The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)

by Andy Reynolds

  “You and I,” said The Angel of Death from behind him, “we have both loved those who have strayed to a darker path.”

  Roman's eyes closed and he took a deep breath.

  “Sure,” she said, “if you had stopped Rachel early on, or if I had stopped my lover, many innocent lives may have been spared. But that's not what torments us, is it?”

  “No,” said Roman. He let go of the small net gun in his coat and pulled his hand out, standing up.

  “What torments us,” said The Angel, “is that we still love them in spite of ourselves. And that if we could go back and do it over, we still don't know if we'd stop them.”

  “What are you going to do?” Roman turned to her.

  “Well, I'm not going to destroy the city.”

  “I know.”

  “If you had the chance to see Rachel again, wouldn't you do anything to hold her, to say goodbye? Wouldn't you want closure?”

  “No. She made a choice to betray The Agents of Fateful Encounters. When she made that choice, she cut herself off from me and everything she'd fallen in love with. Similarly, The Axeman made the choice to become what he ultimately became. Neither one of them was forced to do anything.”

  “I wonder if that's the human side of you talking.” A tear slid down one side of her face. “You cannot tell me that you do not feel even a little responsible.”

  Roman nodded. “You're right. I couldn't claim that I do not feel responsible.”

  “Then tell me,” she said. “Tell me that you wouldn't try and atone for your mistakes, if you had the chance.”

  Roman just looked at her, but when she turned away, he spoke up. “Wait.” The Angel turned to him, and he glanced down at the folded up Gateway. “First, would you help me put this on that train cart?”

  The Angel sighed and grabbed one end of The Gateway, helping him carry it over and set it onto the cart.

  Then Roman looked into her eyes, and he felt the human side of himself wanting to bring her comfort or ease. “You do not owe him anything.”

  She shook her head and backed away. “You're wrong. Maybe our situations are not as similar as I'd thought.” Her wings opened up behind her, and they were so tall that they nearly cast him in shadow under the near-noon sun. “Farewell, Roman Wing.”

  “Godspeed,” he whispered just before she leaped spinning into the air and vanished.

  File 81 :: [The Angel of Death]

  The Angel shifted out of the living world, cycling through the lands of the dead like flipping through the album pages of a jukebox, until she came to the Tartarus. She rose up above the train tracks, warehouses, and shotgun houses, then flew over the empty streets of The Marigny with the sky of Oblivion above her. The city raced by below as she flew into The Quarter, towards The French Opera House, where the sky was ruptured with rogue clouds of Oblivion wandering about.

  Flying down to one of the rooftops where she'd kept the musicians, she landed next to a pile of trumpets. She rifled through them until she found one that she liked, holding it in one hand and pressing down on the keys. Then she took to the sky once more, flying above The French Opera House and up near where the rupture in Oblivion had started, where shards of light poured through like broken glass.

  Bowing her head, The Angel of Death brought the trumpet to her lips and began to blow, her fingers marching in a familiar strut over the keys. The trumpet was the only instrument she'd ever learned to play, and what emerged from it was slow and bobbing, yet built up as it grew, as if it were a creature testing its limits. Her heart sauntered and sidestepped up through her throat and out along the notes as they rose up toward the broken sky. Hearing the music pulled up memories of Storyville and the clubs along Rampart Street, of countless alcohol and music drenched nights. She'd been so reckless then, so new to the world, when she'd met him and pulled him out onto that dance floor for the first time.

  She still remembered the unbridled fascination in his eyes as they danced, still remembered each stomp of her shoe on the wooden floor, the pounding of all the feet around them mirroring the thumping of fingers on piano keys, the thrum of the stand up bass, and the rhythmic wail of the cornet and trombone.

  After they'd danced to two songs, the band took a break.

  While they both sipped whiskey at the bar, she'd asked him why he hadn't been looking at her before they'd danced. So many of the other men in the club had.

  He'd glanced over his shoulder at the stage as he answered: “I don't believe I'll ever love anything more than watching such beautiful chaos, such explosive frivolity, come from nothing but a handful of simple instruments – and wondering how some people are endowed with gifts to create nights like this.”

  The Angel had grabbed his hand and stood up, smiling. “You can't always just watch what you love – you've got to partake! Be greedy!” She leaned in and whispered into his ear. “Take everything you can from life, because she's just going to leave you, in the end. Truth is, she doesn't care about you in the slightest.”

  He'd turned back to her, and that's when she saw those perfect lips curved into a smirk for the first time. In that moment she knew she wanted this man, wanted those lips against hers, wanted her fingers combing through his coal-black hair. Then she'd seen the shift in his blue eyes, the gears turning somewhere deep behind them, and she just knew that this man would fall in love with her.

  The thought scared the hell out of her, so she drowned it in the music as the band started back up. She'd only been The Angel of Death for a year at that point, and couldn't be getting wrapped up in nonsensical ideas like love. She squeezed his hand and pulled him up and back onto the dance floor, into the epicenter of his supposed beautiful chaos.

  * * *

  When The Angel finally opened her eyes, her vision was blurred with tears. She continued to play, and wiped her eyes with her free hand. It was then that she noticed a light brightening in the sky before her.

  Inside the light there was a figure, a silhouette in the brightness, and she kept pressing on the keys and pulling him out like a snake charmer luring their pet from a basket. The figure reached towards her, but was still a ways away when he fell like a drop of water towards the street below.

  The Angel dropped the trumpet and dove after him, catching him in the air and steadying herself as she rose back up towards the sky. In her arms was her old lover, but he was thin and frail and brittle, his head bald and his skin like ash. His eyes were smooth and gray and filled with tiny lights.

  He smiled as he looked up into her face, his mouth toothless and dry. “I knew you would come for me,” he slowly groaned. “It was so beautiful and silent in there. But no amount of beauty could rid me of my memories of you.”

  Tears slid down The Angel's face and landed on his cheeks and lips, and the skin there began to swell and heal, becoming the tiniest bit more alive. Then, as if those tears were traveling through his veins and bones to spread out underneath his skin, he began to slowly fill out.

  His gray eyes became wet at the edges. “I missed you, Sarah.”

  “I've missed you too,” said The Angel.

  He gazed up at the sky of Oblivion. “How long was I in there? It felt like so many lifetimes.”

  “Long enough.” She felt him getting a little heavier in her arms, the Tartarus seeping into his bones and muscle to slowly make him whole again.

  He turned and looked over the empty Tartarus Realm and smiled. “This will be our kingdom.” His hoarse voice was becoming a little stronger. “The world of the living will become my altar to you. All of them sacrificed in your name. And here our dead subjects will gather. You will be their queen, and I your knight.”

  The Angel squeezed her eyes shut and tears flowed steadily down her cheeks to fall onto his face and neck, her body shaking as she held him.

  “It's alright.” He reached up with a frail and bony hand to wipe her cheek. “You've got me back. Now nothing can stop us.”

  She held him tight against her. “I love you s
o much... I think I'd forgotten that.” She bent her head down and kissed his forehead. “There's... something I have to tell you.”

  “Yes,” he said, his gray eyes overflowing with joy just from gazing upon her. “Tell me all of it.”

  “We... we had a son.”

  His face dropped, his eyes quivering. “Had?”

  “He was beautiful. He looked just like you. And he led an extraordinary, full life. You would have been proud of him.”

  His eyes closed and he smiled. “I'm sure I would.”

  Then her massive wings beat behind her, lifting them upward as she shifted with her old lover through the various lands of the dead and into the living world.

  “Not yet!” he moaned. “I need to be in the Tartarus for a little while longer!”

  She cradled his head against her shoulder. “Shh. I know the world of the living hurts, but I've got you now. I'm going to make it better.” Through his frail chest she felt his lungs struggling to breathe and finally she stopped ascending. She pulled his head away and looked at him in the eyes. “I'm sorry.” She kissed his forehead. “I should have done this long ago. Before things got so out of control.”

  He began gasping for air, but The Angel brought her lips to his, kissing him hard and feeling her own tears seeping into the cracks that were spreading all along his gray lips.

  She made sure that the small revolver was between their chests when she pulled the trigger, so that she'd feel the pain of the recoil – so that she'd know some little whisper of what he felt.

  He took a deep, ragged breath and leaned back in her arms, looking up at her like she was an angel – a real angel, not some fucked up woman with black wings and a city job. “I'm sorry I wasn't stronger before,” she said. “I'm sorry I wasn't stronger for you.”

  She felt his body slowly growing limp in her arms, felt the warmth of his blood seeping into her blouse and skirt and running down her legs. She just held him there, high up in the sky – so far above the the world and everyone in it.

  File 82 :: [Edith Downs]

  William's memories were the first that Edith extracted that day. They were set up in one of the empty rooms of the headquarters underneath Spanish Plaza, with William sitting on a small metal chair while Edith strapped on the Extraction Glove and turned it on. He'd had to wear a blindfold while being led to the headquarters and through the stone hallways within, but his blindfold had been removed once he'd arrived in their current room.

  “Now, I want you to bring certain memories to the surface of your mind. Try just to focus on them, that should suffice. Firstly, the night you were taken by The Axeboy. Then when you were taken out of the axe, and all the memories that stand out to you between that point and now. Just focus on those for a moment.” Edith turned to Mars, who was setting up the mechanism Roman had created to store the copied memories – a mechanism which looked oddly like an industrial paper shredder. “How are we looking?”

  Mars flipped a couple of switches and nodded. “Good to go.”

  Julius and Adelaide were also in the room, just observing. Adelaide had cleaned up the wounds on her hand and across the side of her face, replacing the bloody bandages with fresh ones, though she'd have to wait for Roman to get back before having her wrist sewn back up, since Julius wasn't comfortable stitching her up one-handed.

  Edith picked up the copier and began copying William's memories. In the end there were fifteen of them. When she was done she gave the copier to Mars, who emptied it into the machine.

  William stood up, rubbing his eyes. “Well that wasn't so bad.”

  “Good,” said Edith. “We can see if someone feels like escorting you to the time rip, if you want.”

  “I'd rather watch, if that's alright.”

  Edith looked at Julius, who nodded. Then she glanced at Adelaide. “Ready to go?”

  Adelaide nodded. “Are you, Edith? This may take a while. I've still got a lot to give you.”

  Edith took a long drink from her six shot latte. “Let's go.”

  Adelaide sat in the chair, bringing up memories which grew from her head and floated there between her and Edith. Edith barely glanced at them as she began copying. Mars took the copier from her when it was full and swapped it out for another one, then ran over to empty it out. Julius walked up between Mars and Edith, handing the copiers back and forth between them so Mars didn't have to move at all. Adelaide jumped from memory to memory, only staying with one until the moment Edith copied it – the process becoming faster and faster as the four of them got their flow down. Only the slightest change in emotion on Adelaide's face told what the woman was going through as she pushed her way through her past.

  The copiers were filled and emptied, filled and emptied. Edith's eyes began to burn from staring so long into the strange memory-light, but she liked the pain – it reminded her of who she was becoming. It reminded her of who, in some ways, she'd already become.

  Eventually Adelaide's eyes became heavy, the mental energy obviously weighing upon both the fact that she hadn't slept for a long time and that she'd been assaulted just half a day before. Edith's burning eyes began to tear up from the stinging light, but she used Adelaide's determination to spur herself on. At some point she was aware that Roman had come into the room, but the realization was just on the outskirts of her consciousness as she pulled and copied memory after memory.

  When it was finally done and Adelaide groaned and sat back in the chair, Edith put the copier down and leaned on a table, her legs shaking beneath her. Mars took the copier from her and helped her sit down in another chair.

  “That was fucking badass, ladies!” Mars said. “You're both freaking rock stars!”

  Edith looked around, then closed her eyes. “Where did Julius and Roman go?”

  “They're putting away The Gateway,” said Mars. “You could probably use a rest anyway.” Mars handed them glasses of water, and both women drank their entire glass.

  “All those memories should keep you busy for a while,” said Adelaide, nodding to the copy machine. “Years and years of The Agents of Karma, as well as some other memories that might be relevant.”

  Julius and Roman walked in. “How'd it go?” asked Julius.

  Mars looked up and smiled. “Hundreds.”

  Roman smiled and laughed. It was a bit odd, like watching a duck smile or a squirrel laugh. “Thank you so much, Adelaide. In doing this, you have helped out The Agents Of, The Agents of Karma, and all our past and future incarnations.”

  “It is my honor,” she said.

  Julius looked at the three of them. “You all did very well.” His eyes fell on Adelaide. “Now, are we ready for the last part, so we can get this over with?”

  Adelaide looked at Edith. “Are you ready?”

  Edith downed the last of her latte and set the cup down. “Couldn't we just leave him in the axe?”

  Julius shook his head. “We need those memories. We need to see what we can glean from them, about his father and about The Angel of Death. Anything that may prove important in the future.”

  Edith shrugged and stood up, albeit a little slowly. “Alright, I'm ready.”

  Roman took off his coat and hung it on the open door, then rolled up his long blue sleeves. “Mars, I need you to take...” he pointed at William.

  “The name's William, sir,” he said.

  “Take William and bring an empty table from the lab.”

  Mars nodded and they both hurried out the door. Roman took Edith's empty coffee cup and the stapler-looking copier off the table and handed them to Edith, then picked up the table and stood it up vertically on one end so that it nearly reached the ceiling. “Julius, could you hold this here?”

  Julius did as asked.

  When Mars and William came in with the other table, he stood that one on end as well, so that they were both facing the same wall with about three feet between them. “Mars and William, please hold this table steady.” Mars grabbed the table and Roman walked over to his coat an
d pulled a small net gun from inside of it. “Edith, Adelaide, please move to the sides of the room.”

  He twisted the barrel of the gun and the end began to widen. “Be very still.” He turned around and fired at the space between the two tables. The net of light was wider, a function obviously controlled by turning the barrel, and the sides of the net stuck to the tables, one string of light leading directly into Roman's net gun. “Now, slowly place the tables down onto their legs.” They did so, keeping the tables the same distance from each other as they moved them.

  What they had were two long tables with a net of light between them like a spiderweb.

  Roman set the net gun down on one of the tables and put on what looked like a thick gardening glove. Then he picked up the net gun with his other hand and looked at Adelaide. “Drop him in.” He looked from Julius to William and Mars. “Get ready to push.”

  Adelaide took the axe and started trying to pull the wooden handle out of the silver head.

  “It kind of just unscrews,” said William.

  Adelaide nodded and unscrewed the head until it came off, then tilted it over the net. Just like that, the boy tumbled out and into the net, falling down between the tables which were then shoved together. Roman quickly crawled under the tables and twisted the net into itself using the gardening glove, sealing it. After a quick inspection, he stood up. “You can pull them apart now.”

  The tables were pulled apart and the ropes of light had been fused together all around The Axeboy. Roman pulled one of the chairs into the center of the room, then picked up The Axeboy with the gardening glove and sat him down (as much as anyone could sit down being all wrapped up in a net). The Axeboy looked dazed, but Edith saw the realization of what was happening dawn on him.

  She saw his form blur a little and figured he was trying to shift into the lands of the dead. Then the axe head and handle both shook in Adelaide's hands, but he just wasn't powerful enough to call them with whatever effects the net had on him.