Chapter 1: Sunset Grace
Grace Levreaux's eyesight hadn't been what it used to be. Reading glasses had been a necessity for a while, but nowadays, when she was on the cliffs, looking at the beach and the ocean, she noticed the colors blurring together and tiny details like ships and seagulls disappearing into the vast blue.
She was going to need a prescription. Glasses. She was too old for contacts.
Still, she only needed the colors. That's why she came up here. She wasn't painting the landscape before her – her clumsy brushstrokes could never do it justice. She was painting from memory. Neverneverland. Up here, where the sun warmed her wrinkled skin and her old bones, where the wind ran its fingers through her long hair just like Francois had used to, up here, she could paint the colors. The brilliant blue of the sea, the vast blue of the sky, the orange and yellow of the setting sun, the earthy browns and yellows and greys of the beach of St. Bart below. Her watercolor landscape was different: stranger, more fantastical, more Dali than Monet, but the colors, the colors were the same.
This was her place, and it was beautiful. She had long since forgiven the cliffs for their crime, though she never came up here when it was storming.
It was off-season and early, so the beach was empty. She wouldn't be selling much of her goods of the next few months. Grace made and sold souvenirs she crafted herself: sea-shell bracelets, dream catchers, earrings… She didn't make much, but she didn't need much. Some money for food, some money for the rent on her little beach cabin, some money for the little pleasures any old widow is entitled to. (Sherry and HBO.) Her life was basic. Quiet, like this morning.
Painting was therapy.
A bright flash on the beach below distracted her. Her brush stilled. Grace narrowed her eyes. Four figures down below. One looked like he was carrying a surfboard, the other had… something odd on his back. A new kind of board? But nobody surfed here. Too dangerous, too many rocks lurking under the water.
When the things unfurled into large wings, however, Grace realized these four likely meant trouble. She retrieved an old Nokia cellphone from her basket and quickly composed a message. (What would she need a smartphone for? FaceBook was a mystery to her. Christian, Christian would have been in his late twenties now, he would have used it.) Recipient: R.D. She used one finger to type the message. 7. 4. 6. 3. 6. 5. 9. She didn't yet send it, though.
The one with wings and another one had taken to the sky, coming straight for her. Grace rose from her seat, abandoning her easel and her painting case. She moved closer to the edge, trying to look composed. Her heartbeat was picking up. Her right hand cradled the phone. The wind tugged at her hair.
She was strong.
The man with wings soared through the sky, arching through the blue. He wasn't wearing much. A thing that looked like a skirt, but Grace thought that might be the wrong word for it. It reminded her of gladiators, of hieroglyphs. His wings were white and large, his hair long and blond. He looked like an angel, though she wouldn't call him angelic. His body looked like a young woman's fantasy, and it was as if he was flaunting it.
A woman followed him. Grace immediately thought of her as Chinese. She had short-cropped black hair and a harsh expression on her face. The angel flew like a bird, the woman shot through the sky as if she were a rocket, enveloped in flames. She even left a fiery trail.
The man landed gracefully, a few feet from the Grace. His smile did not convince her. "Grace Levreaux?"
Probably no use in lying. "Yes?" She hated how thin her voice sounded.
Behind her, there was a whooshing sound and two thuds. Grace turned her head. Blocking her escape route down the cliff stood the two men from below: the blond boy with the surfboard, and a large, bulky… thing. Its skin was eerily pale, and it was hairless. Its eyebrows had elongated into pointy ridges. His eyes were yellow, lacking pupils. Grace swallowed. She was a mutant, sure, but this was a freak. He looked her over as if she were his prey.
She was strong.
The white brute grunted: "It's her."
"What –," she swallowed, "what do you want with me?"
The angel took a step towards her, she stepped backwards. She could practically feel the emptiness behind her. The cliffs of St. Bart were high and steep. It would be a sheer drop of three hundred feet, right into the jagged rocks poking out through the frothy waves. It would be her way out, one way or another.
She told herself this didn't have to be it. They hadn't done anything yet. But Grace didn't like the feel of them.
Two of them could fly. If she jumped, would they catch her?
"Our High Lord thinks you're very interesting, Mrs. Levreaux," the angel said. He had the sort of voice you wanted to listen to. "You're a strong woman. Your husband and your son died in a car accident, and yet, you've picked yourself up and moved on. You didn't even move to a place where the memories were less painful." The angel grinned. "I understand they never even found the car. Treacherous, these cliffs. Must've been a tough burial."
They knew. They knew everything. Grace moved her thumb and clicked what was hopefully the right button.
They were slowly closing in on her, but they seemed… unhurried. She had taken another few steps backwards. She glanced over her shoulder. Two more, and she'd fall. They didn't seem to care. They would catch her, and maybe they were hoping she'd do what she'd done before…
"Still, you persevered," the angel continued. Was she imagining it, or was there some… gloating in his voice? "Though, we understand there was in incident? A week after they died? Locals report an odd storm, a purple sky… A few beach goers even talked about a rift. Then again, when was this, the eighties? Fanciful stories abound, right? Besides, come next morning, everything had returned to normal. Still, where there's smoke…"
Grace hated his smirk. That was good. Strong people hated, weak people feared.
She looked down, hoping they wouldn't see, playing it off as a nervous tic. She covertly flipped the phone, now able to glance at the screen. 'Message sent'. Good. Now she had to get rid of it.
"You like the look of Caliban?" The angel gestured at the white brute, who snorted in response. "He's a mutant, just like everybody else here. He's special, though. He can sense other mutants. It's very helpful. He led us directly to you, Mrs. Levreaux. Too bad he doesn't tell us what the mutant in question can do… Just last week, we followed a promising lead. Turns out all the guy could do was change the color of his hair. No sense of him sticking around."
The Chinese woman laughed.
"I don't think that will be a problem with you," the angel said. "Your power has uses, as… others have discovered before us."
"Too bad it's not offensive," the surfer added.
Grace straightened her back. She had done her duty. "Is that what you think? An old lady, all she can do is open a door? Well, that's true, but I can open that door anywhere I want. A small one, right in your forehead," she pointed at the angel, "or a bigger one, in the middle of her chest. It's been a while since I opened any, so I don't know how well my aim is these days. Maybe I'll open one that'll rip you all apart." She took a step forward, her hands raised. All of them, save for the angel, took a step backwards. The angel raised an eyebrow.
"You're bluffing," the surfer said. He didn't sound convinced.
"Am I?" Grace asked. She jerked her hand upwards, fingers extended, in the woman's direction. It had been a feint, but the woman flinched and stepped backwards, flames igniting around her balled fists.
Good. She had gotten them on edge too.
"I think you are," the angel intoned. "Go ahead. Open a door."
If she tossed the phone over the edge, chances were, either the angel or the woman would go chasing it down. It would be an obvious lead. The proverbial smoking gun. Same thing would happen if she threw herself over the edge. Sure, she had an escape route, but they wanted her to open a door, she was sure of it. They would follow her there. However, if she threw the phone at them, pretending it was a weapon of some sort…
She focused on the woman, bringing her hand back. "I'll show you a door."
"She's doing –" the surfer shouted.
The angel caught on. "Don't –" he said, reaching out to catch it. He was too slow, or the woman was too fast, too scared of being torn apart by a portal to another dimension. Grace had been counting on that. The woman shot a blast of white-hot fire at the phone.
Grace's plan had been to have the phone incinerated and use that terribly minor distraction to jump off the cliff. If she could, she'd open a portal to Neverneverland and hide out there. If that failed, she'd die, taking her secret with her. It wasn't much of a plan, but, either way, the creepy angel and his team of brigands wouldn't get their hands on it.
Problem was, there were three things in the trajectory of the woman's blast of fire. The first was the angel's hand, trying to swipe the phone out of the air. The second was the phone, which was instantly disintegrated. The third was Grace. It hit her square in the head.
She didn't suffer. The force of the blast threw her backwards, off the cliff, but it was the blast itself that killed her.