Destiny of Coins (21 page)

I doubt Kaslow saw the airborne feet strike his chest and face any sooner than I did, since his entire focus had turned to me once more. His assailant was the most diminutive member of our group, Rafael, who smiled proudly until the knife held by Kaslow plunged down into his collarbone.

“Keep pushing him, Judas—don’t stop!” urged Roderick. He and Francisco scurried over to where Rafael writhed on the ship’s floor in pain. “He’ll kill us all if you don’t succeed!”

Rafael’s blow knocked Kaslow back to where he leaned over the edge, struggling to keep his balance. I had my opportunity to finish the deal. Almost.

Knocking Kaslow out of the ship should have been enough, especially since the hovercraft’s slippery exterior finish was designed to keep the giant lizards and other creatures from the Yitari’s world from climbing into the vessel. But it didn’t prevent Kaslow from somehow digging his fingers into the ledge to secure a hold. Dangling high above the forest below, he leered at me.

“When I climb back in there, I’m going to turn you inside out!” he said. “Then I’ll tear the girl from limb to limb and shove every bit of her down Alistair’s throat!!”

He started to lift himself, but then was distracted by what was going on around him. I, too, had failed to see the world around us change. It was as if nighttime had descended upon our sunny afternoon.

But that was just the beginning of the transformation. The earth below seemed dead and desolate. Yet, I could tell from certain landmarks it was the same place…just in a different realm. The volcanic mountains were more active than in Tampara’s world. Rivers of lava flowed beneath us, and intense heat emanated toward the ship.

As incredible as this was, it paled in comparison to the hundreds of angels hovering in the air along the hovercraft’s left side. They kept pace with our speeding aircraft. Moroni was there with another archangel, whose purple mane of lustrous hair, luminous gold eyes, and facial features were as striking as Moroni’s. They both were frowning, and their wings fluttered continuously, as if barely able to resist the urge to attack a black horde of ugly screeching creatures that filled the air on the other side of the ship.

“Oh, my God…. Bochicha’s Emissaries are here,” whispered Francisco, almost reverently. My son’s and Amy’s worried gasps had drawn his attention to the gathering multitude. The ship began to slow down.

The angels didn’t move to protect us, which made me think about the last thing Moroni had told me. I understood they couldn’t interfere to save any of us. Meanwhile, Tampara confirmed my silent worries that the hovercraft’s sentient material had picked up on the encroaching danger and wouldn’t attempt to plow through the demons blocking our path.

“Why in the hell did you bring us here, Tampara?” Alistair asked him, in a way that implied a good friend had betrayed us.

“It is the only way,” said Tampara, sounding less authoritative and somewhat vulnerable for the first time in my presence. “I have foreseen—as Roderick has—that this man will destroy the world—
your
world. Since we are all connected, the destruction of the realm you and my Essene friends reside in would soon spread to my world. I can’t let that happen. I
won’t
let that happen!”

“Well, isn’t this lovely!” Kaslow chuckled. “Go ahead and take us wherever you’d like to die, asshole! It doesn’t matter where you go, I can kill you just as easily.”

He continued to chuckle until he noticed several demons hovering just below his feet. I’m not sure how he missed the growing horde moving steadily closer to him. Francisco had told us quite a bit about these former brethren of the angels during the angelic portion of our little icebox tour last night. It came in response to one of Amy’s questions. The demons were the same height and they still had wings. But everything that had once been beautiful was no longer so—the punishment from Elohim for their defiance against Him.

Their skin was translucent—similar to Ophanim’s skin from the Garden of Eden. But unlike that angel’s shimmering gold undercoat, what pulsed inside these beings looked like putrid flesh. Their wings were bat-like—not unlike the Mothmen I once briefly mentioned in an earlier account. And, instead of human hands, they had sharp, bird-like claws. Their eyes were misshapen, despite the shimmering emerald color. But their mouths were the worst. Their mouths were filled with long jagged teeth. Teeth, I should say, that were dripping with the putrid slime and what looked like blood from earlier kills.

These horrid creatures have a craving for flesh. Human flesh, in particular, since we carry a sweet flavor. This was apparently how Moroni once described the demon’s palate to Rafael a couple of years back, when these creatures had returned to the earth plane for the first time in many thousands of years.

My point to all this?

Well, I thought some folks might want to know what Kaslow’s reaction was when he finally realized it was to his utmost disadvantage to be hanging outside the hovercraft as he was right then. Perhaps the best ways to describe it was comical, sad, or even amusing. The most fun for us was seeing his reaction when the three demons below him suddenly looked up and opened their mouths in anticipation of taking huge bites from his dangling limbs.

Kaslow fought desperately to climb out of harm’s way. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do it. And, he failed to get his massive hands around the ship’s ledge enough to help pull himself up. Especially with me pushing his fingers away.

The demons, that seemed to understand from the angel’s presence that the rest of us tasty morsels were off limits soon surrounded Kaslow. He began to whimper.

“William…please. Let me climb back on board, and we can talk about this,” he said, forgetting the father and future father-in-law he was addressing. “We can come to some agreement.”

“Indeed, we already have,” I told him. I was unable to suppress the smile that had tugged at the corners of my lips for the past few minutes. I pushed his fingers further.

“William…no,” he pleaded, although years of not showing any compassion to others had made him a terrible mimic of what it should sound like. No doubt, he was genuinely terrified—just like any other predator faced with extinction. I could feel his dire fear growing inside of him, compounded by the fact he surely understood the elation behind my smug satisfaction.

“No!”

That was the last thing he said, as he tried to raise his fingers for an instant in order to trap mine beneath his. He missed, and then he fell. Screaming

Hard to say if he was to die in the air or if the horde that carried him away planned to savor his presence for a while. We didn’t stay long enough to find out. Tampara delivered another of the primal screams he shares with Roderick, and the world around us began to change once more. Sunshine replaced the dimness that belonged to the realm of demons that serve Bochicha. My last impressions were the echoes of Viktor Kaslow’s fading screams and the sight of one immense angel of Elohim hovering momentarily before us.

Moroni smiled, and although Alistair swears it wasn’t so, I’d like to believe he winked at me. He then disappeared with his fellow warriors in a flash of light.

Chapter 17

The sense of relief I felt in knowing those I cherish—and the very world for that matter—were safe from the menace of Viktor Kaslow was indescribable. Incredibly overwhelming was what came to mind the quickest…until I discovered that two of my companions had been seriously hurt during the melee.

Rafael escaped a deathblow, but he was still bleeding from the knife wound to his upper chest. Francisco managed to slow the blood loss with a makeshift compress, and I felt confident our diminutive and heroic Essene friend would survive.

But, as I mentioned above, there were two casualties. Cedric took a bullet to his right side, when Kaslow tried to riddle Tampara with gunfire. Roderick determined that the hollow point shell had destroyed most of our old friend’s liver. Without a miracle, he would die.

To that end, Tampara lowered the hovercraft to where it skimmed across the treetops of the forest expanse below. He was looking for something specific, I could tell, and would glance back compassionately at both Cedric and Rafael while guiding the vessel. Amy wrapped her arms around Cedric when he started shivering from his body’s falling temperature. He didn’t have long.

“The healing powers of a hanging moss that clings to the younger branches of the carnacs will buy us time.” Tampara scanned the area as he said this. His gaze settled upon a tree that had been spared the recent feeding in the area from a herd of giant reptiles resembling Brontosauruses. He stopped the hovercraft in midair, next to the upper branches, and grabbed a handful of the strands that reminded me of the Spanish moss growing abundantly in the Deep South of the United States. He brought three of the strands to my son, who attended to Cedric with Roderick’s assistance, and then gave the remaining epiphyte to Francisco for Rafael’s wound.

“Squeeze out the liquid contained inside the moss and drip it over the wounds’ entry points,” Tampara advised. “It will slow the bleeding down enough for the healing in my hands to be effective. I will start with Cedric, since his injuries are the most serious.”

“Hang on, Cedric!” I urged him, kneeling next to Alistair while Amy gently stroked his temples. He looked like he might lose consciousness at any moment. “Tampara has something that will help heal you!”

“I don’t think so, buddy,” he said, drawing in a painful breath while Tampara lifted his blood soaked shirt. Our Yitari companion grimaced upon confirming Roderick’s assessment of the damage wrought by Kaslow’s hollow point. Cedric tried unsuccessfully to tilt his head so he could see the torn tissues along his right side for himself. “It looks like this is finally it, Willie Boy. I’ve got mainly you to thank.”

“No, there’s still time!”

I wasn’t about to let him die without a fight. As much as our dysfunctional friendship had often irked me during the past three decades, the thought of losing him this suddenly—without time to prepare for it as I had done for my wife and son’s departure from this life—filled me with terrible despair.

“No, William…you’ve been a great friend…usually,” he said, chuckling while he tried to sit up straight and draw nearer to me. Such a stubborn son of a bitch to the very end! “I want to thank you for giving me something to look forward to each and every day, these past few years.” He laughed harder, until it made him cough. “After Darlene died, fourteen years ago, I didn’t think I could go on…. Then, when Candice blamed me for her mother’s death, due to my unwavering dedication to serving our country as I’ve done, I had nothing left to look forward to. Except for you…you and those goddamned excuses you’d come up with to visit the Bum-Fuck Egypts of the world!”

“How is Rafael?” Tampara quietly asked Francisco, while pulling back his bloody hands from Cedric’s side. The lime-colored ‘sap’ had been administered as best as it could be.

“The bleeding is slowing down, and it appears the wound is…it’s
closing!”
said Francisco, astonished.

“That is good,” said Tampara.

He smiled weakly and returned his attention to Cedric, whose eyelids were fluttering. If he was going into shock, as it appeared, then the carnac moss didn’t have anywhere near the affect it had on Rafael.

“Cedric, hold on,” I said again, gentler this time.

Tampara placed his hand over Cedric’s heart while murmuring some kind of Yitaric prayer, or so I assumed. When he finished, Cedric’s spasms had subsided.

“I have something very important to ask you, Cedric, and I will need your answer right now,” said Tampara. He brought his face close enough to Cedric’s, until the two of them were eye to eye. “You are going to die. I can’t save you here, and neither can anyone else. Your injuries are beyond what I can heal, and the present healing abilities of your so called ‘modern age medicine’ will be useless, as well. Are you following me so far?”

“Yes,” he whispered. His near-ageless ebony skin had become deathly pale.

“Do you want to live forever?” Tampara asked.

“Huh? Ah…yeah, sure. Who wouldn’t want that? I don’t want to die…at least not today.”

“That’s good to hear, my friend. I can make your desire happen. But we must return to Paititi very soon, or it will be too late.” Tampara’s lowered voice sounded especially ominous. “If you come with me, you will lack for nothing. You will become one of our citizens. And, this is an honor almost never offered to anyone outside our realm…. But there is one stipulation in order to make this happen. You can never leave our kingdom. Our home must be yours forever.”

Cedric nodded thoughtfully, and as he did, his countenance steadily brightened.  Considerably.

“William, Alistair, and Amy?” he said, chuckling again, as a thin line of blood blanketed his teeth. “Tell the folks back home—especially Michael—they can all officially kiss my ass goodbye!”

This time when he laughed, Cedric coughed up blood. Enough blood for us all to realize he’d be gone very soon unless he could cash in quickly on Tampara’s offer. I worried there wasn’t adequate time for him to reach Paititi—especially when he lost consciousness a moment later. But, armed with Cedric’s consent, Tampara immediately checked on Rafael and then urged the rest of us to get strapped in with our leather restraints again.