CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The people of Blithe were vomiting—and Aaron imagined he knew exactly how they must feel. No, he didn’t have some crablike creature living inside his chest, but he had just received the very first pieces of information he had ever learned about his real father; that the prophecy had something to do with his father’s sins, and that he had his father’s eyes. He thought he might be sick.
Aaron, Camael, and Gabriel moved through the winding passage that led up from Leviathan’s lair, to one of the many chambers that had been excavated out of the rock by the townspeople under the sea monster’s thrall.
“Gross,” Gabriel said, and Aaron couldn’t have agreed more. The people, who up until Leviathan’s demise had been busily clearing away tons of rock and dirt in an attempt to free the beast, had stopped their work. They had dropped their tools and were bent over in obvious pain—their bodies racked with vomiting and throwing up the horrible things that had crawled inside to control their actions.
“Are they all right?” Aaron asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the repellant sounds of people in the midst of being sick.
“Their bodies are rejecting Leviathan’s invasive spawn,” the angel warrior said, rather blasé. “I would imagine they will be fine—as soon as the dead creatures and their nests are expelled from the body.”
The floor of the smaller chamber was puddled with all manner of foulness, and the already decaying remains of the spiderlike things that had taken up residence in their bodies.
Aaron wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about what he had learned; it wasn’t as if he had been given a phone number or a home address. The identity of the man—angel—that had sired him was still a complete mystery, and one that he really couldn’t afford to think about right now. He decided that he would deal with it later, when things had calmed down—when things were back to normal. He laughed to himself, as if his life could ever be that way again.
“I wonder how long those things have been inside them?” Aaron asked to distract himself as they proceeded from the smaller cavern, his level of disgust quickly on the rise.
“Most likely since Verchiel wholeheartedly abandoned his holy mission and became obsessed with preventing the prophecy from becoming a reality,” Camael said as they walked a runnel that would he hoped take them to the surface.
“So this is something else I can be blamed for?” Aaron asked, feeling the dirt pathway of the tunnel beneath his feet begin to slant upward. They continued to pass the people of Blithe, many of them passed out from the exertion of purging the foreign invaders from their bodies.
“In a way, yes,” the angel said. “By ignoring their tasks, the Powers have allowed the forces of chaos to take root in the world, growing in strength unabated. I shudder to think of what other malignant purveyors of wickedness are hiding in the shadows of the world.”
“Great,” Aaron responded with a heavy sigh. “Wouldn’t want to be let off easy or anything. I wonder if I have anything to do with global warming?” he asked, his words dripping sarcasm. “We might want to look into that.”
Gabriel ran up ahead of them and had begun to bark excitedly. “We’re almost to the surface,” he cried, waiting until they caught up, and then running up ahead. The dog was as sick of being underground as they were, Aaron imagined, and wanted nothing more than to breathe in some nice fresh air.
They emerged from the tunnel out into the main excavation in the heart of the former boat factory. Aaron noticed that the heavy digging machinery had been silenced, and the only sound that could be heard throughout the air of the place was that of retching. Everywhere he looked, somebody was being sick or incapacitated as a result of being sick.
“This is just too much,” Aaron said, taking it all in. “Those things must have been living inside just about everybody in town.”
An angled road of dirt had been constructed on the floor of the dig so that trucks and such could be driven down into the hole, and Aaron and his companions used the packed-earth path to ascend to the lip of the excavation at ground level.
As the three moved toward the door that would take them out of the factory, and walked around the violently ill, being careful to step over the reeking puddles that contained the decomposing corpses of Leviathan’s children, Aaron caught sight of Katie McGovern and went to her. “Katie,” he said as he approached. “Are you all right?” His guess about the filthy man in the cave veterinary clinic had been correct, for her former boyfriend Kevin was with her, and they both gazed at him slack-jawed, their bodies racked with chills. Aaron saw no recognition in Katie’s eyes, and he began to feel afraid.
“What’s the matter with them?” he asked Camael, who now stood by his side staring at the two as he was.
“Shock, I’d imagine,” the angel said. “Their minds are attempting to adjust to the horrors they have experienced. The human mind is a wondrous invention indeed,” he said as he stepped closer to Katie’s former fiancé. Camael reached out and grabbed the man by the chin, looking deeply into his eyes. “By the morrow they’ll have only the vaguest idea that something had happened to them at all,” he said, as if attempting to get a glimpse of the inner workings of a human being. “To most, it will become the distant memory of a horrible nightmare.” He let Kevin’s face go and proceeded to the door. “Such is the coping mechanism of the mortal brain.”
Aaron and Gabriel followed the angel out into the early morning dawn. Outside the door, Chief Dexter leaned against his patrol car. He had thrown up onto the windshield, and it looked as though he wasn’t quite finished yet. Aaron quickly looked away. “So they won’t remember any of this?” he asked the angel who was now striding toward the parking lot.
Gabriel sniffed around the tires of the parked cars, completely disinterested in their conversation. There was valuable sniffing time to be recouped.
“They’ll remember, but their minds will shape the event into something that they will be able to accept—no matter how odd or unlikely,” Camael answered. “It’s how their minds work—how they were designed. And those that do remember the reality of the situation, and dare to speak of it, will be ostracized and labeled as insane.”
“Nice,” Aaron said, a little taken aback by the angel’s cold interpretation of the human psyche. He was silent for the moment, digesting the angelic warrior’s words, and decided that he didn’t buy it. “If that’s how our poor human brains work, than how come I didn’t chalk up all this angel crap to eating bad tuna or a high fever due to some rare African virus?”
The angel stopped and turned to stare. “You are Nephilim,” Camael said, as if that would be more than enough of an answer.
“Yeah, but I’m still human, right?” Aaron said, staring at the angel and gazing into his steely gray eyes.
On the outskirts of the parking lot, he waited for the angel to respond. Camael remained silent—but the lack of an answer spoke volumes.
“What are you trying to say?” Aaron asked nervously.
It was then that the angel spoke. “You were sired by an angel. You are no more human than I am.”
It felt as though he’d been struck. Even though deep down inside, Aaron already knew this, hearing it come out of Camael’s mouth was like a whack with a two-by-four between the eyes.
I’m not human, he thought, letting the concept rattle around inside his brain. Could his life be any weirder?
He again heard the Archangel Gabriel’s final words to him—before the angel had taken the express bus to Heaven. The words about his father.