by M. R. Forbes
BALANCE
The Divine, Book One
By M.R. Forbes
Text copyright © 2013 M.R. Forbes
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialog are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To My Angel,
For always believing.
Thank you.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 1
There was something about the way she moved; the feline grace of her body, the softness of her steps. The way her arms swayed languidly back and forth as she sauntered past me. She had black hair that fell to her hips in a single silken flow, blue eyes, olive skin, a pair of tights, a fitted red sweater, and a something extra that put her at the top of the 'out-of-your-league' Christmas wish list. What’s more, she was in a Museum! By herself! Yeah, I stared. No, she didn't notice.
It was my second week on the job at the Museum of Natural History, my first job post-incarceration. It was a long story, but the short simple version had to do with being a too-social computer geek and other people’s credit cards. I had been lucky to get such cake work. Normally the Museum didn't hire ex-cons, but they’d imported a special 'first time ever outside the Vatican, limited time only!' exhibit of ancient Catholic relics, prompting them to beef up staff. The nature of my crime hadn’t been violent or physical in any way, shape, or form, so they were willing to look past it. My job was simple, stand around and make sure nobody even tried to breathe funny on the artifacts.
Today, I was guarding cups. Excuse me, chalices. One in particular, a simple wooden one that sat at the end of the exhibit hall on a special pedestal surrounded by a rope, ten feet of space, tamper-proof, bullet-proof glass, and surveilled by every type of technology you could imagine. They said it was the cup Jesus drank out of at the Last Supper, the Holy Grail. It looked like it had come from 'The Last Crusade'. Lucas hadn't been off by much.
So far, the job had been as boring as I had assumed it would be. Every day from nine to twelve and one to close I would stand at the entrance to the exhibit room, watch the people go in and out, and occasionally wander up and down the aisles to make sure nobody got fingerprints on the glass enclosures. My greatest adversaries in this new career were children. They liked to touch things.
A particularly ambitious offender caught the corner of my eye, and I was forced to stop staring at the girl, who was approaching the wooden chalice at the end of the room. She seemed really interested in it. Very sexy.
Annoyed by the interruption to my creepy stalking, I walked over to where the little boy was standing, his hands and face pressed up against the glass. I peeked down at the label, Diamond Chalice, 771 A.D. There was more, but I didn't need to read it, I already had over a hundred times. It was a fancy piece of work that had been gifted to the Pope by Charlemagne. It tended to be a favorite with women, and even more so with kids. My guess was that the 'ooh shiny' part of his underdeveloped mind had taken over.
"Excuse me young sir," I said, kneeling down to get my face at a level with his. "The rules clearly state there will be no touching of the glass."
He looked at me, and I pointed my finger over at the 'DO NOT TOUCH’ sign. He laughed and ran off to find his mother, who had moved on with little concern for the location of her brood. I watched him go, skirting through the line of adults and latching onto her hand. She looked down at him, and he pointed back to where I was still crouching. She gave me a Medusa look and yanked the little tattletale forward. What was with parents these days anyway? God forbid their kids actually follow the rules. Wait... did I just say that?
I was contemplating the human aging process and that weird phenomenon that occurs when we somehow begin to turn into our parents, when a collective murmur caught my attention. I stood and looked around for the source. Damn!
The cutie with the black hair was inside the rope line! Not really that impressive I know, but this was a major infraction in the Museum Guard handbook. At least it would give me an excuse to talk to her. I began pushing my way through the gathering crowd, who were complaining of course that she was obstructing their view.
"Excuse me, miss," I said to her back.
She had reached the tamper-proof, bulletproof glass, and was standing there in a very thoughtful pose, her left hand up to her chin, her right tapping on her hip. She ignored me, which was about what I would expect from someone like her. I picked up my radio and called for backup. I didn't have the authority to move her. Only the senior guards could do that.
"Hey Jimmy," I said. "I have a little situation over in the chalice exhibit. There's a girl here who thinks she has exclusive viewing rights to the Last Supper cup." There was a short silence before the reply.
"Chalice, Landon. It’s a chalice. I'll be right there." He sounded like I had woken him up. I probably had.
I broke the rope barrier and approached the girl. She still didn't move. "Miss, are you okay?" I asked.
Better to play it sensitive. She didn't react at all to the sound of my voice. I didn't expect much attention from someone like her, but to treat me like I wasn't there? That was a little much. I flicked my eyes back towards the entrance. It should only take Jimmy a minute to get over from the office. When I looked back at the girl, she was cutting through the glass with her fingertip.
"Uhh..." My mind lost a step at the sight, tripping over itself and sending the rest of my body into a spastic overload. Does not compute. I picked up the radio again.
"Jimmy, where the hell are you," I yelled, my voice going up an octave. I looked again. Her finger appeared more like a claw now, and it really was cutting through the glass; the bulletproof, tamper-proof glass. The alarm started ringing.
Jimmy finally trundled into the exhibition hall, his breathing heavy as he pulled up next to me. Old… check. Overweight… check. Out of shape… did you doubt? He was your standard issue Museum guard.
"Geez Landon," he said. "You didn't tell me she was hot." He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry miss but you’ll have to go back behind the rope line.”
There was a blur of red, and the next thing I knew, Jimmy was on the floor sans one appendage. Chaos entered the building.
The crowd that had gathered to watch the show began to scream. I began to scream and backpedal as the girl turned and looked at me. Her eyes were yellow; her teeth were elongated into fangs. It was straight out of an issue of Fangoria. She growled, blasted the rest of the tamper-proof, bulletproof, glass into dust with her fist, grabbed the Grail, and ran towards the spectators - all in the space of three seconds.
Still backpedaling, my legs hit the rope and I tumbled backwards. The last thing I saw was the devil-girl dropping a package that looked all too familiar from any number of action movies. There was a loud pop, and
a lot of heat. As I felt my life slipping away, I could hear the screams and smell the cooked flesh. I wasn't the only one who died that day.
Chapter 2
I came to, if you could call it that, with my face literally buried in the sand. My head was pounding and my heart was racing. Wasn't I supposed to be dead? I clearly recalled the white light, the fading away of my senses, and an overwhelming sense of freedom.
I picked my head up and looked around through the sand that was stuck to my eyelashes. I was lying on a beach, wearing a pair of board shorts. I was alone. If this was Heaven, it was going to be a lonely eternity.
Who was she, I wondered, forgetting my predicament for a moment. The girl had killed me, but I was still thinking about her. Did that make me crazy? I pushed myself to my feet and began brushing off the more tenacious grains of sand, then took a deep breath and tried to think. Okay, so I had just died in an explosion, I was standing on a beach completely alone, and for some reason I wasn't afraid. In fact, other than the headache, I felt pretty darn good.
"Landon Hamilton." The voice was old, deep, and smooth as jazz. It scared the crap out of me. I spun around.
The man had appeared out of nowhere. He was a good six inches shorter than me, middle-aged, gaunt but muscular, and bald. He had a short white goatee and pale blue eyes. He was wearing a tailored black suit.
"Are you God?" I asked.
He gave me a 'you're an idiot' smile. "Thankfully, no. You can call me Mr. Ross. I'm the Collector."
Oh. "I am dead right?" I asked.
He nodded.
"A beach?"
"Look around son," he said. "Earth, water, air, fire; the feel of sand between your toes, cooling off in the water from the heat of the sun. The fresh salt sea air… Where else does humanity so perfectly merge with the most basic natural elements?"
It made sense, in a nothing-is-really-making-sense sense. "Okay. So, I'm pretty sure this isn't Hell, unless you're tricking me into thinking this isn't Hell, and then it turns out it actually is. If this is Heaven, I don't know… don't take this personally but, it’s kind of a bummer."
Mr. Ross sighed. "You may not be much, but if you’re all we’ve got I guess we’ll have to make a go of it. Now, please try to stop making a fool of yourself. Let's go."
He started walking. I followed behind.
"Wait a second. Where are we going?" He didn't answer. "Mr. Ross!" Nothing.
What did he expect? Two minutes earlier I had seen a beautiful woman turn into some kind of monster right before she blew me to smithereens. I was dead, but I was standing on a beach with one of the Blues Brothers. It had left me a little disoriented, confused, and giddy. I was finding it hard to calm down, so I was getting a little stupid.
We were walking, but I couldn't see where we were going. Ahead of us was a large sand dune, over it the clear blue horizon. There still wasn't another soul around, and Mr. Ross wouldn't say anything. He led. I followed. Until, for no apparent reason, he stopped.
"It'll be okay son," he said. "It happens to everyone. Just let it."
"What happens?" I asked.
Then it did. The reality. The crushing weight of what had actually occurred, the cold realization that I was no longer part of the land of the living. That my mother was going to be hearing from the police sometime soon that her son was a casualty of some kind of terrorist attack, disgruntled employee, or major nut-job. That I was never going to get married, have children, graduate college, or travel to Europe. Heaven or Hell, I was out of the game.
That's the simple description. The pain that ensued was a hundred times worse. Regret, guilt, anger, envy, I think I went through every single human emotion in the space of a couple of minutes. I curled up on the beach and cried my eyes out, the maelstrom of feeling overwhelming my senses and leaving me there for ten minutes, an hour, a month? There was no way to measure it except through pain. It felt like it lasted another lifetime. Mr. Ross just stood there while it happened, waiting for it to pass, as I was sure he had done plenty of times before.
When it did, the resulting reality was cathartic. At least I still had something. Something I could build upon, strive for, be challenged with. I may have lost my vessel, but the soul was still sentient. I got back to my feet, wiped my eyes with my hand, and looked at Mr. Ross.
"I'm ready," I said. He didn't say anything, but he looked pleased, as if I had passed some kind of test.
When we reached the top of the sand dune, we were greeted by nothing but white, empty space. Who knew that nothing could be so amazing? I gawked.
"I've seen this at least a million times," Mr. Ross said. I believed it. "I'm still amazed by it every time."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Think of the beach as a staging area. I'm the Collector. I pick you up here. From staging, you can go to any number of places depending on how you've been assigned. Most people get moved on to a secondary staging area where they're met with by an acquaintance if we have one available. We try to find somebody who's already learned the ropes to help them with the transition. If they don't know anybody, or maybe nobody ever liked them, they get moved on to orientation, which is divvied up by religious belief. A few get reassigned up or down, usually because of a 'clerical error'." He actually did the air quotes. "You're a special case. You get to meet the Boss."
Special case? Up or down? Boss? Too many questions, but I never got to ask them. He put his hand on my back and shoved me into the nothingness.
When we came out on the other side, we were standing on a busy city street that reminded me of New York. It was an instantaneous thing, a smooth transition. Right foot forward to land on the sidewalk, left foot still planted in the sand. Thankfully my clothes matched the environment, a pair of jeans, black t-shirt, and a leather blazer. I bet I looked cool.
"New York?" I asked.
"You tell me," Mr. Ross replied. "You made it."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll let the Boss explain it to you." He motioned me towards the building we were standing in front of. I looked up at the huge mass of glass and steel stretching as far up into the sky as my neck would crane. A hundred stories, at least. As we slipped through the revolving glass door, I noticed a small sign etched in the glass in a really fancy script.
Alighieri Corp.
The inside of the building was incredible. A huge reception area with a ceiling that easily reached two hundred feet, a solid wall of glass to the left and right, and a massive tapestry hanging behind a semi-circular reception desk where a young brunette was typing something into a computer. On either side of the desk were two pairs of elevators. Mr. Ross swerved left and hit the ‘up’ button. I took a closer look at the tapestry while we waited.
It looked familiar. A man in the foreground wearing a red robe and a funny hat, holding open a book. To the left a bunch of naked people dancing their way downward towards a fiery pit and the Devil. To the right a walled city, and in the background a spiraling mountain that led upwards to a ribboned sky.
I turned to Ross. "Is that?" I didn't get to finish. The elevator doors opened and he pushed me inside.
"The Boss," he mumbled, telling me to keep quiet and save the questions. The elevator doors binged closed and we started rising, slowly at first but I could feel us building speed. I tried to organize my questions into some kind of logical order, but logic was failing me and besides, the ride was too short. I felt my stomach lurch as we decelerated way too quickly. Could dead people vomit?
The elevator doors opened and I stepped out, feeling the softness of thick carpeting beneath my leather boots. That was nothing compared to the view. The entire floor was surrounded by what seemed like a solid pane of completely invisible glass, and I could see out for miles. The angle was no good to look down on the city itself, but I could see now that tall mountains, with snow-covered slopes and plenty of jagged peaks, ringed us. At the foot of the mountains was a thick forest, and before that the tail end of the city, just as dense as I imagined the
area around this building to be. There were no roads leading out of the city, at least not that I could see.
About fifty feet forward, directly in front of the elevator was an ornate mahogany desk. Sitting behind the desk in an equally ornate chair was a tall, thin man with short white hair. He was turned so I could only catch his profile, but I could tell even from here that he was wearing a finely tailored suit, and a heavy gold Rolex dangled from his bony wrist. Mr. Ross led me over to him.
The man spun the chair to face us as we approached. His lips spread in a tight smile and he leaned himself onto the desk to drag himself to his feet. He was shorter than I had thought, standing a full head below me. He stuck out his hand.
"Buongiorno, Signore," he said. I took his hand in my own, making an effort to be firm, but not break anything. He felt like he would crack under the slightest pressure. "My name is Dante."
He had a soft Italian accent, but it was different than I was familiar with. By that I mean, not like in the Godfather. "Landon Hamilton," I said. I was sure he already knew that, but I didn't know what else to say.
"Of course," he said with a laugh. He dropped my hand and waved me to a chair that hadn't been there a second before. "Please, take a seat." He looked at Mr. Ross. "Thank you Mr. Ross. You can go. I believe you have another pickup."
Mr. Ross looked at his watch. "Yes," he said. He didn't leave by elevator. Instead, he just vanished.
Dante eased himself back down into the chair. "Now, where were we? Ah yes, you are surely wondering what is going on? Would that be a good estimation?"
"Dead on," I said. He stifled a grin.
"I'm sure you've already surmised that you have left behind the state of existence often referred to as 'being alive'. You did so in quite a violent manner in fact, being blown to bits by a certain 'hottie'." He stifled another grin. At least he was amused. "Believe me when I say you should be glad for the fact that it was quick. Better to come to a sudden end than to suffer."
