“Thanks.” Jim pocketed the crystal. “I’ll give this back after we’ve tried it out.”
“I guess you’ll only need one room for the night, eh?” Mike teased them, and Gina felt a blush rise up her cheeks.
They all sat again, and Jim took the conversation back a bit. “So what’s this stuff about angels and flying?”
Chapter Thirteen
Arch looks shot between everyone in the room except Jim. He was definitely being kept in the dark about something. Jim had taken Tory’s talk of angels as ravings, or at best, as a metaphor for something else. But now these people were talking about them too—and none of them sounded like they were on the edge of insanity. Maybe there really was something to Tory’s visions. If so, he’d damn well find out.
Bill gave Gina a narrow-eyed look. “How much have you told him about the Zxerah?”
“Quite a bit, but not that. It is your secret to share or not, as you see fit. I assume your companions already know?” Gina glanced around the room at the others. Jim didn’t like being left in the dark, but he’d play it cool for now. It sounded like he was about to learn something.
Bill gave a most un-Alvian sigh. The guy freaked Jim out a little. He just wasn’t used to seeing Alvians displaying human emotions.
“I’ve got wings.”
“Come again?” Jim didn’t know what he’d expected, but this stark declaration shocked him.
“Wings. I can fly. Like your mythological angels. If the Council has heard rumors, I guess I haven’t been as circumspect as I thought when flying out over the forests.”
“Hell, it’s not your fault, Bill. There are mountain men and hidden villages all over this area,” Mike said in what sounded like an old argument. “Humans around here have gotten good at hiding their presence from aerial view. The Alvian patrols usually come by aircraft, so they keep an eye to the sky. I’d have been surprised if nobody saw you.”
“With our culture’s religious beliefs, we figured it couldn’t hurt anything if a couple of humans saw you flying around. If anything,” Dave stressed, “we thought it might give people hope. An angel is a powerful symbol in most human religions.”
“I am nobody’s deity.”
The true anger and frustration Jim heard in the Alvian’s musical voice gave him pause. He had to keep reminding himself that this guy was different from the other Alvians he’d seen—very different if he really did have wings—but that was something Jim would really have to see to believe. And so would a lot of people he knew. Jim made a decision.
“I think you should come back to Colorado with us, Bill. Just for a visit. And I’ll guarantee your safety. But there’s one foreseer in particular who needs to see you—if you’re willing. She’s been talking about angels for as long as I’ve known her and when she first saw Gina here, she swore up and down that Gina would be the one to bring the angels to us. Nobody knew what she meant and we all figured she was half-insane from the loss of her family, but if you really do have wings, I think you’re the answer to the puzzle. It would be a kindness if you’d let her see you—even if she’s the only one you show. Tory is special, and she needs hope. I think you can give it to her.”
Jim noticed David’s eyes narrowing in thought as he’d started to talk about Tory. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves a bit, but if Bill goes back with you, I’ll go too. It sounds like your seer could use my help.”
Jim felt a weight lift off his shoulders. “I’ve protected her as best I can but what she really needs is a mind healer, and we don’t have one. I’d be much obliged if you’d take a look at her and see what you can do.”
David nodded. “Let’s table this discussion for the time being. It’s late, and I’m sure you’re tired from your long journey. Bill, do you want to show them to the guest quarters? Fair warning, you’ll be locked in and Burt will be monitoring you, but he won’t report back to us unless you try to sneak out.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Jim allowed. “We’re the strangers here. We’ll abide by your rules.”
“All right then.” David stood, and the others followed his lead. “Bill will show you around a bit on your way to your quarters, and we’ll arrange for some food to be brought down to you. We’ll reconvene in the morning, once we’ve all had a chance to think this over.”
Jim was glad of the way David took the lead, though he sounded more like a chairman of the board than a general commanding his troops. Whatever his past life had been, he’d come out on top. He had a wife, a solid place to live and what promised to be a thriving community here. He was luckier than most.
The others said good night and left Gina and Jim with Bill. He led them up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to a large open area that looked a lot like the hydroponics section of the Colorado installation. This one wasn’t completely filled, however. It had the look of something just starting up. There were a few people working at the far end of the large expanse, and Jim was pleased to note they all looked human.
Bill started muttering when he saw them and shook his head. “Please stay here for a moment, I need to get the crew back on track or we won’t have much of a harvest.”
Jim expected him to walk the long distance between where they were and the crew’s position at the far end of a cavern the size of a football field, but he was wrong. Instead, shockingly, Bill shrugged off his jacket and huge golden wings expanded on either side of his torso. The man lifted off the ground with a few beats of those magnificent feathered wings and crossed the vast distance of the cavern in just a few seconds.
“Holy shit.”
Gina laughed at his reaction.
“You knew, didn’t you?” He turned to face her as Bill landed and started talking with the group of people at the far end of the cavern.
Gina’s expression was grave. “I knew. I’ve known his kind for a long time. They are part of my clan.”
“How many?” Jim’s thoughts sped ahead to the implications of having large numbers of winged beings roaming around the Earth. “How many more like him are out there?”
“I don’t know the exact numbers, but at least a battalion was created. They’re genetic experiments. They had another alien race’s DNA spliced into their own chromosomes in order to give them wings.”
“Another alien race? Do we have to fear another invasion somewhere down the line?”
“I don’t think so. From what I’ve heard, the Avarel stopped visiting Alvia Prime and all the Alvian colonies—except perhaps the Zxerah enclave—a very long time ago. I have a feeling they might already have visited Earth in the distant past. Otherwise why do most religious traditions talk about men with wings? By all accounts, the Avarel were a peaceful people. They exchanged knowledge with the Zxerah, and it was they who first warned that selective breeding to eliminate aggression in the Alvian populace could lead to disaster. When the Alvian government refused to listen, the Avarel broke diplomatic ties and were never seen again.”
The Patriarch approached Grady Prime at the hidden base of the winged brethren. The encounter seemed to be purely accidental, but Grady had his suspicions. The Zxerah leader seldom let coincidences rule his life. No, this was a man who made his own fate and decided the fate of many others on a routine basis.
“How goes your search, Grady?” the Patriarch asked. Grady Prime thought it significant that the Patriarch often fell into the speech patterns of the humans, leaving off the rank designation of other Alvians with whom he spoke.
Now that he had emotions and a better understanding of humanity, Grady Prime often thought the use of full names to be stiff and formal—much like the majority of his race and their habits. Formality seemed to go hand in hand with Alvian culture and it chafed Grady Prime’s new perceptions at times.