in a tingling sweat. It didn’t take her long to realize that this had nothing to do with the power residing inside her, and everything to do with her academic career crumbling to ruin.

She slammed the door behind her, and Gabriel started from the noise.

“Are you okay?” the Labrador asked, his head tilted to the right with concern.

“I’m fine,” she answered with a sigh. “Sorry I slammed the door.”

“That’s okay,” he said, walking past her, toward the kitchen. He turned and looked at her. “How about breakfast now?”

Grateful for the distraction, Vilma filled the dog’s bowl with food and got him some fresh water. “Here you go,” she said, stepping back and watching him devour his meal in record time. He licked his chops, took a long, slurping drink, and then cleaned his bowl with his tongue.

“Happy?” she asked as she followed him into the living room.

“Yes, thank you.” Gabriel hopped up onto the couch and turned once in a circle before settling down to rest. “I need a nap, though.” He exhaled noisily and closed his eyes.

Vilma shook her head, watching him for a moment. She had never owned a dog and was amazed by how much Gabriel slept. This was but one of many naps he’d take during the day before going to bed and sleeping through the night. Aaron always joked that it was Gabriel’s job to sleep, and if the animal could collect a check for snoozing, they’d both be millionaires.

She sat down in a large, overstuffed chair and pulled her knees up to her chin. She felt cold inside, but it had nothing to do with the actual temperature. She was afraid again. Until a month ago, she knew exactly what she was going to do with her life: finish high school, go on to college for a degree in education, and then teach, preferably first or second grade.

She smiled sadly, remembering how she would talk with her friends about the future, and how excited it made her. They thought she was a freak, never really understanding that this was the stuff that made her truly happy, that this was as exciting for her as they found dancing at the all-ages club or conning someone into buying them liquor. Her plans for the future were her hopes and dreams, and everything was going fabulously until she met Aaron Corbet.

Vilma’s anger flared. She didn’t want to blame him for her troubles, but it was so easy. What would have happened if she hadn’t spoken to him that day at the library? She sat with her chin atop her knees, rocking from side to side, thinking about what her life would be like without him. She tried desperately to believe that it would have been better, but deep down she knew that wasn’t true. She had felt a strange attraction to him the first time she noticed him at his locker across from hers, as if their being together was part of some bigger plan. And when Aaron had gone away after the deaths of his foster family, Vilma had never felt so lonely—so incomplete.

And now they were together again, but still she felt lonely and frightened, although she knew Aaron was doing the best he could to help her adjust to the changes in her life.

Something stirred inside her, but this time the sensation had nothing to do with anxiety. The angelic power, stirred too quickly to maturity by the tortures of Verchiel, was awake again, and she felt it testing the confines of the flesh and blood that was its cage.

Aaron had tried to explain that the essence had been a part of her since her conception, that the power had simply lain dormant within her, waiting for her to come of age and embrace it. For most Nephilim the unification of the human and heavenly sides was a naturally occurring process, but for others …

Vilma didn’t want to think about it anymore. The idea of the thing inside her was driving her insane. She dropped her feet to the floor and quickly stood, looking about the room for something, anything, that could distract her.

Gabriel came awake, lifting his head slowly to stare at her.

“I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Vilma said, nervously biting at the cuticles of one of her fingers. “I’m feeling a bit antsy. I need to do something—to get my mind off things for a while.” She remembered she’d only had a piece of toast earlier that morning, and thought that food would be as good a distraction as anything. “I’m going to get something to eat, want to come?” She knew it was a stupid question, for the Lab was always hungry.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, quickly getting down from the sofa and following her to the small kitchen where he had eaten a full meal only minutes before.

Vilma went to the fridge and opened the door, peering inside at some vegetables and milk of questionable age. Gabriel squeezed his head past her leg to take a look for himself.

“Hmmm,” he grumbled. “Nothing good in here.”

The power inside her had calmed, but it was still awake. She could feel it experiencing the world through her actions. She closed the refrigerator and looked around the kitchen. In a wicker basket by the sink she spotted some red delicious apples.

“How about an apple?” she asked the dog as she plucked the largest one from the basket.

“I love apples.” Gabriel had already begun to drool.

Vilma grabbed a knife from a drawer and cut the apple in half. “Do you eat the skin or do you want me to peel it for you?”

“The skin is fine,” he said, wagging his tail, a puddle forming on the floor beneath his leaking mouth. “Just take the core out, please. The seeds make me choke.”

Vilma held half of the apple in one hand and sank the tip of the knife into the fruit to cut away the core as she had done for her nieces and nephews countless times before. It was then that the angelic essence chose to exert itself, surging forward to throw itself against the prison of her body. She gasped aloud as the knife blade sank through the flesh of the apple and into the palm of her hand. Bleeding, she dropped both to the kitchen floor. But all she could do was tremble, watching as the scarlet fluid oozed from the wound in her palm, running down her arm.

The power was shrieking inside her, aroused by the spilling of her own blood, and no matter how many calming thoughts she tried to put into her head, the angelic force continued to build. She couldn’t hold it back; it was exactly what she feared.

“Vilma!” Gabriel cried, moving toward her, trying to calm her as he’d done in the past. But he was too late, and the power was too strong.

God help her, it was free.

Aaron approached the rundown house with trepidation.

Scholar had been asking to see him for days, but Aaron always found some reason to avoid meeting with Aerie’s keeper of information and the chronicler of its history. Aaron knew the angel was right. He had come a long way in the past few weeks, but he still had much to learn—about the prophecy that he embodied and the fallen angel that had sired him.

Lucifer.

He climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. While he had come to accept his destiny, Aaron still didn’t want to believe that his father was the Devil. But he owed it to the citizens of Aerie at least to hear the proof of his heritage. If he was going to lead and expect them to follow, he had to have all of his facts straight.

Aaron knocked a second time, but there was still no answer. He briefly entertained the idea of coming back later, but knew that if he left, the chances he’d be back any time soon were slim. No, he thought, grabbing the doorknob and turning it. I have to do this now.

The door opened and a cool gust of heavily scented air reached out to greet him. The air smelled of paper, of old books. It reminded him of the basement stacks at the Lynn Public Library. There was something strangely comforting about the aroma, bringing back memories of the days when finishing a term paper and getting a good grade were the most stressful things in his life.

Aaron stepped inside and stopped in disbelief. The single room in which he stood was huge. For as far as his eyes could see, there were bookcases and piles of books of every conceivable size and shape. He thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him, for it seemed as though the inside of this house was all one room and at least five times larger than it appeared to be on the outside. He considered going out the door and coming back in.

Scholar came out from behind one of the shelves, dressed in his customary crisp white shirt—buttoned to the collar—and black pants, his face buried in an ancient tome. “I thought I heard someone knocking,” he said without looking up. He continued to walk through the room, somehow managing to avoid the precariously stacked books all around him. “Come in, come in,” he urged, sounding impatient. “I should have known you’d come just when I’d gotten busy with something else.”

Aaron moved farther into the enormous storeroom of knowledge. “Sorry,” he apologized. “If you want, I’ll come back another time, when you’re not so busy.”

Scholar finally tore his gaze from his book, a petulant smile on his pale, gaunt face. “Tell me, when will I ever not be busy?”

Aaron threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I was just being polite.”

“Savior to us all and manners to boot,” Scholar said sharply as he closed his book and placed it atop a pile already nearly five feet tall.

The pile teetered but did not fall. Strangely enough, it seemed that the laws of physics didn’t apply here.

Aaron again looked about the enormous room, at the domed ceiling at least twenty feet high. “Is it me or is this place bigger than it looks outside?”

A teakettle’s shrill whistle punctuated his question as Scholar motioned for him to follow. “Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can we, Aaron?” he chided. “Ancient angel magick,” he explained as he walked to a small table in a far corner of the room. “Would you care for a cup?” he asked, unplugging the electric kettle and pouring the boiling water into a mug containing a tea bag. “I think there’s enough water for another.”

Aaron shook his head. “No, that’s all right. Thanks, anyway.” The last time he accepted a cup of tea from an angel it had been poisoned.

He couldn’t get over the size of the room and the enormous number of books. “It’s amazing how much you have here,” he commented looking back to Scholar. “I never would have guessed.”

The angel turned toward Aaron, blowing on the steaming liquid in his mug. “We could have filled every house in Aerie and still not had a place for it all,” he said between sips. “That’s when angel magick can be put to good use.”

Aaron didn’t remember moving, but suddenly a stack of books tumbled over with a crash, sending three other stacks nearby to the floor as well. Scholar gasped.

“I didn’t touch a thing,” Aaron yelled. “Really, they just fell on their own.” He made a move to start picking up the books and heard Scholar gasp all the louder.

“Please, just step away from the stacks,” the fallen angel instructed, gesturing for the boy to move toward him. “That’s it,” he urged softly. “No sudden movements.”

Aaron maneuvered himself carefully between the stacks, and noticed the angel breathe a sigh of relief as he reached him without further incident. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said as Scholar helped himself to more tea.

“It’s quite all right,” he said with a strained smile on his pinched features. “Why don’t we simply deal with the reason you have come, and then you can be on your way, hmm?”

If Aaron didn’t hear it in his words, he could see in the angel’s eyes that he regretted ever having invited him into his work place. But he pushed forward with his questions. “How do you know?” he asked. “How do you know for sure that… he’s my father?” He didn’t feel comfortable saying the name. It made him nervous, the evil connotations and all.

“Lucifer?” Scholar asked, seeming to take some kind of perverse pleasure in seeing Aaron’s reaction to the name of the first of the fallen. “You showed us as much that first day we met,” he explained, “when you manifested your angelic abilities, even through the manacles. Belphegor and I knew then that only an angel of enormous power could have sired one such as you.”

“But aren’t there other powerful angels out there that could have been with my mother? Why does it have to be—”

“The sigils,” the angel interrupted, making reference to the markings that appeared on Aaron’s flesh whenever he manifested the full power of his angelic heritage. “We believed that the sigils were significant to the angelic entity that sired you, but little did we imagine how much.”

Aaron held out his arm and thought hard about the markings. The bare flesh began to smolder ever so slightly as the archaic shapes rose to the surface. He remembered Scholar making sketches of them at Belphegor’s urgings on that first day in Aerie. Now he examined them in the flesh. “Okay, so what do they mean?” he asked.

“They are special symbols representing the names of the elite soldiers that swore their allegiance to your father and his cause,” Scholar explained as he traced the shapes on Aaron’s arm with the tip of his index finger. “Soldiers that died during the battle in Heaven.”

Suddenly it all made sense to Aaron as he recalled the bizarre inner journey he had made with the assistance of Belphegor and a poisoned cup of tea. Within his mind, he had seen the consummation of the power that resided within him, represented by the most magnificent of angels as he bestowed his gift upon his gathered troops.

“I… I saw this,” he stammered, looking into Scholar’s intense eyes. “I saw Lucifer… I saw my father…”

Scholar nodded slowly, encouraging him to accept the truth. “Before the fighting began, the Morningstar gave each of his soldiers a special mark to show how important they were to him. It was with a piece of himself that he adorned them—a piece of his power.”

Feeling suddenly weak, Aaron let go of the symbols and allowed them to fade from his flesh. “But why do I have them?” he asked, sitting down on the floor as his head swam with dizziness. “Why are they on my skin?”

Scholar turned away. “Belphegor and I were trying to figure that out right before Verchiel attacked,” the scholarly angel said. “We believe that if Lucifer is indeed seeking absolution for his sins, then you represent his apology to God—and to all those who died for his insane cause.”

Overwhelmed, Aaron buried his head in his hands as visions of the most splendorous angelic entity he could ever imagine again filled his mind. “How could anything so beautiful be responsible for so much horror?” he asked.

Scholar stood over him as Aaron sat on the floor, awash in the raw emotion of revelation. “He was afraid that he was no longer loved,” he said softly gazing off into space.

“As were we all.”