Saturday, February 25, 2012

Archangels and Demons


“Just how dangerous are you?” said Kepler.
Maia frowned. “I thought you’d know that already.” She shook her shoulders and shrugged her black top in the way Alice had told her. The vibrant angel wings with their edges like steel knives enfolded Maia and Kepler in a way that allowed him to barely move a muscle.
Smart girl that Alice.
“Very dangerous,” said Maia. “Now what’s all this about. Alice was insistent I speak to you.”
“Magicks have more to them than meets the eye,” said Kepler.
“Runs in her family,” said Maia. “Gypsy blood.”
“Well she was right, but you’ve got nothing to fear from me,” said Kepler. “I’m an astronomer of the First Order on Pleiades, not an assassin.”
He reached to push Maia’s wing tips away but only succeeded in drawing blood. He sucked the blue drops before they could spread and stain the white carpeted floor of the apartment.
Maia flexed the wings as if they were an extension of her biceps so that they brushed Kepler’s black hair slicing a single lock, which spiralled slowly to the floor.
Then she drew them back so that they hovered behind her.
“Two problems,” said Kepler. “Samuel, your Dark Lord, already has his demon hordes poised to invade Earth through the Cave at Cumae, as you already know. He is mutating humans into demon spawn at twice the critical rate. Many will die.”
“And…” said Maia, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Monkey 42 is about to visit us.”
“Monkey…?”
“A typhoon, and no ordinary one. Samuel knows you have gone into hiding, so formed this one at the entrance to the parallel worlds to prevent you returning to Earth. This world, the LightWorld, is smack in its path. It might get a bit rough.”
“So we should get you to the safehouse soon.”
“Maia, you can’t play around. There are too many balls to juggle.”
“Meaning?”
“Mother, you can come out now. It’s safe.”
A striking woman, slim and tall, with sapphire eyes, long straight fair hair and a lapis lazuli dress opened the door to the bedroom and glided out carrying a tiny baby wrapped in a white silk cloth.
“Hmm,” said Maia.
“You don’t need to worry. My mother and baby sister will stay close to you and have come prepared.”
Maia noticed Kepler’s mother shouldered a rather large black bag with an emerald clasp.
“We’ll stay out of the way.”
“Right,” said Maia.
“Would you like that green tea?”
“No thanks,” said Maia. “We need to leave, now.”
As if in answer the windows of the apartment began to rattle. The dark winds were rising.
“Alice’s boyfriend Ben has found us all passage on the 0900 aqualiner to New York. It’s a six hour trip. We thought you’d be safer there.”

Kepler smiled and sighed, resigned. He’d get used to this girl’s peculiar ways. She shared the same bloodline, after all.


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