Chapter Three

July 23, 2009

The smell brought me back. Powerful, but not like a weightlifter, more like a dictator. Sweet, but not like sugar, more like when you have a really good day that you wish would go on forever. This was a good sign and then I heard it. Nothingness.
“What happened to the angels, I don’t hear the beating anymore”, said Lani.
“Cupid happened”, I told her, “We should be leaving though, like now!”
“Wait I have to grab the rest of the ti leaves.”
I knew it was too late when I heard the slight whistling, a whistling that you don’t want to hear. The first ball of burning rock came through the roof of the building, melting the ragged edges smooth like cauterizing a wound. I heard the screaming of a cherub as one of the other fireballs found its first target. The smell of burnt sugar permeated the air and it was sickening.



“What is that goddess awful smell?” Lani asked me.
“That would be the smell of ambrosia being burnt from existence, and if you don’t stop asking questions and run faster we are going to be adding a burnt human smell to it”, I urged her.

I stopped because she stopped.
“Lani, there is not an active volcano within a thousand klicks of here, she has no power here, especially against this.”

I might as well have been speaking to a wall. Hawaiian women have to be some of the most stubborn women in the entire world. You cannot tell them anything. She just sits there lips moving silently in a language not spoken by many anymore. I knew some of what she was saying. Calling on the ancestors, calling on her amakua, ultimately calling on Pele.

My hair began blowing, first one way then another, and then straight up. I dropped to the ground the best I could, it was like gravity had given up.
“Lani! Tell her to stop!”
She looked at me with glowing red eyes. This isn’t your Valentine’s Day red, this is the color of charcoal. This is the color of lava.
“How dare you command me mortal. Stand down like a dog if you will but Pele cowers not in fear”

Not one to argue with an angry women, I stopped and stared in amazement. She burned from within, a fire that could not be quenched. She looked as if she was arcing with electricity, sparks going through her ehu hair like sparks in one of those ball like things.

The wind whipped into the fireballs, scattering them to the heavens. They hit a barrier up there and scattered, bursting into what may have been the biggest fireworks in the history of mankind. It was beautiful but I was hoping it would be as deadly to Yahweh as it is beautiful to me.

I thought the danger had passed and I approached Lani-Pele (or is it Pele-Lani?) to help her up when she turned on me. It was like she didn’t realize that I was her friend, the one who had helped her off of that boat in California after Hawai’i had been destroyed by Michael. She placed her right hand on my throat and lifted me as high as she could.
There was a fire burning around my neck like I had never known before. It was like someone shoved hot coals down my throat and wrapped a molten collar around my neck.

“Lani? Lani, I know you are in there and I know you can control this.” I wasn’t sure if she could. “Do you remember when we met on the beach? You didn’t want to leave sight of the ocean, right? Pele is probably the same way, does she fear being away from the ocean? Does she realize how far away she is? Tell her Lani, tell her how far away she is.”

I am blacking out by this point when I notice the internal conflict that she is going through. Her eyes flicker like a burning log in the wind when they finally stop. Ha, I didn’t even realize I had closed my own eyes. I opened them hoping to see those deep earthy brown eyes instead of the fiery ones staring back at me. I slowly opened my own green eyes and was shocked by what I was seeing. Lani stared back at me with one brown eye and one fire eye.

“Are your okay?” she asks me.
“Yeah, I would be doing even fucking better if you would fucking let go of me and kindly explain what the fuck is going on.” I choked out to her.

She dropped me like a sack of potatoes and I hopped up rubbing my reddened neck.
“So about that explanation.”
“Cain, I am not sure. I can hear her now, in the back of my head. She is with me eve now as we speak. I can feel her power coursing through me, nowhere near what it was a few minutes ago but powerful still. I can feel every rock, see the wind,” she paused, ” and Cain, my head feels like it will split in half if I am not careful.”
“Yeah well if I had an ego as big as that chicks’ in my head I would have a damn headache to. Can you talk to her?”
“Yeah I think she can hear me, but I don’t think it is like talking. She understands though.”

Shaking my head I tell her “Tell that crazy bitch that if she pulls another stunt like that I am going to be obliged to beat you. You, Lani, not her, my neck hurts like shit and that she could have killed you”

Not to mention that if she is powerful enough for a deity to enter and leave at will than she could be vital to the cause. She could be the one to bring Him down.

“Tell her I said thank you though.”