by Brian Fuller
“I’m sorry,” Helo said, taking her wrinkled hand and holding it tightly. “I saw a fight I had with my dad this time. I really pissed him off by going into the Marines instead of the Army. He never forgave me for that. Never. He always loved my brother more, and after that I might as well have ceased to exist. He started talking to me when I got married, but it was always like he was talking to some soldier he barely knew. Ugh. Can’t this all just go away?”
“Believe me, if I could have figured out how to do that, I would have.”
The lid opening surprised them both. A middle-aged woman with curly hair peered down at them and screamed.
“We’re alive! We’re alive!” Helo said. “Just a couple of harmless well-to-do old folks in the dumpster! We’ll get out in a minute. Leave your garbage bag on the ground and we’ll get it.”
The woman bolted and Cassandra exhaled. “Well, we have to get out because I’m guessing the police is her next call, and they are probably all over the place after that disaster. I was just getting comfortable, too.”
They hauled themselves over the side, garbage sliding off them as they stood upright in the late-morning sunshine. Moments later, Corinth and Goldbow pulled up in a silver crew-cab truck, both morphed into bloated, middle-aged men.
Goldbow signaled them in from the driver’s seat. “The truck’s hot. The guy who owns it just went into a restaurant, so we’ve got about twenty minutes before he makes a call.”
“I did the hot-wiring in, like, ten seconds,” Corinth bragged as Helo and Cassandra clambered in the back.
“You want a gold star, Chumpkins?” Cassandra said, voice weak. Goldbow pulled away.
“You okay, Cassie?” Goldbow asked, face troubled.
“I’ll survive,” she replied. “Thanks. Thanks for bailing us out. Both of you.”
“I’m glad I could be there this time,” Goldbow said, throwing Cassandra a meaningful look. “They’re sending a chopper for us. Did you guys get anything?”
“No,” Cassandra answered, frustrated.
“Yes, I did,” Helo corrected her.
“In that office I found you in?”
As Helo explained what had happened with Terissa, Cassandra’s mouth gaped open.
“You got another Bestowal?” she exclaimed. “That’s unheard of! What is up with you?”
Helo shrugged. “Like I know. So where is the helicopter going to take us?”
“Back to the operations center where we started,” Goldbow said. “We’re going to get ripped for this one.”
“Why?” Helo asked.
Goldbow ran his hand through his hair. “That civilian the Dread shot. He’s dead. Even if he weren’t dead, this would be ugly. First rule of any mission is that the normals don’t get hurt. That is top priority. You think you’ve filled out forms? Just wait.”
“What did we do wrong?” Helo asked, a hole forming in his stomach.
“Dude,” Corinth jumped in, “we didn’t do anything wrong. But they’ll find something to pin on us. When normals die, somebody gets shafted.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Cassandra said. “Did you get my purse out of the other car?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Corinth reached down at his feet and handed it back to her. She dug inside and produced Simon’s heart, plopping it in Helo’s lap.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Nice!” Corinth exclaimed. “Who got robbed?”
“Mr. Simon Powell,” Cassandra reported proudly. “The guy who seduced Helo’s wife.”
“He was a Dread!” Goldbow exclaimed.
“As red as they come,” Cassandra replied. “Time to have ourselves a little burn party. You got a Stinger?”
Corinth produced one from a duffel bag on the console and handed it back to Helo. “Roll down the windows and blast the air conditioner!” he warned.
Helo took the oversized syringe and smiled. Clearing a space between his feet, he put the heart on the floor. “Go to hell, Simon Powell.”
The needle dimpled the tissue and then slid into the heart. Trace pushed the plunger down. A flash and a pop fried the heart and a good portion of the floor before he stamped it out. The smoke of burning flesh and car carpet coursed out the windows into the wind. Corinth let out a whoop, and Helo sat back. Satisfaction.
“And now Simon is a pile of dirt in a suit,” Corinth said.
“Now Terissa is safe,” Helo added.
Cassandra patted his hand, a sadness in her eyes Helo didn’t understand.
“I told you not to send Helo on this op,” Sixwing argued.
Trace envied his control. Corinth had predicted someone would get the shaft. Sixwing got the shaft. He had every right to rant and swear up a hurricane, but he didn’t.
The entire Archai had conferenced in for the debrief when the mission was reported successful, but the information they retrieved from Goutre and Hudgins was sent to the Scholus before they had even returned to the Midwest Operations Center. Calling the meeting a debrief was a joke. It was a drumhead trial.
“Helo did not have the experience he needed to prevent this,” Sixwing continued, “which is one of the reasons I wanted him off the mission but was overridden by Archus Magdelene. He should have rushed the Dread to keep him from firing at the normal. An experienced agent would have prevented this. Corinth, not Helo, should have handled the insertion with Cassandra.”
“Wrong,” Archus Simeon of the Sanctus piped in, jowled face shaking. “Helo’s personal connection to the place and to Terissa are what made this mission successful! His reception of a second Bestowal—the second in two months!—is ample proof. It is strange to me that for a group of people who call themselves Angels, you can’t seem to see that divine providence is at work here. Helo was a godsend to this mission.”
“Save it for Sunday services, Simeon,” Ebenezer interjected. “I’m sure divine providence would have provided an answer regardless of who Sixwing sent. It should have been an experienced Gabriel, not one who hasn’t had three months of training. An innocent man has paid the price.”
“Exactly,” Sixwing concurred.
Cassandra stood. “Oh, will you all please shut up and quit dancing around the issue!”
“You are out of line—” Ebenezer growled.
“And you are deflecting this conference from the real issue!” Cassandra retorted. “The problem wasn’t Helo, who, in my professional opinion, did his best work on this op. The problem was that someone called Elian Goutre and told him Mr. and Mrs. Honeycutt were a couple of Ash Angels. Or maybe someone is eavesdropping on our communications. Or whatever. If you don’t fix this, a whole bunch more missions are going to go south like this, and more Ash Angels and normals are going to get killed. Quit blaming the agents out there on the line for these failures!”
“Yes,” Ebenezer said testily, “and why don’t we address why it seems all your missions get blown.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re suggesting I blow my own missions so, what, I can put myself and my team in danger? Get my butt torched for fun? Pull your head out, Ebenezer. You’re like the husband who blames his wife for his infidelity. My team is not the one screwing things up here.”
“Are you sure?” Ebenezer said, tone condescending. “How about Helo’s fairy tales to go along with the magic man who can control Dreads? Should we waste time on that?”
The Grand Archus piped in. “It’s more likely that there were other Dreads involved Helo didn’t see. We should table the Dread issue for now.”
“I don’t think we can,” Archus Ebenezer pushed. “Helo’s credibility is compromised by these wild tales that go against centuries of research and experience.”
“What possible reason do I have to lie about this, Archus Ebenezer?” Helo asked.
“Notoriety, pure and simple.”
Helo set his jaw, trying to contain the anger. He would not be called a liar. “I saw it. Two, probably three Bestowals.”
“No one else did. Cassandra was torched,
and Goldbow and Corinth hadn’t arrived,” Ebenezer said. “I will not believe the assertions of a rookie who cost a normal his life!”
Grand Archus Gideon slammed his hand down on his desk, the sound booming over the speakers. “I am not convinced that any other team would have done any better or worse in this situation, and these accusations will stop now. There is one thing we know without a doubt: we have a leak in the system. From this time forward we will dedicate our full resources to finding it, from technological possibilities to personnel issues. I know it’s distasteful, but I am ordering the Sanctus to test every Blank to show proof of an Ash Angel–only Bestowal or multiple Bestowals. Those who can’t do so must be put outside the loop for now.”
A stunned silence fell on the room.
Helo glanced at Cassandra, who slumped in her chair, face set in a stony frown.
“Now,” the Grand Archus continued, “Archus Ebenezer, I need you to bend your research and accounting resources to Qyn Maritime. I need your techs to do a top-to-bottom review of our communication protocols and security. We need answers now. Sixwing will step down from his position as the head of Midwest Operations while this mission is reviewed. Bethel will take his place in the interim. For the time being, Cassandra’s team will do Ash Angel Outreach until they are cleared by Gabriel Operations. This meeting is adjourned.”
Chapter 29
Dread Air
Sanctus time. Every Ash Angel had to do service at least one week during the year. They spent four days at Rafael’s Goodwill Barn above the Midwest Operations Center selling secondhand clothing to the poor and needy. Now Helo understood where all his Ash Angels clothing had come from.
Dolorem would have approved of Sanctus time. Helo used his new Inspire Bestowal three times to perk up troubled shoppers, and it felt good. At the end of the fourth day, the Gabriels had cleared Cassandra’s team of any wrongdoing, much to Cassandra’s relief. She viewed used clothing like dirty diapers. When a vision from the Occulum sent them to the airport, she was more than happy to leave.
Helo pulled at his dark collar as he waited to board flight 920A to Dallas in the Kansas City airport. He wore the attire of a Catholic priest, ready to get revenge on whoever had suggested it as his disguise. Travelers swarmed the terminal in the late afternoon. Business executives trying to get home. Soldiers heading back to base. Grandparents anxious for the smiles of their grandchildren. People swooped in to stare at blue monitors listing their connections and then darted away. They reminded Helo of the hummingbirds hovering at his mother’s feeder outside the kitchen window. The buzz and hum of humanity in motion.
Helo shifted in his vinyl seat and checked his watch. Antsy travelers poured into the gate area as flight time neared. A little girl with blonde pigtails kept staring at him from across the aisle. Perhaps she wasn’t Catholic. His cover identity was young Father Patrick heading to his new congregation in the city of churches. He had no idea how to behave. Raised in a Protestant family, he wasn’t even sure, doctrinally, what he was supposed to believe.
Act nice. Don’t stare at the hot women walking by. Say wise, religious things.
During the taxi ride over, he’d surfed the internet for more information on his sudden holy calling. By the time he walked through the metal detector, all he knew was that he had no desire to get into any debates about consubstantiation or the merits of abandoning the concept of Limbo. And if anyone asked the details of how a new pope was chosen, he would fake a brain aneurysm.
Cassandra sat behind him on the hard seats, reading a book on her phone. With her off-hand, she patted her old-lady short gray curls back into place. Her morph was perfect as always, down to the cloud of perfume she’d unleashed as Mrs. Honeycutt five days before. Corinth sat by her, playing her teenage grandson with denim shorts, puffy black coat, and hat turned askew. Operations had ordered Blank-only teams for the mission. Goldbow left on an earlier flight to Dallas to provide any support should they need him on the other side.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” the gate attendant broke in over the noise. “We’ll start general boarding of flight 920A with service to Dallas in a few minutes. We will begin with our platinum rewards travelers first. Please have your boarding passes ready.”
The passengers formed haphazard lines. Helo didn’t enjoy airplanes enough to want to get on first, but he’d never traveled on a Boeing Dreamliner before. The behemoth filled the gate window like the god of airplanes, every other aircraft unworthy by comparison.
The chatter at the gate drowned out the TV that hung on a pillar, the closed captioning crawling across the screen. News stories of the shooting in Springfield peppered the news, Elian Goutre reported as dead. At least they had inconvenienced the law firm. After a coffee commercial, Tela Mirren popped up on the screen, closed captioning indicating she was coming up next.
Cassandra noticed too. “Your girlfriend’s going to be on TV, Father Patrick,” she whispered.
“No way,” Corinth disagreed. “That fine girl is all mine, baby. Father Patrick must keep his vows.”
Grandma cuffed him on the back of the head, sending his hat to the floor. Corinth had been staring at every nice pair of legs walking by since they had arrived.
Tela came into view on the screen. She sat on a stool in a tight golden dress, guitar on her lap. She said hello to the host, pushing a strand of her wavy brown hair behind her ear. Helo wished he could hear her. Corinth seemed content to watch. After a brief introduction, she launched into a song, the words transcribed onto the screen.
“We’ll now begin boarding our first-class passengers.”
Thumbs flying over the keys, Helo transcribed the lyrics into his phone. The dark tone of the song surprised him. Just as with “Angel in Chains,” its imagery convinced him that her Attunement had inspired her music.
Flesh that does not feel
Hunts the heart it once concealed
The treasure stolen from its chest
By the hand of wickedness
A heart that does not beat
Awaits the sunrise in the east
A secret marriage to begin
Flesh and heart now one again
The east wind blows a tempest in
And some there be that welcome it
But flesh and heart will always sing
In case an angel’s listening
A blade’s a blade beneath the sun
Until it journeys through the one
Whose soul’s a forge of glowing light
Lifeless steel now burning bright
The east wind blows a tempest in
And some there be that welcome it
But flesh and heart will always sing
In case an angel’s listening
She smiled and stood, bowing to unheard applause. Helo noted the name of the show so he could look it up later.
“We’ll now begin boarding all passengers, all rows.”
He picked up his leather briefcase. The thick Bible inside shifted among the toiletries and a change of clothes.
The gate agent scanned his ticket, and he followed the stream of fidgety passengers slowly down the Jetway and onto the waiting aircraft. Somewhere, three other Gabriel teams were boarding three other Dreamliners in JFK, Salt Lake City, and Miami. When they were called into the ops center beneath Rafael’s Goodwill Barn, they learned that the Occulum Visionary had seen four ticket stubs burning in a fire, noting the flight number of each. All four were Dreamliner flights on the same day, all with flights in the late afternoon. One left from Kansas City, and Cassandra’s team was available.
They had come early to wander the terminals and do recon, but they hadn’t spotted any Dreads or Ghostpackers.
As Helo turned the corner on the Jetway, he glanced down the line behind him. Still no red auras. Would they board late to avoid detection until the last possible moment? Even more important, did they know the Ash Angels were here?
The Medius had considered trying to ground all the planes. All a Ga
briel agent had to do to ground a plane was act crazy and yell “bomb”—then sit in prison for ages. In the past, that tactic had simply led to Dreads boarding another flight, one without Ash Angels. The mission was to put a stop to whatever the Dreads had in mind. Modern security protocols made it difficult for them to employ weapons, but a Dread with the Strength Bestowal could tear up an airplane.
Helo’s seat waited way at the back. He passed Cassandra and Corinth, the latter snuggling affectionately with his irritated grandmother. Helo smiled, trying not to clip anyone’s elbow with his suitcase. Craning his head, he glanced down the length of the plane. No Dreads. He passed what seemed like nine thousand rows before he arrived at his spot in the hinterlands of the plane. He had the window seat in the grouping of three, a college-aged African American male in the aisle seat leaning back, a pair of red earbuds pumping music.
Helo stowed his modest carry-on in the generous overhead compartment and squeezed by his row mate. After taking his seat, he admired the futuristic window dimmer that gradually darkened and lightened the glass at the push of a button.
“Excuse me, Father. Do you mind if I have the window seat?”
Helo glanced up and shut his eyes. Unbelievable. He took a breath to calm himself before opening them. Dahlia. Again. The young man’s eyes brightened at the gorgeous woman in dark slacks and tight purple sweater. If he knew who she was, he’d keep his head down and eyes on his phone.
“Of course,” he replied, pushing out into the aisle. It’d be easier to contain her if she was next to the window.
“Thank you, Father,” she said, running a finger along his chest as she passed. Her tight backside became their row mate’s in-flight movie as she passed, and he threw Helo a boyish grin. Helo tried his best disapproving stare, and the young man shrugged. Helo couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t see the red aura that came with the curves. Helo’s phone beeped.
