Brethren Beginnings ~ Gabriel Seeker (4 page)

Gabriel returned to find Caleb
staring out the window at the roiling clouds. “Caleb,” he said
quietly.

“
Yeah,” he muttered,
distracted.

“
Caleb, I took care of
Phoebe's... problem.”

Turning away from the window, his
furrowed brow eased. “I...I don't know what to say. Thank you
doesn't seem close to adequate.” He extended his hand. Gabriel took
it and shook it heartily.

“
You are very welcome.”
Gabriel eased himself onto the couch.  ”How's Phoebe doing? Is
she awake? And how's the search going for my house?”

“
Phoebe's still sleeping,
thank goodness. She was up a lot, tossing and turning. And
I've actually found a place for you. I couldn't sleep
either, so I scoured the internet in the wee small hours of the
morning. Wait right there.” Caleb walked into his suite and came
back a few moments later with a paper in his hand. “Here, check
this out. It's 3,500 square feet of prime real estate in the
foothills.”

“
Sounds perfect. Buy it.” He
barely looked at the paper, scratched his head, and continued,
“Listen Caleb, about Manny, I need to get this thug off the streets
for good, and I need to do it fast before any more
situations like Phoebe's occurs. But before I do, I gotta know
how many others are out there like you in order
to assess the damage and make a plan for their
remediation.”

“
Geez, Gabriel. You'd really
do that for all of them, too? Who the hell are you and where have
you come from?” Caleb marveled, his words laced with
incredulity.

“
I'm just a man who has the
resources to protect innocents from other people looking to exploit
them. Now, tell me who your friends are so we can help
them.”

Caleb, Phoebe, and Gabriel spent
the rest of the morning compiling the Rescue List. There
were twenty other young men and women in Manny's employ, and
had been so since they were in their early teens. Neither
Caleb nor Phoebe knew where they all lived, but they did
know where and when they worked. Caleb took to his post behind the
registration desk later that morning, and as his “co-workers”
approached to receive a key to a room, he included a
note giving instructions on where they should go instead -
Gabriel's suite.

***

Over the course of just a few
short hours, Gabriel's suite was stuffed to the
gills with twenty very confused and apprehensive individuals.
They mumbled and speculated, and at points buzzed like agitated
bees.

“
So, what do you really know
about this guy, Caleb?” Robert, the perpetual skeptic
and self-appointed speaker for the group asked. “I
mean, he waltzes in here from out of Nowheres with lots
of money, and then demands you do crazy tasks as an interview for a
job with him. Then he rounds us up like some kind of guardian angel
or somethin'.  Sounds a bit off his rocker, if you ask me. You
know what I mean?”

“
Listen, Robert. I know he
seems a bit eccentric, but Gabriel's the closest thing to a savior
any of us has ever had. He's giving you, all of you, a chance
like he gave me, to break away from Manny. If you want your
life to be better, then believe in him and what he has to
offer.”

Caleb looked at each and every one
of them. Some were just dying for someone to give
them a leg up and out of the business. But he knew, deep in
his heart, it would take all of Gabriel's tricks to turn others
onto the right path. Josie, he thought, had been with
Manny since she was thirteen. She was nineteen now, and a hardened
prostitute. Fern was nineteen as well, but she'd been sold to Manny
when she was eleven. All semblance of a soul had died years
ago. She was like an empty shell and seemed completely
disinterested in the whole affair. Robert, well, Robert was just an
angry twenty-year-old who didn't trust anybody and didn't know how
to handle the little money Manny gave him from his jobs.

“
Hey, Robert,” Caleb said
quietly taking him aside. ”Don't you ever stop and think about
why you stay with Manny? I mean, you hate the guy, but you still
work for him. Why? Now that I'm free, I've been thinking about why
I stayed as long as I did. Why I didn't run from him. Why I
didn't turn him in. Why I didn't do anything. I don't
have any good answers. You?”

“
I don't know, man. Besides
Manny, I got nothin' else. This Gabriel dude better be on the up
and up or I'm gonna have to kill him, and you for pushing me into
this.”

“
I suggest you direct your
threat towards the monster who really deserves it. One Manny
Robos.”

Robert and Caleb quickly turned to find
Gabriel standing in the doorway.  “Oh, hey, Gabriel,” Caleb
stammered and punched Robert in the arm. “What's the
latest?”

“
Storm's brewing, boys,”
Gabriel said, not wanting to give any more information than
necessary. He didn't need mavericks going in and doing a Brethren's
job. He had a plan. ”I'm going to need you to keep everyone
occupied this evening.  Order in movies and piz...” 
Gabriel was interrupted by a series of cell phones ringing.
Everybody looked at their phones, at each other, and then at
Gabriel.

“
What do we do, Gabriel?”
Melanie, a bedraggled orange-haired girl croaked out, her
hand shaking. “It's Manny. He just sent me a text
message.”

“
Yeah, me too,” they all
started responding at the same time.

“
Okay, okay,” Gabriel
soothed, sending waves of ease and comfort as he walked around
the room, lightly touching each person's shoulder. “What you do is
ignore it, and turn off your cell phones. As I was saying, order up
some movies and pizza. Don't leave these two rooms for any reason.
My teammate, Raphael, will be here shortly to conduct
individual healing sessions with everyone. He's a miracle
worker, believe me.  I'll be back soon. Caleb, get on the
phone and call this guy.” He handed him a business card. “Tell him
that tomorrow I'm sending twenty people for immediate enrollment in
his Private Investigation program.”

 ”
Yes, sir.”

“
Then, find me a bigger
house, a much bigger house.”

Gabriel picked up his jacket, his sword
neatly hidden in the folds, and walked out leaving
Caleb staring incredulously after him.

***

Primed and ready for battle, Gabriel
flew over to Manny's apartment complex, shielding himself from
anyone's notice. The entire city block had completely
surrendered to Satan's influence. He could sense evil oozing from
the cracks and crevices in the pavement beneath him. No animal life
could be seen or heard anywhere. Trees had been prematurely
divested of their leaves, streetlights were broken, and trash
littered the sidewalks. He could hear screaming and crying
reverberating off the building's windows.

Oh yeah, Satan’s been here,
and all these people got for their trouble was a lousy t-shirt… and
lives filled with pain.

Just how extensive Satan's hold was on
Manny became more and more apparent the closer Gabriel got to
Manny's apartment. Walking down the hall without his shields up, he
would have been wading through evil energy like an ocean of
tar. Gabriel raised his fisted sword and banged
fiercely against Manny's door. Then, he simply knocked it
down.

A hailstorm of bullets came flying
at him. Those that hit Gabriel were quickly absorbed by his body
and extruded as sweat. The rest lodged themselves in the walls
around him. He prayed nobody was home behind those walls. As the
bullets continued to spray, he strode determinedly into the foyer
of the apartment straight through to the living
room. 

Upon seeing Gabriel's outspread wings
and the enormous sword in his hand, Manny let loose with a barrage
of remarks, the least offensive of which mentioned how he planned
on playing Connect the Dots with the holes the bullets made. But
when he saw those very bullets disappear without so much as a
bloodstain, he finally froze.

“
Who the hell are you?”
Manny growled, and huffed like an angry bull.

“
Let's just say I'm the
union representative come to renegotiate terms of your workers'
contracts.” Gabriel raised a cheek in a wicked half-smile and
inspected his sword.

“
Contract negotiations? Are
you out of your freakin' mind? Nobody negotiates their contracts
with me, dude. They give and I receive. End of story.” Manny
aimed the gun again at Gabriel's chest. ”Now, why aren't you
dead? And what's up with those wing things you got attached to your
back? It ain't freakin' Halloween, you know. You some kind of
freak?”

“
Oh Manny, Manny, Manny,”
Gabriel laughed, shaking his head, and then he stopped. Manny
couldn't blink fast enough and Gabriel stood before him.
Gabriel took Manny by the throat, and slowly raised him so they
were eye to eye. His stare bore holes straight through to
the charred remains of Manny's soul. “Your reign of terror is
officially over. Say goodnight, evil man. Your angel of death has
arrived.” He tossed him unceremoniously onto the floor. Manny
scrambled to his feet, readjusted the semi-automatic, and started
shooting curses and bullets wildly about him. Gabriel ignored it
all.

“
For all the innocents whose
childhoods and naiveté you've stolen, for all the
depravity and unspeakable horrors you've cultivated and propagated,
I pronounce you guilty and pass a judgment of death to be delivered
swiftly and permanently. Time to return to the Hell that made
you.”

Gabriel raised his sword
and whispered a sacred incantation. The inscription on his
blade turned a fiery red as he pivoted, swung his sword, and
connected with flesh and bone. As Manny's head tumbled to the
floor, his face still showed the last manic expression of his life,
and the rest of his body folded into a crumpled heap. His blood
quickly absorbed into the inscription on the blade. Gabriel
sheathed his sword, flipped open his cell phone, and walked
out.

“
This is Gabriel. Send in
the clean-up crew.”

###

GABRIEL SEEKER appears
next in…

ANGEL RISING
Part One

SN
EAK PEEK
OF

ANGEL RISING PART
ONE

PROLOGUE

It isn’t a pretty world for invisible
children to live in. Not a chasing-butterflies-and-puppy-dog-tails
kind of dream world either. Rather, these children subsist in
nightmarish roach-infested, flea-bag motels, government funded
apartments, and innocuous suburban homes across the country,
chained to bedposts, locked in closets, hidden away from the
civilized world, to be at the beck and call of loathsome,
degenerate adults. No matter the building type, they know of these
children’s plight all too well. If walls could talk, they’d speak
of horrific, exploitive crimes against these innocents on a daily
basis, and the champion who would see all of their captors struck
down and sent back to Hell, a Brethren Protector named Gabriel
Seeker.

This is his story, and of a woman’s,
dear to his heart, who wrestled with a childhood, singularly
unusual and at times dangerous, but never once had to wonder who’d
protect her from the evils of the world. Born thirty-six years ago,
she was the child prophesied to first become the Great Warrior
Child, and then the first female Brethren Warrior when she matured
to a certain age. Hannah Livingston is her name, and that milestone
birthday is a mere six weeks away. So is her
immortality.

A long time has passed since the
apocalyptic war between Satan and The Brethren for the sake of her
soul and the fate of the world. Many years since Hannah’s thought
about her role in the Brethren organization and how living for an
eternity will feel.

A new showdown is brewing between good
and evil. It will be a time for immortals and mortals to come
together as one united army and watch a new angel
rising.

THE BRETHREN SERIES,
paranormal

TRINITY

RELIC

NATHANAEL’S HUNT
~ A Brethren Beginnings Short Story~ (free!)

ELIXXIR

ANGEL RISING PART
ONE

ANGEL RISING PART TWO
(coming soon!)

THE BOOK WAITRESS SERIES,
urban fantasy

THE BOOK WAITRESS
(free!)

DEVIL DU JOUR

DEMON A LA MODE

A-HUNTING WE WILL
GO

ROCK-A-BYE DEMON (coming
soon!)

STICKS AND STONES (coming
soon!)

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS SERIES,
paranormal

BURNING SAGE

IMMORTAL DANCE

1-NIGHT STAND SERIES
(DECADENT PUBLISHING)

GHOST OF A CHANCE,
paranormal

DISTORTION, romantic
suspense