The First Ones Read online

  Jet stared at the mass that Ursula was holding and watched as the thing pulsated in her hand. Jet guessed that it to be the Craig-thing’s heart and he looked from the heart to Ursula’s face to see the feral rage that etched her beautiful features. It was frightening to behold, but it wasn’t something that made Jet feel he needed to run away.

  Ursula looked down to the organ she held and regarded it momentarily as it continued to beat rhythmically on its own. Whatever stupor Jet might have been in was shattered as Ursula growled deep in her throat, then she struck at the heart with her teeth, black blood rapidly covering her chin and cheeks in a mask of gore.

  Jet jumped back at the sight as Ursula’s teeth worried at the heart, until a large chunk came free, which she promptly spat to the side. Ursula looked up to Jet and saw the expression on his face. It must have said volumes, as her eyes softened and she held the heart out to Jet.

  Jet raised his hands, “None for me, thank you.”

  Ursula grimaced and frowned, “No stupid, just watch.”

  Jet looked to the heart and saw that its beating had slowed and continued to do so until it finally came to a stop. Jet looked up to Ursula’s face and saw her smiling again, her features once again beautiful and alluring, except for all the dark blood that was still smeared on the lower part of her face.

  He smiled back uneasily, running one hand through the hair on the back of his head, feeling rather awkward in response to Ursula’s broad smile.

  Ursula tossed the organ over her shoulder and looked wickedly at Jet, “You saved me.”

  “Uh…” Jet saw the look in Ursula’s eyes and felt a wave of apprehension come over him, “…. okay.”

  Ursula sighed and shook her head in feigned resignation, “I suppose that means, seeing as you’re my savior, I have to give you a kiss.”

  Electricity flew through Jet at the thought of kissing Ursula; however, the gore that covered her face quickly tempered his desire.

  “Could you maybe…” Jet had started to say, but Ursula held her hand up silencing him.

  “No,” she commanded, “let’s not ruin this moment with words.”

  Jet took a step back.

  “My hero,” Ursula held her arms out and jogged over to him.

  Jet ran for the van with Ursula laughing in hot pursuit, as Aurora looked on from the passenger seat shaking her head in amusement.

  Chapter 12: Death from Above

  It only took a couple of minutes, once the moment of nervous frivolity had ended, for Jet to put what little gear they had into the back of the intact, fueled Cessna. He then secured Aurora in the front passenger’s seat, while Ursula readied the plane for takeoff.

  Jet hesitated in the loading process as a thought occurred to him, “You do know how to fly one of these things right?”

  Ursula was busy going through the pilot’s normal checklist ritual and she absently remarked, “No, but how hard could it be?”

  Jet looked at the back of her head, uneasy for a moment, when Ursula turned and smiled, her face clean of any evidence of the blood that she had smeared all over his mouth earlier when she had “forced” the most delightful kiss upon him. He made had made a show of hacking, spitting and wiping his mouth when Ursula had finally released him, but truth be told, he was only barely managing to keep a ridiculously satisfied smile completely off of his face, and it was still there, even now.

  “I’m kidding,” Ursula finally said, “I have a pilot’s license and am rated to fly on much more sophisticated aircraft than this go-cart.”

  He felt a slight relief at hearing those words and found that he wasn’t able to take his eyes off of her.

  “You’re smiling like an idiot,” Ursula cooed mockingly.

  The grin on Jet’s face immediately vanished, “No, I’m not.”

  Ursula studied him for a moment, and then said, “Now you’re blushing.”

  “Whatever that thing was, it must have hit you too hard,” He mumbled to her, “You’re delusional…probably need a doctor.”

  “Wow,” Ursula marveled as she looked Jet up and down, “one little kiss and you’ve basically become my bitch… and you’re smiling again.”

  Jet wanted to respond with a suitable comeback, but just looked down and chuckled quietly for a second before he grew a little more serious, “You know I have a million questions right now.”

  Ursula’s smile faded a bit, but the glint in her eyes didn’t diminish as she nodded, “I know, and there will be time to talk once we get into the air, but for now please just buckle up and we’ll continue when we are safely at altitude.”

  He nodded, took his seat next to Aurora and Ursula started the engine. As he looked out the window at the bloodied mass of what was left of the Akhlut, a cold shudder coursed through him. He tried to relax, knowing the thing was dead, but the memory of the horror that it had been would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Aurora’s voice spoke softly, “It will all be fine.”

  Jet turned to the child-god who was comically dwarfed by the seat he had buckled her into and was just starting to reply, when a shadow passed over the plane.

  It confused him because it was still dark and nearly an hour before sunrise, with the only man-made lights coming from either the abandoned SUV’s headlights or the plane. There were no overhead lights to make a shadow that could pass above the plane, and then Jet realized that he had felt the shadow, more than he had actually seen it.

  Ursula must have noticed it as well because she began to move frantically at the controls, grabbed the stick and put the plane into motion. Fortunately, everyone was already strapped into their seats, or the sudden and jerky movement would have thrown them around the interior of the plane as it began to sprint down the runway.

  Jet looked back, saw what looked like a huge bird land next to the mass that had been the Akhlut and thought it might have been a Golden Eagle. The enormous raptors were indigenous to this area, but he realized that this one was several times larger than the normal size that an eagle would attain when it was fully grown. The bird studied the Akhlut’s remains and then raised its head and shrieked. The noise was so loud that even as far away as they were and fully enclosed within the plane, he still had to turn his head away and instinctively raise his hands in an attempt to cover his ears. The cry died out as the bird turned and looked toward the plane.

  “It’s Kaylanna.” Aurora’s voice said calmly, “we need to hurry.”

  “Kay…?” The question froze in Jet’s throat, as memory of his grandfather’s tales connected with the name, “Ursula! We need to get moving!”

  “On it!”

  “We have company!”

  “I know!” Ursula called back as the small plane picked up speed, “I’m hurrying!”

  Jet watched as the bird extended its wings and flew up from the ground. It gained some altitude then made a wide arc that took it in the opposite direction from the plane as it flapped its massive wings and dove for the ground. The bird came out of its dive only a few feet above the ground and hurtled forward at tremendous speed toward the plane.

  Ursula yelled, “Hang on!” and pushed the throttles to the dash, sending the plane hurtling even faster down the runway. Yet despite the plane’s increasing speed, Jet could see the bird was steadily gaining on them.

  “Hurry!” he urged.

  “Almost there!” she muttered under her breath.

  The bird closed within twenty feet before the Cessna reached its proper takeoff velocity and she pulled the wheel into her gut causing the plane began to finally lift off of the ground. Jet breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the plane rise, but with two flaps of its massive wings the bird rose with the plane, closing within ten feet of the plane’s tail.

  “It’s still on us!” Jet cried. And then he asked Ursula, “Can this thing go any faster, or do some highly evasive maneuvers?”

  She shot him a quick and incredulous look, turned back to the controls and the open sky above, while saying, �
�Evasive maneuvers! Are you serious?”

  “Well, you need to do something!” he quietly responded.

  “This isn’t a fighter plane, but we can outrun her as long as we continue to ascend. She won’t be able to keep this up for long.”

  Jet wasn’t so sure, and he watched as the eagle grew larger and larger, continuing to gain on their airplane. Jet looked around the plane, as if searching desperately for an idea, but there was nothing he could think of doing, given their situation. He looked out the side window as the wisps of clouds began to flow over the wings. It made him think about the forces that the bird, unnatural though it may be, had to fly against.

  Jet had turned to Ursula and spoke his thought out loud as soon as he thought it, “Are we flying into the wind?”

  Ursula sounded impatient as she quickly replied, “Yes, why?”

  He frowned, looking out at the wing of the plane, and felt his focus fall on the clouds as they were passing over the wing.

  From where she sat Aurora’s tiny voice whispered the word, “Yes,” with the adult inflection in the word making it sound as if she were very pleased with something.

  Slowly more clouds began to shift, moving into the planes path until their billowy vapors were being pulled over the wing, while Jet found himself locked in a conscious daydream watching the clouds roll and twist over and over themselves in an almost rhythmical and orchestrated manner. He even thought he could predict the way the clouds might undulate and tried to imagine them rolling in spirals toward the oncoming Kaylanna, not unlike the way he used to look out his grandfather’s car window and watch the moon “follow him home.” Jet didn’t hear the eagle’s shrieking cry of protest, which cut through the sky just as the cabin rocked from a sudden shift in the air’s turbulence. Ursula quickly made the appropriate corrections in time to steady their Cessna TTX+, as the winds continued to increase their speed outside the cabin. She stared in confusion at the unnatural wind patterns and the way the white plumes were flowing faster and faster over the surface of the cockpit windows.

  When Jet woke from his daydream he realized that the pursuing eagle hadn’t been able to keep up with the plane. Kaylanna was gone. Relief washed over him and Jet turned away from the window with a single parting glance to make sure Kaylanna had disappeared from view. He could just make out a small shadow turning and dropping away, apparently giving up the chase as the turbulence that had been shaking the plane seemed to vanish and a quiet came over the cabin.

  Jet checked on Aurora, and found her smiling in a ridiculous manner at him.

  Thinking the child, or whatever inside of her, had simply enjoyed the ride, Jet nodded, “Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?”

  “Actually, I’d say it was quite enlightening,” Aurora answered in a teasing manner. Jet didn’t get the joke, but saw no reason to press the issue; instead he turned to talk to Ursula, only to find her openly gawking at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “How… How did you do that?” She stammered.

  “Do what?” Jet asked, then got defensive, “I didn’t do anything!”

  Ursula just continued to stare at him as if waiting for him to admit something.

  Jet’s eyes began to dart around the cabin, “What... is it you think I did?”

  Chapter 13: Ageless

  The trio rode in silence, allowing the momentary relief of having escaped Kaylanna to calm their nerves, until Ursula reached below her seat and lifted a water bottle that had been stored there. The bottle had a sports tip and she used her teeth to pop the top before squeezing a long stream of water into her open mouth. When she was finished she offered the bottle to Jet, who accepted it graciously and took two long swallows of water from the container.

  “Ursula…” He began, but she interrupted him.

  “See if Aurora needs some water first.”

  Jet nodded, but when he turned to the child he found her curled up, turned to one side and fast asleep with a thumb in her mouth.

  He marveled at the child’s ability to simply go to sleep after all that had happened, and then he remembered that she was, in actuality, a god. And he frowned.

  “She looks like such a normal kid.”

  “She is,” Ursula said quietly, “the First One is simply along for the ride. When this is over she’ll go back to being a regular two-year-old.”

  “What will happen to her?” he asked.

  Ursula looked at Jet and he saw a slight apprehension in her expression, “We have to survive first before we can worry about that.”

  It wasn’t an answer and the evasiveness upset him, even though Jet knew she was right about the timing, “If we are going to die together then you should know I don’t like cryptic answers.”

  Instead of enlightening him with an explanation, she simply replied, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Jet looked at Ursula and waited, but when he realized she wasn’t going to discuss that topic he asked a different question.

  “So,” he began, “what was it you thought I did back there?”

  Ursula just stared through the windshield at the empty sky in response.

  “Silence, in this case, isn’t particularly helpful, you know?”

  Ursula shook her head, “Remember last time when Aurora showed you too much too soon? Remember how that felt? How that ended?”

  He put his hands against his stomach as he remembered, “Yes.”

  “That’s why I can’t just blurt the answers out for you,” Ursula fixed him a “sorry” expression and said, “Some things you have to figure out for yourself.”

  Jet thought about it, but his mind was blank, “Give me a hint?”

  Ursula smiled, “Let’s just say that with your background and training, you are a lot more than you think you are.”

  “Wait... Training? What training do you …?”

  Ursula laughed, “Definitely not your Forest Ranger training.”

  Jet settled in his seat and mumbled, “We aren’t called ‘Forest Rangers’ anymore.”

  They rode in silence for another moment as he thought about the thing they had come across and fought to the death at the airport.

  “So…” Jet asked cautiously, “Let’s assume I believe the fairy tales for a second. The child is a ‘First One,’ right?”

  “Actually, Aurora is just a child, with the Spirit of a First One inside of her,” Ursula corrected.

  “Right, right. And that thing you killed back at the airport?”

  “One of Kaylanna’s first born.”

  “Kaylanna?” Jet asked, “The Ancient?”

  Ursula said simply, “Yes.”

  “So that thing was an actual Akhlut and not some distant relative like the other werewolves?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is it dead?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and then added, “and thank you for the help. I may not have been able to take it on my own.”

  “Just instinct,” Jet shrugged, “but you’re welcome. I don’t remember anything in the stories of the Akhlut being…” Jet considered what it was he had seen, “whatever that thing was.”

  “You forget that half of Kaylanna’s first born were abominations without form. They can shift into whatever animal or horror they wish.”

  Jet blew out a breath, “Demons.”

  “If you like,” she shrugged.

  Jet shook his head as if to clear it of the image of the thing from the airport, “And the eagle that chased us was Kaylanna herself?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “So…” He frowned as his thoughts distracted him, “What are you?”

  Ursula’s head spun to him with a look of anger and hurt on her face that made Jet instantly put his hands up in surrender as he realized the insensitivity of his words.

  “Damn,” Jet shook his head as he cursed, “sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “You think I’m a freak?” she stammered.

  “No, no!” Jet found himself stammering, “I don’t�
�I didn’t…”

  “Or maybe every bit the monster like those we’ve been fighting tonight?”

  “Of course not! It’s just that…”

  “Just that… What?!?” she glared.

  Jet met Ursula’s glare and their eyes locked. Jet was sure that his gaze held no anger or challenge in it, but he consciously refused to look away as Ursula’s eyes burned with fury. Then she softened and looked away from him first and Jet saw the smallest of quivers on her bottom lip as she tried to hide the emotions that were overcoming her.

  Jet spoke softly and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, “Ursula, the thought that you are something monstrous or evil could not be further from my mind.”

  He let go of her shoulder and lifted her chin so she would look at his face. She didn’t resist and a tear fell from one eye. Jet wiped away the tear with his thumb, cupping her face in his hands. He surprised himself when he leaned in and kissed her. Ursula seemed surprised as well, and her body, which had jumped initially, settled into him, as her lips melted into his and she kissed him back passionately, needing him, and longing for his touch. She kissed him as if she had been waiting her whole life to do so and he felt the world start to spin as he began to lose all sense of himself within her kiss.

  Then he realized his head wasn’t spinning as much as the plane had begun to dip to the left. Ursula was so lost in the moment that when Jet whispered, “Ursula we’re falling…”