Airel - Aaron Patterson [100]
“Yes and no. You may live for eight thousand years and die of old age. Then again you may only make it to eighteen, dying in a bombing, or drown… no one knows.” His statement was loaded, but I had learned enough at this point to keep my tongue in check. If he didn’t say something, he meant not to say it.
“You do age, but very slowly. When you’re two hundred years old you will look much the same as you do now.” He began cleaning up the dojo, putting the equipment away.
I didn’t know what to think. This changed everything. My friends, my family would all die, and many times over. I would be alone for so very long. Just when I thought I was going to like the idea of—well, immortality—the catch landed on top of me.
Chapter VI
1250 B.C. Arabia
The horde camp was quiet. A few guards patrolled the perimeter carrying torches. It was easy for Kreios and Yamanu to creep past them into the main part of the camp, the fog moving in subtly with them. Kreios was waiting to feel the pull and drain of his power, but because of the Sword, he did not. He hoped Yamanu was doing fine as well.
His hope was not returned to him void; as Yamanu shaded them from enemy detection, he also read Kreios’s worry and reassured him. “I think El is for us this night, my friend.”
“I count over one thousand; does that sound right?” Yamanu agreed, and they moved on to the edge of the camp. “We will sweep from one end to the other, killing as many as we can without drawing attention to ourselves. When we are discovered, we fly.” Kreios wanted to break the will of the horde and see if he could turn fear upon them for a change.
There was only one variable outside the scope of their control. If a demons that owned the men remained unmanifest—that is to say, lying dormant within the men’s flesh—then all Kreios and Yamanu would need to do would be to kill the men; the demons would follow them to hell. But if the demonic pairings of the Brotherhood were physically manifest, and resting alongside the men—or elsewhere—their task would become complicated.
Kreios tossed his invisible dagger from one hand to the other and stepped silently inside the nearest tent. It was large, composed of rotting hides tied to long wooden poles. Flies buzzed about, even though it was cold.
A cluster of men, six of them, slept snoring like wild beasts. This was the smallest component of the enemy army; a group of six that ate, slept, and fought side by side. Stench filled Kreios’s nostrils, reeking of sweat, filth, and the sweet tang of urine. The men were not clustered in pairs, which meant that the demonic controllers of the enemy men remained inside them, dormant.
Silently communicating with his partner, Kreios took the left side, and Yamanu took the right. They moved quickly, cutting throats like butchers. The men flopped and kicked, gasping as blood poured into their throats, simultaneously bled dry and drowning. The demons within made them convulse, making one last vain effort to break free and escape as they were dragged off to Hell, kicking and clawing.
The angels had their way in the camp for a good portion of the night, despoiling and irradiating the pestilence of death and judgment. With each kill, Kreios grew more and more hopeful. Yamanu did not make a sound through it all.
Kreios turned from slicing the neck of a short man, the last in a group of four in a smaller tent, when an enormous man entered clad only in a loincloth. A tangled, matted mass of thick brown hair clung to him like a shrub to the face of a cliff. His enormous belly overhung his loincloth, the picture of sloth.
The two angels were invisible to him, but his eyes grew wide as he realized that his comrades lay dead at his feet, their blood soaking into the ground. One, the last one to die, twitched, his left hand jumping. The giant man screamed like a wild cat, sounding the alarm.
Kreios was quick, stabbing his dagger into his throat, cutting the cry short—but it was too late. The sound of voices