The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (27 page)

Azazel became one of the leaders of the rebellious Watchers in the time preceding the flood. He taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows. He also revealed to the people the secrets of witchcraft and corrupted their manners, leading them into wickedness and impurity until at last he was, at the Lord's command, bound hand and foot by the archangel Raphael and chained to the rough and jagged rocks in the desert of Egypt, where he was to abide in utter darkness until the great Day of Judgment, when he will be cast into the fire to be consumed forever.

I looked up from the book. So he was a fallen Angel who had been thrown out from Heaven because he taught humans evil practices. I got that much.

I read on: The corruption brought on by Azazel degraded the human race, and the four archangels—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Phanuel—saw much blood being shed upon the earth and all lawlessness being wrought upon the earth. The souls of men made their suit, saying, “Bring our cause before the Most High; Thou seest what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were in heaven, which men were striving to learn.”

The following paragraph was more detailed about how God became angry with Azazel and asked Raphael to throw him out of Heaven. But as he did, Azazel took two hundred Angels with him in the fall, along with numerous spirits. The ones who refused him, he froze. He froze their minds in a state of terror inside a nightmare, as well as their bodies. The only way they could be freed was by tying Azazel under the ground. So Raphael bound his hands and feet and cast him into a hole that God made in the desert and then placed rough and jagged rocks over him and covered him with darkness.

I was breathless. So Raphael knew perfectly well who was behind these attacks on the students. He had to know, and so did Rahmiel and Salathiel. Who else knew? And why did they all insist on keeping it a secret from us? To protect us? To avoid creating panic? I closed the book and stared out the window again. Now I was more scared than ever. The fact that students in our school were subjects to the same type of attacks—did that mean that Azazel had escaped? And did it mean he was here at the school?

The grounds outside were still and quiet. No breath of wind disturbed the treetops in the forest. The stables seemed quiet and the ocean calm. I put the book on the floor and was about to get down from the window sill, where I often enjoyed reading, and go back to my bed, when something caught my eye. Someone was prowling across the silvery lawn. It looked like a young boy or some kind of animal—I had a hard time telling. I followed the shape as it moved across the lawn toward the stables. It was flying and running at the same time and looked mostly like a strange animal. Was it a big cat? But it wasn’t running on the ground; it was flying in the air. Where was it going? Why was it heading toward the stables?

In the same second my roommates entered the chamber. I asked Mai to come to the window.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“I want you to tell me if you can see something,” I said.

“It’s pretty dark. What am I looking for?” Mai asked with a yawn.

I pointed. “Down there…”

As I looked out the window again the cat-like figure was gone, like it had vanished. I climbed back into the window sill in order to see better, but nothing was there. I stared at the stables. Had it gone inside or had it disappeared back into the forest where it came from?

“It is probably just some animal from the forest,” Acacia said while Mai yawned again.

“Boy, I am beat,” she said and went to her bed.

“Me too,” Acacia said.

I was tired as well, but as the lights went off in the dormitory, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept seeing that strange cat-like figure. It looked so big, the size of a human. And it floated above the ground like a spirit. But again, as Acacia said, there were a lot of strange animals in the forest that we had never seen. At least that’s what Adahy had told us. He was the one closest to nature, since he lived in the forest, in a cabin no one had seen, since it was so deep in the forest.

The next day I flew to the stables on my lunch break to  find Adahy. I wanted to ask him about the animal I had seen, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I found it strange since Adahy was always in the stables. As I approached Yofi I could tell he hadn’t been fed. He stared at me with his deep purple eyes and neighed, like he was trying to tell me he was hungry. As I checked the rest of the Pegasuses’ troughs I found them all empty. No one had fed them all day, I realized. In the first year of school I had helped out in the stables so I knew my way around and quickly found their food. I put it in big buckets and soon the Pegasuses were eating eagerly.

I enjoyed the sound of them eating, when I suddenly felt someone was behind me. I turned and found Adahy. He was standing in the entrance and was staring at me. His long black hair was tousled and he seemed to have a hard time catching his breath.

“What are you doing here?” he said with great exhaustion in his voice.

“I … I was just … Well I came to talk to you actually.”

He looked at me looking like he didn’t believe me.

“I saw that the Pegasuses hadn’t been fed.”

Adahy looked at little confused.

“Well, I was just going to do that now.”

“Is everything all right?” I asked, a little concerned. Adahy didn’t seem to be himself. He never forgot to feed his animals.

He stared at me. Then he nodded. “Why do you ask?” he said.

“I don’t know. Just making sure,” I said.

“It is none of your concern.” He started floating past me while he was still speaking. “You shouldn’t even be here. Don’t you have class now?”

“Well lunch break is almost over,” I said.

Adahy seemed to not be listening. “Mmm …” he grumbled while floating around a little bewildered.

Wanting to get back to my class I started heading to the door. When I reached the door I turned around and looked at him. He stood still, bent over a sack of food for a long time without moving. It was odd to see him like that. It was like he didn’t know what he was doing.

“I was just wondering if you had seen a cat-like animal running around on the lawn outside the stables,” I asked. “I think I saw it from my window last night.”

He froze. Then he turned and looked at me. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said while shaking his head and breathing faster.

“I just thought you knew all the animals in the forest. That’s why I ask.”

Adahy forced a smile. “Yes, yes of course. I see,” he answered, very distraught.

“So do you know what kind of animal it is? It seemed to be flying and not walking.”

“It might have been King here,” he said and petted his wolf dog that was always next to him. “He likes to go running at night. He runs very fast. It might look like he is flying in the air.”

“Well, maybe you are right,” I said. “I’d better get back to my class now. Thanks for your help,” I said and looked at him, waiting for him to say something, but he had gone back to staring at the sack again.

C
HAPTER 13

T
HAT SAME AFTERNOON
P
ROFESSOR
Grangé, my Metamorphosis teacher, wanted us to try something new. Everybody had learned the basics of flying. Even Nigel eventually got the hang of it. So now it was time for us to take it to another level, as the professor put it while he spoke to us from his head that he carried under his arm.

I had been wondering why he hadn’t asked to get the head back on when he entered Heaven, but Mick told me that Professor Grangé had chosen to keep his head off. He enjoyed people’s reaction when they saw him and he liked to scare his students. He just preferred it this way.

As second-year students, we had gotten used to it, so we no longer thought about it and no one stared at him or his head anymore.

Not until this moment.

Because that day Professor Grangé did something completely new. He put his head back on in the classroom. He lifted it up and screwed it back on the neck. It made a squeaking noise as he turned it. We all dropped our jaws simultaneously.

Professor Grangé smiled widely as he got the head positioned on his neck. He tilted it back and forth a couple of times before he burst into a great laugh and talked with that French accent of his.

“
Alors
, I’ll wager you didn’t know I could that, huh?” He said.

The classroom was silenced.

“I got you there, didn’t I?”

Still no one managed to utter a word, so the professor continued. “What are you waiting for? Why are you still sitting here and staring at me? The fun is outside, you know that!”

We gathered on the lawn outside the castle. As a couple of third-year students floated passed us, they yelled at the professor.

“Looking great, professor!”

“Keep moving, Mr. Dale. Nothing to see here,” Professor Grangé yelled back with a wide smile.

“New hair?” The guy next to the one the professor had called Mr. Dale yelled with a fake French accent not pronouncing the “h.”

The professor shook his head which looked very weird to all of us since we had never seen him do that before.

“Time to try something new,
n’est-ce pas
?” the professor yelled back. He looked at us and told us to ignore them.

“Well, children. The reason why I have put on my head for you today is that we are going on a field trip. We are trying something new today and it is easier if I keep my head on my shoulders.”

Nigel stretched his hand into the air. “Where exactly are we going?”

The professor smiled. It made me a little uncomfortable. “You’ll see,” the professor said as he soared quickly into the air yelling, “Follow me!”

We did as we were told and followed the professor for an hour or so flying above rugged mountains, dark oceans with crystal-white seashores and later big cities. It was the first time we went outside the school area as a class and I could tell my classmates were excited. A lot of them had never left the school since we got there. Since I was the only student who had a permission to leave the school and visit Jason, I had tried it lots of times. So it wasn’t that big a deal to me, but I did enjoy getting away from the school again. It had been quite a while.

The sky was crystal clear for most of the way, but as time passed by it got increasingly cloudy. Clouds were always more fun to fly in and we all had a lot of excitement gliding in and out of them. Nigel even tried surfing one for the first time.

“Look at me!” he screamed, just before he fell and landed on another cloud.

He was laughing so hard and I couldn’t help but miss Abhik terribly. He would have loved going on this trip. I would have to take him when he got better, I thought to myself as the clouds became heavier and darker. Now we had to stay close together, the professor instructed us, so no one would get lost.

“The visibility is terrible around here, but it will only get worse from here on,” he said.

So we had to find a buddy, someone to stay close to. I chose Mai, with whom I had talked to a lot lately. We stayed close to each other as the clouds became really heavy and we could feel how it rained underneath us. Thunder roared beneath us and the professor told us to go higher, above the clouds, to avoid being struck by the dangerous lightning.

Mai and I stayed just behind him. He looked as though he was searching for something in the air.

“It should be here somewhere,” he mumbled to himself. “Just around here somewhere.”

”What are we looking for, Professor? I asked.

He put his hand up in the air to quiet me. “Just one moment, we are almost there,” he said.

Then he stopped in the air. “Here it is.” He pointed down through the clouds where a giant hole was growing out of the clouds. “I knew it was around here somewhere.” The professor smiled at us.

“What is?” I asked.

“The eye.” He pointed again and we all stared into the giant hole in the clouds that seemed to be slowly turning in a huge circle.

“What is that?” Acacia asked.

The professor smiled as if he was glad that she asked. He spoke with great enthusiasm.

“This,
mes enfants
, is the eye of the hurricane Katie. She was formed a couple of days ago over the Atlantic. She became a hurricane just yesterday so she is very new. Almost a baby.”

I swallowed hard. Comparing a deathly storm to a baby wasn’t something I had heard before.

“And what exactly are we doing here so close to her eye?” I asked.

The professor lifted his forefinger. “We are going to dive into it,” he said.