Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) (39 page)

SIXTY-TWO

Jack remained motionless as he watched Evangeline enfolded in the arms of two Angels claiming to be her parents. He was not sure what to do. Kevin and Felicia were watching from the other side of the room, talking in whispers between themselves.

Without warning, Evangeline broke away from the tight embrace, shoving herself away from the Angels.

“No!” she cried. “I don’t believe you! My parents left me all alone and then they died. You can’t be my parents! You’re Angels!”

She was scratching her fingers across the surface of her helmet as if the ludicrous thought could escape from her head if she could create an opening.

“I need to get out of here,” she said under her breath, pacing back and forth in a disjointed pattern. She resembled a cornered animal searching for any means of escape.

Her eyes landed on Jack and she rushed to him, wrapping her arm around his waist, and clinging onto him for dear life. She felt like her sanity had escaped out an airlock into space and he was the only thing tethering her to what was real.

Jack pulled her close to him, as he stared around the room, searching for answers. Kevin, Felicia, and the Angels were all showing great sympathy at Evangeline’s sudden outburst.

“What is going on around here?” Jack managed to get out. He, too, was bewildered, but the focus of his attention was Evangeline in her moment of crisis. Jack bit his lip as he restrained himself from saying more. A thousand questions ran through his mind, but he did not understand the circumstances enough to know how to verbalize them.

The female Angel reached out toward Evangeline, wanting comfort her as any mother would, but again the male Angel held her back. He seemed to understand that if Evangeline did not trust them, physical comfort would have done more harm to her fragile state. He released his hold on his companion and took a slow step toward Jack and Evangeline.

Gesturing to some stools nearby, he said, “Perhaps you should sit down. We have a lot to explain.”

Jack watched the face of the male Angel, looking for any sign of deception or danger to his wife or himself. Evangeline murmured something into his chest. He could understand her refusal to accept what she had just learned to be true. He, on the other hand, had always been more prone to listen to a different point of view before making up his mind. Jack was concerned about Evangeline, and how much she had endured in such a short amount of time, but he resisted the urge to lash out at everyone in the room. He was unsure who was to blame for the traumatic events that she had been dragged through.

He looked down at his wife. Her face shield pressed against his chest, her eyes shut tight. She was whispering to herself. “Wake up. It’s just a dream. It’s not real. Wake up. It’s not real.”

Jack placed a gentle hand on the side of her head and pulled her face up to look into her eyes. She kept telling herself to wake up until she felt his eyes staring down at her. Tears erupted as her vision focused on the calm reassurance she saw in his eyes.

“I think we should give them a chance to explain,” he coaxed in a tender voice.

He looked over at Kevin and Felicia. They had remained off to the side of the room, watching with eager eyes and pondering how they had reacted the very first time each of them had stepped into the lab and discovered the truth about the Chapels. Jack then shot a quick glance at the male Angel before he returned his attention back to his wife.

“I won’t pretend to understand what’s going on, but it can’t hurt to listen and ask questions.”

Evangeline gazed into his eyes, hoping to absorb a degree of his quiet strength. She took in a deep breath and nodded, releasing her hold around his waist and allowed him to direct her to the stool. There was a slight shaking in her hands as she sat down, still shocked by the idea that her parents could be alive, and had been transformed somehow.

She took another deep breath and tried to rub the trembling out of her hands against her leg before she reached up and took Jack by the hand. She needed him beside her until she was able to make sense of it all. He looked at her and grinned.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

The tension in the room dissipated once Evangeline took a few more deep breaths and her shoulders relaxed. The male Angel grabbed another nearby stool and set it down a few feet in front of Evangeline. He led the female to the stool with a gentle nudge to the small of her back, holding her hand as she sat down. She smiled at him and gave him a muffled, “Thank you, Sweetie.”

The male Angel then retrieved another stool from the workbench next to Kevin and Felicia, along with a tablet, and sat down next to the female Angel.

The interchange reminded Evangeline of the way her father always pulled out the chair for her mother at the dining room table. The situation was nothing but bizarre. Evangeline could not shake how the Angels mannerisms were similar to those of her parents’ she remembered from her childhood; even the longing in their eyes when they saw her walk through the door.

The ever-patient smile on the male’s face had never once faltered from the moment Jack and Evangeline had entered the room. He never expressed frustration or irritation by her reaction to his claims. Evangeline evaded his eyes for several minutes, pretending to take assessment of the room’s contents.

She had told herself it was her training to examine her surroundings for signs of danger, potential weapons, and means of egress, but the truth was that she was not sure she could bring herself to accept the remote possibility that the two Angels seated in front of her were her parents. Despite the familiarities, something within her did not want to believe.

Memories of rage-filled nightmares, fierce workout sessions, and sleepless, teary nights came crashing into her consciousness like a landslide. It was an inescapable avalanche of emotions. She thought it was too much to bare all at once and she felt her emotional defenses deploy. She did not fool herself into believing that she was going to be unbiased. She squeezed Jack’s hand and tried to convey an unspoken message that she would rely on his objectivity for a while.

The male Angel continued to sit in silence and waited for cues that Evangeline was ready to listen. The female Angel hugged herself on the stool. She longed to cross the chasm between herself and her daughter and embrace her child to make the pain disappear, but she knew that Evangeline needed time to accept their story in order for her to forgive them.

After several deep breaths, Evangeline looked over into the deep, blue eyes of the Angel who had not taken his eyes off her since he sat down.

“I’m sure you will have many questions,” he began, “but, if you’ll listen for a few minutes, there are some things we should tell you first. Would that be alright?”

The cadence and tone of his speech struck a chord in Evangeline, the uncanny way it mimicked the memories of her father. She examined his face, searching for a reason to distrust him and use it as an excuse to leave, but she only saw tenderness, love, and pain behind his eyes.

She sat a little straighter on her stool and cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said, her voice low, “I’m ready to hear you out.”

He heaved a sigh of relief.

“First, and foremost,” he continued, his eyes glistening, “we are eternally sorry for leaving you as we did.”

He reached over and took the female Angel’s hand. She squeezed it back and wiped the tears that had resumed running down her face.

He took a deep breath, bracing himself as he reopened their story from the day of his last daddy-daughter conversation with Evangeline.

SIXTY-THREE

“The medical community considered us the leading transplant surgeons of Olympus,” the Angel claiming to be Matthew said, sitting taller on his stool, “specializing in epidermal transplants. For that reason alone, I performed the full tissue replacement procedure on Silas Graham, giving my friend the best possible chances of recovery after his disfiguration from the recent Dissident attack at the clinic.”

The Angel claiming to be Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Weeks after the explosion, we first encountered the disease that would change the course of our lives,” she said, holding an open hand out toward Evangeline, including her in their narrative. “We had been treating a patient from the LTZ who complained of constant redness and itching on her legs. The local doctors could not figure out the cause of the condition, so they referred her to our clinic for a second diagnosis.”

“The intake nurse interviewed her for her medical and recent travel history,” the male Angel added, “and the only thing out of the ordinary in her report was a hiking trip she had taken three months prior in the distant mountains outside the LTZ borders. She said the redness had spread across her leg, but it had not start itching until the past several days. The LTZ doctors had thought it was an allergic reaction, had given her a prescription, and sent her home. But when the redness continued, she returned to the doctor and let him know how it had gotten worse. With no other options at his disposal, he sent her up to Olympus, to our clinic, for another opinion.”

“Your father could not identify the specific dermatitis plaguing her,” the female Angel recalled, “but he gave her a prescription for a stronger medication. He had a nagging hunch that she had happened upon some obscure irritant in the area where she had been hiking.”

The male Angel nodded along with female’s recollection of the events. “She seemed reluctant to admit how far she had ventured into the restricted zone, but I assured her that I only cared about finding the cause and a cure. After disclosing to me the specific directions to find where she had been hiking, we sent her home to rest.”

Evangeline’s mind reflected on how her parents had always been curious researchers, when the male Angel interrupted her thoughts. “The mysterious skin problem intrigued us, and we decided to investigate ourselves and take samples of the area in the hopes of determining what was causing the illness, which eventually would lead us to a source of treatment.”

The female Angel spoke up with a tender voice. “You had a sleepover planned at a friend’s house for the following weekend, so we decided it would be an opportune time to go on a research trip outside the LTZ.”

The male Angel turned to face his companion. “We decided to borrow a specially equipped vehicle from the clinic, stocked with all the supplies we would need for taking samples and running preliminary tests. It took us several hours to travel to area described by the hiker. We set up camp and began investigating the area. After three hours into our exploration, we discovered an old metal container bearing an unfamiliar logo, and lettering that your mother did not recognize. It wasn’t large, perhaps about six inches tall and three inches in diameter. The container had suffered some corrosion and damage, but otherwise appeared intact.”

“We noticed a curious number of discarded snakeskins to the hiking area,” the female added, placing her hand on the male’s arm. The gesture flooded Evangeline’s mind with long-forgotten memories of her parents. “At first we guessed we had stumbled upon some kind of snakeskin burial ground. We had also observed that all the shrubs and trees within a twenty-foot radius had neither bark nor leaves. Being less familiar with botany than biology, we thought the trees had been through a fire or bleached by the sun over many years.”

The male nodded his head. “We sealed the container in a sterile bag and continued to take samples, cataloging our findings until the sun dipped below the horizon. We returned to camp for the evening. I don’t know if you recall talking to us that night from your friend’s house.”

Evangeline gave a quick shake to her head. She did recall speaking with her parents from her friend’s bedroom display, but for reasons unknown to herself, she was unwilling to admit the recollection to the two Angelic strangers seated in front of her.

The female continued, her eyes heavy with disappointment. “We spent the following day taking samples in another area nearby, but found nothing as interesting as the container. On the third day, we returned to Olympus, laden with samples to analyze in-depth at the clinic.”

The male Angel’s eyes beamed with vibrant excitement. “We had not experienced that kind of thrill in years. To be hunting a mysterious contaminant and doing genuine research? We felt young again as we dove headlong into unearthing the mystery at the root of our patient’s discomfort.”

Jack, listening to the Angels’ account, became enrapt in the details of their story. He, more than Evangeline, allowed himself to suspend his disbelief and wanted to believe their story was true. However, a small voice in his head reminded him that he had to remain objective for Evangeline.

As if seeing Jack’s attention flutter, the male Angel refocused his narrative toward Evangeline with greater sincerity. “The lab technicians began immediately examining the various samples we had collected, while I made my own personal errand to show the container to Silas. I hoped his shrewd investigative skills could identify the source of the container and explain how it had found its way to the middle of the desert. Silas happily obliged - he attributed his full recovery to me and my team. He said that helping explain the origin of the container was the least he could do.”

“Graham began his investigation by researching the markings on the container in the historical archives. After several days of dead-ends, he discovered that the container had been part of a shipment of experimental medicines that had been sent off world to an undisclosed laboratory for further testing and research. There was no further record of what kinds of medicines were in the shipment or where this testing facility was located. Silas concluded his investigation, but my curiosity was piqued.”

The female Angel shifted to the edge of her seat. “Your father assumed that containers used for medicinal research experiments would have to be shipped following stringent regulations. He found transport logs and combed through thousands of manifests, examining the freight records of each conceivable ship that could have been capable of handling such precious cargo.”

“After weeks of scattered hours of research, he found records of a small freighter that had taken undisclosed cargo into an unexplored area of deep space. The description of the containers matched the one we had found in the desert terrain. He was sure that he had found the ship he had been hunting for.”

The male spoke up again. “I started making inquiries into the shipping company, but no one could deliver the information I wanted. I submitted requests for documentation with the Interstellar Shipping Authority as well as the military, but no one seemed to care about helping me identify the catalyst of this new contagion, which was causing so much discomfort for a single person in the LTZ.

“Undiscouraged, I continued searching any records he could find that related to that specific area of space. I came across an old note in a captain’s journal describing the location of an abandoned mining facility on a small moon of that quadrant. With the new information I contacted the mining guilds, the ISA, and even the military again, petitioning them to launch an investigation based on the obscure notation from a freighter captain made two centuries before.

“No one I reached out to would concern themselves with my petitions. I knew there was only one option left, and that was to venture to the mining facility myself and find out the truth behind the mysterious containers.”

The female Angel spoke next. “He asked me to go with him, but I had given up finding the true source of the dermatitis as a lost cause. The woman was stable with treatment, and I didn’t share your father’s fire for trekking across the quadrants on partial evidence. And then, there was you to consider,” she said, again reaching out an imploring hand in Evangeline’s direction. “How could we both leave you behind for such a journey? No, I had put the issue of the mysterious illness to rest. My quest was over.

“Your father, however, was not able to accept unanswered questions. He chartered a freighter to take him to the general area noted on the old captain’s logs and left to go off-world. Once he arrived in the area it did not take long to find the old mining operation, but what he found was not what he expected.”

The male Angel took a deep, exhausted breathe. “I found the mining operation still inhabited and functioning. And, I found a group of people who I thought was responsible for the explosion at our clinic. I thought I found the Dissident’s.”