Now she studies him closely. He stands in the shadows to one side between the buildings. He is big, but not threatening. She cannot explain why that is, but she feels it. She cannot make out his features, so she walks over to him to see what he will do. He does nothing. He stands where he is and waits for her.
"Angel of the streets," he greets her in a low, rumbling voice that comes from somewhere so deep down inside him that she cannot imagine how it climbs free. "Do you walk in shadows or in light this day?"
She smiles despite herself. "I always walk in light, amigo. Quien esta?"
He steps out of the shadows now, and she sees that he is Native American, his features blunt and strong, his skin copper, his hair jet black and braided.
He wears heavy boots and combat fatigues of a sort she has never seen, and the patches on his shoulders are of lightning bolts and crosses. One hand holds a long black staff carved with strange symbols from top to bottom.
His smile is warm. "I am called Two Bears, little Angel," he tells her.
"O'olish Amaneh, in the language of my people. I am Sinnissippi, but my people are all gone, dead now several hundred years. I am the last. So I try to make the most of my efforts."
She nods. "Is that what you are doing here?"
"In part. I arrived last night from other, less friendly places, searching for a place to hide. Those who hunt me are very persistent. They dislike the idea that there is only one of me. They would prefer that there be none."
"Los Angeles is not particularly friendly, amigo," she says, glancing around out of habit. "It may look it, but what lives here is only resting up for the next attack. There are Freaks of the worst sort. There are street gangs.
There are things I cannot even give names to. You might be better off in a smaller, quieter place."
"I might be," he agrees. "I will find out when I leave. But I need to speak with you first. I came to do that, as well."
She hides her surprise, wondering how he would even know of her. "As you wish. But we will not do so here. Are you hungry? Have you eaten today?"
He has not, and so they go to a place where she knows there is food to be salvaged, and they carry the packets to a small open square and sit on stone benches to eat while the sun, hot enough to melt iron, sinks slowly into the maze of buildings that lie between them and the ocean.
"Who hunts you?" she asks him after a few minutes of chewing in silence.
She regards him carefully. "Who would dare?"
He smiles at the compliment. "Many more than you would think. Mostly demons and the once–men in their service. Do you know of them?"
She does not, and so he tells her of the history of the Great Wars and of the source of the destruction that has changed life for all of them. He tells her of the Word and the Void and the battle they have waged since the beginning of time. He tells her of how life is a balance between good and evil, and how each is always attempting to tip the scales.
"Each side uses servants to aid its efforts. The Void uses demons, black soulless monsters that seek only to destroy. The Word uses its Knights, paladins sent to thwart the efforts of the demons. Once, they were mostly successful. But humans are an unpredictable, volatile species, and in the end they fell victim to their own excesses, fostered by the work of the Void's demons. They succumbed, and civilization succumbed with them."
She doesn't know if she believes him or not; certainly she thinks his story is as much fable as truth. But the way he tells it lends it the weight of truth, and she finds herself believing despite her reservations. His words provide an explanation she finds plausible for all the mad things that have happened to the world. She has always known that it is more than it seems, that the conflict between nations, between peoples, between beliefs, is augmented in a way she doesn't understand.
"I serve the Lady, who is the voice of the Word," he continues. "It is given to me to find a handful who will attempt to restore the balance once more.
For a long time, it wasn't possible; the madness and rage were too great to be overcome. But enough time has passed, and now there is a chance it can be done.
Are you interested in serving?"
She is caught off guard by his question, and she stares at him in surprise. "My place is here, with my people," she answers.
"Your people are no longer confined to a small part of a large city," he tells her. "Your people are the people of the world, near and far. If you would make a difference, you must look beyond your own neighborhood. A balance restored in one small place is not enough to change anything. In the end, it will fail and become a pan of the larger madness. It will be consumed."
She knows this is so. She has been feeling it for some time. She fights a losing battle because the larger world continues to encroach. But she is afraid to lose even this; it is all she has left.
"What is it you want me to do?" she asks finally.
The big man leans forward. "It is the Lady who seeks your help. She would have you become a Knight of the Word. She would have you enter into her service and give over your life to restoring the balance. She would have you do battle against the demons and their minions, against the evil they inflict. She would give you this."
He lifts up the black staff, which has been resting against the bench beside him. She has forgotten about it since she first saw him holding it. Now she looks at it closely, sees how deep and pervasive are the carvings on its surface, how they dominate the sheen of its polished wood. She has never seen anything like the staff. It attracts her in a way she thought nothing ever could again. When he holds it out to her, she takes it from him because she thinks that maybe it belongs to her.
'You are to keep it with you always. It is your sword and shield. It will protect you from the things that you hunt and that, in turn, hunt you. It is a talisman of powerful magic. Nothing can stand against it. But its power is finite; it is directly dependent on your own strength. Grow tired, and it will grow tired, too. Grow careless or lose heart, and you will be at risk even with the staff."
"What does it do?" she asks him.
"You will discover that when you use it. You will know instinctively."
She is still not decided about whether she will agree, but then he tells her of the slave camps, of the raids that have already begun on the compounds, and of the fate of humans who are taken captive, and she makes her choice. When he leaves her, she is holding the staff, her new life still only a faint glimmer on the horizon of her understanding, a mystery she will have to unravel one day at a time.
She watches him walk away from her until he is standing in the shadows between the buildings where he first appeared to her, a big, motionless presence. Then a noise catches her attention, and she glances toward the sound out of reflex.
When she turns back again, he is gone. Something in the way he has disappeared–the quickness of it, perhaps–makes it feel as if he was never really there.
IT WAS NEARING midnight when Delloreen reached the storage complex and began a slow search of the pillaged units. She had tracked the woman Knight of the Word all the way from Anaheim, from the hotel lobby where she'd nearly had her, from the ruins of the city to the countryside north, a slow and arduous hunt. It had been difficult to do this, but not impossible. Delloreen could track anything that gave off a scent. She was blessed with animal instincts and habits, with feral abilities that gave her an advantage over others. Demons were humans made over, but she had always been more animal than human.
So when she pulled herself clear of the hotel rubble and began her hunt, she used her nose to smell out her quarry's scent, to find it amid all the others, to taste it, memorize it, and then follow after it. It was easy enough, even mixed in as it was with all the other scents. Hers was a distinctive scent, a Knight of the Word's peculiar scent, recognizable by a demon with Delloreen's