Messengers Rising: 444, #3

By Relvin Gonzalez

The only way to free her loved ones is through killing a human.

 

Luna must seek a target named Robert on the barbaric planet Earth and end his life. Only then will Lucifer release her mother and allow her to reunite with her friends.

 

However, upon arrival, she discovers her prejudice against earthlings might have been a deception.

 

She must now choose between carrying out Lucifer's orders and killing an innocent human, or sparing him and facing the celestial consequences of her actions.

 

Join Luna as she continues to explore the secrets of her past in this blend of mythology and science fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Relvin Gonzalez
• Release date: Jun 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9781964803050

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

POL

There was a hole where the windshield used to be. Wind fluttered strands of his raven black hair in and out of his horizon. The hair attached to him, and he detached from the world. Depersonalized. Reckless. Vibrations throughout his body, blinding noise in his ears—a glass shattering orchestra. His chest throbbed at 140 heartbeats per minute. Blue blinking lights rose on the mirror’s line of sight. A chuckling sound from the heavens sliced through the earsplitting siren.

He looked up from behind his sunglasses.

With a turn of the steering wheel, the car kicked up clouds of dust and the blinking blue lights were his audience around a 360-degree concert stage. He hit the brakes to face his predators.

Dead silent.

Amidst the frenzy, he paused and contemplated on the dust. Dust, as it suspended in the scorching air of the New Mexico Prairie. People in his life couldn’t hold their attention on a single thing for more than one second, but his weakness was to fixate on everything for far too long. He opened the door of a 1965 Mustang and stepped out into the grass. He knew the grass was called Blue Grama, though he wasn’t sure why he knew that, or how. Maybe a teacher had said it while he fantasized of being a rockstar, a dream which he had since fulfilled. His brain had the bad habit of absorbing facts he had no use for. Burned out by the industry, he had left his career behind some odd weeks ago, or at least that’s what his publicists went with. The truth was much stranger.

In the New Mexico desert, he tried to forget the truth. The first policeman that got out of the patrol car was a heavyset man with a serious face and a mustache that covered half his mouth. He tried speaking, but his voice was lost in the deafening noise flying overhead. The policeman waved the helicopter away, then slammed twice over the roof of the car. His partner passed him a megaphone.

Stop, or we will shoot. I repeat. Stop now, or we will shoot, the voice exploded from the megaphone.

You can come get me, the Mustang driver shouted.

The policeman looked confused and brought the megaphone back to his mouth. Don’t move. Get down on your knees and place your hands behind your back. We will come to you.

The man with the sunglasses complied. The mustached policeman threw the megaphone into the patrol car and signaled his younger partner to go ahead.

Led by their guns, they approached the offender until the labels on their uniforms were clear enough to read. The man with the sunglasses ignored the younger one, as the buttons on his shirt were silver, meaning he was a newer hire, and focused on the one with the golden buttons and a belt wrapped diagonally over his chest with Senior Patrolman initialized over it. A. Ward, the badge read.

Officer Ward. Do you care for a story?

Ward had the stern voice of routine. Save it. Then to his partner, Cuff him.

While the silver buttoned youngster cuffed him, the man with the sunglasses said, A policeman, dedicating his life to protect and serve. Do you even know what you’re protecting and serving?

Ward stowed away his gun. If I were you, I would stop talking until you get a lawyer.

But this is so much bigger than you and me. We’re probably nothing to these creatures. Nothing.

Yeah, whatever you say. You people get weirder every year. Damn punks have nothing to do but go about ruining a perfect day. Must be heatstroke. Get up. Ward yanked him from his jacket’s collar and pushed him toward the patrol car in front of them.

Once inside the car, the man with the sunglasses pleaded, They’re among us.

Ward turned back, gun aimed at the man, and said, Shut up!

You need to hear this. Everyone needs to hear it. Or everyone will die.

The silver buttoned officer looked at the rearview mirror, then at Ward.

Ward faced his partner, then turned toward the road, put the gun away, and looked at every mirror in the car. Shut the hell up, you’re giving me a headache, he said, and covered his face with his hat before the car made it to the highway.

The man stared at the road and watched the lane lines merge together as one. He accelerated against his will toward the next location, the next stage, some place where new people awaited his performance, knives out to feed from a piece of him. His body eased into the car’s vibration, and the vibration joined with the lines, and the landscape blinked into eyelid red, and he slept.

The man was falling, slowly. At first he reached up desperately, hoping for salvation, but it wasn’t long before he surrendered to his fate. And he relaxed his body. His arms outstretched, he watched the world shrink on top of him, and he sunk down an infinite well. Darkness swallowed him whole.

The car’s harsh stop bumped the man’s head against the police car’s partition, rousing him from his sleep. White, limestone buildings made everything brighter than it really was, and he squinted his eyes to the bite of the stinging daylight. The car swayed when Ward pushed his body out the door. His attention shifted to the front of the car, then to the rearview mirror, where the young driver emerged with a piercing stare latched onto his face.

He didn’t know the city, but it couldn’t have been far from the last sign he had read a few minutes earlier, before driving a stolen car straight into the fences of private desert acres. Solano, the sign had read. Yet none of it mattered. He wanted to get arrested, to rest protected behind bars and guns, and, opposed to common belief, it was easy to get what anyone wanted if they tried hard enough.

Behind his desk, Ward let out a groan, and an old swivel chair squeaked when he let his body fall on it. He stared at their prisoner and the younger officer locking him inside a cell. With the gate locked in place, he turned to a Police Officer Shield Plaque hanging on the wall, and smiled when his gaze reached the Employee of the Month commemorative text. He then grabbed the remote, and the TV turned on to a picture of an old woman sitting in an armchair. Ward pressed on the remote again, and the woman spoke.

"—whenever people ask me, well, what can I do?" the woman on the TV said, "I tell them to be ready. I say, keep your eyes open, because the question is not whether they’re out there. The real question is, when are they coming for you? For all of us. And will you be ready?" The old lady stared intensely at the camera, her eyes almost bulging from the sockets.

The man with the sunglasses stood up from the corner and grabbed onto the cell bars. "I killed one," he said.

Ward turned to him. What?

The man with the sunglasses repeated the sentence as if it would make sense the second time.

What do you mean, you killed one?

An alien. At least it didn’t look human after it was dead.

Ward threw a glance at him,—that fishhook eyebrow that screamed You’re crazy without uttering a word—and turned back to the television.

The documentary had cut to a helicopter hovering over white mountain peaks that spanned across the terrain as the vertebrae of Earth’s spine. The corner of the TV had Cappadocia, Turkey, written on it. "Cappadocia is well known for its fairy chimneys, but underneath its devastating beauty lies an ancient multi-level underground city. It is located near the town of Derinkuyu, extending to a depth of approximately eighty-five meters, and it is large enough to have housed over 20,000 people."

No, it’s true, said the prisoner over the television’s speakers. I don’t regret it either. It was self-defense.

Ward told him to shut up and rolled his chair closer to the television.

But they’re not like in the movies, the prisoner continued, louder to match the increase in the television’s volume. They’re just like us. Or at least at first, when they’re alive. Once they’re dead, it’s another story. That’s when they let the wings come out.

You look familiar, Ward said, giving up on the documentary and standing up from his squealing chair. Give me those. He yanked the man’s sunglasses off. Wait, a minute. I saw a news report on you. You’re that musician that went crazy, crazy like the rest of them. Just couldn’t handle the pressure of fame, huh? He shouted at the other room, Daniel, come in here! Then back at the man in the cell. What was your name? A Paul, something. They’ve been looking for you for weeks, haven’t they? No wonder they haven’t found you yet. They’re all turning stones in Hollywood, while you’re stealing cars out here in the desert.

Daniel stepped in and confirmed Ward’s suspicions.

I bet someone’s got a hefty bounty on your head. Killing someone from your own staff in cold blood like that, Ward scoffed. I need to make a few phone calls. Today’s our lucky day, Danny Boy. Finally, something interesting happening in this boring drought. Daddy’s thirsty, let’s drink. Pleased with his joke, he sat in his chair and swiveled, phone in hand.

The prisoner shook the cell’s door, trying to stop Ward from making the phone call. You aren’t listening. It wasn’t human.

Ward ignored him and continued dialing.

Daniel walked closer to Ward without saying a word. Then one step too close, beyond the threshold of social convention.

The prisoner hesitated; he wasn’t sure if saying anything was to his advantage. One man was about to turn him in to the judicial sharks, yet the other one might be a psychopathic murderer using the guise of a police officer to fulfill his urges. It was either dying all at once, or by the pain of a thousand bites; sudden death seemed like the lesser of two evils. He stood, gripping the bars, and felt his heartbeat at his hands, beating against the cold steel. He wished he wasn’t looking at reality, but at a stereogram version of it, where if he focused on Ward’s red telephone, the clear image of what was about to happen would merge into everything else and disappear forever.

Daniel grabbed Ward’s plaque from the wall and struck him on the head with a forceful blow. Ward’s head fell to the side, and the phone landed on the floor with a thud. Daniel pulled up the phone by its cord. The dial tone seemed to annoy him. He turned the television off and made sure Ward was unconscious before turning around. The man in the cell pulled away from the bars.

Be not afraid, Daniel said with an open hand in front of him. I believe you. We must get out of here, Pol. Fast. If there was one, others will come.

Pol had a terror-stricken face. Those had been the exact words the producer that wasn’t a producer had said moments before Pol had killed him. Be not afraid.

Where are your things? was the first thing any of them said. It had been Daniel who broke the silence once he had driven the police car onto the town’s main road.

Pol gave him a puzzled look.

Your things—clothes, money, passport.

Passport? Pol said. Where are we going?

We need to lay low for a while, at least until they stop looking for you. Daniel grinned. I know a place.

Pol regretted his choice and thought it might have been better to warn Ward of the young police officer creeping towards him with