by Brian Fuller
Now reunited with the rest of his body, he hauled himself up and into his office chair. As a matter of pride, he ate the now-stale cookie. Begrudgingly, he had to admit it was probably the best chocolate chip cookie he had ever tasted, but maybe that was Rapture talking.
He pulled his phone out to see what the beeping had been about. There had been another Slice and Dice, which Aclima had won handily. Another message informed him of the mission debrief in ten minutes, and Corinth wanted confirmation that Helo could take over his duties with Tela for the Michaels Ball. Seeing Tela again was something worth looking forward to at least.
He changed into the new uniform he had procured, though the drywall dust in his hair was still there. With the debrief coming up, he didn’t have time to shower, though he didn’t leave for the meeting until he was sure he would get there late enough to avoid any pre-meeting banter. Rapture had helped soothe his sharp feelings, but it hadn’t helped him want to deal with people yet, especially not the ones on his team.
The debrief was in the same conference room as his first meeting with Sicarius Nox, and when the door slid open, they were all there. Shujaa was slouched at the back, Faramir sat one row from the front, and Aclima occupied a desk in the middle. Up front, Goliath sat on the table, and a Michael he hadn’t seen before stood off to the side. He had a big, round face, a pronounced nose, and bright-red hair morphed into a flattop so level you could put a glass of water on it without spilling a drop. He stood at picture-perfect parade rest.
All talk stopped as Helo walked in and took a seat next to Shujaa.
“You’re late,” the newcomer barked, and from his cold, green-eyed stare, Helo knew he was going to be trouble.
Chapter 12
Argyle
“Sorry,” Helo said, settling into his seat. “Had to take some time to get my head on straight.”
Goliath got the joke. She grinned and hopped off the table where she had been sitting. “Let’s get this meeting going. I’ve already turned in the action report to Archus Mars, who is pleased with the results of our inaugural mission. One Dread Loremaster in custody and one Sheid destroyed. Not bad. Admah is currently undergoing interrogation, which Aclima was involved in during the early hours this morning. The contents of the trucks and equipment we confiscated are being examined. Before we proceed with a full accounting of our original mission and the extra action Helo and I were involved in, I would like to introduce Argyle, a fifty-year veteran of the Michaels. He will be my second in command from this point forward, replacing Helo.”
Faramir twisted in his seat and smirked at Helo for a moment. “Nice,” he said, turning away.
Helo was aware of Aclima glancing his way, but he kept his eyes on the wall behind Goliath.
Goliath continued. “I expect you to treat Argyle’s commands as my own and to respect his experience and skill. His mission track record is exceptional, and I think he can take this team to the next level. Now, let’s go over what went right and what went wrong during the mission, and Helo, I’d like you to fill in some bits about your encounter with the Sheid.”
It took about an hour to get through all the different perspectives. Helo gave the bare facts. He didn’t feel like giving any at all. Demoted. He felt like the log dragged out of the fire and left to smolder while the rest of the fire burned happily on. Luckily, everyone bought his explanation that Dolorem had called him with information about the vision, and Goliath kept her word and didn’t reveal that he was a Visionary. Argyle stayed rooted at parade rest the entire time, barely twitching no matter how exciting or dull the details.
Once everything had been logged and recorded, Goliath instructed Primus to close their very first mission file. “Okay, before we go, Aclima has brought a theory to my attention I think everyone should hear. We’ve got no proof yet, but it would explain a few things. Go ahead.”
Aclima walked to the front of the room and stood near Argyle, her arms folded. “I believe finding Admah infused with Vexus and the attempt to capture Tela Mirren are related. I believe Cain or one of his associates wants to use Tela as a focus to create a Sheid.”
Helo straightened up in his chair, but Faramir asked the question before he could. “Why her? They know we’re guarding her. Wouldn’t they go after a simpler target?”
“They could,” Aclima said, “but using Tela as a focus would create a more powerful Sheid.”
“Why?” Helo asked.
She hesitated for a moment, eyes tightening, and then continued. “There are three things that contribute to a Sheid’s power. The will of the creator, the type of victim selected as a focus, and the amount of Vexus used. Using an active Attuned is the most powerful focus you can have. Due to Tela’s involvement in unraveling Cain’s last plan, he may have selected her both for the power she will provide and to get revenge at the same time. I have explained all of this to the Scholus and the Medius.”
“So you’ve made a Sheid?” Faramir asked, tone disgusted.
“Yes,” Aclima said softly, eyes distant. “A long, long time ago.”
Faramir leaned forward, tone accusing. “How long? Fifty years? A hundred years?”
Aclima’s gaze sharpened. “BC, Faramir, not AD.”
“And who was your victim?” the usually silent Shujaa piped up, fists clenched, the 3:24 on his knuckles warped with the stretching.
Helo swallowed involuntarily. He hadn’t thought she would have ever been capable of doing something so horrible, even if it was a long time ago. Of course, he hadn’t thought she would chop his head off to make a point, either.
“That’s enough,” Goliath said. “There’s nothing we need to do about this theory except be aware. Aclima’s information has been very useful to us, and we need to respect that.”
Helo remembered Goliath had said she would give Aclima a chance, and so far, she had been true to her word, even if Faramir and Shujaa seemed hell-bent on dragging Aclima’s past out of the closet.
“Now,” Goliath continued, “as you are no doubt aware, the Michaels Ball is in Denver this year and begins tomorrow at nine at night. The address should be on your phone now. Enjoy yourselves, but return to Zion Alpha promptly afterward. Everyone got a date?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Argyle stated as if Goliath had ordered him to storm a machine-gun nest and he couldn’t wait to get started.
“I’m DJing,” Faramir said.
“I am going to the dance with Grand Archus Gideon,” Aclima said, the information raising Faramir’s eyebrows. “Yes, Faramir, the Grand Archus,” she reiterated.
“I’ve been asked to guard Tela Mirren for the evening,” Helo reported, Faramir’s mouth still agape at Aclima’s revelation. Helo wondered if he disapproved or was just surprised.
“I’ll be here training to burn Dreads,” Shujaa growled. “Dancing is pointless.”
Helo nodded approvingly. Finally, someone who got it.
“Gotta put a little ‘life’ in your afterlife, bro,” Faramir chided.
Shujaa glared at Faramir like he was next on the fist-to-the-face list.
Goliath turned to her second in command. “Argyle, do you have anything you want to say before we break up?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, maintaining his rigid posture. “It is an honor to serve in this re-formation of Sicarius Nox. Goliath brought me in to help tidy things up and provide some command experience. From now on we will start acting like a team and looking like a team. When we have meetings, we will be on time. We will sit together, not strung out all over the room like a group of random strangers. We will drill together. We will honor the command structure and get the job done cleanly and efficiently. We will make this team great again and be the envy of the Michaels. Understood?”
Scattered answers filtered out, Helo settling for nodding his head.
“I said Understood?’”
“Yes, sir!” they answered in hearty unison.
“Dismissed,” Goliath said.
Helo had to fight from rolling
his eyes. He had run into several Argyle types in his days in the Marines and hated them. They were either career guys bucking for rank advancement by trying to seem like Sammy Super Soldier or psychotic patriots so lost in military culture they almost didn’t seem human anymore. This was his replacement?
Helo made it out the door before anyone else made it out of their seat. Outside. He wanted to see the sun without seeing anyone else—certainly not Faramir, who was no doubt thrilled “Cowboy Helo” had lost his position on the team. Certainly not Aclima. He took one of the elevators up out of the underground base and into the hangar.
A single guard stood sentry inside the voluminous building, and Helo crossed to a side door and let himself out. He’d never enjoyed running during his mortal days, and the Marines certainly had ways to make jogging as miserable as possible, but running as an Ash Angel was effortless. He set off toward the rising sun, running past the Nevada wasteland toward the base’s exterior gate at a nice even pace.
The fields of rocks and dust slipped by him, and he breathed on purpose to fill his nose with the scent of sage and let clean air circulate in his lungs. He could have sprinted the entire way if he had wanted to, but he kept his pace at a jog, not so much to look normal to anyone but to take his time and relax. Since his Ash Angel body would never tire, he couldn’t exert himself and sweat his problems away. Time was what he needed—time and distance, wind and sun.
He ran around the environs of the base for an hour. As he slowed and headed back toward the hangar, Shujaa pushed out the door carrying a Big Blessed Sniper Rifle over his shoulder and an ammo box. His bald head turned in Helo’s direction, and he raised a hand in greeting, though his face was as somber as ever.
“Where you headed?” Helo asked.
“Shooting range,” Shujaa said, African accent thick. “You any good?”
“I got some rust on me,” Helo answered.
“Let’s knock it off, then,” he said. “Come. Come with me. Oh, but Aclima was trying to find you. Perhaps you should go talk to her or she will chop your head off again.”
So that was getting around. Great. But he wasn’t ready to face Aclima yet. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Good,” Shujaa said. “This way.”
The range wasn’t as formal as Helo expected and was nothing more than a low hill facing an empty stretch of desert dotted with broken rocks, cracked boulders, and stunted sage bushes. By the generous littering of shell casings at his feet, it seemed to get good use.
“You wait here,” Shujaa said. “I will set up for you. Five rocks. Five shots.”
Shujaa handed him the rifle and sprinted off into the desert using his Speed Bestowal. The last time Helo had used an Ash Angel sniper rifle was when he had set up an ambush for the Dreads in the cemetery after he had rescued Tela from their clutches. The targets then were only two hundred feet away at most, but by the looks of it, Shujaa had stopped five hundred yards out.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
A flat rock surrounded by spent casings seemed an ideal place to lie down without getting dust all over his black fatigues, and he got down on his belly and peered down the scope. Shujaa had collected a few football-sized rocks and was placing them on top of a boulder pitted and chipped by every shot that had gone low. When Shujaa had set five rocks on the top of the boulder, he stepped to the left and waved his hand.
So ingrained was Helo’s training not to take shots when someone was downrange, it took him a moment to realize he could proceed. The first shot, he knew, would be cold. Really cold and really rusty. He lined it up and fired. The rifle kicked, and all he got was a puff of dust behind the boulder. He reloaded. Remembering to flare his Strength to absorb some of the kickback, he fired again, this shot striking the boulder and spitting rock shards everywhere.
He adjusted the elevation knob on the scope. The next three shots hit the stones, but only one of them squarely enough to destroy it completely. He was very out of practice and glad he had run into Shujaa. This would be useful. This would help him get work done.
Through the scope, he could see Shujaa setting up the rocks again before sprinting back toward the low hill. His mouth was turned up in the barest of grins, the first Helo could remember on the man’s face.
“The rust is thick, Helo,” he said. “You must come train more. You and Faramir.”
“I need the practice,” Helo said. “But in my defense, the scope wasn’t zeroed. I fixed it for you.”
“Good excuse,” Shujaa said. “Let’s see if you’ve screwed up my weapon.”
Shujaa took the rifle and a fistful of bullets and then rolled onto his belly. He had barely lined up the shot when the rifle fired. The boulder was too far away to see what had happened, but like clockwork, Shujaa had fired off five shots and stood back up.
“Take a look,” he said, handing Helo the rifle.
Helo took the rifle and looked through the scope. Nothing remained on the boulder but shards of blown-apart rock.
“Nice,” Helo said, handing back the rifle. “Looks like you don’t need the practice.”
“Five hundred yards is rookie distance,” Shujaa said. “There’s another boulder out about a thousand yards. I miss targets on that one at least once every time. You stick to five hundred for now. I will help you. You don’t need to worry about nothing except killing Dreads. That is the job. No more.”
Helo nodded. Here was someone Dolorem wouldn’t get along with at all. His Old Master had tried to beat into him that Ash Angels weren’t made as Dread hunters but meant to be servants to improve the lives of all humankind. Shujaa would likely say killing every Dread was the best way to effect that improvement.
“But tell me, Helo,” Shujaa said, sitting on a nearby rock. “You trust this Aclima woman?”
“I do,” Helo answered, though a gnawing doubt grew in his mind, not so much about her intentions but about her weaknesses—flaws Cain might use against her. Shujaa gazed off into the distance, face troubled. “What’s up?” Helo asked. “You with Faramir on Aclima?”
Shujaa’s hard brown eyes took him in. “I believe people can change, but most don’t. Even if she is worthy to be an Ash Angel, she has blood on her hands. Lots of blood. Innocent blood. You know this. Has she confessed her sins to you?”
“No. I’m not her priest, and I’m certainly not her god,” Helo said. “She wants to move on and do good, and that’s enough for me.”
Shujaa sat quietly for a moment. “I don’t know if that would be enough for me. I died in Nigeria fighting to save my little girl from the hands of Boko Haram. An Ash Angel on an aid mission to my village awakened me three days later. I did not listen to her advice to leave or to seek training. I went after my girl.” He faltered, tears welling up in his eyes. “There were Dreads, and they knew who I was. What I was. They put me in chains. Made me watch as they . . . tore . . . tore my girl apart, limb from limb from limb.” He paused and wiped his face. “They would have turned me to ash, but the Ash Angels pulled me out.
“So you think good and hard, Helo. Aclima was one of those animals. Can you trust someone, work with someone, who has done those terrible things? She may be an angel now, but that doesn’t take away what she has done for the devil. Everyone finds God on death row, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the needle.”
Goliath had called Shujaa one of the best Dread killers around, and now Helo knew the pain of loss driving the man. Still, despite what she had done, Aclima deserved the second chance she had been given, but it was clear many would just as soon drag her into the desert and execute her to balance the scales of justice. If Aclima wasn’t careful, she would have more than Cain gunning for her.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Helo said. “But like you said, I’d better get some practice in. I’m with you on the dance, though. We’ve got better things to do.”
“Yes,” Shujaa agreed. “When the Dreads are all gone, when there are no more red and black auras, then we gather the women and we da
nce. Not before. Your turn to line up some rocks, my friend.”
“You got it.” Helo sprinted toward the boulder in the distance. He would practice shooting for a couple hours and then see if he could catch a ride to Denver. It would be good to see Tela again, though if Cain had the young singer in his sights, he wondered if anywhere would be safe for her.
Chapter 13
The Michaels Ball
Helo glanced at his watch. Corinth had told him to arrive at the Super Sleeper Econo Lodge to take over from the day shift at seven sharp. Since the latest abduction attempt, the Ash Angel Organization had moved Tela around every day, paying cash and keeping a low profile. Helo could only imagine Tela’s frustration. As an artist, she needed to be in public and market herself; as a target of the Dreads, she had to hide. And she had to wonder why she, of all the mid-list performers out there, would be targeted for abduction by some random group she knew nothing about.
He had traveled to Colorado in the same Civic he and Aclima had driven after she and Magdelene had sought him out in Phoenix. Aclima left Zion Alpha before he had returned from the gun range with Shujaa, apparently to catch an airplane to meet with Archus Gideon.
The long, solitary drive with the car stereo—weak sauce though it was—playing a playlist he had put together did him good, softening his bitter feelings at his demotion and his irritation at Aclima’s decapitating lecture. To make good use of the time, he listened to Tela’s two albums to reacquaint himself with her work. He loved her imagery and her voice, songs both moody and upbeat.
As he pulled into the old part of town where all the crappy hotels languished in various states of disrepair, he couldn’t help but wonder if the Michaels Ball was an even worse idea than he thought. On the one hand, the Dreads might cause trouble once they realized a large host of Ash Angels had invaded town. Though, as for that, it might just inspire them to get out of town for a few days.
