“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.”
“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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