Angels Born of Hell and Fire

[Chapter Seven]

Peter’s funeral was held on a damp dismal day, four days after the attack. The air was frigid, the very ground frozen under a layer of ice. It was like the whole world was in mourning, too numb from grief even to stir a breeze. So many people had died that night…

I had attended 27 other funerals in only the past three days. There were 3 more planned for later this evening. That grew the total to thirty. We had lost thirty lives, with another fifty or so injured or in critical condition, barely hanging on to their souls. In retrospect, it wasn’t a large number in comparison to the couple thousand of military personnel who lived up in this valley. But to me, it seemed like a hideously giant number.

I had known these people.

Not very well, but I could place names to all their faces. It was my job to after all. I had gone over each and every file, stared at each and every face until I could never forget them. The youngest out of the casualties had only been 14 years old, the eldest being a solemn faced general of 52.

I looked around the fog coated hills, the view somehow devoid of all color, and shivered.
200 armed soldiers had infiltrated the valley. They had come in three separate groups, the largest of which sent up into the mansion, where they had been told to find a girl matching Jasper’s description and a man who sounded uncannily like Adam. They had failed of course, and now all of them were dead, their bodies thrown into a giant ditch down at the lowest part of the valley and set on fire. The smoke could still be seen, a terrible shade of pitch, rising against the morose skyline.

I hunched lower in my jacket, the sight of that smoke enough to unnerve me. All those men had been alive just a few days before. I’m sure they had families, loved ones who were waiting for them to come home. Only they would never go home again. I wondered if their families would be told the truth, that their fathers, husbands, lovers and brothers had been sent to destroy a secret army up in the middle of the mountains. Somehow I doubted that.

Eight of those men had been taken down by my own hand. I remembered each one. I remembered the smell of their fear, the sounds of their breath hitching when faced with the hideous monster that was me. None of them had known, none of them had been prepared for the truth behind Adam’s army. They hadn’t known we were all nonhuman freaks with strange abilities that couldn’t be matched by normal people. It was this lack of knowledge that had killed many of them.

Someone came to stand beside me and I looked up to see Gabriel. His green eyes were rimmed in red and his adams apple bobbed a few times before he spoke.

“You’re not going down?”

He referred to the fact that I was standing a distance from the graveyard, watching the cluster of people huddle against the cold, their heads bowed. At this distance I couldn’t even hear the words the priest was saying. But I also couldn’t feel the sorrow that pressed down all their shoulders, and I defiantly couldn’t hear the thoughts of my best friend, who stood shivering from something stronger than the chilly air.

“No,” I said shaking my head. “Why aren’t you over there?”

He looked down, running a hand through messy locks that didn’t look like they’d seen a brush in days. In fact everything about him was rumbled, like he had been sleeping in his uniform. Or maybe not because there were deep bruises under his eyes that told of many sleepless nights.

“I don’t know…” he said softly, “maybe I’m just afraid.”

My eyebrows raised. So I wasn’t the only one hiding then? Though I doubted it was for the same reason.

“Afraid of what?”

Gabriel swallowed his jaw working as he stared at the figures clad in black. Or maybe it was the hastily made wooden box, set upon the edge of a six foot hole that held his gaze.

“Afraid that he really is gone,” he whispered and my heart broke into another piece. If this kept up, I wasn’t sure there was going to be any left. Between my own and Jasper’s grief, and now Gabriel’s, how much more would I have to take on?

I reached out and put my hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, squeezing until he looked at me.

"He died honorably," I said severely. "He died fighting for what he believed in, that was the type of person he was. Remember him that way. He wouldn’t want you to mourn for him. He was a strong man, be proud of him."

Tears weld at the corners of Gabriel’s eyes and he had to look away to cover them. I pretended not to notice.

"I will," he said finally when he had managed to compose himself. "I won’t forget him. I won’t let his memory fade. I’ll make him proud of me."

I smiled slightly, a sad and broken thing.

"I’m sure he already is," I said, suddenly finding it hard to block away my own tears.

Since that night I hadn’t allowed myself to cry. How could I? Not when my own grief was so minuscule, so insignificant next the overwhelming mountain of Jasper’s. How could I possible cry while she sobbed, curled in a ball on the floor, clutching one of Peter’s jackets to her chest? All I could do was watch helplessly as she mourned her whole world shattering to a million pieces. I wasn’t sure she would ever be able to put them all back together.

And here I was, too afraid to even get close to her.

The funeral ended just then. That wooden box was now gone, hidden beneath layers of dirt and gravel. In the slow way of mourners they made their way back towards the cars that would take us back to the mansion. When they turned from the freshly turned dirt their faces were drawn, tight with grief, many tear streaked, but as they neared the cars those emotions flaked away, and they were all once more part of the military in some form. Officers, lesser Generals, regular soldiers that used to be under his command; each and every one of them had been raised in military standards. They had grieved, and now it was time to get back to work.

Jasper was one of the last to leave. She stood beside the grave, clad in a long, lacy black dress, her vibrant hair hidden beneath her veil. Over the past few days she had said very little. When she wasn’t crying she was staring aimlessly into space, her azure eyes devoid of all life. She hadn’t eaten, hell she barely breathed. I found it amazing that somehow her heart was still beating, being so broken.

Five minutes passed, and Jasper still stood where she was. I was about to brace myself and move forward to her but Gabriel surprised me by doing it instead.

My head leaned to the side as I watched him move to stand beside her. He spoke to her, and Jasper didn’t seem to react at all to his words. Yet Gabriel didn’t give up. With cautious hand he touched her arm and just like that her frame crumbled to pieces. She hadn’t cried, not in front of all those people, but now without all those watching eye she fell to the ground, Gabriel’s arms wrapping around her thin shoulders.

And then I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned away from their anguish and ran back to the car that had brought me here. As soon as we reached the mansion I yanked open the door, not waiting for the person who was supposed to open it for me. I jogged up the stone steps, and slammed open the doors. With every step that took me farther from grief, agitation rose in its place. These past four days I had been too busy with repairs, fear and grief, to go see Adam. But now was different, now I was tired of just cleaning up and not knowing why. Now I wanted answers to the questions I had been putting off, and I wanted them now.

Being me, I didn’t bother knocking when I reached his office, I just walked in. Being him, he probably knew I was coming any way. Despite that, he chose to pretend he hadn’t, not moving away from the window he had been gazing out of. It hit me that it must look out over the graveyard.

"Tell me," I stated flatly. He didn’t turn, didn’t twitch, just stood with his hands behind his back, staring out into the gray light.

"Does it matter?" he asked.

"Yes,"

He nodded, as if this was the answer he had wanted. Then he turned to look me straight in the eye, an act that caused unease to stir in my belly.

"Your own people attacked us Chaos. It was this very country we are now in that tried to destroy us."

I sucked in a breath but decided that the news didn’t surprise me as much as it might have.

"You knew."

Adam tilted his head back, but didn’t say anything.

"You knew," I said again, my voice gaining volume. "And so did Peter. He knew but because of a spell that you put on him he couldn’t say anything. And because of it he’s dead!" I needed to shout at someone, I needed a bad guy, someone I could hate with my every fiber. I needed someone to blame.

"How could you have done that?! How could you have just LET them attack us? To let us think everything was okay? People DIED because of that! If we had known we could have prevented it! We could have stopped that! We could have stopped THEM! And everyone would still be alive!" Peter would still be alive. And Jasper would be okay.

Adam’s gaze was so cold it would have frozen lithium. Yet I continued.

"How could you have let them die? How COULD YOU!!"

He was suddenly right there, his cold fingers wrapped around my throat and his face inches from mine.

"Because this is the real world," he hissed, fury radiating off of him. "Because there are people out there who want every single one of them dead. Who would be quiet content in just shooting them all. THIS is their world now." With every word his grip tightened, cutting off my air. None the less I managed to say,

"Because YOU put them here! You forced them into this world! They didn’t ask for it!"

Adam gave me a pitying look.

"My dear Chaos, whoever ASKS to be in the world they’re in? Yes I put them here, but how many of them mind? How many are crying injustice against me? None but you, my daughter." He shoved me away from him, a sneer twisting his handsome face into a horrid mask.

"It’s about time you realized that," he turned away from me, clearly as a dismissal. “Oh and tell your sister we will be leaving the day after tomorrow.”

I glared at his back, hatred for him burning my battered soul.

"And everyone else?" I spat.

That earned me a slide long glance.

"They will be following on later on. It’s much too dangerous for the Empress to stay here any longer."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you provoked an attack," I growled and he turned to look at me with a genuine smile.

"Oh but I did. I had to see just how capable of protecting the Empress you were, what better way than in an actual battle?"

I stared at him in horror.

"You really did provoke the attack," I whispered.

When I had said it before I had meant him building an army right under the presidents nose, not necessarily that he had caused the raid.

He laughed, the sound wrong for the tension in the room.

"Oh if only you could see your face! Ah Chaos," he said my name lovingly, and reached out to touch my face. I was in too much shock to even flinch away. "You’re such an ignorant child. But you will learn. You will learn." He kissed my forehead and gave me a slight shove towards the door.

"Now run along and gather your sister," he smiled at me one last time before turning to sit at his desk, still chuckling softly.

Without seeing anything better to do, I left, closing the door behind me. For a moment I just stood there, my brain spinning.

Adam had provoked the invasion on the mansion. He had done it on purpose, even though he knew people would die, possibly even Jasper. But he had done it any way.

I shook my head.

The human part of me, the part that still harbored my own emotions, and sense of right and wrong, was completely scandalized by the very notion. It couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be purposely attacked. How he could have taken the risk to everything he had built here.
But the other part, the part that was less human, more General, could see the logic in the plan. It was a risky strategy, but the odds had been in Adam’s favor. Despite seeming like the stupidest plan in the world, it really wasn’t, as long as he had taken certain precaution. Such as not leaking the information of how large the army was, or the age of most of its members. If he had made sure that they believed they were just going after one man, and a few rag tag followers, then they would only send a stealth regiment. But he would have had to stress that there were quite a few of those followers, just to make sure they didn’t send too little. What was the challenge of 10 soldiers? I had taken down nearly that many by myself.

With a shaky breath I realized how ingenious this whole little scheme was. Little facts started falling into place, things I had noticed, things I had been told. The soldiers hadn’t been busting into rooms shooting people. They hadn’t even been taking hostages. No, they had been looking for something, or someone. Many had been reluctant to even fire. That reluctance had cost many of them their lives.

I shook my head, fighting against the admiration I could feel sneaking up on me.

The whole thing was brilliant really, carefully thought out in our favor in every way. The chances of us suffering major losses were less than 2%, it was obvious we would win. Most of the people here had been training for years; it was practically ingrained into their blood.

My eyes fell to my wrist. And for some of us, it really was.

As I slowly made my way up to my room I carefully massaged my neck. The pain was already fading, by time I got up the stairs I knew the bruise would most likely be gone as well. There was something to be said for super hyped up healing.

I sighed as I opened my bedroom door. We were leaving, to only god knows where. I was surprised Adam had waited this long to move us out of here. But maybe that was because he knew they wouldn’t send more people into the valley for at least a few days more. Too bad when they finally gathered the resources we would had already been gone, disappeared into the night
.
In a way I was excited. I hadn’t been out of the valley in over a year; it would be nice to see the outside world again. At the same time however, I was terrified.

I might miss the outside world, but the outside world most defiantly didn’t miss me.

[End: Part Two Chapter Seven]