Chapter 42
Kevin’s point of view
It had taken me a month to do it, but by
travelling only by night and staying in remote regions, I had finally reached
Atlanta undetected. All I had to do was find my way to where Brian lived from
the city limits.
Dawn had just broken when I first caught sight
of my cousin’s city of residence. Golden light lit up the horizon and banished
the shadows of night. I sought shelter until nightfall in a copse of trees.
Swiftly climbing to the canopy of one tree, I folded my wings around me and
fell asleep, waiting for dusk.
It was raining heavily when night fell over
the city. Clambering down the tree and stretching my limbs and wings, I pulled
my large black cloak around me, hood up.
More by luck than skill, I had managed to get hold of this long draping
trenchcoat a week ago while I was passing across the border of Georgia. Someone
had left it on a park bench, and I was in desperate need of some way of hiding
my appearance. I sometimes wondered if the owner ever went back looking for it.
Shaking such thoughts aside, I began walking
toward civilisation. In a few hours, I planned to contact Brian mentally again.
This close to him, there would be no way he couldn’t hear me. I stuck to back
alleys to avoid detection and human contact. Normally such a route would be
risky, but with my strength I was safe. I proved that to myself soon after
entering the city.
The alley I was in was dark, and the
torrential rain was making the path more of a mini river. I could feel the five
Aversions approaching from a street away. Constantly aware of every single
Aversion I could sense, I tracked their progress towards me. I knew it would be
better to avoid them. The five humans were closely grouped, and there would be
more chance of one of them spotting me than a lone person.
I crept down a second alleyway, pressing
onwards. I had exposed myself to the open stretch of road while skulking
between alleyways, and sensed the group’s pace had quickened. They had spotted
my shadow creeping between streets. I suspected immediately that these were
petty thugs. Taking me for some loner wandering the empty streets, and an easy
target, they split up. Two of them ran along the adjacent street while the
other three circled to the alley entrance that I had just entered myself. They
were trying to pen me in.
I cautiously knew I couldn’t avoid detection
now. I would have to confront them. Scaring these criminals would be far easier
than fighting them. I had no need for combat and I wasn’t low on strength so
didn’t have to drain energy from one of them.
I stopped and felt them approach. They seemed
a little confused at my apparent unconcern, but soon began to snicker and close
in on me. I let them, my eyes closed in concentration.
“Hey, buddy,” one of them called arrogantly.
“Hand over whatever money you’ve got, or we’ll kick your ass!”
The others laughed in amusement, trying to
intimidate me. I ignored them, sensing my surroundings to plan my course of
action. There was a fire escape on the side of one of the buildings.
“OK, man, you asked for it!” the thug leader
exclaimed at my silence.
As he lurched forwards with a knife raised, I
swirled my trenchcoat around me dramatically and summoned a flash of blinding
light. As the humans were covering their eyes from the flash, I deftly leaped
upwards at the fire escape scaffolding. Hanging there, I waited for the human
thugs to recover before calling down to them,
“Up here, morons!”
They looked up with anger and indignation. I
opened my eyes slowly, letting them see the icy blue glow in the darkness of
the night. There were gasps, followed by awed mutterings about my glowing eyes.
“Terrorise this!” I yelled as they muttered.
I charged a telekinetic projectile and infused
it with Blue Flame, and threw it to the floor below. The thugs darted out of
the way, and the flaming bolt hit the pavement with a hiss, the flame
evaporating the nearby water from the rainfall. Foul smelling smoke rose, and
sent the thugs running in both directions.
I grinned – this was easy. Yet, I cautioned
myself, deciding to try and avoid yet more confrontations. Swiftly, I clambered
up to the roof of the apartment building and sat on one of the ledges.
I took some time to look around, and I
suddenly saw an old building that I thought I recognised. Shrugging it off as
irrelevant, I sighed peacefully, wondering where to go next. Again, I spotted
something familiar – a billboard on a corner of a street. The angle and position
of it was very familiar. Then, one after the other, I began to recognise the
entire area. It had been such a long time since I had been here, but I had no
doubt – this was Brian’s neighbourhood.
Filled with a sudden anxiousness, I pinpointed
the direction of Brian’s house and jumped silently from rooftop to rooftop
towards my cousin.
Brian’s point of view
11 pm… I glanced wearily at my watch. The
rerun of some outdated film was just finishing and I stood up to get myself a
drink. I had a strange sense of discomfort that was keeping me awake. Pouring a
glass of water, I drank it down in a few gulps. There was a grating, distorted
voice coming from somewhere nearby, and I assumed it was some advert on the TV. I rubbed my eyes and placed the glass in the
sink, deciding to go to bed. Ambling back to the living room to turn off the
TV, I noticed it was already off. I frowned – that was right, I always turned
the TV off when I was finished watching something, mainly out of habit. But
where had that distorted voice come from?
“Come and find me, Brian,” it stated, as if on
cue. “You want to know about me, don’t you? Come and find out!”
I grimaced. That voice, though distorted,
sounded at lot like Kevin’s voice. Yet, Kevin’s voice was never filled with
such a deep darkness with subtle hint of malice. No, it wasn’t Kevin’s tone……
and despite everything, Kevin was dead.
“Who are you?” I thought silently. “Where are
you?”
“Follow the sense of fear that chills you.”
The voice instructed. “Look for the eyes in the dark…”
The voice faded. Disturbed, I sat down and
pulled my arms around myself in sudden fear.
“Maybe I am going mad,” I commented to myself.
Whatever was happening to me, it wasn’t going
to leave by itself. If this strange entity that communicated with me held
answers, I would find them.
Standing up, I closed my eyes and tried to
make sense of my fear. I felt an inexorable desire to turn left, so I did. The
words of the voice echoed in my head eerily:
Follow the sense of fear that chills you…
My foot
stubbed against the wall, and I opened my eyes again. I was standing in front
of the window. I suddenly realised that this entity was guiding me towards
it. Remember it’s second instruction.
Look for the eyes in the dark…
Looking out into the darkness of the night, I
saw only the street I lived in, shrouded in shadows and moonlight. I looked
more carefully, afraid of missing something. Parked cars, empty gardens, dim
streetlights… nothing unusual. What did he want me to look for?
Maybe it’s a metaphor…… I thought, Eyes in the
dark? It could be the stars…
I went to the door and opened it, craning my
neck back at the heavens above. The stars were there alright, but the stars
were always there. And every single one of them could be described as ‘eyes in
the dark’.
“You won’t find me up there,” the voice
returned, as if he knew exactly what I was doing. “Looking up too much makes
you lose perspective… try a little closer to the ground.”
I nervously obeyed, stunned by this entity’s
apparent omniscience. Looking down from the sky, I saw what the creature was
talking about. Two icy blue lights were shining from the nearby rooftops. For a
moment they dimmed and then brightened again. It had just blinked – these were
the eyes in the dark. I understood now how it knew what I was doing – it was
watching me.
Unexpectedly, it turned, and the eyes, along
with the silhouette they belonged to disappeared from the roof.
“Wait!” I cried out.
When it didn’t reappear, I grabbed my coat and
keys, darting outside after locking the house up.
Kevin’s point of view
Brian had spotted me, I was sure of it. He was
a curious man, and I knew he would follow into the next street after me.
Unwilling to let him see me before I was ready, I slipped into the spectral realm
and disappeared from mortal eyes.
It wasn’t long before I saw my mortal cousin
wander anxiously into view. He scanned the rooftops, and at one point looked
straight at the point where I was perched.
Grinning, I reached forwards to climb down to
the ground and greet him. Yet, I stopped, frozen. A force of realisation stole
over me that was so powerful, I couldn’t move. Below, I saw Brian take one last
glance around, then scowl and skulk back home in disappointment.
Cursing to myself, I darted back to the taller
apartments of the city and fell to my knees on the roof of one of them. Totally
disillusioned, I began to weep uncontrollably. I had come within 10 meters of
the goal of my entire journey, and in that moment, I had hesitated! I had
caught a glimpse of my own hand.
In that moment, I was reminded of my entire
past, stretching back centuries, including my unjust transformation into this
demonic visage by Anubis’ trap. For the first time, it seemed, I felt horribly
repelled by my reptilian features. Knowing what I’d become, I knew in that
instant that I couldn’t face Brian like this. Therefore, if I couldn’t face
him, there was no way on earth he could face me. The horror and shock would
probably traumatise him.
It wasn’t just my appearance that I feared
would horrify. It was me. What new and unexpected things had I done over three
centuries? I had made and broken alliances with friend and foe, I had
discovered much about the universe and it’s non-human inhabitants, I had
learned about life as a Soul Creature. Yet, the most vital thing was that I had
killed…
In the mines, when I fought for freedom, I had
killed…… in the Dragon empire, as a fighter pilot, I had killed…… as a Soul
Creature defending Karnak, I had killed……
Blood now stained my hands. Though my battles
were for just causes, it made little difference. The simple fact was that I had
taken the lives of others.
Kevin Richardson would never have killed
another living creature. But then again, looking at what I was compared to what
I’d become, the contrast was stark.
This place among my family belonged to Kevin
Richardson, and because of that, I knew I could never go back to them.
The reason? I wasn’t Kevin Richardson anymore.
I was Zakkar – a demon…
***
