Whitley Strieber: 2012: The War for Souls

It was as hard a moment as he had ever known. The beauty of his wife was stunning, her scales so tiny and so pale that she looked like a doll, her hair a wisp of delicate white smoke around her head, her eyes bluer than a fine earth sky, and deeper than the deepest ocean.

How he loved this woman, his friend of his youth and childhood, his dear companion.

But there were vows of the lips and vows of the blood, and his vow to those children on one-moon earth was a vow of the blood.

“I’m so glad it’s over,” she said. She gazed into his eyes. The Corporation seraph were remembered by man as nephilim, as archons, as demons. Mankind called Union folk angels or daikini, sky dancers.

“I’m glad it’s over, too.”

“But you sigh, husband.”

He drew her close to him. These were simple houses, a central great room, with kitchen, dining, and storage in one wing and sleeping quarters in the other. They had been living in these houses forever, almost literally. They had no age, nothing here did. The Union was with God. There was nothing to count.

But he had forgotten how good a woman’s hair could smell, sprinkled as hers was with the dust of flowers. It fell, sometimes, on that brilliant, glowing brow, that was almost as soft as human skin. She was almost as beautiful as Brooke, really, but the truth was that even to seraph, the humans were incredibly beautiful. It was why Corporation types had gone to rape them in the first place. It was why Unionists cherished and protected them as best they could. There was something about the humans that was close to God, very close, and you felt toward them both a desire to protect and a desire to worship.

Kelsey, Nick, Brooke. His buddy Matt. Cigars and absinthe. The fun of it all, of being in the human form, of looking like them and being able to kiss human lips and walk their pretty streets, to look up into the sacred blue of their skies, to lift his face to clean rain and listen to wind in the night, to watch TV, to go to the movies and eat popcorn, to feel warm human hands on his human skin, to sink into the dark of her.

“You’re far away,” Talia said.

“I’m just in shock. Seeing you again. Remembering you. Realizing—oh, my Talia, all that I’ve forgotten.” He took her again, held her close. “All that I’ve missed.”

She saw the truth, though. She knew him so well. They had been children together, born in the same basket, their eggs warmed by the same egg ladies. Their families had entwined their destinies long before they were born.

Trying to hide his tears, he turned away from her. “I belong to you,” he said, feeling the twin pulls of his fiercely divided loyalties. Again, he hugged her, and again felt Brooke’s absence in his arms.

Her eyes met his. The question that flickered in them now was a dark one. Then she held up her hand.

Her Electrum ring glowed softly. His ring. He took her hand and kissed it. She laughed a little, deep in her throat, and he wanted her. He wanted her so badly that he began to exude from under every scale on his neck. She brought a towel and wiped it gently. Her hands touching him evoked desire so great that it seemed beyond his trembling flesh, beyond belief, beyond body itself, a longing that was literally fantastic.

But if he did this then he could not leave her, not a second time, it was too cruel. And yet he had the children, the vow, and the other dear wife. And he knew, as soon as he was with Brooke again, he would lose himself in the wonders of human life and human love.

“It’s only a few minutes,” she said softly. She drew up the wooden blinds, and he saw in the evening light a diamond hanging in midair. In its facets, he could see another house, lights just coming on in the windows, and a small form at one of those windows looking out.

Kelsey was waiting for her daddy to come back.

“I have the permanent salve,” she said. “Choose.”

He took her hands. “We always knew the danger of the mission. I have a life there, now. I have children who need their father.” And he wished—he just wished.

“You won’t remember me.”

“You’ll find somebody else,” he said.

“Don’t mock my love, please.”

He would leave her forever wanting him. If only he had known it would be this hard.

He had known. She had known.

She began to apply the salve, and he let her. It sank deep into him, into the most secret corners of his deepest cells, and as it did, this old homestead began to look stranger and stranger. He noticed that blinds closed up here, that there were no chairs but only these strange, three-legged stools. He saw the spinning wheel and the loom, ancient and obviously heavily used, but who used looms nowadays? And the grate and the big iron cook pot, so strange and archaic, and candles instead of electric lights, all so just plain weird.

But then she did an odd thing. She applied salve to herself.

“But no, you mustn’t.”

“Look, the sun is setting and Kelsey’s gotta be getting scared. And Nick’s liable to blow our heads off if we come up in the dark.”

“Brooke?”

“Yes? Hello?”

Talia had been with him all along. Now, as they changed from seraph to human, fixed by the DNA salve, he threw his arms around her. “It’s you, it’s always been you! Did you know?”

“Not until I followed you through Samson’s little gateway. Then I knew.”

“But you escaped from the Corporation, you came home, you came to meet me even though you could’ve stayed back.”

“To protect you. Remember what I am.”

“The Guardian Clan.” He laughed a little. “You really are a guardian angel.”

“Who you need, Mr. Drinker and Smoker and hell-raising daredevil—the idea that any sane person would volunteer for an assignment like this!”

“It had to be done.”

“Which is why I love you so.” She smiled up at him, and as she did, her face shimmered, the scales smoothing in blurry waves, the brow widening, the cheeks growing less narrow, the eyes deeper, less wide, more human, the nostrils opening more, the lips softening and becoming red, the teeth thickening into human teeth. And he could feel by his own internal shivering that he was doing the same.

This was not shape-shifting. This was fundamental DNA transformation. When his brother ended his tour of duty, this would be his house. He would reenter his old body here, he would find his wife and bring her here, and there would be eggs here, and the egg ladies would brighten the house with their laughter again, in the coming years, in the ages.

But Talia and Aktriel were dying into the human form.

She took his hand more firmly. “Ready?”

“How do I look?”

“Perfect. Or no, you’re missing that mole under your left ear.”

“Whose gonna notice?”

“You know your daughter. She’s inherited your following and watching instincts.”

“Do we need to take salve for them?”

“Born of earth as they were? They have the DNA to shift, but not the skill. They’ll stay as they are, with their good seraphim hearts in those lovely human forms.”

“Are you gonna be on my case again?”

“Always.”

Then they were in their familiar woods, and for a fleeting moment his soul was in both worlds. Brooke said, “I’ve got something on the tip of my tongue.”

He shook his head. “I feel like I just woke up from a dream I thought I’d never forget.”

“Which was?”

“I forget.”

She came to him and kissed him. “We’ve all been through too much. And it has to end. It ends here.” She looked toward the house. “It’s time to return to normal life.”

“Can we?”

“I think we can. I mean, have you noticed that it’s six and nothing’s happened yet? No 2012 shift here.”