by Brian Fuller
She nodded and the gun dipped. “You know, when my mom left, my dad would say, ‘Allison, it’s not your fault.’ When my sister Cassandra killed herself, the shrink at school would say, ‘Allison, it’s not your fault.’ But, oh, my dad’s eyes said something different. When my fiancé dumped me two weeks before the wedding because I was ‘too married to my job,’ my friends told me it wasn’t my fault. Goldbow 44-2ing me? Maggie says it’s not my fault. Goldbow leading me on while coming back to make love to his wife and selling me out on every mission? Not my fault!”
She dropped the picture on the floor and ran her hand through her limp hair. She kept the gun. “When everything you love goes away and betrays you, ‘it’s not your fault’ starts to sound like a bigger and bigger lie. A lie told by people who need you to stick with your miserable life until you can figure out some way to let them down, too. I am so tired, Trace. Tell me you felt it too. Tell me you wanted to run. That even death was a relief.”
Helo tried to inch closer, but she jumped to her feet and reasserted the pistol. “Tell me, Trace.”
“All of it. I felt all of it.”
“And after what Terissa did to you, do you think you could ever really believe it if someone said I love you again? That every time she left and came home late that you wouldn’t have that nagging thought banging around in your head that you’d driven her to someone else because you just weren’t good enough?”
“Cassandra, look—”
“Tell me!”
“Yes! I’ve thought those things, okay?”
She lowered the gun. “Then don’t give me the ‘it’s not your fault,’ ‘time heals all wounds’ BS. There are some wounds that won’t stop bleeding. The Dreads will teach you that, Helo, every time they torch you.” She seemed to deflate, eyes worn.
“You’ve got to forgive them, Cassandra,” he begged, taking a step forward.
“Forgive them?” She laughed bitterly. “You’re missing the point, Jarhead.”
She turned the gun barrel to her heart and pulled the trigger.
The report of the weapon rattled the windows. Her awkward grip on the gun couldn’t handle the kickback, and she dropped the BBG as she flopped backward into the entertainment center. The bullet punched a hole in her chest, exiting out the back and shattering a row of pictures. Shards of glass and wood rained around her, littering the floor with sharp edges. She turned toward him, eyes flinty with dark resolve.
“Goodbye, Helo.”
Then she ran.
The water! She was filling the tub.
With a shove, she blew past him toward a hallway turning left out of the living room. He righted himself and tore after her, two steps behind. The bathroom was midway down the hall on the left. The tub had overflowed, water flooding into the hallway, the carpet squishy beneath their pounding feet. The left turn into the bathroom was tight, slowing Cassandra down. As she turned, Helo threw himself at her legs like he was trying to keep a receiver from that last stretch to the end zone. He caught her left knee and used his momentum to push it forward hard. Twisting with the force, her back hit the doorframe, and she spun out into the hall, head and shoulder slamming into the back wall. Angelina and David’s wedding photo dropped on her back.
He needed to trap her. Releasing the leg, he launched himself forward to pin her, but she rolled to his right. Water from the carpet sprayed up as they scrambled, soaking their clothing.
She tried to stand, but Helo kicked her hard on the shins, and she hit the floor chest first. Hand over hand, she army crawled into the bathroom as Helo sat up to get his head pointed in the right direction. The slippery floor aided her slide as she gripped the edge of the tub and pulled. With his right hand, Helo grabbed the doorframe and flung himself forward, his left hand clamping around her ankle. Water brimming over the tub flowed over her hair and down her shirt.
“Let me go!” she yelled.
Helo flared his Strength and yanked, breaking her grip on the tub. She landed face-first with a slap on the wet linoleum, banging her ribs against the doorframe as Helo forcefully extricated her from the bathroom and entangled her in an unbreakable embrace. In vain she struggled and screamed, beating at him with every free appendage she could liberate from his grasp. But she couldn’t escape. His Ash Angel body could take the punishment of her clawing nails and jerking knees indefinitely.
Behind them, the door banged open, and Dolorem ran into the hall. He knelt at her side and placed his hand on her head, his divine aura igniting and flowing into her. The pacifying gift drained the fight from Cassandra. But while the fire was gone, Helo knew the fuel awaited another spark.
Helo held her as she sobbed, her self-hatred and broken heart swirling in a storm Helo understood all too well but felt powerless to stop. He tried to use Inspire on her as he had done Terissa, but it was in vain. Her anger and sadness deflected his every attempt to give her hope.
“I’ll get Magdelene here,” Dolorem said quietly.
Helo sat up and pulled her more comfortably against him, her body shaking.
Magdelene, already in tears, rounded the corner a few minutes later and took Cassandra in her arms. Helo shut off the water and drained the tub. How had Cassandra come to Pearson Drive? Where was Goldbow? The questions would have to wait.
“We need to go,” Magdelene prompted, stroking Cassandra’s hair. “I’ll take her in my car. Let’s meet at the Midwest Operations Center tomorrow in Kansas City. Corinth, you take Helo’s bike. He’s going to ride with me.”
Cassandra leaned against the window of Magdelene’s rental car as the lonely miles whipped by in silence.
Helo drove while Magdelene sat with Cassandra in the back, stroking her friend’s hair and talking to her in low tones. They expected to hit Kansas City at two in the morning. Helo pitied whoever drew the assignment to debrief Cassandra. No attempt at talking had helped draw her out, and Helo wondered if Dolorem’s Pacify had worn off yet. Somewhere on an empty, dark stretch of I-70 west of Columbia, Missouri, Cassandra finally stirred and leaned the other way into Magdelene’s shoulder.
“I bet you wonder where Goldbow is,” she said, voice weak.
Magdelene reached her arm around and pulled her closer. “You don’t need to talk about it until you’re ready or until the Archai demands it, which will be as soon as we get there. I’ve been ignoring their phone calls for about four hundred miles.”
Cassandra wiped her face. “I don’t know where he is now. We were driving to the East Coast when I got tired of waiting for Helo’s report and just asked Goldbow about the address. His face—” She paused, overcome by the memory. “He told me about his wife, about being trapped and blackmailed by the Dreads. I . . . I couldn’t take it. I told him to get out of the car out in the middle of nowhere off some highway and then shot him until he couldn’t move. I wanted to see them. I wanted to see the people he really loved. It was wrong. I should have called it in, I know it, but I couldn’t.”
“Helo and I got the family out,” Magdelene said. “They’re safe. They’ll hunt Goldbow, though. Did he say how they found out about his family in the first place?”
She wiped a stray tear making its way to her jaw. “After he became an Ash Angel, he’d go to check up on them. After a few months, he couldn’t resist and reentered their lives on the pretense of having just been released from captivity overseas or some such story. He didn’t know how the Dreads found him there, but they’ve been using him for almost a year. This is so wrong,” Cassandra said, sniffling. She reached forward and put her hand on Helo’s shoulder. “How about a little music or something, Helo?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Remember that song Tela Mirren sang while we were waiting in the airport? I think it means something.”
Cassandra turned to Magdelene. “Tela is his obsession.”
“She is not, but her song ‘Angel in Chains’ predicted this whole mess. Remember?”
“Really?” Magdelene said. “Play it.”
Helo queued up the song
, and they listened. He paused the song after each stanza and explained his interpretation of the lyrics.
“I can see the relationship between the song and Goldbow now,” Magdelene said, “but it wouldn’t have helped much before. A lot of the dreams we get from the Cryptics in the Occulum aren’t actionable for that reason. That’s why we prefer the Visionaries, though there are relatively few of them. So what’s the other song?”
“She sang it on a show. I found the video of it. It talks about a tempest being blown in on the wind and about a blade burning bright and stolen hearts. Lots of Ash Angel imagery.”
He handed the phone back, and Magdelene and Cassandra watched with interest.
“I agree it means something,” Magdelene said, “but it lacks specifics that could make it useful. Dreams often have to be looked at sideways to tease out their meaning. Once we get to Deep 7, I’ll see if I can get Ramis to pressure the Scholus into looking at it. They might be a little busy at the moment.”
“Why is that?”
“They’re trying to figure everything out about that man, Devon Qyn.”
“Who is he?” he asked.
“They never told you? Even though you were the one who found him?” Magdelene said.
“They treated me like I was the mole when I was at Deep 7. I was locked out because of Dahlia’s ability to find me wherever I am.”
“It was Goldbow feeding her information about you,” Cassandra said. “I’m almost sure of it. He tried to get you killed, too.” She slumped back, anger reasserting itself on her face.
“So who is Devon Qyn?” Helo asked again.
Magdelene seemed to hesitate for a moment before speaking. “Devon Qyn is the man you and Cassandra saw in the graveyard and the one who tried to drown you. Turns out he’s a co-founder of that company you uncovered at Goutre and Hudgins, Qyn Maritime. Qyn Maritime is the funding source behind the vehicles and weapons you found. They’re still trying to dig into how deep his pockets are, but he controls a lot of cargo ships, and that is bad news if he’s got upgraded weapons to distribute to the Dreads.”
“I think Devon is Cain,” Helo said, wanting to throw the theory out there. It was enough to pique Cassandra’s interest despite her sadness.
“The Cain?” Cassandra asked. “Why would you think that?”
Helo explained what he had learned from Rachel the Unascended and recounted the hints that Dahlia and Devon had dropped about their age and relationship. “It’s not bulletproof, but it fits the facts.”
“There’s a big debate among the Scholus and the Sanctus about how old Dreads are,” Magdelene explained thoughtfully. “Both sides agree that the knowledge required to awaken them existed before Christ, but Scholus scholars—who are more bound to accepted history and archeology—tend to put Dread beginnings in Egypt around the time of the Exodus. The Sanctus believes it was much earlier, and Cain, as the first murderer, has been speculated to be the first Dread before. But so much of what happened back then comes from oral tradition and apocrypha that even the Sanctus doesn’t rely on it much. Even if Cain were the first Dread, both sides agree he would be long gone. Dreads simply don’t last thousands of years.”
“Why not?” Helo asked, curiosity piqued.
“Well, they have no Ascendancies like we do. They just keep going until we take them out of the world or they tire of their existence and off themselves. While the statistics are sketchy, few Dreads can stand their new life for much more than a hundred years. So when you come along and say Dahlia and Devon have been around for millennia, well, research and tradition say that’s highly unlikely. When you suggest they are Cain and his sister Aclima, you might as well say you saw the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus as far as most Ash Angels are concerned. The evidence is starting to stack up, though. As wild as your stories are, Helo, they do offer an explanation for the concerted actions of Dreads and Possessed. I can’t imagine anything but someone removing their free will that would account for it.”
The dark hours passed to the sound of Tela’s silky voice. Helo tried to ignore the whispered conversations between Magdelene and Cassandra, his trainer trying to choke down the sniffles and sobs. He hoped Magdelene could soothe her. He hoped the Archai would believe him now. What possible reason would he have to lie? What benefit would the Dreads gain from tricking him into believing that Cain and Aclima sill lived and that Cain was behind the recent troubles? Perhaps the Scholus researchers and analysts could invent some wild, devious Dread scheme that explained Dahlia’s claims, but Helo couldn’t.
As they pulled off the highway and neared Rafael’s Goodwill Barn, they passed a caravan of emergency vehicles, lights off, passing them in the opposite direction. Helo thought nothing of it until they turned a corner to find half the store burned to the ground. Police tape cordoned off the entire building. A few cars and friendly auras waited in the parking lot, and Magdelene grabbed her phone.
“I guess I shouldn’t ignore my phone,” she said, turning it back on.
Helo pulled the car in, finding Sixwing, now restored to his post as the head of Midwest Operations, chatting with two other Ash Angels, a man and a woman. They backed away from the incoming car of Blanks, the man and woman pulling BBGs. Helo shook his head. More Blank paranoia? He parked and stepped out with his hands raised, explaining who was in the car, but the guns weren’t lowered until the familiar face of the former Archus showed itself.
“What happened?” Magdelene asked.
“Let’s get inside,” Sixwing said. “You must have your phone off.”
“Yes, sorry,” Magdelene apologized. “Is there an inside to get into?”
“Luckily, yes. They didn’t breach the protected lower layer. The location has lost its cover, but it’s still intact.”
He led them through the police tape and the acrid, wet interior. The front of the store had taken the worst damage, the outer wall a burned network of charred two-by-fours. Light from the parking lot shone through the gaps. Ceiling tiles lay broken amid the burned remains of damp clothing turned to an ashy sludge in the water from the fire hoses. They wove around fallen shelves and racks, the damage lessening the farther back they pushed into the store.
Sixwing pulled open the double doors to the stockroom and flicked on a fat flashlight. The entrance to the operations center waited behind a permanent stack of boxes and under the locked maintenance hatch on the floor. Smoke clung to the ceiling, casting a haze around Sixwing’s flashlight as he unlocked it with a key from his pocket. The metal grate pushed upward on hydraulics, revealing a long stairway riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel. The reinforced door at the end bore the indentation and black streaks of an explosion. Sixwing had to call to have it opened from the inside.
Helo surveyed the damage. It looked like they had fought the Dreads on the stairs, then retreated inside and closed the blast door. That meant they were either overwhelmed by numbers or surprised so badly they didn’t have time to mount a good defense.
Sixwing stooped down and grabbed a bullet casing from the floor, pocketing it. “We’ve burned all the Dreads, but we have three dead Possessed. We’re scrambling to come up with a cover story and to get the corpses out of here. We were lucky to hide them from the police.”
The lock popped, and the heavy iron door haltingly swung open with an unpleasant screech, like nails scraping against iron. Behind the door, the operations center buzzed with activity. Helo scanned the walls, which were clean. They’d kept the ambush outside the center.
Sixwing deposited them in the familiar conference room. “I’ll be back momentarily. I’ll let the Archai know you’re here.”
When Sixwing returned a few minutes later, Magdelene prompted him for details.
“We got hit, obviously. Thankfully it was after-hours. Goldbow led them here. He still didn’t know his family was safe. We’ve corrected his information, so he’s more at ease now.”
“Is he here?” Cassandra asked.
“He is in custody, yes,” Sixwing
confirmed. Cassandra stood.
“Sit down, Cassie,” Magdelene ordered. “You are not to see that man ever again, you hear me? Helo will keep you from getting out of here, so just sit and listen.”
Helo stationed himself at the door, and Cassandra fell heavily into her chair. He agreed with Magdelene. The time for working things out with Goldbow was over, though Cassie probably wanted to shoot him a few more times.
Sixwing continued. “It was like Trevex but on a much smaller scale. Just the three Possessed going berserk to occupy the outer guard followed by a pile of Dreads blitzing inside. They set Goldbow loose and followed him here. In his defense, once he realized he’d been followed, he helped take them out. Mean fighter, that one, but I don’t think there’s much hope left for him.”
“The Archai will rip him apart,” Magdelene said sadly.
“They won’t get the chance,” Sixwing said. “The Dreads took out his heart before they let him go. He said he wanted to come and confess, and I believe him. He’ll be back under Dread control at dawn.”
“Good riddance,” Cassandra spat.
“You don’t mean that, Cassie,” Magdelene said, face disapproving.
“The hell I don’t! He used me!”
“You know what they can do to him,” Magdelene said, tone firm and compassionate at the same time. “He was trying to protect his family. He messed up, sure, but I don’t believe he was trying to spite you. He cared for you.”
“Oh, really?” Cassandra said. “Wow. I’m getting pretty tired of being cared for.”
“We’ve got a counselor on site,” Sixwing offered, shifting in his seat. “I can arrange—”
“I’m not going to a stupid shrink! Just rip my heart out—if there’s anything left of it—and send me to Deep 7 so I can tell them how little I know, okay? Helo here can dump his theories on them while they all laugh. Maybe after that I’ll go sell snow cones in Florida and play bingo on Fridays while the whole Ash Angel Organization gets blasted to hell.”
