Overcomer - The Battle, Judy Colella [first color ebook reader .TXT] 📗

stared at them, both taller and more splendid to behold than any human, and had to remind himself that they were children of the ultimate Being of love, light and goodness. They had to feel something toward the three young people who were possibly being so brave only because they had no idea what they were about to face – well, except Cian, who’d at least had a glimpse of Moloch’s capabilities.

“Keeper.” Celesta laid a hand on his shoulder. “We love them, too. You must know we’ll do everything within the Laws of Creation to help them, and I can at least assure you that they will all survive this encounter. But I cannot tell you in what state they will be or where this will take them. I hope that’s enough; we love you as well and it hurts us to see you so . . .what is that word your doctors like to use so much? Conflicted, I think.” She smiled her brilliant smile, but her sapphire eyes gleamed with regret. She clearly wanted to tell him more, but was simply not allowed. “Why don’t you play for a while?” she suggested. “I know it gives you peace even when you are being extra watchful.” She handed him his harp.

“Thank you, Celesta.” He took it, grateful for her efforts to comfort him, and sat on the stone.

“We will see you soon, Keeper,” Michael said gravely. “Keep your heart as well as these Doors.”

“Thanks, Michael. I will do that.”

The two dissolved into their respective veils of liquid light, and except for the sweet melodies soon issuing from the harp, the Hub was back to its customary stillness.

 

*******

 

Katie watched Cian approach the classroom door from the opposite end of the hallway. “How can he seem so, so normal after what he did?”

Celeste shrugged. He really did appear unchanged, at least insofar as his shyness was concerned. But still, there was something…she looked at Katie, and suspected by the way her friend was staring at him that she felt it, too.

“Hey,” he said quietly when he’d reached them.

“You feeling okay today?” Celeste asked.

“Fine. You?”

She smiled up into his eyes, happy to be near him. “Yup.”

“Guess we’d better go in before the Glassy-Eyed Rabbity Sheep Creatures show up,” Katie muttered.

Cian gave her a strange look, then turned back to Celeste. “You have any idea what she’s talking about?”

Remembering her friend’s description the week before of their female classmates and their reactions to Cian, she giggled and nodded. “Yeah – don’t worry about it.”

Mr. Barata, their history teacher, greeted them with a smile. He was sitting at his desk, a huge stack of books on one side and a pile of what appeared to be maps on the other. The girls knew this meant he had something interesting in store for them – he was one of those rare teachers who loved the realities of his subject so much, he was able to draw his students into the various worlds it encompassed. Even students who hated school enjoyed his class.

Most everyone was in the room by now, and the boys acknowledged Cian with friendly words and pats on the back. A few girls were already seated, but the majority of them came in right before the bell rang.

A group of three separated themselves from the others and one of these came up the aisle, stopping beside Celeste. “Hey, bi-atch!” she hissed.

Celeste glanced up in surprise, more at the venom in the girl’s voice than at her words. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me – and you’d better watch your back – ”

There was a sudden movement behind the girl, and she turned to find Cian, his brows drawn together in anger, glaring down at her. “If anything unpleasant happens to her,” he said in a terrifying whisper, “you and everyone involved will have to answer to me.”

The girl gulped, nodded, and retreated back down the aisle, going swiftly to her desk and opening a book.

Meanwhile, Celeste, having recovered from the shock of what had happened, gave Cian a grateful smile, blushing fiercely.

He sat down again, still a little upset. How dare that girl threaten Celeste like that!

After class, all the girls gave both Cian and Celeste a wide berth as they headed out the door. The one who’d had the audacity to make threats had, through some careful note-passing, warned the other girls that Cian and Celeste were together, and to back off.

Now the glances he was getting were mournful ones, most accompanied by head-shaking, and he had no idea what to think about that.

“I’ve got it!” Katie exclaimed when they were out in the hall and on their way to the next class.

"You’ve got what?” asked Cian and Celeste, almost simultaneously.

She stared at them for a second. “Seriously? You guys have got to stop that. Anyway, what I was going to say is that I’ve figured out what’s different about you, Cian.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You’re more confident. I really don’t think you could have told that air-head off the way you did if this was last week.”

Airhead. . .oh, Lord. Yet another term he’d never learned because of those six years in Georgia. He shrugged. “Maybe. I guess. I…I was really furious that she would say something like that when Celeste hadn’t done anything to provoke it.”

“Well,” Katie put her head to one side, “that’s not entirely true.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean, Cian, is that you like her – like, a lot. Everyone can see it, and the other girls are so freaking jealous, they can’t see straight.”

He thought about this for a moment. “Okay, but how is that her fault?”

“It isn’t.”

“Uh, what?”

Katie sighed. “Cian, my friend, ask any boy in the school. He’ll tell you guys do not understand us, and probably never will. We girls are, uh, hard-wired – no, you don’t know about that – um, we’re, well, we think way different than boys.”

“It certainly seems so,” he agreed, totally confused now.

Celeste and Katie burst out laughing at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry,” Celeste told him through a giggle. “You’re not alone. And we have to get to our next class. See you at lunch?”

He nodded, took a deep breath, and went down a side hall to his classroom. Maybe Tyler could explain all that to him. Or the Croghan. Or maybe he didn’t want to know.

During his next two classes, Cian found himself scribbling the Laws of the Sword in the margins of his notebook in Gaelic – he didn’t think they were something anyone else should read; Michael had admonished him never, ever to forget them, and he had a feeling the Archangel wasn’t in the habit of saying things he didn’t absolutely mean. He was also a bit distracted wondering what kind of lessons he’d be given later on. They were to return to the Hub soon after school –

“. . .MacDara?”

He sat straighter and looked up at the teacher, startled at the sound of his name. “I, uh, I’m sorry, ma’am. I was thinking about something else. My apologies.”

In lieu of running up the aisle and giving Cian a big hug to let him know it was all right, Mrs. Swanson blushed and waved her pointer. “Oh, honey, it’s fine – could you try and keep up, though?”

“Honey”? Good Lord! “Excuse me, Mrs. Swanson - what did you ask me, ma’am?”

“Well, I wondered if you could come do this problem on the board, but don’t worry about it.”

“No, it’s fine.” He got up and went to the front of the room, avoiding her flirtatious gaze.

She handed him a dry-erase marker, resisting the urge to pat his—hand.

“Thanks.” Cian looked up at the algebra problem. It had taken very little for him to understand the concepts involved during his six months of tutoring; after getting easily through Algebra I and Geometry, he had found this discipline equally agreeable and was glad his alternating schedule at this school had him taking it twice a week, albeit in different time slots.

With no difficulty, he assessed the problem, figured out how to solve it, and put the right numbers and symbols up on the board.

“That’s absolutely correct!” the teacher gushed.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, handing back the marker. As he returned to his seat, he tried not to roll his eyes, but his expression did elicit some appreciative chortles from his male classmates.

He met Celeste and Katie in the cafeteria at lunchtime, relieved to be among the sane once more.

“You know,” Celeste said once they had gotten their food and were sitting at a table, “I think part of why Ginny – the one you scared the bat snot out of – is so pissed off at me, is because of the spider incident.”

“Bat snot?”

Katie went instantly hysterical.

“You could choke,” said Cian, slightly nonplussed. He certainly had not been trying to be funny, only…they had such weird expressions!

“Sorry,” she managed, “but you’re so. . .I love you, Cian. Like a brother, of course. You’re – you’re wonderful.” She went off into a fit of renewed laughter.

He looked helplessly at Celeste, who was obviously trying her hardest not to join in Katie’s merriment.

“Listen,” he tried again, “can we just. . .we have our final lessons today, remember, and I, for one, am really nervous.”

That seemed to do the trick. Katie instantly sobered, took a deep breath, a bite of her sandwich, and said, “Muh goo.”

Cian raised a eyebrow. “Katie, please swallow first.”

She did. “Sorry. I said, ‘me, too’.”

“I’m really scared,” he told them. “Remember that awful dream-thing Croghan told you guys I had?”

They both nodded.

“I never told you the details of it, did I?”

“Nope,” Katie confirmed. “Celesta explained some more about it, but I doubt she told us everything.”

“In my dream, I was confronted by Moloch. He’s, well, ‘intimidating’ doesn’t really begin to describe him. He can, he can change. One second he looks like. . .like someone I knew, and the next, he’s a horrible pagan idol, then he’s this huge creature with sharp steel teeth, and then . . .then he’s some guy in a really bad suit.”

“Wow,” Celeste murmured. “How can anyone fight something that keeps changing shape?”

“Exactly.” Cian been wondering the same thing.

After school, Cian rode the bus home with the girls, getting off at Celeste’s stop – Katie had gotten off three stops earlier. Throughout the ride he’d had to put up with constant staring, which he tried to ignore by engaging in quiet conversation with the girls and not looking at anyone else. The whole thing was, in his estimation, rather bizarre. He was highly relieved to finally get off the bus, swearing to himself he’d never get on one of those again.

“What time did Croghan say he’d meet us here?” he asked, following Celeste around to the side door.

“Four, I think. Did you talk to your, uh, Mr. Geller, is it?”

“Yeah. . .so did the Croghan. He promised to have me home by five-thirty.”

Celeste uttered a short laugh. “Five months and five-thirty, he means.”

“Think it’ll take that long?”

“Who knows? I suppose it depends on how much more they have to teach us.” She unlocked the door and they entered the small hallway off the kitchen.

As usual, Eileen Kelly was already busy preparing the evening meal. Celeste had warned her that Cian would be taking the bus home with her that day, but she still looked a bit startled to see him.

“Oh! Cian. How are you?” She somehow didn’t sound very friendly.

“Very well, ma’am. Yourself?”

“Fine, thanks. Celeste, why don’t you go upstairs and change before our friend Mr. Croghan gets here, okay?”

“Sure, Mom.” She cast a worried glance at Cian, then left the room in a rush, determined not to let the woman have too much time alone with him – she had a feeling her mother was in mama-bear mode today.

“Please sit,” Eileen said, waving at the table.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He was suddenly very nervous, having caught her somewhat frosty tone of voice, but almost as much because the kitchen had always been the place of his worst confrontations with his former foster-mother.

“So tell me. What are your feelings toward my daughter?”

Wow – she gets