Chapter 5 Plans and Death #2
Gasping and still feeling lost, I pull air into my bruised lungs, trying to find the breath to thank my savior. I finally look up and see Malam.
With my vision working better than last time, I get a closer look at him.
Light green eyes sit within a face that is chiseled with high cheekbones and an olive complexion.
A mop of textured black hair sits on his head.
As he brushes his hand through it, pushing it out of his eyes, I note how predatory his movement is.
His shoulders are broad, straining against the black, long-sleeved linen shirt he wears. Tailored black pants sit low on his hips.
For a moment, as I look into the green eyes of my creator, I am lost. Everything that is me evaporates, and as the sound plays over us, I am frozen, unable to feel anything except the music pounding through me.
It feels as though I’m looking at a part of myself, an oddness that makes the breath freeze in my lungs.
Vaguely, I am aware that The Boys have moved on to their next song and the crowd, their next frenzy, but I remain lost from myself, still unable to react.
Malam grins, a look that is both terrifying and comforting. “Interesting crowd you fell in with,” he says dryly.
Somehow, despite the noise, I am able to hear him clearly as though we are standing in a quiet room together.
“They are kind and the only people I know,” I say. Even I am aware of the irritation in my voice.
He frowns and examines me carefully, and then looks away, seeming satisfied that he found the answer to his question. As he looks up at the band, he says, “I was admiring your choice, or rather chance, more than questioning it.”
He looks back at me again and grins.
A chill runs down my spine. Something about the grin screams of violence despite the clear lack of that emotion on his face.
I begin to watch the band again, my mind trying to find the path back to my tongue.
Triumphantly, it succeeds, and I turn back to Malam only to find his lips moving, following the words that Reem sings.
He looks as lost in the music as I feel, but he also fits into this crowd, this place, in a way I do not.
Finding me watching him, he becomes still and then more quietly says, “They have been my favorite since before any of these people knew them. None of their success was a surprise to me. You being taken in by them, on the other hand, is a wonderful and bittersweet twist to the story.”
After a few moments pass, he continues,“I rarely attend their concerts, but I am often around to support them in their work to learn dark magic, so I will be seeing more of you than I expected. Perhaps the deities above us are laughing about it even as we speak.”
As I consider his words, and try to make some unconscious decision myself about this being who seems to feel he knows me, he suddenly looks behind me. I watch as his eyes grow hard, and I turn to see what he is looking at.
Whatever it was is hidden from me at the moment, and I turn back to him to ask what is wrong, but Malam is gone, missing from the spot he occupied just moments before.
I turn back to the crowd and try to find something out of place, something that would make a demon mad, and this time I see him. A man stands quietly in the middle of the crowd, but perhaps I shouldn’t call him a man.
Bright shadow wings, the opposite of Malam’s, jut from his back.
Although it should be hard for him to stand in the middle of that wild crowd, he is poised and standing with an unnatural stillness.
There is a peace to him standing there in the middle of the frenzy that is wildly wrong.
Thanks to Malam’s memories, I know he is an angel.
Thanks to Malam’s memories, I also feel rage as I look at him.
Then he focuses on me and opens his mouth. A hush falls on the crowd. I note that they don’t seem to see him and continue their celebration, but their sound is now lost to me completely.
In my awareness, there is only me and him.
I turn and walk, or weave, or dance more calmly than should be possible through a crowd that doesn’t seem to see me.
I know he is at my back and narrowing the space between us.
However, some part of my mind has calculated the equation between the danger behind me and the door well enough to be content in my seemingly slow progress.
Reaching the door, I pull it open and am on the street before I am consciously aware. I am acutely aware, however, of the landscape in all of its detail, and which of those details will help me in my plight and which will hurt me.
An unbidden thought comes to my mind of a weapon, a form of safety, on the back of one of the haphazardly parked carriages. I turn, trying to find that which some instinct has already located. I move left, down a long row of carriages of all types, colors, and sizes.
Some part of me can feel him behind me, but even as my ears strain to catch the sound of him, I am moving along the street.
The horses’ focus is on me, and with ears tipped to the danger behind me, they watch my progress like spectators at a bullfight. Trapped, fastened to their carriages, they have no ability to run or to help.
I see it then.
A sword handle reveals itself to me where it juts from the foot space beneath a coachman’s seat. In a smooth, slow movement like a sort of dance, I pull it out and remove it from the sheath. Then, subconsciously, I turn my whole body to meet his sudden charge.
His face is so near me as I turn. The beautiful stillness of it is far more dangerous, far more deadly than any expression of rage. My body is stiff and still unfamiliar to me, but there is that gifted strength that I suspected might exist within me.
He pulls back and strikes at me suddenly, and somehow my body moves the sword to block it.
The sword in my numb hands, the ground beneath my numb feet, the fight before my blind eyes progresses both slowly and too fast.
The world spins around us while the sights and sounds pass us by, and there is only us, only survival, and this awful, beautiful, wonderful dance. Still, even blind, the landscape somehow changes as time moves.
For a moment, I feel as though this is all I’ve ever known.
Then instinct moves me quickly to the left, and I strike out strongly to the right and front, still unseeing in this subconscious space.
There is a gasp, and slowly vision returns to me, and I see him, there in front of me. His face is still soft and glaringly beautiful. Then I see the trail of dark red, so dark it is nearly black, running down his chest. He falls, slowly, crumpling onto the middle of the open street.
There is a silence that seems almost to be its own sound. It is a roar in my ears, and then I hear them. There is a crowd around us.
There are people of all types standing in the street with smoke and fog surrounding them, watching me, where I stand frozen in the middle of a spreading sea of blood with a naked sword in my hand.
There is a sense of peace in finding your place.