Chasing Sunrise

Twenty-Seven

"This is gonna look really suspicious if we return the backhoe all covered with dust like this," I said.

"Is it?" asked Corban. "I don't think the damage here looks backhoe related. And I seriously doubt the police are gonna investigate this as a crime." He gestured at the crater and the dust still hanging in the air. "They'll probably be trying to classify it as some freakish natural phenomenon."

"Valid points," I agreed, though it was odd to think about ways the police would be misled. That went against my rule-bound nature.

Corban started his car, and drove over the uneven ground, toward the road.

That's when it fully hit me that we'd just killed Evan. I hadn't seen his body, but that massive explosion had been him being unable to sustain mist form. I wondered if he died without resuming his corporeal form, or if he snapped back to his corporeal form and died in the sunlight and crumbled to dust. Neither sounded like a great way to go.

Corban reached the paved road, carefully guided the car and trailer up onto it, and then sped up towards town.

I shut my eyes, a wave of nausea washing over me.

"You okay?" Corban asked.

I shook my head. "No."

He pulled over off the road and I peered through one eye and saw that we were in the parking area by the gorge, its great chasm open before us.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"We just killed someone," I said. "I mean... I know you say he was already dead, but..."

"But you're not making an easy transition into being a cold-blooded killer? That's fair." He turned up the heat and angled the vents in my direction. Warm, vanilla-scented air streamed over my skin and lifted a few strands of hair off my face.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I don't like it either. No matter how often I've had to do it, I hate it. And also, for what it's worth, Evan's killed five people that I know of. He figured out that killing homeless and transients attracted less attention. Doesn't make it easy to off him, though."

"You're also not a cold-blooded killer?" I tried to keep my tone light.

"I dunno. I was a soldier when I was alive." He stared off at the gorge.

"You were?"

He nodded. "That's how I got in trouble. Roman soldiers had to contribute to religious sacrifices, and I refused."

"So did you ever fight in battles?"

He shut his eyes. "Don't laugh at me, but I don't remember. I mean, yes, I've fought in battles, but before I ascended? I don't know. It was a really long time ago and you've gotta understand, there wasn't just one Dark Age between then and now. I went through several. I've seen a lot of innocent people die, and most of them because they were on the wrong side of a border, were the wrong color, prayed to the wrong deities, or just plain had stuff their neighbors wanted. Stupid technicalities that cost them their freedom and their lives."

I let that sink in. "So... do you protect non-Christians?" Silently I prayed for an answer I could live with.

"Of course I do," he said.

Good, I thought.

"I protect good people, and Christians... I mean, nobody's perfect, but you know as well as I do that not everyone who wears the label believes Christ's teachings. Some of the nastiest wars I ever saw were done in God's name." He rubbed his face with his hands. "I don't protect you because you wear a cross, Liana. I protect you because you want what anyone would want. A normal life. Free of having to cause pain to others."