“Do you think Camael will come with us?”
Aaron didn’t get a chance to answer, for at that moment Belphegor and Scholar returned to the room. There was a strange look upon the old angel’s face and Aaron saw that he was holding Scholar’s notebook. It was open and Aaron could see parts of drawings that he recognized, sketches of the symbols that appeared on his body when he allowed his angelic essence to emerge.
“Is everything all right?” Aaron asked. As of late, fearing the worst had become as natural to him as breathing. It wasn’t the greatest way to be, but at least he was always prepared.
“Were you serious about being taught, about wanting to learn?” Belphegor questioned.
Aaron nodded, not quite sure what he was getting himself into.
Belphegor handed the notebook and its drawings back to Scholar. “We’ll begin your training immediately.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Camael sat on the forest green, metal bench in the tiny playground, his angel eyes detecting the resonance of things long past—ghosts of children and families who had once played here. It had been seven days since he and Aaron first arrived in Aerie, and the former leader of the Powers was having to deal with ghosts of his own. He thought of those he had destroyed during the conflict in Heaven, and those slain after the war when he was performing his duty as commander of the Powers host—obliterating those who were an offense to the Creator. Since finding Aerie, he’d been thinking of them more and more, their faces and death cries haunting his every moment.
Should I be allowed to stay here? he wondered. For if he had found this place before his change of heart, before the realization that the killing had to stop, he would have razed it, burned it to ash in a rain of heavenly fire—and God have mercy upon those he found living within its confines.
A crow cried overhead as it circled a gnarled and diseased tree growing to the side of the play area. Its caws voiced its uneasiness with the area, despite the fact that it was tired and wanted to rest. The animals knew that the Ravenschild development was poisoned, Camael realized; they could taste its taint on the air rising up from the earth. The place had the stink of man’s folly, and the blackbird, knowing it did not belong here, flew on in search of another place to rest its tired wings.
Do I belong? Camael deliberated. He had searched for Aerie for many hundreds of years, but had he actually earned a place here? The faces of those who fell before him were slowly pushed aside, replaced by those he had saved. He could still hear their plaintive words of thanks and feel their touches of gratitude. Despite the violence he had wrought in the ancient past, he had still managed to do some good, and he would need to hold on to that as a drowning man would latch on to debris adrift in storm-wracked seas.
And what about the Creator? His mind frothed with questions for which he did not have answers. Does He look upon me with disdain, or pity? When the time comes, will I be permitted to go home?
The sound of claws upon the tar path interrupted the angel’s musings, and he turned to see Gabriel trotting toward him.
“Camael, have you seen Aaron?” the dog asked, stopping before the bench.
The angel shook his head. “Not since this morning. I believe he is still with Belphegor.”
“It figures,” Gabriel responded morosely.
“Is there a problem?” Camael asked, curious in spite of himself.
The dog hopped up onto the bench and sat beside him. “He’s never around anymore. I see him early in the morning when he takes me out and gets my breakfast, but then he’s gone all day and he’s too tired to play when he gets back.”
Camael slid over on the bench, away from the dog. He and Gabriel had developed a grudging respect for each other, but he still did not like to be too close to the animal. “I believe that Belphegor is attempting to train Aaron in the use of his angelic abilities.”
“And that’s something else I don’t understand,” said the dog indignantly. “First they think Aaron is a lost cause and now they can’t seem to get enough of him. Besides, I thought you were training Aaron.”
“It would seem that Belphegor and the others have at last seen in Aaron what I found several weeks ago,” Camael explained. “What that something is I cannot tell you, but it was enough to gain their trust and free us from those damnable restraints.” The angel unconsciously rubbed at his wrists where the magickal manacles had recently been removed.
They were silent for a moment, two unlikely comrades pondering a similar mystery.
“I miss him, Camael,” Gabriel said as he gazed into the playground. “I feel as if I’m losing him.”
“If Aaron is indeed the One foretold of in prophecy, you are losing him to something far larger than your simple emotional needs. He will be the one that brings about our redemption—Heaven will open its arms to us again and welcome us home,” Camael said.
Gabriel turned his head to look at the angel. His animal eyes seemed darker somehow, intense with worry. “I don’t care about redemption,” the Labrador said with a tremble in his voice. “He was mine first; Aaron belongs to me.”
The primitive bond between humans and their domesticated animals was something that Camael had always struggled to understand. How had Aaron defined it for him during one of their seemingly endless drives? Unconditional love, he believed was how the boy had phrased it. The master was the animal’s whole world, and it would love its master no matter what. That was the strength of the bond. The angel found the level of loyalty quite amazing.
“Aaron does not belong to you alone, Gabriel,” Camael explained. “There are those around us now who have waited for his arrival for thousands of years. Would you deny them his touch?”
The dog bowed his head, golden brown ears pressed flat against his skull. “No,” Gabriel growled, “but who will take care of me if something happens to him?”
Camael had no idea how to respond. It was a variation of a question he had been wondering himself. If Aaron was indeed the Chosen, what fate would the fallen meet if Verchiel should succeed in his mad plans to see the Nephilim destroyed?
The two sat quietly on the bench, the weight of their questions heavy upon their thoughts, the answers as elusive as the future.
Lorelei stepped out the back door of the house she shared with Lehash, a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, searching for her father. She thought the constable had come outside, but he was nowhere to be seen. Since the strangers’ arrival, Lehash had become distant, uncommunicative, immersed in his work of keeping the citizens of Aerie safe, and she was becoming concerned.
Over the sound of the gas-powered generator that provided their electricity, she heard the reports of his guns, like small claps of thunder, rolling up from somewhere beyond the thick brush that surrounded the backyard. She started toward the sound, dipping her head beneath young saplings, careful not to spill the coffee as she maneuvered through the woods. Stepping into a man-made clearing, probably meant for development in years past, Lorelei stared at her father’s back as he fired at targets set up along the far side of the wide open space. The weapons discharged with a booming report, and several targets disintegrated in plumes of heavenly fire.
“Good shootin’, Tex,” she joked, letting him know that he was no longer alone.
Lehash slowly turned and regarded her with dark and somber eyes, smoking pistols of gold in each hand. It was a look common to the head constable of Aerie, a look that she herself was often accused of wearing. The angel Lehash took everything quite seriously.