Undone by a Broken Angel

20.) Dragged

“Do not drag me off with the wicked, with the workers of evil, who speak peace with their neighbors while evil is in their hearts.

-Psalm 28;3

A purple ribbon and a rolled up parchment sits in his open palm.  He wonders why Paul would want him to go to the bunker, but he doesn’t mind.  He had planned on stopping there anyway to rest before continuing on his long flight to Eden.  The only problem was, he feels as though he is being followed because every time he was close to landing over the cover of night, he sensed reapers nearby and was forced to fly back up to continue on.

The night hid him well as he flew through it.  He wanted rest, but now that it was daytime, he could see where he was going.  Stopping won’t be an option until nightfall.  The further away he can get from his dead friends, the better.

Keeping himself in the sky is getting increasingly more difficult with his exhaustion from not sleeping in well over twenty- four hours.  Plus, his energy is sapped from not eating anything for several hours and his muscles are starting to cramp from being dehydrated.  If only he could stop to drink some water, he would be so thankful.  His mouth is dry and his stomach twists like a red hot iron has been shoved in his gut and giggled it around for good measure.

He forces himself to think about the girl instead.  She must be so confused, but he wonders how she’s been kept so well hidden all this time.  It’s common knowledge that her mother was a genius; he would have liked to meet her.  What could her daughter be like?  Will she be just as intelligent?  What would she look like?  Will she have her mother’s gold eyes?  Her dark hair?  Her almost perfect features?  What elements would come from her father?  Sam never met the king either; not many people knew who the king was.  Queen Katrina said she picked an honorable man, a decorated soldier, who was good and pure at heart.  No one questioned her judgement, he obviously was humble enough to want to keep his status unknown.

So perhaps Samuel did know him.  Picking a face out of the hundreds of soldiers he fought with, though, is an impossible feat.

Since her face is impossible to imagine, he’s anxious to meet her.

He flies as the day drags on, his wing growing tired.  The colorful trees below him pass by, a hawk flies up to greet him and is startled away when it sees he’s not a large bird after all.  He giggles at it and continues on.  By the time the sun sets, he finds a break in the trees to land, but as soon as he lands, he senses he’s not alone.  He’d like to be safe in the sky again, but he’s too tired to even entertain the idea.

He walks and monitors the trees, his guard up, daggers in his hands.  He’s tired of being hunted, of losing people he loves.  It’s why he never married and still doesn’t consider it.  Death has always been on his path and no matter how much research he does, he cannot escape that path.  Being alone is just easier- no attachments.

A shadow among the shadows shifts in his peripheral vision and he freezes, slowly turning towards the movement, a negative feeling twisting in his gut. 

The reapers rush him in a moment and he sees that there’s too many.  He tries to count the shifting black shapes in the darkness and guesses that he’s surrounded by no less than six of them.  He swallows, his fear putting his heart on overdrive.

“We found one,” one of them hisses.

“It was too easy,” another agrees.

They’ve never behaved like pack animals before, not with him, anyway; but they have him cornered and there’s nothing he can do but fight his way out.  The daggers are thrown so quickly he doesn’t look like he moved and two of them fall; one dead, one wounded.  They growl or hiss in unison and he tenses, not sure what their next move will be.

“Where are you going?” one taunts and he jumps at its voice, the sound so close to him that it rattles his head and he relates it to chewing glass.

“We want to show you something,” another broken voice says too close to him.

Whatever they have in mind for him, he doesn’t intend to be a part of it.  They could kill him and even though he wants to cling to his life, he’d rather die than fall prey to Abraham’s fate.

As they inch closer to him, he flings his daggers, trying to catch any part of their flesh that he can.  Even if he doesn’t fatally wound them, any wound is better than none.  He doesn’t end up finding out if his efforts made a difference.  He’s kicked to the ground, the reaper’s foot slamming hard into the middle of his back, and he lands flat on his face.  Road gravel, dirt, and who knows what else, fill his mouth and nose.  He sputters, trying to clear his airways when he feels ropes bind his arms behind his back.  Instinct kicks in and he struggles against them, but the more he fights, the tighter the binding gets.  They grab him by the arms and place him back on his feet.

He has little options at this point.  He could try to run, but without his arms to keep his balance, he’ll most likely trip and they’d catch up.  He could extend his wings and knock them over, take off again, but he’s not sure if he’d have enough time and by the way they’re standing, they’re expecting it.  When they push him forward to start walking, he’s out of ideas.  He’ll have to play along for now.

Reapers have never taken prisoners before.  They don’t strategize, just attack.  At their centers, reapers are demented demons, soulless being whose core need is to destroy anything good in this world, anything God created.  They crave human souls because they have none and their creator wants to ensnare humans to an afterlife of suffering.  When the falcone were created, the reapers were so filled with the lust to destroy them that the falcone killed them with ease.  If only it were that easy today, but they’ve evolved since then.  Is that what’s happening now?  Are they beginning to strategize?

This is a problem.

He’s in a pickle.

Where is he, he wonders.  He had flown all night and all day- he should be near the bunker.  The landscape looks right.  The alp mountain range towers above him, its peaks and valleys cutting the sky like sharp teeth.  Though this section of the mountain range isn’t as impressive as it is a few hundred miles north, the peaks are dusted with snow.  The path he is forced to walk twists and turns down a slope into the valley below.  There are no lights that he can see, no fires or sounds, so no settlements.  At least he’s giving them the excuse to be away from humans.  Still, despite that one positive thought, he feels stupid for falling into this trap.

They snicker and taunt him as they force him to keep moving.  Sometimes they poke his back with a sword point to keep him walking.  Judging by how dark it is, he’d say it’s well past midnight and his limbs drag from exhaustion.  He’s not a stranger to all-nighters, but with all the flying he’s done in the past 24 hours, gravity feels more powerful.  His feet falter, and his legs give out, his knees hitting the gravel road hard.  The impact vibrates up his frame, and his eyelids are so heavy, he has a hard time keeping them open.

“He’s useless now,” a broken voice says.

“We’re almost there,” another replies.

“Just let him rest,” one argues, the sound of rustling indicating some physical disagreement breaking out between them.

“No,” a firm voice stops them.  “Drag him.”

He feels cold hands grip his arms and pull him away in the direction they had been traveling.  He isn’t conscious for much of it.  He cloak does a decent job of protecting his precious feathers and his clothing from getting damaged on the dirt ground.  The hairs on his neck and arms stand up in warning with them being so close.  As his alertness dips in and out of sleep, he feels hopeless.

He’s not sure how many hours it is later when they stop moving, but his world stops spinning and he feels something cold and hard biting between his shoulder blades, up his spine, neck, and the back of his head.  It’s the least comfortable thing he could ever rest on.

When his eyes open, he’s alone in the open valley, ties to a metal post.  Reapers stand by to watch him, their red eyes glow in the dark, their red eyes challenging him to try to escape.

He’s not sure how much thinking will get him out of this.