Airel - Aaron Patterson [55]
With greater force but no greater speed, the tip of the dagger pierced the blanket, the shirt, the skin, the ribs, and blood began to boil outward from the wound, against the dagger, accompanied by spitting smoke as two realms came into collision. The wings were vibrating with hideous pleasure.
The killer struggled, trying to escape but unable. He turned his face toward his enemy, with bulging eyes. The big demon was fixed with burning, red eyes as a hunter fixes on his prey. It was an apparition of black smoke mixed with tar, dripping as if wet.
Sickly green smoke came in bursts from the snout of the thing. It crouched, hovering just inches from the face of the tortured killer. The pulsing red stone dangled and came to rest upon his chest. The dripping maw housed hundreds of sharp teeth, discolored by putrid breath and coated in filth. Two horns sprouted from the top of its skull and enshrouded its face protectively. A long thin tongue slithered out and caressed the face of the killer.
The killer flinched and whimpered something unintelligible. The demon smiled above him and laid back its ears, ripping a scream through the air and the killer’s very soul.
Tengu seized the killer’s shoulders and its claws dug in. The glowing eyes of the demon flared brighter, singing eternal death. The killer cried out for mercy. Tengu shoved a closed fist into his chest and slithered into the killer’s body as if it were a pool of water, not a body of flesh. The sharp tail disappeared with a snap and a twist.
Bolting upright in his bed, soaked, a killer opened his own eyes, gasping for breath as if surfacing in the sea. He was drenched in sweat, his heart pounding like a hammer, his right hand curled as if grasping a weapon. Heavy in his mind, glowering and cloudy, he beheld a rotting, staring hooded face—one of the very few things that could cause him real terror—but he would not speak name or title tonight. It has to be tonight or never—there is no more time.
Chapter I
1250 B.C. The City of Ke’elei
Kreios knew firsthand Who it was that had His large, powerful, hand under the universe. It is—was—will be—God; the Most High. Kreios had looked into His eyes and saw the flame of fire that burned there. He felt the Presence and in those eyes he saw more than he could ever say in one lifetime—even a lifetime as long as his would be.
Kreios feared God in a way that gave bedrock meaning to the word. The All-Powerful Knowing Master that ruled and reigned could, in an instant, know every choice that would be made in a single life. Even the earth knew Who had spun it into existence. Kreios knew Him as El, or the power of El. The saying was true that El was all in all.
Kreios’s thinking was best done in the air, where the cool scent of the earth filled his nostrils and mind. He could think clear thoughts in the blank canvas above, where the land below rippled in undulations and trees seemed to grow from nothing, in an order known only to El.
He was glad that Maria, wife to his beloved brother, was safe—and his daughter as well, in the hidden city at Ke’elei. Most simply called it, "The City." No more was ever needed. It was the most beautiful place on earth. A long valley of tall green grass led up to it in a lush carpet, shouting out with the truest color he had seen since he left home.
They had been in The City for two days now, and Kreios took his morning flight over the vast valley that lay nestled between snow-capped peaks rising sharply, like teeth, toward the sky. On the north end was a sheer cliff of rusty red that stood in stark contrast to the calm green valley. It reminded Kreios of what he had seen in parts of the world where deserts gripped the earth and the sun was king.
He turned and surveyed the city from the sky. He was just a speck against the light blue and as he looked down he admired the thick