Eternal by Israel Barbuzano

Author:Israel Barbuzano [Barbuzano, Israel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, love, conspiracy, aliens, afterlife, belief, AWESOME, superpowers, female lead, badass
Publisher: Smashwords
Published: 2014-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

His racing heart thumped in his chest, pounded in his temples. His eyes welled with tears.

It’s her.

“You should hope this isn’t who you are looking for,” Marion’s voice came, cold and tart.

The entry is dark.

“I thought her name was Alexandra?” Ming Xiu asked in the softest murmur.

He responded in a mental haze, his voice pushing to get past his constricted throat.

“Her name was Sauda before she was adopted. She used Saudanaishi as her screen name. She said it stood for ‘Sauda Lives.’ She picked it as a teenager and never had the heart to come up with a different one.”

“Are you . . . certain . . . this is her?”

Something in her voice made him peel his eyes off the plate and look at the women. They were staring at him, Ming Xiu with worry, Marion with disgust.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Ming Xiu glanced at the entry, then back at him. She hesitated.

The entry is dark . . . .

“Please tell me.” He looked from one to the other. “I need to know.”

The keeper gestured at the plate with a flick of her hand, voice brimming with anger. “This is the entry of a criminal and a traitor and you should hope—”

Ming Xiu grabbed the woman’s arm and forcefully pulled her away from Aaron. “Shut your mouth, Marion.”

First shocked, then outraged, the livid keeper locked stares with Aaron’s mentor. “How dare—”

“Have you forgotten what it is to be human? Have some blighted sympathy for the boy’s pain.”

Marion’s frame rippled as if she was about to dissolve, then regained its solidity. She glared at the shorter woman as though she could burn a hole through her skull. “Unhand me.”

Ming Xiu let go. “Leave us,” she said. “Now.”

Marion fixed up the sleeve of her dress, oozing indignation. She shot one last glower at the dark-haired woman. “Bring me the plate after you are done.”

The keeper of the census vanished in a burst of smoke. Her signal disappeared from Aaron’s perception.

Ming Xiu and Aaron looked at one another in silence. As sorrow took over her features, a new kind of despair sunk its teeth into Aaron’s chest, biting down on that rekindled spark of hope and tearing it to shreds.

“Alexandra is gone, isn’t she.”

The fractured whisper left his lips, and something broke inside of him.

Ming Xiu laid a hand on his shoulder. Aaron watched his tears hit the slab in his hands, run down its surface and then vanish into eddies.

The entry of a criminal. A traitor.

“What did she mean?” he croaked. “Why’d she call her a criminal?”

Ming Xiu let out a long sigh. After a few more moments of hesitation, she took the plate from Aaron’s limp fingers.

“Entries are rendered ashen by the scribes when a recorded Human is scattered,” she began, speaking softly. “They become . . . gravestones . . . of sorts, where their memory will remain for posterity. This one . . . .” She pointed at a series of marks set deep into the left margin of the plate, running from the corner in a short column.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.