Chapter Two
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WATER ENVELOPED RAMIEL when he woke from his stasis.
His feet touched the bottom of what appeared to be a shallow pond.
Pushing himself upwards, his head broke the surface and he looked around.
The water was only neck deep and the pond was maybe twenty feet wide.
“Fate’s aim is uncanny,” he said in wonder, glad he hadn’t landed on boulders this time.
He’d made the mistake of offending the deity a few wars ago and had paid the price the next time he’d been released from the Void.
It was nighttime and he seemed to be on a farm.
No lights were on in the nearby house and he couldn’t sense anyone.
Wading out of the water, Ramiel paused when he sensed something was different.
His head turned towards the south where he could faintly detect someone.
They were too far away for him to figure out who it was, but it could only be one person.
“Amaros,” he said in anticipation of seeing his commander again.
Time seemed to stop when he was in the Void, yet he always woke up feeling the weight of the eons that had passed.
Too exhausted to follow the link in his head, he trudged over to the house.
A frown appeared as he walked through grass that reached his thighs.
A car had been abandoned in the driveway.
Its tires were flat from disuse. A general air of neglect hovered around the entire property.
The front door was unlocked when he tried it.
Dust coated the furniture and clung to his wet feet as he searched the house.
A couple in their sixties had lived there according to the photos he found on a mantlepiece in the living room.
They’d had an extended family of children and grandchildren.
None of them had visited in months, so the owners must have perished.
“Why haven’t their children sold the house?” he mused as information about this era filtered to him.
At least he would be safe from discovery here, since the place seemed to have been forgotten.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor and found a towel in a linen cupboard next to the bathroom.
Drying himself off, he saw two towels and washcloths were hanging over the towel rails.
Toiletries were still on a shelf in the shower.
Toothpaste, toothbrushes and other items were inside the medicine cabinet above the vanity.
Nothing had been removed even though the house was no longer occupied.
“This is getting stranger by the second,” the knight said in a disturbed tone. He wrapped the damp towel around his waist and crossed the hallway to the main bedroom. Even without the light on, he could tell something odd had occurred.
Ramiel moved closer to the bed and peered at the colorful cylindrical plastic objects and bobby pins scattered on and near one of the pillows.
“Hair curlers,” he said as the name rose to the surface of his mind.
Fake teeth were lying on the other pillow.
“Dentures,” his brain conjured up. “The couple vanished while they were sleeping, leaving their clothes and other items behind,” he surmised.
A nightgown and pajamas were still between the sheets.
The warrior didn’t have any explanations for this occurrence and Fate didn’t enlighten him. He was too tired to try to puzzle it out now. Maybe he would be able to come up with an explanation after he’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
There was no way he was going to sleep in this bed, so he checked the next bedroom.
It had a double bed, which was too short for his six foot three frame, but at least no one had vanished from it during the middle of the night.
He stripped the dusty pillow and bedlinens off and lay down on the mattress.
Sleep claimed him and he sank into a deep slumber.
Dawn light woke him when it spilled in through the window.
Ramiel rolled onto his back and lay there, staring up at the ceiling.
Ancient stars had been glued to the ceiling, probably back when the vanished couples’ children had been young.
“Humans used to worship us in eons past because we came from the stars,” he said.
“Somehow, I doubt the people of this era will worship aliens from another world.”
He got up and pulled the towel around his waist again. Now dry, it wasn’t exactly adequate cover, so he searched the closets and dressers in all four bedrooms. “Why do humans have to be so damn small?” the knight complained as he tried on a collection of clothing.
Standing in front of a tall mirror in one of the bedrooms, Ramiel studied himself, then snorted out a laugh.
He was dressed in a white tank top that clung to him like a second skin.
The red shorts had an elastic waist and were so tight he could barely walk in them.
He sank down into a crouch and the side seams split open.
“I look like an idiot,” he complained, but nothing else came even close to fitting him. He shoved his feet into flipflops that were too small for him, but at least he didn’t have to tread on the dust now.
Heaving a sigh, Ramiel could picture his brothers rupturing themselves laughing at his ridiculous outfit. He ran a hand through his messy auburn hair, then finger combed it so it no longer fell into his green eyes.
“Amaros could turn up soon and I don’t want him to see me looking like this,” Ramiel decided. He needed to find something that fit him, which meant he had to search for a town. With luck, he could steal something from a store without being seen.
He headed back downstairs and looked inside the drawers in the kitchen. “There has to be a map of this area somewhere,” he muttered, but came up empty. A small room down the hall was an office. He squeezed himself onto the chair behind the desk and started looking through the drawers.
Pulling out some letters, he found the address of the house.
Another drawer was full of maps and a handy road atlas.
The road atlas depicted the surrounding area and he quickly located the farmhouse on it.
“The nearest town is twenty miles away,” he said and glanced at his flipflops.
“I can already tell this is going to be fun,” he grumbled, then heaved himself out of the chair.
Taking a map of the area with him, he left the road atlas behind.
He’d memorized the route he would need to take.
His torn shorts didn’t have any pockets, so he scrounged up a duffle bag from one of the bedrooms. “I can carry my loot in this,” he said, shoving the map inside it, then slung it over his shoulder.
Ramiel left through the front door and took off in his flipflops.
They were just as uncomfortable to sprint in as he’d expected.
Wind made his torn shorts flap around him, leaving his ass half exposed as he raced along the route he’d mapped out.
He didn’t see any vehicles driving around as he closed in on the town.
“Where the hell is everyone?” Ramiel murmured, coming to a stop half a mile away from the settlement. He hadn’t seen any signs of life in any of the homes he’d passed.
Shielding his eyes from the sun, he saw smoke coming from somewhere in the middle of town. “At least someone’s still alive,” he muttered. Something catastrophic must have happened in this area, that much he’d figured out.
Amaros preferred for his squad to avoid humans unless they required assistance. Ramiel always stuck to that rule himself. People tended to complicate things and he didn’t want to become embroiled in any local drama.
He raced closer to the buildings and heard someone talking loudly. Stopping behind a house that he sensed was empty of life, Ramiel peered around the corner. The settlement was small, but it still had a town square.
A tall, brawny man stood on an elevated platform with his hands raised up high.
“God has sent us many trials since the Rapture struck nine months ago!” he called out to the fifty or so people who were gathered in the square.
“Food is scarce and a plague wiped out many of the wild animals and all of our domesticated ones,” he went on.
“A blight killed our crops and many people have given up in despair.” In his late thirties, he had shaggy black hair and an overgrown beard.
He was as big as Ramiel and wore a black t-shirt, black jeans and a white collar around his throat.
“Has God forsaken us, Father Ingle?” someone in the crowd called out.
“God would never forsake us, child,” the priest said in a condescending tone even though he was a full decade or more younger than the man.
“This is just another trial for us to prove our worth,” the holy man declared.
“Another gold comet was spotted last night. It landed somewhere in this area. It has to be a sign for us to remain faithful to our Lord!”
“What do we need to do, Father?” another person asked. “Those thugs took two women the last time they raided us in the middle of the night. Are we going to just keep turning the other cheek?” Her voice broke and another female comforted her as she sobbed.
“Justice will come to all those who perform dark deeds, child,” Father Ingles said with a smile that looked as fake as the dentures that Ramiel had found in his temporary base.
Ramiel didn’t like the look of the preacher. He sent his senses towards the mob, amazed at how much stronger he was this time. Most of the people had gray souls, with a few black ones scattered here and there. Just as he’d expected, Father Ingle’s soul was black.
“These humans have no idea the male they’re relying on to guide them is evil to his core,” Ramiel murmured.
Clearly, Father Ingle was up to no good.
The knight knew it was his duty to assist humans in need.
None of them had white souls, but he couldn’t just walk away.
He needed to get to the bottom of the priest’s plans.
Besides, the preacher was roughly Ramiel’s size.
He would spy on the human and follow him home so he could raid his closet.
It would be his payment for aiding the folks who appeared to be struggling just to survive in the aftermath of whatever the Rapture was.