Children of the Archangels

CHAPTER 1: LUKE MISSES HIS GIRLFRIEND

Luke was missing his girlfriend who used to be possessed by a demon.

Please note that I usually advise against interacting with any person who has been possessed by a demon and to find your local priest instead. However, Luke is a special case and managed to both save her soul and find himself a soulmate in the process.

But now his girlfriend lives on the other side of the country.

Luke hadn't even set foot on the campus of his new school and he already regretted leaving his old life at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. For starters, Luke was over the cold and the mounds of snow. They call these the Rocky Mountains, but they might as well call them clouds because he couldn't see any land buried beneath the sea of white.

And hiking up the snow in Vans is an excellent way to get frostbite.

"How much further?" Luke's feet were already numb, and he felt like collapsing and dying. The falling snow would be enough to bury him.

"No one told you to wear flat shoes to go hiking," Kevin said. Kevin was his old roommate from CUA who turned out to be an ambassador and an alum of the new school Luke was climbing the Rocky Mountains to get into (and you thought your typical college admissions process was tough). He had thick round glasses, messy hair, and a pretty toned body that blended into the snow, rivaling Luke's more modest figure, short curly hair, and an olive complexion.

"But you didn't say anything about hiking through Antarctica."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you possessed the same knowledge of geography and topography as a fetus in the womb. Let me educate you. High altitude," he enunciated each word as if he was talking to a slow baby, "means cold." He pretended to shiver, although the whipping snow made it more believable. "Rocky Mountains are very high, so they are very cold."

Luke rolled his eyes. "Okay, you don't have to be an ass about it though."

Kevin reached into his bag and took out a thermos. He tossed it to Luke. "Drink it."

Luke caught the thermos and it felt warm. He uncapped it and watched the wisps of smoke rise up and battle the cold air. He took a large gulp and swallowed only to realize he wanted to vomit it back up. It tasted like hot water diluted with bitter lemon tea and ketchup.

Luke spat. "Is this your piss?"

Kevin smirked. "It'll keep you warm."

Luke tossed the yellow liquid in the air at Kevin, feeling satisfied that he could get back at him by drenching him in his own pee. But then the liquid just exploded into yellow dust and coated the snow on the ground in golden crystals.

"Nice going," Kevin said. "You just wasted some valuable medicine."

"Your piss isn't that holy," Luke said. Feeling was returning to his legs like blood rushing back down after sitting on the toilet for too long. His legs turned to jello and he collapsed face-first into the snow. Okay, maybe his pee is holy, he thought.

Kevin was about to yank him back up. "We don't have time to waste. We need to get—" Kevin tuned himself to a whisper in the air that tried blending into the snow storm like silver on gray.

Luke wanted to finish his sentence with a witty remark like "to your mom's house," but Kevin snuffed his pathetic attempt at a comeback by shoving his face back in the snow. Luke wanted to bite back, but Kevin wrapped his hand around his mouth, and Luke knew Kevin never washed his hands. A three-day old baby's diaper after having explosive diarrhea would've smelled better than his stale hand.

Kevin tapped his back three times gently. Luke wanted to squirm and scramble. I knew I shouldn't have trusted him, Luke thought. Maybe his friends Alex and Geo back in D.C. were right. Alex even went as far as to threaten to cram his meaty fist down Kevin's throat if anything happened to Luke. Maybe it had been a wrong decision to venture off into the mountains alone with someone as indifferent as Kevin. Would Kevin abandon Luke at the first whiff of trouble?

But then Luke heard what Kevin was hearing: the whispers. They slithered like snakes feeling their way around the air. The words were inaudible, a language far older than Adam and Eve.

As quickly as the whispers came, they left, and Kevin unwrapped his hand from around Luke's mouth and yanked him out of the snow. He pulled him up the mountain and picked up his pace.

"What was that?" Luke asked.

"Trouble," Kevin marched forward.

"You're an open textbook," Luke sighed sarcastically and saw his breath float off into the cold wind.

Kevin hadn't come back with a sarcastic remark yet. If a couple of weird whispers in the wind was enough to spook Kevin into silence, well then, something was up...

Like when Luke was flung off the ground with a powerful blast of wind, separating him from Kevin. Luke tumbled off the cliff like an avalanche, bringing down snow with him. He was glad that this part of the rocky mountains wasn't so rocky after all.

Eventually a cliff ledge caught him like a net and he had the wind knocked out of him only to have it forcefully returned to him in a quantity he couldn't handle. The more the wind shoved its way through his nostrils, the more he spazzed out and shuddered. He was losing control over himself. He wanted to pinch his nose, to stop the airflow, but he had no use of his arms.

As the wind made his head swirl, he heard a voice in his head whisper with his own tongue, "Your body is mine."