Airel - Aaron Patterson [51]
“Yep. My head feels like it’s stuck under a school bus. Do you have anything for that?” Hey, Miss Parks, don’t worry about it. It’ll heal here in the next few seconds… just watch. Yeah, that would go over like a turd in a punch bowl.
Miss Parks smiled a weak smile, pursing her lips compassionately. “I’ll get you some Tylenol. That should help.” She hurried into the other room.
I stood up and walked toward the door so when she got back I could get out of there as fast as possible.
Miss Parks came back into the room, handed me a little packet of Tylenol, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Take two now and two more in a few hours if you still have a headache. And try not to faint the next time you see a bunch of boys in football uniforms.” She giggled at herself and I faked a light laugh.
“Thanks for the Tylenol.” I said and turned toward the door.
I opened the door. First I saw green and gold, then a football jersey, then Michael. He must have hurried back from practice after it ended. I grinned compulsively at him like an idiot, and then tried to wipe it from my face, hiding behind my hand. But that only made it worse.
He looked incredible. I tried to tear my eyes away from his, but did a double take. Something in his eyes refused to release me. It was shock, amazement—then fear.
Chapter XXIX
1250 B.C. Arabia
A tent stood in the darkness, ringed by hundreds of other tents at a distance that suggested supreme command, fear of authority, or both. Choking smoke filled the beaver skin tent as the Seer looked deep within his pulsing bloodstone.
The blazing light was otherworldly. Even though it was sucking the life from him, he could not pull away. He desired and lusted for the glow of amber light so much that it filled his obsessive dreams every night; whispering to him things he never before imagined. A faint glow escaped from the seams in the tent. The light dimmed, flared up, then faded back to a fragment of its former self.
The camp numbered a thousand men and a thousand demons. They were weak when the men, the hosts in the parasitic relationship, were separated and the demons were manifest in their true forms.
Demons, agents of the kingdom of Hell, sought a lodging in the minds of the men and fed on their life force parasitically. Men followed the Seer blindly, obsessed with every filthy lust to which they could give themselves, or to which the demons could tether them. To the men, the demons were men too—they just possessed higher—kingly—authority. This was rarely questioned. They had been blinded and cursed by the power exchange—power they thought they received from the demonic relationship, but which in fact they gave and re-gave time and again to the agents of Hell that fed off it. This deception was an addiction both parties found irresistible.
And their foolish hearts were darkened, blinding them from the truth…
The army was trained and seasoned by war. They were fiercely loyal, so long as plunder was available in plenty, but they also feared the Seer. Remarkable was the fear that the bloodstone he carried around his neck garnered. The light that ominously bloomed from his tent at night unnerved them. For this reason, not one tent stood anywhere near a stone’s throw of the Seer.
“Yessssssss… yes, show me what you will have me do… sssssspeak.” The Seer groaned, his body writhing shamefully. His face washed out in the ruby red light, his eyes empty sockets filled with blood, glowing with consuming heat. He looked featureless in the glow as the demon light took his human features and replaced them with something entirely different. The figure that stared into the pulsing pendant was ancient; repulsive, suggesting real evil–something that went far beyond description. The Seer was careless of the sucking leeching properties of the bloodstone. He was addicted to it, bound to it, dependent upon it; even as it rotted him from his core.
His hollow sockets blazed their way into the world that lived within