Witch Lights by Michael M. Hughes Read Free Book Online

beings. Not all nasty, either, like what came through in Blackwater. In fact, some of them like to help us. They want us to grow. To help us evolve in spite of ourselves.”
    “Good monsters? Nice, friendly aliens or whatever the fuck they are?”
    Mantu laughed. “There’s another word for them. You go to church when you were a kid?”
    “Yeah. I hated it.”
    “The church school I went to had a painting of two little kids, a boy and a girl, walking along this little road. Little
white
kids, of course. But there was this dude walking behind them. I used to stare at that picture all the time. He was wearing a white robe, and he had—”
    “Wings.”
    Mantu smiled.
    “You’re telling me Jeremy and the Brothers at this Eleusis are talking to
angels
? Are you shitting me?”
    “That’s one name for them. But there are lots of others.
Shedim
is another.
Nephilim
is even older.
Djinn
if you’re Arab. Lots of names for the same things.”
    Ray stared. Then he held out his glass. “Fuck that shit. Let’s finish that bottle.”
    Mantu laughed. “Bottoms up.”
    —
    “Welcome to my home.”
    Ellen and William had been escorted through the doors of an enormous colonial estate house enclosed within a twenty-foot-tall fence topped with razor wire. Guards stationed along the perimeter ringed the opulent building. It was an armed compound, not a home.
    The man welcoming them wore an open-collared shirt beneath a designer suit. His exposed chest was covered in short black hair. He was tall, more mestizo than Indian, and slender, with large, vibrant eyes.
    “My name is El Varón.” His accent was unusual, his English nearly perfect.
    “What’s that mean?” Ellen asked.
    “The gentleman, I think,” William said.
    El Varón smiled. “A smart young man.
Muy inteligente.
”
    “Some gentleman,” Ellen scoffed, pulling her arm out of the grip of the smelly, rough guard escorting her.
    “I’m sorry for the unpleasantness in getting you here, but you can be assured that while you are my guests your safety and comfort are my primary concerns.”
    Unpleasantness was putting it lightly. They’d been tied up and gagged and locked in the back of a pitch-black trailer. The duct tape hadn’t been taken off their mouths until they’d been loaded onto the private plane. Even then, they’d been told to stay quiet, and Ellen had felt the greedy, lascivious eyes of the guards ogling her the entire ride. The windows of the plane had been covered so they couldn’t tell where they were or where they were going. Not that she would have been able to tell anyway.
    “Well, Mr. El Varón, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t feel so welcome.” She moved protectively in front of William. Not that it mattered. Three of their escorts held military rifles and were standing a few feet away. But she felt like she had to assert herself. She wasn’t going to act weak in front of these men, not while William was watching her.
    El Varón shook his head. “You have my apologies,
Señora.
And my promise to do the utmost to make it up to you and your fine son. It’s an unfortunate fact that my business requires some primitive tactics at times.”
    William stepped in front of his mother. “Let us go,” he said. Ellen grabbed him by the shoulders, but he shook off her grasp. “Just let us go.”
    El Varón bent to look William in the eyes. “Little man, I brought you here for a good reason. Not to hurt you. I bought you here to keep you safe.”
    “Safe from what?” Ellen asked. “What’s safe about getting kidnapped, tied up, and—”
    El Varón wagged a finger. Several of his thin fingers had thick gold rings. “Someone has been looking for you for a long time. And for a…man you were said to be traveling with. But he is of no concern to me now. You are here, and that is what matters. And she—this awful woman—would do very bad things to you if she found you. So I brought you to my home, where you will be safe and