by Brian Fuller
Once the cabbie deposited him and his duffel on the sidewalk, he stared at his parents’ house. They’d lived in many houses during his dad’s military career, but this one seemed less like a home than any of them. The red brick walls and low hedge around the yard did not invite him; they shunned him, told him to turn and leave.
“I am their son.” He thought it out loud this time.
Straightening his uniform and hoisting his duffel over his shoulder, he marched forward and politely knocked on the door. The old wooden floors creaked as someone approached. When the door opened, his father, wearing his customary jeans, leather jacket, and Army cap, frowned at his younger son, eyeing him up and down with distaste.
“That uniform isn’t welcome here,” he said flatly and slammed the door.
Trace walked the five miles into town. His conditioned body made easy work of the duffel and the distance, but his heart proved the heavier burden. He’d brought this upon himself. His stupid act of rebellion. His dad would never forgive him.
He took a hotel room, throwing his heavy burden and then himself on the bed. Cast out. Alone. Over and over he saw the face of his dad disappearing behind the slamming door. He scoured the hotel room for the remote, looking for anything to distract him. He opened the drawer to the side table, the remote sitting next to the complimentary Bible, each vying for his attention, each presenting itself as a solution. Bitterly he laughed, thinking of them as the proverbial angel and the devil on the shoulder. He chose the devil.
He needed the angel.
Angel. Rachel’s burning glory as she ascended through the ceiling in the reliquarium flooded into his mind. The racking pain disintegrated. Remembering her freed him. He blinked. The ceiling fan of the Redemption Motorcycle Club spun overhead. Dahlia had his feet, duct taping them together. A sticky, bitter taste was on his lips. His mouth was taped. Wrists too. She had extinguished her desecration, the numbness welcome.
He took no half measures. With every ounce of Strength, Helo pulled his feet backward and kicked Dahlia. The blow shattered her ribcage. Flailing, she spun across the chapel, clipping the fan. Headfirst she slammed into the back wall with such force it rocked the entire building. Drywall crumbled, dust rising. She landed hard on the floor, twitching, body too damaged to move. Strength gone, Helo had to get the duct tape off his legs with his hands bound at the wrists. He ripped the tape from his mouth, but Dahlia had wrapped his wrists so thickly he had no hope of chewing them off.
Once his legs were free, he ran into the office. Gagged and duct taped, Dolorem’s elbows and knees were bent backward. He lay like a discarded puppet, head against a gray metal file cabinet. The Old Master’s eyes brightened.
“One minute,” Helo said. He hurried out to where his katana stuck out of the wall. After slicing through the duct tape with its razor-sharp edge, he returned and dragged the Old Master outside. Dolorem’s indisposition would make the motorcycles impossible, so he shoved him into the passenger side of Dahlia’s sporty Nissan and went back to grab their swords and her keys.
Dahlia’s purse sat on the bench near where she lay broken on the ground. A fine white dust from the wallboard covered her black pants and hair, chunks of the wall haloing around her. The crazed killer was gone. Dahlia, neck broken, stared up at him from the ground, eyes watering.
“End it,” she croaked, voice rough. “Please, Helo.”
She will save you.
“No.”
Tears slid from her eyes.
He turned away and searched the purse. Once the keys were in hand, he ran back and pulled his sword out of the wall and retrieved Dolorem’s blade from its drawer in a toolbox in the shop. He passed Dahlia one last time. Her swirling black-and-red aura beckoned for him to take her heart and burn it as any other Ash Angel would have done. Her wet eyes pleaded for him to do it. The Vexus she had absorbed from the plane wreck demanded he do it.
She will save you.
The phone on her purse rang, and he fled.
Chapter 32
A Dreadful Neighborhood
Helo ripped the tape from Dolorem’s lips and pulled the cloth out of his mouth. The broken man’s face was sober. They needed to ditch Dahlia’s car, but Dolorem was a problem. Trace didn’t want to toss the Old Master in a dumpster until he healed at dawn, but if the car had a GPS security system, they were screwed. The police would pull them over, and Dolorem would end up in ICU, and he would do time for stealing a Dread’s car.
Trace racked his brain and then remembered. What had Archus Magdelene called it? Roaster? Flirting with the wrong side of the speed limit, Helo gunned the Nissan and went home. And there it was, still blighting the parking lot of the Sao Paulo apartment complex with its miserable bulk. He swung Dahlia’s car into the parking stall next to it in reverse so that the passenger-side doors were next to each other. With a yank, he pulled opened Roaster’s squealing door and then the Nissan’s. Dolorem was dead weight. Pulling his beefed-up biker persona out of the Nissan and stuffing him into Roaster was like trying to shove a sedated bear into a broom closet, flaccid appendages continually trying to escape.
He hoped no one was peering out their apartment windows while he made the awkward exchange of a busted up man and Japanese swords. What would Mindy and Scarlett think? The truck belched and banged its way out of the parking lot like a drunken locomotive. The drive belt screamed in horror as he pulled out into the street.
“Was it just me,” Dolorem said, head contorted against the dashboard, “or did Dahlia use more than one Bestowal?”
“She used three on me. Probably four.”
“Good. I’m not crazy.”
“She’s the second Dread I’ve seen do that,” Helo explained. “I’ve got a lot to tell you, but we’ve got to find somewhere to hole up and wait for dawn.”
Dolorem tried to shift but collapsed awkwardly on the seat. “There’s a nice little rest area off of I-10.”
Helo stopped to get gas in Tucson and fill the overheating radiator. Green fluid dripped out from the guts of the beast as if it had been stabbed. He paid the clerk in cash, the truck’s five miles per gallon not doing his wallet any favors. Pedal to the floor, Roaster managed a respectable sixty-one miles per hour on the freeway as they went east away from Phoenix and out into the lonely solitude of the sandy tan desert. The heat gauge approached critical as they pulled into the Texas Canyon rest stop, parking in a remote corner, back with the big rigs.
Helo killed the engine, acrid smoke wisping up from under the hood. Around them jagged hills gashed the skyline, and green shrubs anchored into cracks slowly crumbling the weakening stone. Higher hills and mountains, brown and sterile, rose in the distance in the unyielding sun.
“Could you adjust my body to something a little more natural?” Dolorem requested.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
After wrestling Dolorem upright and snapping his joints back in the right direction, Helo rolled down the windows and leaned back. The dry desert air settled on them, the steady hum of passing cars on the freeway soothing frayed nerves. Helo told Dolorem everything that had happened, uncaring of what the Ash Angel Organization might think about his divulging sensitive information to an outsider.
Dolorem’s face scrunched.
“And so they booted you out on her account?” he asked once Helo had finished.
“They felt I was a security risk, and I can see their point. Dahlia seems to have some magical ability to find me wherever I am. They can’t have that hanging over every mission they send me on.”
“True,” Dolorem agreed, “but it should narrow down the source of the leak. How many people know where you are all the time?”
“If it’s a person, not many,” Helo said. “But if they have hacked our communications network somehow, they might be able to find anybody who has a phone.”
Dolorem thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Did you get the sense that other teams were having security failures like yours?”
“I never heard,
” Helo admitted. “I don’t think they’d tell everyone about it. Since the Blank Massacre and Trevex, they’ve been fighting to keep morale up.”
Dolorem grunted. “It almost makes me want to join back up so I can see what’s going on. If I had more than a few months left on this mortal plane, I might just do it. Still, this business with Dahlia, or Aclima, is either a gigantic scam or a turning point for Ash Angels and Dreads. You’ve got to promise me something. If she’s really Eve’s daughter, you have to ask her.”
“Ask her what?”
“Well, it’s the deepest theological question of all time. She can put it to rest once and for all.”
“And that is?”
“Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?”
Helo smiled. “I’ll try to remember.”
The air cooled during the dead hours of the night. They traded stories, Dolorem’s past more colorful than Helo had imagined. He’d been a drunk, drug addict, and thief until his sister pulled him out and straightened him up. Motorcycles filled the gap left by his abandoned addictions. One night he’d stepped between a convenience store clerk and a nervous robber whose inexperienced trigger finger had flinched, the .38 revolver punching a hole in Dolorem’s head.
The Ash Angels gave Dolorem structure and purpose, but accidentally killing Tela Mirren’s father had changed everything. He spoke of his love for her and the satisfaction of fatherhood. He’d returned to the Ash Angel Organization briefly after faking his death, only to find it too regimented for his tastes after he had experienced years of freedom. He apprenticed briefly with an Old Master named Cyrus and never looked back.
Dawn finally broke into the empty desert sky, and Helo enjoyed the clear head that always came with Rapture. Dolorem’s mangled joints and bones pulled together. Before they left, Dolorem walked inside the rest stop and practically emptied the vending machine of its snacks while Helo filled the radiator with water carried from the rest stop in a bucket he found in Roaster’s camper shell.
“Where to now?” Helo asked as Dolorem crammed his snacks into the capacious glove compartment.
“Back to the club,” Dolorem said, unwrapping a candy bar and handing it to Helo.
“Isn’t that risky?”
“Yep. But I’ve got a flock. I can’t just walk out on them. Besides, the Dreads probably think you’ve moved on and wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back.”
Helo grabbed some Skittles out of Dolorem’s pile. “So does that mean if I go back I’m really stupid or really smart?”
Dolorem grinned. “It’s smart if they’re not there, stupid if they are.” He swallowed a handful of Peanut M&Ms. “Love these things.”
They pulled out onto the highway, the truck struggling against the wind and its own shape. Once above fifty, the steering wheel vibrated so badly Helo thought his teeth might fall out. Letting go at that speed was not an option. Left to itself, Roaster would swerve so hard to the right he would be in the desert in two seconds flat.
Helo’s phone beeped, and Dolorem grabbed it.
“Looks like Cassandra,” Dolorem reported, yelling over the din of the shambling car.
“Great. What does she say?” Maybe he could get some news.
“She says, ‘Need favor. Check out 37 Pearson Drive in Lexington, KY. Be discreet. Do a heavy morph, plz.’ She said please, so I think you have to do it.”
“She wants me to check out an address in Kentucky?”
“Yep.”
It was something to do. “Tell her okay.”
Dolorem typed the response. “She says, ‘Thx.’ Well, we’ll go grab the bikes and have a little road trip through Kentucky. You’re in for a treat.”
“Why?”
“Great, greasy food. Have you ever had a Snickers bar breaded, wrapped in bacon, and deep fried?”
“That’s just wrong, Dolorem. I mean morally wrong.”
He laughed. “Oh no, my friend. The Good Book tells us that the righteous get to eat the fat of the land, and we will be making some stops to reap our divinely promised blessings. Green beans boiled in bacon grease; fried chicken legs wrapped in bacon; a bacon, sausage, and fried egg sandwich—”
“Maybe the Jews are right about the whole pig thing.”
Dolorem shook his head. “No way. By the end of this trip, you will be converted to the gospel of greasy food, Helo. Mark my words! You’ve been in the Ash Angel Organization for only a few months and you’ve already been infected with a bad case of solemn seriousitis! Sure, Ash Angels have responsibilities, but don’t forget the fun and rewards! And the rewards I’m talking about are deep fried.”
The Redemption Motorcycle Club was deserted. Dolorem left a note on the door explaining that a family matter would take him away from the flock for a while. They pulled the truck into the garage, locked it in, and roared out on their motorcycles dressed in leather and do-rags.
Fearing the weather farther north and to satisfy Dolorem’s obsession for all foods unhealthy, they kept south, passing through Little Rock, Memphis, and Nashville. Dolorem’s days raising Tela from behind the wheel of a truck had turned him into an encyclopedia of out of the way food joints that served the most determinedly artery-clogging culinary creations Helo had ever witnessed.
Sure, a double bacon cheeseburger with extra cheese, extra bacon, and two glazed donuts as the buns would instantly inflict a normal with Type-2 diabetes. But Helo had to confess he loved it. French fries he could wring oil from. Ice cream so rich it puckered his mouth. Grease-slimed fried chicken drenched in gelatinous white pepper gravy and served with a veritable storage tank of sugary pop. Delicious.
Once he fully embraced his Ash Angel invulnerability to eating total crap, there was no holding back. After every gluttonous stop, Dolorem would shout Hallelujah before powering off on the next leg of the journey. After their third stop, where they ate sandwiches towering with an obscene amount of fatty roast beef, ham, and beloved bacon, Helo rejoined Dolorem’s praise with a hearty “Amen!”
They rumbled onto Pearson Drive in Lexington, Kentucky in the early afternoon on a cloudy, blustery day. The trees hadn’t quite recovered from winter, forlorn branches stretching over the road. After the open vistas of Arizona, the morass of trees felt like prison walls. Crispy brown leaves skittered in the wind, the day feeling like leftover autumn warmed up in a microwave. It all felt familiar to Helo from his days living in Missouri.
Pearson Drive cut through an old neighborhood. Low rooflines sat atop rectangular, single-story houses of dingy white-and-red brick. Shards of the broken sidewalks and driveways collected in the gutters, brown weeds poking their way out of the tiniest cracks. The wind jostled trees and bushes tall enough to dwarf the houses they were meant to accent. Only the rush of the wind in their ears interrupted the vacant silence of empty houses.
The house at 37 Pearson Drive stuck out. Thick blue siding and a two-story colonial design elevated it above the cookie-cutter mold of its neighbors. While small, it had a wraparound porch and a backyard bordered by a chain-link fence. Two boys tossed a football in the side yard, both straight and tall. They ran to the fence to watch the thundering motorcycles rumble by. An old green Toyota Corolla with bald tires sat in the sloped driveway.
They took another pass a few minutes later, finding a Dread lounging on the front porch of the home next door. He was a bald, pudgy mess. A ratty tank top spotted with what Helo hoped were lemonade stains dropped over a bulbous gut. Thin, lumpy legs of shocking white jutted out from a pair of patriotic red-and-blue shorty shorts, worn despite weather that called for a jacket. The Dread eyed them from behind a long drag on his cigarette as they passed, the remaining wisps of blond hair on his balding pate flip-flopping in the wind.
They drove a street over and parked the bikes.
“The Dread lives at 56 Pearson,” Dolorem said. “You sure it’s 37 we’re after?”
“You read the text,” Helo said. “It can’t be good to have a family with two boys living next to a Dread.”
“We should at least check it out. We need a disguise of some sort. I’d say Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but we don’t have the books and magazines. Maybe we could be security system salesmen.”
“In this neighborhood?” Dolorem scoffed. “Chances are nobody would even answer the door.”
While they tossed ideas around, the solution walked up to them. Two teenage girls were going door-to-door selling what Helo recognized as discount cards. He and his brother used to sell them to raise money for football, local businesses pledging to give customers a bargain if they showed the card. Since they were both morphed into their biker personas, it took a little convincing to get two sweet-looking school girls to believe they wanted to buy the whole stack, but once Helo whipped out his stack of money, they were happy to make the exchange and go home early to get out of the wind.
“Looks like we’re selling discount cards for girls volleyball,” Helo said, examining his purchase.
Dolorem grinned. “Might seem a little weird, but, hey, when I was that age, if some cute girls like that came up and asked me to help sell cards, I’d do it. We’ll need to morph.”
“I’m a bit slow. I’m getting better, but I’m warning you.”
“We’d best get started, then.”
After a quick trip to Walmart for some younger clothes, they drove to a nearby mall where they could occupy a bathroom stall and make the change. Dolorem finished his morph in five minutes. Helo took nearly thirty, and while better than usual, Dolorem still shook his head in a very Cassandra-like way and then nitpicked Trace’s morph until they rode off. They parked a few blocks away and walked back to Pearson. The gusting wind kept the kids off the streets but blew the aroma of dinner at them as they walked.
