Zeke Rising Read online

  She ushered me out of the way and locked the front door, but she paused for a second as if she was actually considering it. “No honey, I can’t afford to miss a day of work, and you can’t afford to miss school.”

  We made our way to the car, and I mulled over what she said and how she said it. “Wait…did you just call me dumb?” I asked across the hood of the little two-door Pontiac.

  “Of course not, honey, you’re brilliant, you know that.” She opened her door and started stuffing her purse, jacket, and other unnecessary junk into the back seat. “Just saying, if you don’t go to school, you’ll probably start doing drugs, join a gang, get shot in the street, and die in a gutter.”

  “Now who’s being overdramatic?” I said with my door open and only one foot in the car.

  “Just giving you a taste of your own medicine,” she stuck out her tongue and then plopped down and turned over the engine. I stood there staring at the caricature of Jesus on the side of the mug right in front of me. “C’mon honey, what are you waiting for?”

  “Mom?” I asked suggestively, “did you forget something?”

  She looked around inside the car quickly but no light bulbs went off. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Pretty sure you did. You forgot about Jesus.”

  She was confused for all of two seconds before using his name in vain followed by, “My coffee!” Instead of getting out of the car and grabbing the cup like a normal person might, she just blindly reached up and tried to grab it. I saw it coming, but there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. The knife of her hand found the side of the mug and knocked it backward. Coffee spilled out across the roof, and the mug toppled over a few times before the handle stopped it from falling off. She pulled her hand back in through the window and got out to see the damage saying “Oh shoot!” over and over again. I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “This isn’t funny, Liam!” and her whiny voice made me laugh even harder.

  “Wow! I finally see where I get it.”

  CHAPTER TWO: PREPARE NOW, WING IT LATER

  I could’ve easily flown to the American fracture in a day, but as I said before, there was no rush. I had a lot of sick humans to do research on, but that got boring if I stayed at it too long, so I also wanted to make sure to cross off some of my to-do list before I left for Earth. Sure, I’d probably come back every once in a while, but the ultimate goal was to make the move as permanent as possible.

  First order of business was to see my kids before leaving. I only have ten children, and that might sound like a lot to you, but when you remember just how old I am, and consider the fact that the number of nieces and nephews I have is well into six figures, it’s not very many at all. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret having children, well…except for maybe Stacy, I think I would’ve been fine if she had never been conceived, but besides that, I love my kids, it just got too weird for me to keep having offspring. See, as a fallen angel, my romantic options are limited to the souls of the damned, or my three sisters that Fell. I never hooked up with a fellow angel, though, not because of the reason you think – it’s not taboo for us, it’s more like the Greek/Roman Gods. We’re not even blood relatives, because…you know, we don’t have blood, so yeah, even if Trini wasn’t a crazy little nutcase, or Aida had anything remotely close to a personality and I had done anything with them, you’d have no place to judge me. My third sister, well, Lucy’s a little too powerful for me to even think about getting close to. My hands instinctually get protective just talking about it, so let’s get back on track, shall we?

  I still remember when I found out I’d be a father for the first time. A few of my brothers had already had kids, so I knew what I was in for and it frightened the hell out of me, no pun intended. Going back to the Greek/Roman God metaphor, in the same way their children are crazy monsters like three-headed dogs or one-eyed giants, it’s not very unlike the offspring of a fallen angel and damned human soul. You humans know these children as demons, and I’ve been doing my best not to contribute to their rising numbers, but…well, accidents happen.

  Monsters or not, though, they’re my children, so I did my best to raise them right, teach them right from wrong, and all that. Of course, my youngest was born around a hundred years ago, so they all predate that everyone’s special, you tried your best and that’s great, here’s a trophy! crap that I’ve been seeing lately. Now, do I sometimes wonder what my relationship would be like with my kids if I had coddled them more? Yes, but I just remind myself that would only be in my interest. All ten of my kids are strong, independent members of society, and I’m proud of that. They don’t really talk to me much, but that’s just because I was a bad father in other aspects.

  Four of my kids lived in the city of Abaddon, so that was my first stop. I had already been looking for potential hosts for about a week by the time I headed for the city. My favorite at the time, a 24-year old biker that had clipped a semi on Hwy. 550, had just died. He even had the nerve to go to Heaven, so I couldn’t so much as yell at him for it. He was the fourth potential I had really liked only to watch die before I could take advan…I mean, before I could help them.

  With the biker off the table, I decided to take another break from host hunting and with my head off the screen, I was able to enjoy the sights of Abaddon, for what they’re worth. It might be the finest city in Hell, but it’s still Hell. Dark rock bricks frosted together made up the majority of the blocky architecture and the buildings all blended together like an artist’s worst nightmare. As I approached from the northern sky, I could see the entirety of the sprawling metropolis – skyscrapers huddled together at the center of the city only to grow shorter and further apart in an outward ring, gradual at first, but after a few dozen miles it turned to a slum of rock piles barely worthy of being called homes.

  I landed outside the city limits and walked the rest of the way in passing one of the aforementioned rock piles to see swarms of tiny demons hovering around and slithering through the cracks. It looked like a bustling coral reef in one of Earth’s oceans, only significantly more disturbing. Their size told me all I needed to know, they were weak beings, the offspring of demons and the damned over many generations; whatever angelic power conceived their ancestors had been diluted almost to the point of nonexistence. I stomped my foot as I turned past them, and they fearfully retreated into the safety of their home. If they were fish in a reef, that made me like an army of great white sharks with frickin’ laser beams. Even hidden in the rocks, I could’ve destroyed them all, but I was just messing around with them, all in good fun.

  I received a lot of surprised glances walking through the slums, but by the time I reached the city center there was enough of a crowd for me to blend in. I reached a fork and had to decide who to visit first. I settled on the conclusion that my second to youngest would be the easiest to find, so I took the right and headed to his mother’s house. I already knew she’d be pissed to see me, but I was used to that. I reached her place and knocked with a big grin, just to piss her off that little bit extra. She opened the door and as soon as her eyes met mine, her expression soured just as I knew it would. It made my smile bigger.

  “Oh, great, it’s you,” she snarled in her thick Serbian accent. “Behemoth not here.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Nina. And yeah, I figured. He is forty feet tall after all, kinda hard to miss. Know where he is?” Behemoth got his name as you might expect, he was fourteen-and-a-half feet tall when he was born and only grew from there, and as I’m sure you could imagine, any woman that gave birth to something like that might not be too fond of the guy responsible for putting her through it.

  “He run off with she-devil sister. Say they would start new life on Earth.” I gave her a blank look indicating her answer was too vague for me to know who she meant. “Ugh, Shiva.” she clarified with a heavy roll of her eyes. “Her mother here, too, suggest you run off before she see you.”

  Shiva, one of my daughters, may have been literally made out of ice, but she got that from her figurative ice queen of a mother, Vladimira. Back when I met her I wasn’t the light-hearted sarcastic bastard I am today, but I realized my mistake a few decades too late. While Nina wasn’t too far off from that same description, I actually liked annoying Nina, her reactions were entertaining to me at this point, but being on Vladimira’s bad side was no laughing matter. “I’ll leave, promise, but if you know where they were headed…?”

  She snarled again. “Russia, all I know. Goodbye.” And like that she slammed the door in my face.

  I stood with my nose a millimeter from the door for a second in slight shock of hearing that two of my kids ran off to Earth without so much as a goodbye text. It was for things exactly like this that I bought them the new iPhone when it first came out down here in 2011.

  I couldn’t have been standing there for very long though, because I heard the sharp Slavic cackle that is Vladimira’s voice through the door say, “Who was that?” and that was all I needed to turn and run until I was at a safe distance.

  I stopped running when I reached the center building at the city’s heart, home to hundreds of thousands of demons, damned, and fallen angels alike. I looked up at the towering structure and found the window belonging to my second child, eldest of my sons, Fenrir. I decided to text him before barging in, but when there was no reply and I grew impatient, I flew straight up anyway.

  As you meet more of my kids, you’ll come to realize I wasn’t the most original dad, because yes, I named my boy Fenrisúlfr because when he popped out he had a full coat of black fur, snout, tail and paws just like the Norse wolf his mother’s people told stories about, give or take a few opposable dew claws. In hindsight, I should’ve picked a different name, like Max or Lucky, because the one I gave him went straight to his head. Over the course of his life, he’s made it his mission to fully embody the Fenrir of legend, going so far at times that he’s actually started believing he is the mythological beast and that he’ll bring about Ragnarok and end the world. I have to occasionally remind him that the “real” Fenrir dies during that apocalyptic myth, but with the fractures big enough for him to cross, I worry what he’ll do with his misguided fantasies. I found myself hoping he was actually going to be at home and not off with his two siblings.

  “I already told you,” I heard through the window in my son’s growly voice mere moments before I could get a visual. “You can count on me, one hundred percent, you have my full support whenever you decide to move forward on this.” I stayed low outside the window and peeked just enough to see my son pacing through his room with a phone to his pointed ear.

  He was on the phone, which made me a little less upset that he didn’t text me back, so I decided to wait for him to hang up.

  “No, don’t worry about me, I know this is a big undertaking, I wouldn’t expect you to jump the gun on anything. You just focus on getting everything set up, laid out, and ready for the next step, this isn’t something we should rush into.” Despite his throaty grumble, Fenrir had a very professional speaking tone. It was a nice sight to see as his father and gave me hope that his ‘I am a God’ phase might be over. Perhaps focusing on his business could keep him from you know, trying to kick off an apocalypse, or doing drugs, you know, whatever the kids are into these days.

  “All right, I’ve gotta run. No, thank you.” I kind of wondered who he was talking to, if it was anyone I might know, but I couldn’t hear anything from the other end. “What?” Fenrir looked puzzled at the phone. “Oh no, that was just a text from dad, it was nothing.”

  Not going to lie, that got me back to being upset.

  “I guess he’s in the city for a bit, I’ll probably just text him back tonight, say I was too busy or something like that. Usually works.”

  Sad thing was, it did always work now that I was thinking back. “Why that little piece of dog sh–” I whispered under my breath until my phone buzzed and bleeped the default text tone from my pocket. I covered my phone as quick as I could and ducked down, but Fenrir must’ve heard it.

  “What the?” he said perplexed. “Oh, no, not you. I’ll call you later, we’ll do lunch.” I heard the padded footsteps approach the window slowly with the click-click of his claws like an offbeat metronome. Since he clearly didn’t want to see me today, I decided to respect his wish, so, yet again, I turned tail (figuratively) and flew out of there at top speed.

  I looked back up to see the small figure in the window walk up, look around, and leave none the wiser.

  “Now, let’s see what was so important,” I said quietly to myself as I fished out my phone to check my message. It was a response from my youngest, the fourth and last of my children living in Abaddon. He was running some errands nearby and said I could join him if I wanted to, so I did. One loud whoosh, and I was standing next to him. “Steve!”

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed, dropping a bag of groceries from the start I had given him.

  “Not even close. It’s me, your dad,” I said, laughing at my own dad-joke.

  Steve wobbled a bit, as he bent down to retrieve his belongings. As far as demons are concerned, he looked more human than most, but he was very thin and frail; if all of my children were a litter, he was undoubtedly the runt. It took him a while to chase down everything that had rolled away, but before long he had everything together again and hanging from his three fingered hands. “You made good time,” he said sarcastically.

  I had a feeling he was madder about not helping him pick up his stuff than he was for making him drop it in the first place, so I stretched out a helping hand. Better late than never, right? “Like me to carry that for you?”

  He was reluctant at first, but his arms were already shaking from the load so he handed it over. “I’ve just got one more stop before heading home.”

  He led the way, and we got started with the awkward small talk. After a few long silences, we got to talking about family, and since he had more contact with his siblings than I did, he carried most of that conversation. He told me more about Behemoth and Shiva’s Russia trip, how Leonard and Shax were adjusting after their move to Gomorrah, and that Fenrir had been blowing him off a lot lately.

  “Yeah, don’t worry, you’re not alone on that one,” I said and followed it up with the majority of the story, just leaving out the part about eavesdropping and running away. That made the story a lot shorter and less exciting than I realized it would be, so I ended up looking kind of stupid. “Yeah, um, I guess you had to be there.”

  We were already on our way back to Steve’s house, and I hoped we could wrap up before getting there. “So, what brings you here, Dad? You don’t exactly reach out to us much anymore.” His tone hit me with a tinge of guilt.

  “Well, I’m thinking of moving up north,” I pointed up to the shimmering fractures overhead. “I hear it’s warmer,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood back to comfortable.

  “Yeah, I guess. I made a few trips last year, but I don’t know, it really wasn’t for me.” He sank his head and started lightly kicking a rock along our path. “But that’s just me, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.” I wasn’t sure what to say back, so we just walked a little further. “Did um, do you know what you’ll do for a host yet?”

  “Your Uncle Zak asked me that. I’m still not totally sure, but I’ve still got some time.”

  “Shiva said Russia’s real easy, a lot of remote areas to nab people.”

  “It’s not that easy for me; I need permission to take a host,” I explained. “I did find one potential in Kazakhstan though.”

  “Oh, right, I think I knew that, sorry. What makes you think they’ll, you know, let you?”

  I could see his house, so I tried to make it short. “Well, she just got diagnosed with breast cancer, she’s going to try taking the treatment, but her doctor’s an idiot, it’s only gonna do more harm than good. The part I’m not too sure of is…well, she’s a sort of Nihilist, she doesn’t believe in anything after death, so I’ll have to deliver that news softly, but at least she won’t have any prejudice against me at first. I don’t know, it’s the best I’ve got so far.” We were almost to the front of the house so I slowed my pace. “I’d really like to start in America, though; I’m meeting Uncle Zak there actually, guess I should get going.”

  “Oh, sure you don’t want to come inside for a bit?” He reached for the door, and I started creeping away, but the door parted of its own fruition, and if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve sworn an angel was on the other side. “You’re late young man,” she said to her son. She spotted me and her face lit up. “But with good reason I see. Good to see you, Zeke.”

  Hearing her say my name made my knees weak now just as much as it had the first time a century ago. I cleared my throat while also trying to remain cool. I don’t think it worked, but it could’ve been worse. “Same, you, um, you look good, Dorothy.” Her long straight brunette hair fell past her slender shoulders like strands of silk. Her milky white skin was smooth and spotless like porcelain, and she wore a shimmering red flapper dress with black boots that zipped all the way up to her knees.

  Steve took the bag from my hand, and that gave me enough of a jolt to stop staring. He walked inside past his mother, and she turned back to me, placing her elbow against the door frame and leaning into it. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” her long eyelashes fluttered with each blink, as they concealed her striking hazel eyes, teasing me to lose myself in them only to have them taken away in short intervals.

  The truth was yes, a million times yes, but I had to be strong. A hundred years was a long time, and we had a lot of history, complicated history. Usually, Zak was the one to smack me in the head and convince me going back was more harm than good, and the times I dismissed his warnings, he always turned out to be right. For decades, I lied to myself to believe the good outweighed the heartbreaks, but not this time. I was about to move across plains of existence, about to start a whole new life. With that new life, I wanted to start it off right, to cut out all my bad old habits and become the me I’ve always wanted to be. I was going to finally have some self-respect for myself. I didn’t need her anymore, I was beyond that.