Joshua Graham - Terminus

He took a seat facing her.

“You’ve changed,” he said.

“You haven’t.” Her lips curled up in a smile that didn’t match the coolness of her eyes. “But then, you never change, do you? Perpetually young, eternally beautiful.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“What’s happened to you?”

“I’ve spent the last few years searching, Nikolai.”

“For what?”

She put the teacup down, folded her hands across her lap, and fluttered her eyelashes.

“Why the inquisition, darling?”

“I only—”

“I would so like to see my precious little Clara. Still attending Northbrae?”

“I’ll be going to pick her up there in ten minutes.”

“Nikolai, why don’t I go? What a splendid surprise it shall be for her to see her Mummy, waiting for her at the gate.”

“Actually, I think it’s best if I go myself,” he said.

She came over and sat in his lap, slipping her arms around his neck.

“Darling, one might think you weren’t happy to see the bride of your youth, after all this time.” She lifted his chin gently and brushed her lips against his until he opened them, sending a thrill through the human form in which he’d taken up residency for the past few years.

Her hair smelled like lilacs.

She kissed him again. But it was unlike anything he’d experienced with her before. It was aggressive, intoxicating, so pleasurable it hurt. It felt horribly wrong, and yet he wanted more.

“After I bring Clara home,” she said, “we can go out to celebrate our reunion at Brigham’s.”

Nikolai wrapped his arms around her, and she pulled him close—so close. For a brief moment, he loathed it.

Then he loved it.

He forgot where he was.

Who he was.

What he was.

“I’ll go and get her right now, all right?” Sophia whispered. “Be right back.”

“Go on, then.” He gasped for air, having forgotten to breathe. “Come back as soon as you possibly can.”

She slipped out of his arms, and left.

He barely noticed the dark vapor hovering about him.

From the second-floor apartment window he watched Sophia with waning lust as she sauntered down the street. Never had he felt so human as he did just now. Before his decision to forsake his angelic ways and pursue a mortal life with her, he’d always wanted to know, to feel what it was like to be fully human. But after what had just happened? Losing himself in those purely physical, loveless cravings had left him feeling like some kind of animal. She was his wife, but it had never been this way before—so raw, so pleasurable and yet so abhorrent.

As she continued down the sidewalk, a dark cloud seemed to pass through the street. It vanished so quickly that he wasn’t sure he’d seen it at all. Yet at the same moment he became keenly aware of his angelic nature for the first time in years.

He began to perceive things again in the spiritual layers of reality on which he’d turned his back. And so, just before Sophia turned the corner, he noticed that a white aura encompassed her body as she walked. Small glowing lights invisible to the human eye floated around her and followed her like fireflies.

Lovely.

Yet the sight of those lovely white lights filled him with dread, with revulsion. Thanks to his reawakened angelic awareness, he knew what they were and the danger they posed.

And why they were floating about Sophia.

Demons.

And judging by the way they surrounded her and flowed through her, the demons had possessed her.

All those years she’d spent seeking the supernatural, only to find this? She must have given herself over to them in exchange for some empty promise. Demons were liars bent on destruction. They always offered humans what they desired most—which they couldn’t really give, of course—at a dear cost.

The human’s soul.

Nikolai hurried to the door, then remembered that as an angel he could teleport to the school…

Only he couldn’t. Nothing happened.

His abilities were still there—he sensed it—but they were…frozen. He’d have to run and hope they’d thaw out before Sophia reached Clara to do…God only knew what, considering she was under the influence of demons.

It’s not her , it’s not her. He kept telling himself that as he raced down the stairs, down the street, and to his daughter’s school. Not her.

When he arrived, a long queue of girls were pouring out from the gates of Northbrae. A sea of pigtails, navy skirts, books tied like parcels, but no sign of Clara or Sophia. He pushed through the crowd of mothers and nannies awaiting their children.

“Clara? CLARA!”

A huge bruiser of a man grabbed Nikolai by the lapels of his coat, and lifted him off the ground. “What’re you doing, shoutin’ in me ear like that?”

“Unhand me, now!”

“You’ll say you’re sorry first, now, won’t you?”

“I’ll knock you down first.” Nikolai gripped his hand but could not pull it off. He craned his neck and shouted again. “Clara!”

“Quit yer shoutin’!”

“Release me or throw a punch, you filthy mongrel!”

At this, the bruiser set him down, coiled his fist, and launched it at Nikolai’s face.

Nikolai braced for the pain—but didn’t feel the impact. Instead, the bruiser gripped his hand as if he’d just smashed it into a brick wall and howled in pain while Nikolai got to his feet and brushed himself off.

“Best run, mate.”

Which is precisely what Bruiser did. Eyes wide with fear, he ran down the street, glancing back twice as he fled. Nikolai glanced down at his hands and flexed his fingers, grateful his abilities were returning. He’d need them to find Clara.

Because she wasn’t there. The last child came out, met her mother, and left.

“Have you seen Clara?” Nick asked her teacher.

“She left a few minutes ago with her mother. It was so good to see—”

“Do you know which way they went?”

She pointed in the direction of Victoria Station.

“Are you two—”

“Thank you.” To his relief, he found himself hovering imperceptibly above the city streets. Down below he spotted Sophia walking briskly, pulling Clara by the hand. Past Eccleston Square, across to Wilton Street, and into the railway terminus. Did she actually believe she could simply take his daughter from him, that he couldn’t track them down and stop her?

He descended upon them.

Sophia seemed to sense his proximity and rushed into the throngs coming, going, and passing through the terminus. Nikolai took human form, more out of instinct than anything else, and plunged into the crowd himself. The need to stop her became visceral.

Down by the tracks, the massive steam-sighs of trains waiting to leave filled the air. The whine of metal against metal rang out along with the announcements of arrivals and departures.

He and Sophia were perhaps ten yards apart and surrounded by strangers when their eyes met, Sophia’s wide with anxiety. For a brief moment, he saw the lovely young woman he’d fallen in love with—but only for a moment. A sinister aspect fell like a veil over her face. She turned and ran with Clara in tow towards the stairs and elevated walkway above platform 12, the white lights only he could see flashing around her as she pushed through the crowd.

Nikolai heard the whistle of the train from the Brighton line approaching the station, assumed his angelic form, and was instantly behind Sophia and Clara, who were now running up the stairs to the platform.

“Sophia!”

She either couldn’t hear him in his extra-physical state or she was ignoring him. The train would be there in less than a minute.

The white lights faded, and for a moment Sophia released Clara’s hand. She stared at her mother, who looked stunned as she put her hand to her forehead.