Chapter Thirteen: Michael
She had woken Gabriel shortly after she herself found that she could not return to sleep. The starry night sky passed quickly as their feet sped across the sandy dunes and through the sagebrush dotting the land like polka dots. Sera felt a quickening in her bones, feeling that somehow, in some way, the end of her travails was very near, though what end exactly lay in store was still a mystery. One thing was certain, however, even as the wind blew softly around her and rustled the sage and yucca as they ran, and that was the thread linking her to Jack. It bound them as one, as surely as those heavy steel chains had bound her to the tall wooden pole in New Zion, the very spot where she had died.
Twice, she thought, I died twice at his hands, but he doesn't know. Likely she would never tell him so, for that was a different timeline, one that no longer mattered, for it was in the past. It might have happened a million years ago as far as she could tell, and though only days had ticked slowly by as they ran through the desert, it seemed as though it was a much longer span of time.
She had left the rifle, the same rifle wielded by her grandfather and his father before that, and his father before that, had had no choice but to leave it behind. Seth's treachery had bent and twisted its frame and barrel beyond mere recognition, and its chambering mechanism, its bolt and firing pin had been lost. Those strange rounds that she had been unable to fire, the bullets packed with bluish powder, she had not fired, and only fate, or chance, had been to thank for that.
Seth had died for his betrayal, had been killed by his own device almost as surely as she had killed him, with a burning chunk of the gun she had used since she was a child stuck in his eye, fusing his nerves into a useless ball of flesh. Her feelings on that matter were mixed, and even though she was glad to be rid of the scheming, wretched cur, the two men she'd had to kill to bring it about weighed heavily on her conscience. Two good men, with families to feed and fields to plow, she had killed in her own self-defense. One for many? She had asked Jack. One for many? He had answered her question without saying a word, or rather had lead her to her own conclusion. How many is enough? As many as it takes.
Yet vengeance was no longer her only motive for giving chase to the man who had killed her village, had stolen her life. She had to thank him, as well, for saving her from a life filled with boredom and complacency, with children and with the destrachan. Perhaps not the children, though, perhaps the destrachan would have had her long before she got the chance. Yes, she'd thank him when she found him, with her knife in his ribs and a kiss on the cheek.
Sera would have grinned at the image this evoked in her mind had she not suddenly thought of Seth's final flight. The burning metal blinding him, the stones she had cast at him forcing him to tumble from the upper level of the Salt Lake City Temple. The mad laughter as his doom was realized atop the spiked metal fence three stories down, how those spikes had pierced his organs, and snapped his back with the weight of his descent. How the second stone ripped his body in half, intestines uncoiling from his abdomen as cups and cups of blood splashed on the ground around him, and how that same altar half had crushed him into the dirt, had crushed his bones beneath its weight and ground his meat into tenderized pork. She shuddered at the thought.
No, her rifle she had left, useless where it had lain beside his corpse. Her knife, on the other hand, she had pulled from the wreckage, had wiped the blood and fleshy gibs from it on his pants, and strung it back around her waist. Gabriel had gathered the rest of their belongings into her satchel, and he carried it now, though she held the water skins. The water to fill them hadn't been as easy to get a hold of as anything else, however, for even as Seth was dead, his gruesome remains lying strewn about the dirt covered street, none of the New Zionites would aid them.
They had been convinced that she was, in fact, the Anti-Christ, and that she had come for their souls. Needless to say, the events that had transpired were memorable.
“You're very pretty,” the little boy had said, not at all abashed.
Sera knelt down beside him and looked him in the eyes. “Why thank you! What's your name?”
“Devils and Demons and Succubi all! Don't talk to them Joseph! They mean to have your soul, that they might drag you down with them to the infernal depths of Hell! Satan, Lucifer is their . . .” The father shut his mouth as Gabriel glared at him.
“Well then, Joseph, would you like to show me to the well?” She smiled at the child, happy to see somebody smiling in this hellhole of a town. Joseph nodded and returned her smile, walking down one of the side streets with Sera in tow.
“You'll not take my son, you murdering son-of-a-whore!” the mother exclaimed, the words bursting from her mouth disgustingly. Her tongue reminded Gabriel of a pimple, spraying its pus, thick with blood and yellow waste. The look he gave her was one of revulsion. He was repulsed at the way she had assumed to know anything about himself or Sera, having never met either of them before.
“What the fuck is your problem, you sorry excuse for a mother? You presume to know our motives and our intentions? Do you also presume to know what my breakfast was then? We need water, that is all, though I wish I could teach you some manners as well. Fortunately for you, and your bloodthirsty husband here, we are in a hurry, and have no time for such dalliances.”
“Why I . . .” the father stammered.
But Gabriel was not about to let this lie. He was angry, far angrier perhaps than he had been at Seth for trying to control him, and this . . . “You were there, crying for her blood, waiting for her to die. You know nothing of her crimes. She did nothing against you and your people until they threatened her life, I did nothing to you before they threatened her, before you threatened her. She comes for the sake of all men everywhere, to free them from the destrachan horde once and for all, and you sought to take her life. She destroyed an army of hundreds of them not two miles from where we stand, killed them all. Not that you care about any of that, though. So go on and live your pitiful life, turning a blind eye to every bad, every wrong in this world and let whoever make your choices for you.” He had no patience for those who deafened themselves.
The street was silent as Sera returned, holding the little boy's hand. She ruffled his hair and walked to the edge of the hushed crowd, leaving Gabriel to finish his speech. “We thank you for your hospitality,” he said sarcastically before joining his girl.
She had heard every word of it, of course, every empassioned iota of what he had said echoed in her own thoughts. The poor blighted souls who couldn't see past the tips of their noses to save their own lives filled the world, were a part of the conflict, gave their belief to empower the cycle to complete its revolution. The irony of it was almost too great to bear, the hypocrites claiming superiority were feeding the great machine that would bring down the empire of their god. They had no idea.
She paused in midstep, bringing her foot down and sniffing the air, listening. Gabriel skidded to a halt beside her, breathing quietly and waiting. It was good to be running again, always good to feel the burn in every muscle, and to run beside the girl he loved, well, that was just too much to ask for.
“They're waiting for us, Gabriel.”
“Who's waiting?”
“The Zhen-hai. Only I don't know what they want, or if we can kill them.”
“The who-now?”
“The Zhen-hai, the speakers. They call themselves Destrachan, holy or chosen ones. And they didn't come alone.” She didn't know how exactly she knew this, but she knew it all the same, as if she was connected to each of them, as well.
Kiera hova du clieve koya, du clieve koya ha'eil. The voices joined together, carried along ripples in the air. The grass and sagebrush rustled with the wind, blowing softly from the northeast, at their backs. We're getting close now, she thought. The words of the Zhen-hai echoed in her mind, collected with the hum of anticipation, the hum of the glimmer. The aura reached out and over the dunes between her and the destrachan, and the words were important. She comes to break us, to break our prison.
I do come, she thought, and I'll break more than your prison. Drums were beating in her head, the soft thrumming of a steel stringed guitar playing music in time. Music playing over her senses, the voices of singers long since gone calling out from beyond the grave, strengthening her resolve and lending their courage to her step. The dunes gave way to a large plain in the center of a bowl-shaped valley. Once-men chanting Jack's name in their forsaken tongue, Esseshoos, moving softly across the air and land. Their glimmer made no difference this time, as her blood began to beat in time with the drums and rhythmic guitars in her head. She knelt to the ground, drawing her knife, her spear-knife and placing it point down into the sand.
Kill me with the beat.
The soaring riffs and chords of the guitars were all about her, enlivening her spirits and her emotions as she pulled and tugged at the golden threads around her, pulling power and energy into and through her. The staccato of the drums echoed in her brain, rippling the air around her as it grew solid, and bubbling out in waves of time and reality. Neither the drums nor the guitars slowed as time did, playing instead at a greater pace, pounding her heart and urging it to beat faster and faster, adrenaline pouring in her veins like heroin from a needle. She was alive!
The faces of the destrachan and the Zhen-hai alike were all around her in that chilled bubble, faces that were there and then weren't, were standing and then falling. The music that playing never stopped, the lyrics catching in the sieve of her memory, music she had never before heard. The bubble around her vanished, and she knelt in the center of the valley amid the ruin of a great battle. Dead destrachan and Zhen-hai alike lay where they had fallen. Limbs and blood and entrails and gore splattered every fallen face, and the numbers of that host had been in the hundreds. The music slowed and stilled in her memory, leaving her feeling hollow and used up in its wake, empty and devoid of its rhythms and astonished at the massacre around her.
“You killed them all?” Gabriel was as shocked as she was.
“How long was that? Did I fight for long?” despite the hollow in the pit of her stomach, she was not winded as such a battle should have left her.
“Long? I barely had time to draw my gun!”
Her breath was chilled, and it condensed heavily in the air, hanging like a cloud before dropping. The blade of her knife dripped with the blood of the fallen shades, yet the blood was frozen, streaking the steel with a crimson gradient that rapidly melted from the warmth of her hand. Wiping the blood the knife on her pants leg, she felt on her cheek where the cougar's mark had been left. A single tear had crystallized there, and as she stared at the way it sparkled in the starlight, she remembered everything.
It was all a blur, of course, and they hadn't stood a chance against her, and perhaps it was this realization that had made it possible. Had she fought them? It seemed as if she had, all the evidence around pointed at that conclusion, but it was all a blur. Time was flowing downhill, in more ways than one, and it was slipping through her fingers.
Her blade was cutting, tearing through the bone of the shade's skull, moving so quickly as to counteract whatever force she was using, slicing it from one side of its face to the other, across the bridge of the destrachan's nose and leaving the blood streaming. On to the next, a backwards somersault of a kick, snapping its jaw into pieces before driving the teeth and bone up into the once-man's brain. Next.
The frames were not moving, frozen in her memory now, as if it was a slide show of pictures that someone else had taken. Her fists and feet and blade were a blur, even in her memory, moving faster and faster, until the only thing recognizable was the blur itself, a translucent portrayal of her fierceness and brutality. Then only the victims of her attacks were visible. A destrachan, cut from stem to sternum, blood pouring out of its bony chest, eyes bulging in breathless agony as its insides dropped to the ground. Another with a blade shoved through the soft underside of its jaw into the brain cavity, stunned and unable to move.
Corpse after bloodied corpse, falling steaming to the ground as she finally knelt in victory, her blade shining with an icy sheen of crimson that melted quickly. Just an hour now, until sunrise as the final Zhen-hai fell in her mind, its words frozen on its lips just as the white aura surrounding her was frozen in her mind. Whipping about her arms in a frenzy of the final blows. Sorachim. Savior.
I damn you back to Hell, to the grave to richly deserve.
The beating of a heart that was the same staccato as her own, thrumming like a coin-operated washing machine in the distance, beating with the same intensity and adrenaline as her own, was fleeing, retreating to the south and to the west. Jack, she thought, I'll catch up to you sooner or later. Along that silver and gold thread that connected them, a whistled tune that bothered her came creeping back, bothering her because she knew the words, though she had never heard it before, creeping back along the halls of memories that weren't her own.
Michael, row the boat ashore, Hallelujah.
He was whistling as he left the dank of the dam behind. Damn you, Jack, sticking catchy songs like that in my head when I have more important things to be worrying about. Not that he was worried, just that the song annoyed him. Michael had always heard that song whenever Jack was around, some sort of play on his name, although he didn't think it very funny at all. The trap was set, though, and that was all that mattered now, as the sun began to rise in the east. The water along the lake was teeming with fish, some sort of trout, probably, and for the first time in over a hundred years, he wished he'd brought his pole along, a graphite rod that he had purchased at a supermarket ages ago.
His long dark brown hair, curly and nearly unmanageable his entire life, was drawn back into a ponytail at the base of his skull, with the ends running just below the collar of his black silk shirt. He smiled, his silk shirt worn for only special occasions, I suppose this is as good an occasion as any. It is a good day to die, he thought.
Their forms were visible now, through the mist that gathered on the lake behind the concrete wall of the dam. It was thick, the mist, and it came with the cold as the first rays of sunshine marked daybreak on the water. It evaporated as the heat from the sun struck, first shining, shimmering in the water drops that hung in the air, prismatically shattering the white light into a million brilliant rainbows that reflected on the concrete that seemed stark and grey compared.
It was all a lie, though, for even as beautiful as the natural effects of the weather were on the landscape all around, the man-made dam was a wonder of engineering and cooperation. With steel and rock, man had harness the power of the mighty Colorado River and made it a useful device, and one that had lasted over three hundred years. The surface of the dam was paved with asphalt, allowing at one time two lanes of vehicles to pass, becoming an effective bridge, and now was no different. The Colorado was treacherous and dangerous, and for someone unskilled in swimming, it could prove deadly. Escaping the swift current might have made it impassable, with all bridges to the north and south of the dam damaged or swept away by eroding land that they had been anchored to as the river itself beat against the rock and weathered it into dust and silt. The perfect bottleneck.
The girl and her guardian emerged from the quickly dissipating fog, the mist was gone and the sun was ascending rapidly to its throne in the heavens. Michael smiled as he watched their approach, sitting calmly in his folding chair as if he was at a barbecue and had not a care in the world. Mirrored aviator-style sunglasses reflected the two approaching, and he chuckled to himself.
Hey, Jude, he hummed quietly, La la la la la la, take a sad song . . .
“And make it better,” he finished aloud.
The girl looked as if she knew a thing or two, and wasn't someone he'd normally fuck with, which wasn't to say he thought her unattractive, no, that'd be lying to himself, just that she looked dangerous, like perhaps she ate nails and shit razor wire by the spool. Three identical scars ran across her cheek, deep on the far side near her ear and fading slowly as they neared her nose, but that was stunning, not ugly. She had an air of beauty and feline grace about her, and she looked just like that other girl, what was her name? The one Jack had almost settled down with. Iris, his mind spit. She doesn't look so dangerous, fierce maybe, but not dangerous.
Jack had said she'd be able to do things, like he was sometimes able to do, things that had no place in the world, things which defied reality. With each step she took closer to him, Michael could see what Jack had been talking about. The air rippled around her, bubbling outward and distorting her, like waves of heat that were already beginning to form above the black asphalt. Was it a mirage? The desert did have a way of addling the mind and twisting the eyes to see what the heart desired, but this was no mirage. He leaned forward in his seat and crossed his legs, placing his hands on the edge of the armrests and let her come to him.
Only twenty feet remained between himself and the girl, with the boy she traveled with only a step behind and to the right, when she stopped. To his left, the water was lapping gently against the concrete, only a few feet from coming over the top, the wind brushing past his pant legs gently made the air smell of fish and the depths of the water the dam held back.
“Michael?” the girl asked curtly, letting only a hint of distrust and a violent temperament show through.
He nodded and took another look at the two travelers before him. They weren't wanderers, not like he had been once, and his violet eyes appraised them without prejudice. The girl was dressed from head to foot in tanned leather, most likely she had helped to skin and tan them herself. A hunter, then, he supposed, but has she taken the oath? Her green eyes were startling, and filled to the brim with every human emotion at its greatest peak of intensity. Sorrow, it seemed was no stranger to her, and neither were anger and hate, jealousy and love. She was a melting pot of mixed and swirling, thought-provoking emotion, a tidal wave of humanity, a champion. The boy, on the other hand, was dressed just as simply, and did not hold near the same battle-hardened quality as she did. He too was dressed all in tanned leathers, and he carried a knapsack on his back, tiny though it was, and held a poised hand at his side, waiting to pull something from his back. A gunslinger, a man whose skill was in speed and stamina. From the way he stood, his legs must have been strong indeed, a runner as well as a gunslinger. Perhaps he was more formidable than he looked. The boy's face was as calm as the ground beneath his feet, and gave no hint as to what he felt or was thinking, but his eyes shone lustily in the dawn's light, as if he was ready to see blood spilled on the ground.
A single thought occurred to him as he looked at the two as they stood, but it wasn't a jumble as thoughts sometimes were, but a word, a name. Daniel. Yet it seemed that as well as he had known him, for as long as they had traveled together, as much as they had talked and joked at length, Daniel's face would not be summoned by his mind. Lost in the fray of time as a name with no face, a voice with no name. The edges of his memories were unraveling as were the ideals he had once stood for. Yet he was still alive, and Jack was still fighting, and as thick and true as the streak of loyalty ran in his spirit, so he would fight also, and let come what may. Daniel should have been there still, together they might have triumphed over this vixen, this whelp, this child.
“Yes, I am Michael. Who are you?” He didn't need to ask for her name, he already knew that, knew with every fiber of his being who she was, and what she was here for, but it was a formality, a holdover from the past that he could not relinquish. He had to be sure of it, for it wouldn't do to make a mistake like that.
“I am called Sera, and this is Gabriel.”
His echoing laughter grated against her nerves visibly, and he couldn't help but smile. “The destroyer of worlds, the breaker of oaths walks the land with an angel of the light, arguably the greatest seraphim to wield the flaming sword of the Almighty? That is irony, right there. Proof that God has a sense of humor.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “What did you call me? And him?” she motioned to Gabriel. Seraphim, far too close to the name the Zhen-hai had given her.
“Seraphim, the highest choir of angels and Sorachim, the betrayer of men. You really are an odd couple.” The girl gave the boy a look of unbelief, of not understanding, and Michael almost laughed again.
“You're not making much sense at all. Do you even know why I am here?” she asked.
“I know why you think you are here, why you think you follow Jack, but you don't really know why you are, and yes, I do know.”
“I follow Jack for my vengeance, for the evil he wrought on my life and my people.”
“And is that your sole reason to give chase? Do you think that destroying Jack will give you redemption? That somehow in killing him you will be forgiven your own sins? Mankind's vindictive nature runs strong in you, yet your retribution will profit you nothing. You are aptly named, Sorachim, and there is reason for that, though once you realize why it will be too late.”
“Yes, I seek Jack for the sole purpose of revenge. He is a plague upon humanity, and I intend to wipe him from the land,” she declared indignantly, righteously. What a fool she was.
Michael shook his head slowly, his smile turned upside down. “Very well, your lies do not allow you to see the error of your ways, and I cannot allow you to pass. You forced this upon yourself, I want you to remember that.”
“Oh, I'll remember the look of horror as it dawns on you that you cannot win, no matter what you do.”
The last laugh will be mine, you arrogant, self-serving child. You will remember.
He strode towards her with a determined step, crossing the gap between them with ease. His boots made a distracting scuffle across the pavement and Sera looked down to see them, black leather polished in a high shine, with a tiny silver latch and loop holding one side to the other. The bottoms of the boots appeared to be made of rubber, and it was this that made the scuffle, and as she looked, a tinkle of metal against stone crept up as tiny silvered spurs clinked against the asphalt. It was only a fraction of a second that she took to glance at his feet, yet when her eyes returned to her advancing foe, she recognized those violet eyes and open grin. She saw it too late, though, and his fist was balled and hitting across her left cheek, the one with the three identical scars, and in the brief nanosecond before it connected, she saw a flash of silver, glinting with the sun's first rays.
As she fell to the ground, she saw him shake his fist, and watched as tiny red droplets fell free of the ring. Feeling the warm trickle of blood with a single hand, the world was spinning from Michael's jab and she felt like she was on the urge of passing out.
“Get away from her!” Gabriel was shouting, his pistol in hand, pointing it at the man with violet eyes.
“Or else?” Michael asked. “Or else you'll shoot me? With what?” The gun wrenched itself from Gabriel's hands, tumbling across the pavement with a life of its own, and then giving it up as it leapt into the air, falling and skipping down the steep slope of the concave side of the dam, the scraping of metal and ceramic against stone growing faint as it went.
“She left me no choice, Archangel, and now you must pay for her. You chose to follow her as I chose to follow Jack, and this is the price we must pay: If I am to die in service, then so shall you.” Gabriel found himself lifted into the air, a feeling much like floating in a sea of water, except that it wasn't his kicking feet which held him aloft.
“No,” Sera murmured, eyes half-closed against the world that spun around her.
“What was that? Watch closely as your friend dies.” Michael clenched his jaw and tossed Gabriel over the side of the dam.
He hurtled down, skipping like a stone across the surface of a still pond, except that the concrete was a poor substitute for water, and he felt every bump, scraping and tearing at his flesh, leaving bloody streaks wherever he landed. He was suddenly aware that he was screaming, too, but that was soon drowned out by the crashing water below him, and as he struck the ground, the cement structure at the very bottom of the dam, what seemed like a mile below, he felt his skull caving in as everything went black.
“No.” Sera wasn't screaming the word, but it came out all the same, loud and assertive, and filled with power. The air around her crackled with electricity, and the smell of the dank spray that leapt up over the side of the dam was overwhelming. The sky above was a collaboration of every color under the sun, as the pale blue sky mixed with the reddish sunrise, making the sky a dim purple between one horizon and the other, and becoming orange and yellow where the sun was just peeking out over the tips of the mountains. Not that any of these things mattered, but they were notices, and carefully cataloged in her memory.
Her body was sheathed in the white flame of her aura, and the tips of those flames whipped about like they were being blown about as waves on the lake, except that they moved as if the wind was coming from beneath her. She could feel the energy flowing to her from each tiny golden thread, feeding her and intoxicating her with power, infusing her with raw human emotion, and it was electrifying, but that didn't concern her. What concerned her was the sound of Gabriel's screaming as it was consumed by the rushing water, tumbling through the turbines of the massive generators beneath her, and their sounds too, which rumbled and groaned and turned, the power they created lost in downed transmission lines.
There was a click, the sound of a massive clock as the minute hand joined the hour hand and the second hand, a thundering as it connected with its destined point, and it was time. The midnight hour, surely it was somewhere, the witching hour, and the birds flying overhead grew dim and distant. Grey light streamed down from the sun dark and lighter, twisting in the sky, refracted and bent as if viewed through a large empty drinking glass. The penetrating wah of discordance filled her ears, and the chill of timelessness was once again upon her. She watched as her breath clouded up in the windless space and hung as a deep fog around her.
“No,” she repeated defiantly. “Not yet.”
The birds overhead, gulls, were moving backwards in the sky, and she could feel the earth groaning under her feet, yet the earth wasn't alone in its cry against what she was doing. The universe itself was stopped in its tracks, revolving and rotating planted, stars, and galaxies were pushed against the flow of time, against fate's will, and against their natural laws. Gravity became a positive acceleration, no longer attracting but repelling, and the equal and opposite force to every action preceded the action that created it; the physical world was reversing around her.
Not that she cared in the slightest. The sounds of shrieking, splintering metal clashed in her ears, and she heard Gabriel's cry pulled back into his throat, could feel him bouncing upwards along the side of the dam, the damage caused by his fall on his body becoming undone, unraveled. Time itself was no barrier to her, and the grey world around her was the proof of that, as it shaded with her will a deep violet, tinged with crimson and grey. The emerald of her eyes reflected in them the passion she felt for the boy as he was once more visible over the edge of the wall. He was held in the same reversing stasis as everything else was around her, and the slow beating of the lakes waves against the wall of concrete became audible once more. Michael's voice was the next thing she heard, but it was like a record spinning the wrong direction on its turntable, the sound muddled and confused, reversed.
How had Jack done what he had to Gabriel, and how had Michael been able to do the same? Why had she not thought of it before? She had done something similar to Seth, and yet couldn't put a finger on what it was. Some evidence had to be visible, especially now, in this place, this bubble beyond the normal stream of time where she could watch it happen over and over again. Her teeth chattered against the cold. Perhaps not, then. Watch closely as he is lifted, and maybe grasp hold of the concept as you would the hand that saves you.
A tiny silver thread ran between Michael and Gabriel, taut and faint, barely outlined in the grey sun's light. The strand cast no shadow on the ground, but it was there all the same, and real as anything had ever been. Sera watched in awe as a ripple, a tiny wavelet originating from Michael ran the length of the wire, looping it around Gabriel's neck and growing taut once more, growing stiff and lifting him from the ground, a nice little trick indeed. As she watched this all happen, she could feel revulsion building up in her throat like bile, but she bit it down and ignored it.
Her own translucent golden strand also lay between herself and Gabriel, and she let a tiny wavelet streak out across its length to him, knocking the other strand from his neck and loosening Michael's hold on the boy.
“What was that? Watch closely as your friend dies,” Michael clenched his jaw and attempted to repeat his tossing action, but Gabriel did not move at all. Michael didn't know there was a thread, did he? She realized this and choked down a laugh as he sent another ripple down the silvered wire, yet just as it was about to loop about Gabriel's neck once more, her own golden thread knocked it aside, and even though Michael might strain against the thread, he could gain no hold on the boy.
“You are like a child with a magnifying lens, Michael, watching as the ants burn beneath your gaze, but you don't realize what it is you do.”
“I realize more than you know.” He sent a wave along the golden thread linking him with her, yet it dissipated before reaching the center, unable to shake for the growing yellowed thread that shimmered was fast becoming a rope, a cable that could not be moved by such small exertions as Michael was capable of.
Sera laughed aloud as she manipulated the golden cable with ease, looping it around his neck like a lasso and pulling it tight, lifting him off his feet and holding him suspended above the asphalt. “Now, I must confess that a part of me wishes nothing more than to release you, but I think that were I to do so you would do nothing but hound my companion and I as we hound Jack. Even knowing that this profits you nothing except your own death, you persist, and so you leave me no choice.”
“And what do you know of choice, Sera? What do you know of the differences between choice and chance? This is the essence of conflict, would you do what is necessary to end it? Would you hunt down any who . . .”
“I would do whatever is necessary, however many must be killed.”
“So then, you have denied Jack's wise counsel then. One for many. How many will be enough for you? Do you see my ring, Sera? Do you see it? Emblazoned on it are the characters 'C,' 'T' and 'R,' they stand for a saying. Choose the Right.” He held out his hand for her to see it, “Those characters are ingrained in your flesh, placed there by my own hand even as they are ingrained in my soul. Do what you will, whatever you must do, but remember everything I have said, for I cannot and will not say it again.”
“Shut up. I'm sick of you and Seth and Jack, trying to pull me this way and that, to push me towards the way of thinking to which you've grown accustomed. I am my own person, and no one else's. You called me breaker of oaths, and you spoke truly, for I am no longer held by the oath I once was, and for that, I have Jack and his machinations to think. Without his work, I would have been paralyzed, unable to defend myself against the scheming and plots of Seth, that ravening dog, yet you are no better than he. While he sought only to rid the world of my presence, you sought to destroy Gabriel, and in so doing you have signed your own death warrant. While once I, myself, thought to end his life to save my own, I have since let be what must be, and I would have it no other way. However, as you have done this terrible thing, My hand has been force, and you will die.”
Michael was laughing, that insane laugh of the damned and the doomed, and for the first time, Sera realized that he had not once undone his fist, with its ring so forged with the letters 'CTR,' and she couldn't help but suddenly dread the moment he opened his hand. With all her will, she pulled and strained at the cable around his neck, and as she heard the vertebrae at the base of his skull crack, and his head turn abruptly to the right, she also heard a faint click as the button he had depressed was released. Letting the cable go slack and limp, Michael's body began to fall slowly to the ground.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.
She was cold, then, in the summer's morning sun's glare, and it was the chilling, biting cold that she had grown accustomed to, the kind of cold that only those in the far north and south of the equator knew and feared, yet it was almost comforting, if only for the familiarity it lent. The frost of timelessness crept all around her, shining anew on every fold and crease of her leathers as the threads pulled and tugged at the energy behind them, but it wasn't enough. Her well of power, the source of her miraculous abilities was being bled dry, an engine running only on fumes, the gas gauge empty. She hoped there was enough left to sustain what she had already done. Anything else was gravy, the icing on the cake.
Grabbing hold of Gabriel's hand, she pulled him free from his unmoving state and into the bubble she had created in the stream of time. She could hear that enormous clock somewhere in the infinite, trying to click to the next second, pushing and straining with time's current to shove the stone that so blocked its passage to the next instant of time. It succeeded, but only barely. Time was slowed and moving forward at a fraction of its normal pace.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The first tremor hit the dam with the force of a freight train, rocking the concrete and shaking it loose of its steel girders and rocky foundation. Cracks appeared in the wall of the dam, far from their eyes, yet the sound of it was as intense as the vibrations were. The second charge blew next, erupting from far below in a spray of stone and metal. The turbines attempted to finish their revolutions, but were cut short in an avalanche of debris. Spinning metal blades and gears were grinding and cutting through their stony prison and screaming as they did so. The shrieks of metal on rock were piercing and painful, so much so that Sera wanted nothing more than to cover her ears, but to do so meant letting go of Gabriel's hand and ensuring both their dooms.
“We go,” she yelled, pulling him to the west, across a sea of tarred rocks that were splitting and descending slowly beneath her feet. There was a delay before the third blast hit, and Sera could have sworn that she heard a tick from that distant clock, straining against her disruption of normal physics, yet not even that mattered. The third blast was the end to whatever structural integrity that remained in the dam. It was collapsing, with water pushing outwards at the point of the greatest pressure, pushing through the holes created by the explosions, ripping and tearing the concrete like a bulldozer, shooting outward through the ten-foot and widening gaps, spraying white and gray against the dim-lighted sky and canyons.
The ground beneath them was falling, slowly descending the hundreds of feet, but now it was cracking and breaking into chunks, becoming islands that floated on the air. The pieces of the road that remained were tumbling, now as they fell, the steel and rock holding them together sheared and split, stretching and groaning against the unholy stress that was so rocking it to its very foundations. The water was now the only audible and clear sound that she could hear, and it was the roar of a massive lion, or perhaps a cougar of a size too far-fetched to be real, yet they ran from it all the same.
There is no cougar, she thought.
They ran, Sera in front pulling Gabriel along, as they ran along the twisting piece of road that was falling as they ran, and attempting to dump them head first into the debris that swiftly fell into the riverbed far below where they now were, running. As each step took them closer to the next piece, so did it also find them spending more time in the air, as the land accelerated to the ground below at its normal speed, yet the normality of that was too far distant to be anything but trivial here in this timelessness, where a clock could only tick one second in fifteen or twenty. The clock ticked again as she leaped into the air, reaching and straining to gain the next island, and she did, but just barely, and she was aware that Gabriel had not jumped soon enough. Spinning around, she grabbed at his other outstretched hand and pulled with her might, as this particular island bowed and flexed, attempting to continue in the spin from her exertion. It did, too, as they ran up its length while it slowly spun around whatever axis it had in its shape, and as they reached the final edge of this piece, it was nearly vertical in the air, and continuing to rotate.
So it went, as the two sought nothing save to leapfrog from falling island to falling island, as each in turn began to twist and spin in those three dimensions, yet it was far from over. Only a little was further to go, yet it seemed a staircase made for giants, as each island they leaped to fell further and faster than the one previous, and all the while they jumped, the were still falling with the stones, just not quite so fast. It was a feeling much like flying, with the air nearly as solid as the ground they ran across, as they ran along this mad obstacle course, a gauntlet whose reward for failure was death, and each step closer to the other side left them falling faster, as Sera's bubble weakened and cracked, allowing more color, more vibrant living color, into the grey landscape.
The sky bled its hues of red and orange through the mountain's stone, and reflected on the water as it was pulled downward in a vortex of swirling stone and metal, and the sound it made was the rushing of wind and water, pulling at Sera's ears into its torrent. The sound gave a feeling of inevitability, of impending death and dismemberment, and it reminded her of the destrachan glimmer, an echo of Jack's pure blackened aura, the shadow of her own. Was it light or darkness that it sought to take from her, to incorporate back into the earth? The last step in the giant staircase was snugged against the canyon walls of sandstone and held in place once by the wall of water now descending the maddening thousands of feet to the river below through holes and cracks in the concrete dam as it too fell. As pressed into its place that it was, the force that had put it so deep in the stone was no longer there, and it was hanging precariously. The final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that had once been a dam groaned and shook as her foot graced the edge of it, followed quickly after by straining and more violent shaking as Gabriel followed suit. As they moved up its slanting surface, the concrete was shifting and ripping free of its stony holds with abandon and pulling with its steely anchors as if they were its teeth, grating and tearing at the canyon's stone and finally falling free into the waterfall, the avalanche of liquid stone and metal, pouring down the river's trench.
The air they ran through now was as solid as the cement and asphalt they had once come across, and it was Gabriel who now took the lead, flying further into the cerulean sky as the greyness of being without time slipped into the whirling and churning water below. The was a crack as it happened, and somewhere off in the distance that magnificent clock ticked back into a normal stream of flowing time. He threw himself at the edge of the cliff, twisting and tumbling in an azure ecstasy as he landed and clutched even tighter to Sera's hand, as she began to fall into the dirt and rock that was cascading downward.
Don't let her go, he mind screamed, don't even think it, and he didn't, but held on with all his might as her body clapped against the rocky face, breaking loose another barrage of rocks. The sound of the water raging below them was the only thing audible, and not even Sera's screams could break past that din of chaos and swirling debris.
She had been falling, yet Gabriel's hand held tightly to hers, and that was the only thing she was sure of now, as she scrambled at the edge of the canyon's wall gaining little in the way of either foot or hand holds, yet she was making progress, being pulled up and over the cliff as visions of her body being crushed and mangled by the flowing stones and water far below danced mockingly in her head.
It was over.
Sera lay breathless next to Gabriel as exhaustion took hold over both of them. The screaming falls of water, tumbling stones the size of school buses and small buildings down the canyon as the huge lake diminished and the water levels fell, gradually fell away and died down, as the river returned to its normal course and ran over and around its new obstacles. The sun was creeping over the land and spreading its heat and light across its blue span of sky, bluer than any sapphire, and it danced in front of her eyes as she regained her breath and strength. Slowly, but surely, she got to her feet, and in doing so roused Gabriel from whatever rest he had gotten. As she helped him up, his brown eyes twinkled in excitement at the turn of events which had come about.
She was dusting off her leather clothing when he finally spoke. “Did I just save your life?” he asked, startled at this discovery.
“I . . . don't know. I think you might have,” she replied flatly, nonchalant and nonplussed about it.
“I think I did. Its usually you who ends up pulling me out of the much, and nows it me who . . .”
“Feeling heroic?” she queried.
He smiled as he touched her hand, pulling her gaze away from her dusty leathers and aiming it at his eyes. Her lips were pursed, with her lower lip curled under her teeth, as if she wanted him to . . . his lips met hers for only a second before she slapped him hard across the cheek. “Oww! What the hell was that for?”
She smiled, but said nothing, ruffling his hair with one of her hands, and then he was doing the same, running his agile fingers through her short black mane, and they kissed, with sun on their backs and the wind rustling their hair, they kissed, holding one another tightly. The sky was cloudless overhead, and the sand beneath their feet grew restless, drawing them to the south and west, to where Jack was waiting for them, Yet for a moment, Sera was lost in Gabriel's embrace, and he in hers, and nothing else seemed to matter, but the machinations of the universe were not so easily foiled, and were it so easy to escape the bonds of fate, nothing would ever have been done at all; the pull was too strong to withstand, and Sera broke the kiss and began to walk, a long stride with a steady gait, and Gabriel stayed at her side, her hand clasped gently in his, and they set out once more for whatever destination Jack had in mind for the final battle, and towards whatever outcome in would yield.
The wind blew at their heels, and the sagebrush and long desert grasses rustled from it, with an occasional cactus swaying from the breeze, and the leafy needles of the joshua trees with it, and they walked, long and steady steps, one after the other.
Copyright 2006