The Lily Harper 8 Book Boxed Set

by HP Mallory

  The sudden clenching of my jaw and stomach were clear signs of how unfortunate I found that information to be.

  “Not scorn, but grief much more…”

  -Dante’s Inferno

  THIRTEEN

  BILL

  Christ, but I freakin’ hate walkin’.

  Yeah, yeah, I know… that’s how everybody gets around. But c’mon! I’m a freakin’ angel. That oughta count for something!

  But all my gazillion requestrations to AE for a pair of wings always gets me the same damn answer each time: “disqualified.”

  Except for the red eye flight on Lils’ pet bird bitch and the car rides on the Garbage Truck of Doom and the Little Electric Car That Couldn’t, I ain’t done nothing but walk since I got down here. And it was seriously getting old.

  My in-and-outsoles were screaming with agony while I followed Tido who was too busy trailing our new gal pal, I Dream o’ Jeannie. Damned if I knew how long we’d been hoofing it, though. The clock on my phone barely budged since leaving the elevator. We were probabilistically too far away from any cell towers and no way could it have been three minutes, but that was what it said. Still, as extenuational as our travel time was, it gave us a lot of opportunistics to talk. Good a reason as any other for why Tido decided to put the one billion dollar question to Jeannie.

  “Ye seen ah certain blind giant recently?”

  A bit of surprise cracked open her Lady Madonna mask, one she’d been wearing since she hooked up with us. “Epimetheus?”

  Conan actually gave her a smile… at least, that’s what I assumed it were under that forested bog he called his beard. “Aye, the verra one, Jeanne… he spoke o’ ye as though ye were his personal angel.”

  She took that complimentary with a shrug. “I could see he was in pain and I wished to do something to alleviate it, if only for a little while.”

  “Aye, an’ yer kindness left a deep impression oopon him. His brother contracted oos with ensurin’ yer safety in exchange fer lettin’ oos pass by.”

  I scoffed. “Yeah! And look how that worked out, Conan! She winds up savin’ our asses, yo, ‘cause we never seen them ambashers comin’.”

  The mask dropped back over Jeanne’s face. “Everyone needs help eventually, William. At the end of my life, I was denied any assistance. So how could I cruelly deny it to either of you when I could so easily offer it?”

  Conan’s voice sounded real choked up like when he yapped again. “Ah, had Ah known ye in me life, Ah’d have been proud tae stand by yer side in battle.”

  I cleared my throat and changed the subjective. “So why didn’t you find Epi and Pro before now? I mean, after spendin’ centureons walkin’ around the Underground City, ya shoulda run into ‘em a loooong time ago.”

  She bowed her head a bit. “In death as in life, I am guided by something I cannot speak of. Wherever it prompts me to go, I must follow.”

  Sounded a lot like my gig as a guardian angel. Problem was: angels don’t stay with their humans after death—they just move on to the next human who gotta need for ‘em. So why was I still with Lils? Easy—I’m the exceptionator, not the ruler. “Did ya ever, ya know, not listen ta that voice or whatever it is?”

  A smile that looked as sad as Tido’s shoeless feet took holda her face. “More than once, William, and each time, I regretted it. I now follow this inner guidance without question, wherever it might lead. And it has never guided me here until this very day.”

  Conan asked a question that made me wonder if he weren’t such a dumbass as I thought. “Ye been tae all the Circles aboove oos?”

  She didn’t hesi-state. “Every one and many times.”

  “An’ yer jist now comin’ down tae the morgue?” Tido asked, shaking his head like he got a damned tick in his ear. “Yer timin’ makes me wonder; why now?”

  Jeannie blew a cute, little breath out her nose. “I truly do not know, Tallis. But I shall find out when I need to.”

  And there it was, the secret sauce of how she kept us mesmer-roused: true faith. Most humans in my experience just go through the motionals. Including most of the folks I watched over. Some of them said they believed, and put on a good enough act to fool everybody else but I always saw right through ‘em. Auras are real handy when it comes to sifting out bullshit.

  But every once upon a time, you run into the feels real deal. Those people make the human race better. They be so good that you feel bad about yourself for not trying harder to be better. That’s probly why most of them don’t last. The hippocratical world around them can only take so much gazing in that reflectation before they decide to smash it with the nearest hammer.

  All that bullet-training ran through my head when I piped up. “Dunno if I’m speaking fer Tido here but, uh… I hope we can do the same fer you as ya did fer us.”

  The smirk returned to Conan’s lips. “Nae offense, stookie angel, but Ah’m guessin’ that somethin’ like repellin’ them Spites is a wee bit beyond ye.”

  I blew a raspberry at him. “Yo, ya know what I’m sayin’, Conan.”

  “Ah think that was the first pair o’ full sentences Ah didnae need a translator fer.”

  Watching us speak-spar made Jeannie smile. “You squabble as only deux freres can.”

  Maybe Tido didn’t get the French but I sure did. “Him? My bro? If you’re right, Jeannie, that’s one branch o’ the family tree I want chainsawed off.”

  The big ogre gave me a quick chuckle. “Aye, Ah’d like tae see ye attempt tae work a chainsaw.” Then Tido faced Jeannie. “The angel’s ah rather useless, girly type.”

  “Consider yerself lucky to be hanging out with the yeti,” I said to Jeannie. “Usually he only comes outta the forest on occasion an’ most people don’t even believe he exists.” Tido frowned at me before turning ‘round again. “Dat ass doe.”

  “Stop lookin’ at me arse, man!” he railed.

  Jeannie couldn’t keep a straight face. She started laughing the way only a free soul can. It made me wonderize, yet again, how in hells she got down here. I’ve always known AE was an ineffectualized, slug-trail operation with no right to still be in busy-ness. But this went past what Polly’d call “oversight”—guess the word “mistake” ain’t in her vocabulary—and straight into what Sally’d call a “travesty.” That’s her code word for disastrophe.

  Any dumbass who could see straight would know this was the last place Jeannie should be. An’ yet here she was with the rest of us poor saps. Sweet kid deserved a lot better… just like my Lils.

  ***

  The big artillerator guns went off and sounded too damn close, even if they weren’t nowhere in sight. It was enough to make me tempermentally forget my acherating feet. Guns mean armies. Armies mean base camp. Base camp means radio contact. Guess Jeannie’s info weren’t as out of date as she thought.

  Tido pointed to an open area just beyond us. Once upon a time, a building stood there but now it was no more than a pile of ragged rocks. You could hear and see all the shells firing past it. Tido started running towards the heap an’ Jeannie started up behind him before she turned to look at me where I was maintaininating my current walk.

  “William, you must hurry!” she whispered.

  “Nah ah, not me, sugar lips. I got runner’s block.”

  “You’ve got what?”

  “It’s like writer’s block but not. I got me a lack o’ will or reason to run. It can last up to a few weeks.”

  “Hurry, ye bleedin’ dunderheid!” Tido said as he walked his enormo self back over. Then he was glarin’ at me as he started up that junk heap like the bear he resymbolates and Jeannie wasn’t too far behind him. Me? I was way behind both of them. I was too busy lappin’ up the view of Jean-Jeannie’s ass-ets and even that couldn’t make me climb no faster. Being short’s a bigger bitch than Skeletorhorn.

  Jeannie, or God movin’ through Jeannie, or maybe she was channelin’ some other dude like John Cena, but she managed to haul my dumpy ass over the final stretch of
the rubble up to the top. That gave me a good look at the situ-aching… which was anything but good. The place was a square gridlock of tents.

  “I shaved my balls for this?” I whispered as I took me another once over of the encampment. It looked like the boy scouts had taken over only these ones were way less friendly and I doubted they even knew the first thing ‘bout roastin’ marshmallows.

  Not too far from where we was, I seen those big arse-an-all guns getting reloaded by their crews. Every one of those metal monsters was a Big Bertha, over a hundred years outta date but still pretty deadly. Just past them, I saw the ragged line of humans all loading their rifles. My eyes practically bugfucked out my head when I saw they were also fixing bayonets on the gun barrels. Freakin’ bayonets…

  I nearly swallowed my own tongue when a guy popped out the nearest tent. There weren’t no mistaking those natural blonde curls, matching blonde mustache, deep-socketed blue eyes, and that damn ridicu-louse broad-brimmed hat. He always looked like a kid imposteranating a grown-up. When I heard him talking to his men in that high-bitched, enthusi-asshat voice, I realized things hadn’t changed much.

  Conan actually did utter a groan before he identificated the asshole. “General George Cooster? O’ course, he’d be in the thick o’ it.”

  Jeannie looked over at Tido. “You know him?”

  I ignored my twisting guts—for once, not because I was hangry—but to fill her in. “We both do, Jeannie. The only reason people rememorate that yellow-haired idiot is ‘cause he got hisself an’ all his men killed in a battle with Nativity Americans that never should’ve been fought.”

  The way Jeannie was frowning, I could tell she didn’t understand. “Was it not a worthy cause?”

  Tido’s whole face, not just his lips, sneered in disgust. “Ah wouldnae say so, Jeanne. An’ e’en if it were, none o’ the men oonder his command had tae die the inglorious way they did.”

  I wasn’t sure if I agreed with the Scottish Sasquatch; if I did, it would be the first time an’ I weren’t sure I was ready for that yet. “One o’ the guys who died that day was one o’ mine. I tried tellin’ him to GTFO while he could. I damn near screamed it in his ear when Custer got closer. But instead…”

  I didn’t like how that rememory affectuated me. Right after that, I really started party-hardying just to cope. Sometimes you can lead a human to the trough but you can’t get him to shit. Or however the hell that stupid sayin’ goes.

  The consternation on Jeannie’s face clued me in: she finally got on our wave-lap. “Do you both believe this man, Custer, is about to do such a terrible thing again?”

  Our perch gave us a clear view of the enema lines. I took out my telenoculars to get a better peek. What I saw in the trenches was anything but encourageous. “I’m seein’ a metric ton o’ rifles an’ the supersized, jumbo, economy pack o’ machine gun nests; I don’t believe shithead’s about to do a terrible thing, Jeannie. I knows it.”

  When I looked away, Conan grunted like a moose with a bad ear infection. “Cooster probably thought the big cannons would soften ‘em oop long enough tae charge the lines.”

  I gave him something ‘tween a laugh and a cough. “Yeah, good luck with that. All those idiots with the merit stars on their shoulders thought that’d work in World War I too.”

  Jeannie went back to being confrustrated. “One two?”

  Conan got me out of that jam by interrupting. “Hol’ on now… look down below oos.”

  “Your doom fix’d deep within me…”

  -Dante’s Inferno

  FOURTEEN

  BILL

  Since I couldn’t see shit, I wiggled up a little closer to the edge. Looking straight down, I saw a tent—hell, it were more like a bumbershoot seeing as it didn’t have any sides on it—and it had a lotta comm gear under it. A bunch of perfect-looking kids, vale-dictator-ans of their eugenics class no doubt, were manning the equipment. It was surrounded by four troopers who were probly glad to be spared the Suicide Sprint Custer planned for everybody else.

  “Ye think those kids on the machines are Soul Retrievers, stookie angel?”

  I gave ‘em a quick aura read. “Yeah, pretty safe bet, Conan. They’re definitely newlydeads an’ the guys ‘round ‘em got Underground City stamped all over their auras.”

  Jeannie started tapping both our shoulders. After getting our attention, she pointed at the cannons. The cannon cockers were falling in line with the rest of their battle-buddies, right down to the bayonets on the rifles. I did some quick death math in my head. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, Conan?”

  “If ye be thinkin’ we make our move right after Cooster makes his, then aye.”

  Jeannie chose that second to hurlicane us a curveball. “No killing.”

  That threw Tido for a loop. “Nae whit?”

  She nodded toward the line where General Fuckster was walking to the front. “No killing.”

  I wanted to say that was impossible an’ bullshit but I never got me the chance. ‘Cause Conan hurly-burlyed me a second curveball.

  “Aye, Ah think we can accommodate ye, lass.”

  How’s we was gonna do that, I had no idear. But whatevs.

  “Charge!” Custer’s yell was damn near as loud as his cannons. All his boys started hollering just before rushing the other front line. Somebody needed to kick this party off, so I launched myself right on top of the nearest guy’s head.

  “Light it up!” I yelled before cutting loose with a flashbang aura that blinded everyone but the guy I was riding. He failed ta appreci-ache my feat or regalize that I’d just saved him from a seri-ass blinding while his buddies were aimlessly stumbling around and clawing their eyes.

  Dumbass kept swiping at me, trying to pull me off but I was seated pretty good on his shoulders. The good news was: Custer’s boys were preoccupated with the whole full-frontal and didn’t see us. The bad news: the guy was frantically trying to tear me off his shoulders. I kept squeezing his head the way I would’ve liked to squeeze a pair of over large breasts.

  Tido landed on the back of the one in front of my ride. His big fist smashed the back of the guy’s head, knocking the sap out cold. Then Conan laid out the next one with a bomb-punch that sent him flying into the guy ahead of him. They both fell in a heap while sasquatch yanked out his sword. He brained both those guys with the hilt. That left the one guy, who was so busy dealing with me, he had no idea what was happening around him.

  Tido reared back his sword, hilt first.

  “Off, stookie angel!”

  No need to tell me twice… I ain’t no fool. Soze I jumped off the guy at the same time Tido whacked the dude squarely in the face and he hit the ground in the same exact place where I was! His head slammed into my empty gut so hard, I almost power puked. Too bad I didn’t have nothing inside me to vominate.

  By then, the 90210 crowd were getting their regularly scheduled insta-vision from their eyeballs again. Every one of ‘em backed away from Tido’s uniquified blend of bad hygiene and overlarge muscles. One kid in the back looked like Tom Cruise before his plastic-fantastic surgery. He damn near back-walked out the tent saying, “W-W-We don’t want any trouble!”

  I heard some rocks moving behind us and I assuminated it was more trouble until I saw Jeannie walking out from behind the yeti. The girl next to her was such a looker, I found myself suddenly nursing a semi. The hottie-patotty took a couple steps toward the last member of our not-very-merry band.

  “Who are you? And how did you get stuck with these two?” she asked.

  Jeannie’s dazzling smile could’ve lit up Vegas for a whole year. “I am Jeanne, mon ami. Please do not be alarmed by these two. They rescued me from Cardinal Cauchon.”

  Tido unexpectedly turned his full at-tension on them and they all looked scared. I wondered if they thought he was gonna eat them? “Unless Ah’m mistaken, ye all moost be Soul Retrievers?”

  A super pale kid with a mop of orange hair scoffed and stared at the ground. “Yeah…
not that the title means much.”

  Tido looked at Hottie like he wanted an explantion. She shrugged. “It’s the same story for all of us. We get our first job, run into trouble and next thing we know, we’re here.”

  “Not like we’re prepared,” the orange-haired dude added.

  The other girl, a blonde, wore the body of a super fit, muscular gym bunny. She grabbed flame-crotch’s shoulder and squeezed. “I keep telling you, Harry. We were set up purposely to fail. None of this is our fault.”

  Harry gave her a look. “I hear you, Kay. I just can’t stop thinking we could have done better.”

  Tido’s head turned towards the raging battle. “Water oonder the bridge, lad, an’ that’s somethin’ we got nae time tae discoose. How long ye figure, stookie angel, ‘afore Cooster’s troops be fallin’ back?”

  Harry’s eyes bugged out a little before landing on yours truly. “Did he just call you an angel?”

  Ms. Hottie next to him lightly slapped his arm. “Quiet!”

  While the girl hissed, I answered Conan’s question. “We got maybe five, six minutes max, yo. Chargin’ the front lines that way, one side’s gonna be massacrated PDQ. An’ I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna be the side Curly expects.”

  Ms. Hottie gave me a shrewd look. “So… what do you need from us?”

  Ms. Junior She-Hulk aka Kay looked over her man-shoulder. “Uhm, I don’t know if you missed it, Addie, but these two don’t look like they need much of anything.”

  Jeannie stepped up and put her finger on the equipment they were standing in front of. “We need your radio. There is someone I must call before it is too late.”

  Harry’s eyes got harder. “Can we proceed on our way after that?”

  Tido did a quick nod. “As ye like, lad, boot Ah’d recommend stayin’ with oos jist sae ye got a fightin’ chance tae make it out o’ the Oonderground City.”