Michael (The Curse) (The Airel Saga, Book 3: Part 5-6) (7 page)

Kreios wasn’t even breathing hard. He stood and scanned the area. The fire was spreading to the ceiling. From there, it would find the hundred-year-old rafters, dry as a tinderbox.

They knew his name. They knew of Airel and the boy Michael, that he had betrayed both the Seer and the Brotherhood. Kreios concluded that he knew what it all meant, but he did not care.
Let him die. He deserved it after all, did he not?

The blackness of his wounded and grieving heart suited him as he sheathed his sword in its scabbard on his back.

He then burned them. “Just a taste of what is to come.” He lit a single match and dropped it onto the hideous floor. Human remains spontaneously combusted, filling the air with burning sulfur and phosphorous. He watched the unholy fire wound the evening sky with red haze.

Airel. And the boy, Michael.

It is a lie
. He tried to convince himself that the falseness that had been spoken into the air did not matter, that it was meaningless. But it mattered. He remembered Airel. And Kreios wept as his eyes reflected the light of the consuming blaze.

CHAPTER X

Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho—Present Day

“HEY,” I SAID, WALKING toward Michael along the path to the little training shed. He was sitting there on the ground staring into space, the graying clouds of a potential thunderstorm looming over the mountains beyond.

He looked up at me when I spoke. “Hey yourself.” He smiled.

I sat down next to him, looking out at the view along with him. “So now we’re fake smiling at each other? We’ve come a long way in no time at all.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all.” He seemed agitated. “Look, I hate to ruin the mood, but we need to get out of here, and quick. The Brotherhood is probably already headed in this direction. They will want to finish the job.”

“The job, huh. I know. That’s what Kim said you called me.”

He sighed. “That was the wrong thing to say.”

“Why? Seems like it was honest. What’s wrong with that?”

He let out a heavy sigh. “Nothing. I—”

I could tell I was irritating him. Not what I wanted. But I couldn’t help myself. “You know what … you have a lot of explaining to do.”
How can I defend him to Kim and then stab him in person? Arrgh.

His eyes took on a deeper look. This time he did not sigh. “I know.” He was looking right at me—into me. “I know.” He looked back out into the mountains, the forest, the meadow, all of it on parade in front of us, a total gift. “If anyone knows where they stand, it’s me. I have a lot of work to do. But it has to start with getting us—you and Kim and me—out of here. Like now.”

“Michael, I—”

He grasped my arm and raised his voice a little. “Stop it. Trust me, I know. I know, okay? But you have no idea what kind of danger we’re in. If you’ve ever trusted me, you have to trust me now. You have to let me lead. This is the only time I will ask for your permission in this. I know I don’t have much to go on; you don’t have much reason—any reason, really—to open yourself to me again. Not after what I did. I know it, I know it, I know it. I don’t need you to freaking harp on me about it in order to know it.”

“Whoa, dude. Just stop right there.”

“Airel, we don’t have time for this. Don’t you understand that we’re in danger right now? Every second we waste talking about this touchy-feely bullcrap is a second taken away from our lives. I’m just concerned about our safety—”

“Oh,
heck
no. Michael, you are crossing a line. I’m not trying to attack you here.” But I was, in a way.

He stood and began to pace. He talked with his hands, pleading with me. “Airel, please. I understand already that you’re upset with me for what—for everything that I’ve done. I don’t need to talk about it—”

“Well, maybe I do. Did you ever think of that? Huh, traitor?”
Oh, no.

My words cut him deep. I could tell that I would regret them for the rest of my life. It was one of those things I would never forget—how he looked at me then.

“Please …”

Who’s the traitor now?
I reached out to
She,
but all I could sense was glib satisfaction coming from her.
She
didn’t care much for him from the beginning, evidently.
Great. Just great. I can tell how this is going to end.
“I’m sorry, but there is a difference between forgiveness and trust.” I was really desperate and confused.

He continued to look at me with those ice-blue eyes. If it is true that the eyes are the window to the soul, I had seen his. It was honest, clean, rough, and dangerous, and I wanted every bit of it. Regret for my rash words was already heaping itself on my head—hot coals.

“We really don’t have time for this, okay? I want to leave this place
with
you. At my side. I want to protect you from what is already coming for us. But you have to trust me.”

I looked at him, tears already clouding my vision. I shouted at him, “Do you have any idea how difficult that is going to be? For me?” I wanted to punch something.

He came closer.

“Keep your distance. I will hurt you.” I remembered Kreios’ teaching in the little training hut behind us, that mixing my abilities with raw and undiluted emotion, with anything other than love, was very dangerous and almost impossible to control.

He simply said, “Go on. I deserve it.”

“No. Stay back. Please.”

He walked closer, his arms out, ready to enfold me in his embrace, I wanted to feel those arms wrap me up nice and tight, good and strong, smell his skin, feel the soft spikes of his hair as my hands and fingers interwove themselves in it. I wanted to surrender to all of the nameless feelings and potentials that cavorted within my written-back-together heart. But I felt the danger. It was coming at me from inside, deep. It was coming at me from outside, near, far.

He came still closer, within an arm’s reach.

“Michael.”

His face was inches from my own and I could smell the masculine cleanness of his breath on my lips.

I did what any girl might have done. I collapsed into a sobbing mess in the arms of my lover. He was flawed, but strong enough, filled to the brim with courage, and all of it for me. I let myself go, let myself cry for a good long time.

The gray clouds overhead then burst, drenching us both to the bone.

I thought of how horrible the world was to have given a place for people like Stanley Alexander to live and exist. I thought of how painfully dear to me my parents were.
Would I ever see them again?
I thought about Kreios and wondered why he would have abandoned me, even if he did think I was dead.
Wouldn’t he at least have wanted to bury my body?
Maybe he just couldn’t deal with it. I thought about Kim and how much I loved her, how sorry I was she had been caught up in all this nonsense with me and my drama. And I thought about Michael.

That’s when the storm within started to finally clear up.

We were soaked, our clothes clinging to our bodies.

I pulled back from him. I felt bad; his shirt was covered with rain, with my tears, slobber, and snot. I wiped my nose with my shirt front, revealing part of my stomach as I dabbed at my eyes with it.

He pulled me in close to him again, but not all the way—his eyes were locked on mine, the puffs of our breathing intermingling in the misty aftermath of the storm.

He leaned in, but off to one side, brushing the softest, gentlest kiss against my cheek and then pulling back. “Airel,” he said, his voice a husky whisper.

CHAPTER XI

THE MORNING SUN AND fresh after-rain smell of the woods turned to heavy, sticky humidity as we walked back to the house. We had to get going, we had agreed. I looked up through the trees and saw dark clouds moving in quickly as they do at high elevations. It could be sunny one moment and snowing the next.

I was still shaking a little from the moment before, but the rain starting and just shutting off like that, like a faucet, pulled us into awkwardness. He had pulled away then. I wondered what it was that held him back from me. Was he scared that I would judge him, that he wasn’t good enough or something?

“I think we need to cut each other some serious slack,” I said. Michael stepped over a fallen log and I followed.

“Word up, homie.”

I laughed. “Who
are
you?”

“Gangsta, girl.”

“That’s actually kind of true …” I thought of his recent antisocial associations.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Remember: slaaaaack.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, giving him a little shove in the back.

He laughed.

How could we go from rain-soaked dream moment to adorkable in two seconds?
I shook my head, but realized that I liked his dorky side.

We walked on for a bit and I came alongside him as the trail widened.

“So, do you really think we can find Kreios?”

“Sure. Besides, that’s what I’m good at. I’ve tracked guys like him my whole life. Kind of what I do.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“Google,” he said. “Get me a network connection and I can find just about anybody pretty quick.” He pulled a smartphone from his pocket.

“That thing survived the rain?”

“Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I don’t mess around with my tools. You could drop this into a bucket of water and it would be fine. I have people.”

“Yeah, I don’t wanna hear about your people.”

“But seriously. This is a mil-spec case around it.” He pointed to his phone.

“So you have a 4G pocket protector. You’re a nerd.”

He just looked at me. “This is serious stuff.”

“I can tell, Mister. But what are you gonna search for?” I wondered if he knew something he wasn’t telling me about where Kreios went.

“Murder. Crime. And in big numbers.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Kreios was beyond angry when he left. There was something uncontrolled about him. He wouldn’t even look at me.” He looked down as he walked. “Personally, I think he’s going after the Brotherhood clans, maybe one by one. He’ll go down the rank and file until he gets what he wants.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Revenge. I’m betting he’ll leave a wake of bodies. We find the bodies, we find him.”

“Or at least a trail that might lead to him,” I added.

“Yep. I just need to get somewhere that has more bars than …” He checked his phone display. “Than zero.”

We laughed.

“The Brotherhood has been waiting on word from Stanley, but they won’t wait for long. When they don’t get it, they’ll know something’s up, maybe even by now, and start moving.”

“Hey, I agree. You made your point, okay?” I looked around as we walked, looked up through the trees and into the troubled sky. It looked like it had a stomachache—it was all churny. “Well, we
should
get going. I’m a little weirded out by this place anyway. With Kreios not here, it seems kind of out of sync and wild … or is that just me?”

Michael looked at me. “I know what you mean. It does seem off somehow, as if time is different here.”

“Yeah, and have you even once seen a plane fly overhead?”

“Those are called contrails. Those little white trails they leave.”

“Nerd alert,” I said, pointing to his pocket where he stashed the phone.

He sighed at me. “Are you done?”

“Why? Want me to be?”

“Desperately.”

“Then no,” I said playfully.

“Okay. If I’m a nerd, then you’re a dork.” He nudged me with his arm.

It sent tingles through me.
Just like always.
I felt relieved by that, but all my words were stolen as a result.

He went on. “The seasons change by the hour … the weather has moods.”

Thank God he’s kept things going.
“I feel like it’s based on
my
mood. When I get emotional, it gets stormy. If I’m normal, it’s all sunny. I don’t mean to sound self-important, but I’ve been watching it for a while now.”

Michael looked at me. “You need to cheer up, then, so we can get dry. Dork.” He smiled at me, just a little too broadly, and I laughed at him and shook my head.

We finally arrived at the house, panting and grinning, still soaked to the bone but at least not dripping wet.

“Kim,” I called out as we walked in.

“She’s probably upstairs,” Michael said.

“Or in the kitchen,” I said.

“Try the kitchen,” came a voice. It was Kim. We walked toward it and her. We turned the corner to find her standing at the counter by a plate of sandwiches. A duffel bag was at her feet. She turned to us. “’Bout time you two lovebirds showed up,” she said. “Kiss yet?”

I blushed.

“Ooooo,” she cooed, coming closer to me. “Do tell.”

“Stuff it,” I said.

“How ’bout
you
stuff it,” she said, motioning to the sandwiches. “I made us some lunch. And I’m packed. I’ve just gotta go powder my nose. You guys try to keep up, okay?” She scampered out, headed upstairs.

***

MICHAEL WATCHED KIM AS she hurried off. “She’s an odd duck,” he said. The scar under his shirt burned, and he felt something call to him, back in a hidden place in his mind. It sat there, waiting: “
Come to me—find me and be whole.”

He blinked and looked at Airel, his mind flitting over her Book, over the other books on that shelf. Anxiety filled him.

The Bloodstone.

He wanted Stanley’s stone. But, no, he didn’t. Why should he? He didn’t know what he would do with it. But he had to have it back. No, he didn’t.
Where is it? Does Kreios have it?
He might have kept it as a sort of talisman.

The Bloodstone that had owned Stanley Alexander was more powerful than anything Michael had ever known, and it was calling to
him.
He clenched his jaw. He picked up a sandwich.

***

“SHE
IS
AN ODD duck,” I said, “But I love her.” I had to confess, though, Kim wasn’t who was on my mind. It was
She,
and
She
was not helping It was hard enough without her input, especially when it was so negative.
“He almost died, sure … almost killed you too. Did you ever think he might have planned it all? Made sure he didn’t die, made it look like he was saving you, that he cared?”