Uriel: The Inheritance (Airel Saga Book Five)

Chapter IV

Boise, Idaho—Present Day

MICHAEL HAD NEVER HAD as many questions in his life as he did now. And yet the power of his love for Airel compelled him to place them all aside as he looked on and saw her mourning in the rain at Kim's open grave. Already, she looked older and more mature.

He understood grief. He also understood what it felt like to bear too much—experience. Whether such things would produce wisdom, or indeed, anything good, remained to be seen. What he did know was that he wouldn't say much today. What was there to say at the mouth of a grave?

The plane ride back from Africa had been surreal. Airel's father, John, was stoic. Stoic doesn't even begin to describe him. After the fog of whatever sedative he had been dosed with finally burned off, he'd hardly spoken to Michael the whole trip home. All he had said was, "You can call me Mr. Cross." And that was what plenty of people called him on the way home, all of them showing the most profound respect.

John Cross seemed to blame Michael for everything. Each sideways glance said more than any words ever could. He blames me.

Michael wasn't entirely certain how they had been allowed to pass through customs—if that was what two armed guards, a private hangar, and a chartered jet amounted to—but he did hear diplomat bandied about more than once in hushed tones, along with the word president, but exactly which president, and of what country, he didn't know. The expressions of awe and fear on the faces of those who attended them, the fact that eye contact was always deferred, said more. Michael wondered what kind of pull John Cross had with the authorities. It was internationally potent, whatever it was, and they clearly were going to be allowed to leave South Africa and enter the United States without documentation of any kind, absolutely incognito. His mind spun with a million questions, but the look John had given him ... that stopped everything.

So they had spent the next twenty-four hours travelling on a chartered plane. It was a small aircraft and didn't have provision for baggage beneath, so Kim's coffin—an unceremonious-looking air freight crate—rode with them in the back of the passenger cabin all the way back to Boise. A load-keeping curtain had been strapped down between the "cargo" and their seats, but still.

They had touched down in Boise yesterday and nothing really happened after that, except for this—sometime in the early evening, John walked up to Michael, shook his hand firmly, and looked him in the eye. He said, "Thank you. Thank you for all you've done for my daughter. I'm very sorry for your loss." Michael understood that John was talking about Stanley. He figured Airel must have had a sit-down with John and asked him to go easy on him, telling him he had nowhere to go, nowhere to live, nowhere even to sleep, but all he had been able to do was nod.

And now today, at Kim's grave, he couldn't even do that. He stood wordlessly outside the inner circle and watched Airel grieve the loss of her best friend. If anyone in this whole mess was innocent, it was Kim.

At least at first.

***

ELLIE STOOD IN THE rain under a leafless tree wearing gray skinny jeans and a black zippered hoodie, the hem of the hood brought down low over her forehead. She looked on at the mourners. There was something like pity in her eyes as they beheld the sight of the girl's mother—a divorcée and single mother who, Uriel knew enough from her due diligence on Airel, had tried her best for Kim. But now the time in yet another human life had run its course, and those who were left had to find a way to move on.

Unfortunate that Kim got caught up in this. Uriel reflected on her own past, on her own dealings with the Brotherhood, on what she had learned over the course of millennia. Kim had been smart enough to do reasonably well in life, at least before it had gained an infinite number of extra dimensions. The Bloodstone had simply been overwhelming to her, in every possible way. And in some impossible ways.