by Peter Roman
“Cleansing it?” I asked. Yes, it was definitely darker now.
“Removing all those beings that never had a place in Heaven,” Aigra said. “The minotaurs, the sirens, the ones that must not be named. They slay those they cannot remove.”
“What do you mean remove them?” I asked. “Where are they taking them?”
He shrugged. “We don’t know. Those taken by the Risen are never seen again.”
I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.
“They will not rest until the earth is naught but heaven and human,” Aigra said. “The seraphim and their subjects.”
Alice, I thought. The gorgons. The faerie. And all the others.
“It is not our duty to protect them,” Aigra said, as if reading my mind. “Nor could we if we chose such a path. The Risen have grown too strong.”
“What do you care what the Risen do?” I asked. “I would have thought such a world would suit you just fine.”
“It is obviously not God’s intention or he would have made it so,” Aigra said. “The Risen are perverting the Plan.”
“And I suppose you want my help in fighting them,” I said. I moved around to the wall that had served as our kitchen. Cups and plates still sat on a wooden shelf. I blew dust off them while looking for the knives I remembered to be here.
Aigra didn’t turn to follow me.
“You are our lord,” he said. “We will do as you desire.”
“I’m not who you think I am,” I said, automatically. There. A knife with a good-enough six-inch blade sitting on top of the old wood-burning stove.
“You are the closest we have to God,” Aigra said.
I sighed. Sometimes there’s just no talking to angels.
“And who have the Risen chosen to fill in for God?” I asked. “I’m guessing it’s not me, or I would have got the memo by now.” I picked up the knife and looked at it. The blade looked like it had been sharpened recently.
“They see you as a corruption that needs to be purged,” Aigra said. “They have elected one of their own to rule, another Lucifer.” He spat on the ground. “He has taken on a human name to express his supposed humility and devotion. His servitude. His name is Edwards. Jonathan Edwards.”
I leaned against the stove and studied Aigra’s back. It was all coming together. And yes, I had a very bad feeling about this. What had Cassiel involved me with?
Of course, Aigra being an angel, there was a distinct possibility he was lying to me.
“Tell me,” I said, “why didn’t you seek me out before this?”
“There was no point,” Aigra said. “We have had few dealings with you since the Resurrection, and little access to your heart and soul. We didn’t know if you would be interested in fighting against the Risen or with them. Or fighting for anything.”
That one stung a little, but only because it rang true.
“I volunteered to wait for you here after you left,” Aigra went on. “Because I believed you might come back in a time of need, when you would be willing to listen to my words. When my sacrifice would not be in vain.”
A thought occurred to me, and the knife grew light in my hand.
“How did you know about this place?” I asked.
“You grew careless when you were with her,” Aigra said. “We were able to watch you unnoticed. We discussed approaching you then, but we believed you would not have gone to war against the Risen when you were in love. You would not have willingly let go of that life. So we continued to wait and watch. We lost you for a time after the chaos of Hiroshima. That’s when I came here and readied myself for you. We have come across you from time to time since then, of course, but we kept our distance. You were much changed after that day, and your thoughts were writing in the dark to us. I remained here. I knew you would come in a time of need.”
I thought about the angels hidden away somewhere during all those moments I had with Penelope, and I grew still inside. “You’re going to have to wait a while longer,” I said. “I’m not going to kill you. And I’m not going to help you in your fight. I’ve got business of my own with Edwards, but it’s just business. I’m going to settle it on my terms, and it won’t have anything to do with you or the Risen or anything else. You and your plan can rot in hell with that other bunch of Fallen.”
Aigra didn’t say anything.
I meant what I said. I wanted his grace but I wasn’t desperate for it. I could walk away from here and leave him waiting for another hundred years. Only this time I wouldn’t come back. I’d make him long for me like I longed for Penelope.
I stuck the knife into the wall and started for the door, but he stopped me halfway across the room.
“We could have saved her,” he said.
I couldn’t help but look at him again.
“We saw her death,” he said. “We were there when it was made. When the mortals dreamed the dreams of seraphim and conceived the bomb. When they sent it on its way to you in that lonely plane. We were there when she died. We knew how much you loved her. We could have shielded her. We could have spirited her away from the fires, as a gift to you. We could have brought her back here for you.”
I didn’t say anything. What was there to say to that?
“We need you angry,” he said. “So we let her die.” He dropped to his knees. “We need you wrathful, so we let her die.”
I stared at him for a moment. He kept on looking ahead, out the door, at the stars that were beginning to show outside. Then I went back for the knife.
And I was wrathful. I was very wrathful.
AND THE GRAVES WERE OPENED
I awoke with a mouthful of dirt.
I was buried in a grave somewhere.
I reached out for Penelope, for Judas, for anyone, but there was no one.
And I screamed to find myself alive and alone again.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
When I was done with Aigra I hiked back to the car. The rage was still with me, despite everything I had done to him. I found myself on the hill with the bones that Penelope had photographed that day. I tore them from the ground and threw them deep into the forest, one after the other, until I couldn’t see them anymore. I smashed trees out of my path as I went, and the ones that were too large to smash I lit on fire with my burning hands. I turned the forest into ash and smoke, and my memories along with it. I burned the forest. I wanted to burn all of God’s creation.
The heat of the flames stung my eyes, and I felt tears on my cheeks for the first time in ages. I tried to stop them, but then the feelings inside me welled up and I wept there in the burning woods, while still screaming my rage and frustration.
I wept for what the angels had done to me, and what I had done to them.
I wept for what I’d been and what I’d become.
I wept for everything I had lost.
I wept for Penelope.
I wept for Amelia.
I made it back to the car as the sky in front of me began to lighten again. The sky behind me was a red haze. I sat behind the wheel and took a few deep breaths to compose myself once again. Then I started the car and headed off to find Edwards.
THERE WAS SILENCE IN HEAVEN
I died and Penelope died and Amelia died.
I couldn’t save them.
JUDAS MAKES A SURPRISE APPEARANCE
I followed the map Alice had given me to a neighbourhood of luxury homes overlooking Puget Sound on the outskirts of Seattle. They were the sort of places that all had metal gates sealing off their driveways, and garages so large they could have housed families. I half expected to be arrested by private security guards at any moment.
I couldn’t see a street sign for Genesis Way anywhere, but I didn’t really expect it to be marked. I found it anyway by driving around and pulling over every few minutes to check my progress against the map. Whoever had inked it had been dead accurate.<
br />
Genesis Way was a long, winding paved road behind another gate. It climbed a hill at the water’s edge, disappearing behind some trees and emerging again at the top of the hill and ending at a house. It was one of those houses that was all windows—you could see right through it to the cloudy sky on the other side. I’ve always been wary of such places. As much as you can look inside them, the residents can watch you. Sometimes you couldn’t ask for a better surveillance system than 360-degree windows.
There were no numbers on the gate but there was only one house up there, so I figured that was it. I parked the car and studied the place for a moment but I couldn’t see any movement or light in any of the windows. No one was home. Or maybe they were but wanted people to think they weren’t. Or maybe they were just out buying groceries. Only one way to find out. I got out of the car and popped the gate open with a little bit of all that grace I had and went up the hill to the house.
I was grateful for the fact there were no guard dogs. There always used to be guard dogs in the days before security cameras. Most people think the cameras are better, but trust me, guard dogs are much more difficult to deal with than cameras. I didn’t see any cameras either. Which didn’t mean they weren’t there, of course. But it didn’t matter that much—I’d cast a sleight on myself in the car to make me appear like Sut. The faithful servant returns home.
It took me a moment to find the door, because it was glass too. The only thing that gave it away was a small metal handle. I stood in front of it and looked inside the house for a moment. It looked like every other rich person’s multimillion-dollar house on a multimillion-dollar location: couches and chairs made out of some sort of moulded plastic, abstract metal shapes on tables—sculptures or garbage, I wasn’t sure which—a couple of telescopes on stands by the windows on the water side. And still no lights or people.
I tried the door but it was locked of course. I shrugged and hit the doorbell. Sometimes the only option is the best option.
No lights turned on, no people came to investigate who had wandered to the end of their lonely road.
I grabbed the door handle and let some grace flow from my hand into it. There was no sound at all. Expensive lock. I opened the door and stepped inside the house.
Into an entirely different house.
I stood in a living room with cozy wooden walls lined with bookshelves. A fire blazed happily away in the fireplace in one wall. The couches and chairs were plush, with cushions that looked as if you might actually want to sit on them. The tables held bottles of wine and other spirits. There wasn’t a window anywhere, although old landscape paintings hung where they might be. There was no sign of anything I’d seen from outside.
I paused and looked back through the door. The road I’d come up was still there. As was Puget Sound and the city and everything else. It was just the inside of the house that had changed.
I stepped back outside and looked back through the windows. The same, empty modern house with no bookshelves or paintings or fireplace. But when I looked through the door I could see the other place there, waiting for me. I checked for the things I’d usually check for in such a situation, but I couldn’t detect any sign of a sleight. It looked like both places were real. You see something new every day.
My options hadn’t changed any so I stepped back inside the house and closed the door behind me. It would have been nice to leave the door open as an escape route, but I figured that’s not the sort of thing a loyal employee like Sut would do.
I waited for a moment but no one came to welcome me. There was no sound but the crackle of the fire. I pulled out a few of the books on the shelves. They were handbound tomes. Religious texts, mainly, although there was a copy of Aristotle’s Poetics of Comedy and a slim untitled book by Thomas More that was the real reason he was beheaded. I didn’t know any copies of that one still existed.
I put them back on the shelves and glanced at the paintings. They were the sort of thing you’d normally find in old English estates: pastoral landscape knockoffs à la Constable and Turner.
I moved on to the next room, a dining room with a long wooden table set with places for a dozen people. The china held a pattern of fighting dragons. It looked so old it may have come from China itself. The silverware was tarnished with age. The dust everywhere was so thick I could have written my name in it.
The kitchen looked about as heavily used as the dining room, but at least there were a few touches of modernity here. A restaurant-grade stove. A metal refrigerator the size of a small car. I opened it and looked inside, but it was empty. I began to wonder if anyone lived here at all.
I found an answer to that question on the second floor, which was interesting on its own because I didn’t remember seeing a second floor from outside the house. In the first bedroom I looked into I found a man sleeping on a bed. The room was empty of everything else but the bed—no dresser, no laundry basket, not even a window. The bed was one of those ornate affairs with large posters and a dozen silk pillows, which suited the man because he was wearing the breeches and shirt of an Elizabethan man.
I grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to shake him awake, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t even stir. I pulled him up into a sitting position, slapped his cheeks, opened his eyes and looked inside, but he gave no response. I did note, however, that his ring finger was missing, just a stump showing where it had been cut off.
I laid him back down. I was willing to bet money that he was a faerie, and he wasn’t responding because he was off in the glamour. But given the absence of his ring finger, I suspected he wasn’t in Morgana’s court. He’d literally severed his tie to her—or someone had done it for him.
I didn’t know what that meant. I explored the other bedrooms, but they were just as empty as the rest of the place. All they held were beds that looked as if they’d never been slept in and closets with nothing in them. No windows, no phones, no computers, nothing to connect this place to the outside world.
I went back to the first room to wait for something to happen. I leaned against a bookshelf and watched the fire for a while. I poured myself a scotch—an 80-year-old Macallan Angel’s Share, if I wasn’t mistaken. Edwards had taste as well as money. I examined the paintings on the walls. Now that I looked at them closer, I wasn’t sure they were knockoffs.
I stepped up to a reproduction of Constable’s Hadleigh Castle and studied it. I’d seen it a number of times over the years, and it was one of my favourites—something about the way the castle overlooking the Thames had crumbled into ruins, with the storm clouds overhead threatening to finish it off. Maybe I identified with the shepherd and his dog wandering the desolation. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking about the fate of the Royal Family. Either way, I knew the painting well, right down to the individual brush strokes. And this was a perfect reproduction. Only a master forger would be able to pull it off. Or the artist himself.
“It’s real, if that’s what you’re wondering,” a familiar voice said from behind me. Or rather, familiar voices.
I turned to find a corpse in a suit standing behind me. No, not a corpse. Judas. He just looked like a corpse because he was letting his true nature show. I was so surprised to see him here that I didn’t even move. But I wasn’t surprised enough to miss the gun in his hand. As usual when guns are involved, it was pointed in my direction. That was the only thing that stopped me from leaping across the distance between us and tearing out his throat for real this time. But it wouldn’t stop me for long.
“They’re all real,” he went on, nodding at the other paintings. “The ones in the art galleries are the reproductions.”
For some reason, he didn’t seem interested in catching up on events with me. He didn’t even call me “little monkey.” I remembered I looked like Sut, but I didn’t drop the sleight. I’d been in enough situations like this—all right, not quite like this—to know something felt wrong here. I decided to stay in character a b
it longer.
“This is private property,” I said. “I’m going to have to call the police.”
OK, it wasn’t the wittiest comment I’d ever made, but I was taken by surprise. And I was puzzled that I didn’t feel the usual things I felt when I encountered Judas. Rage, confusion, emptiness, the desire to murder like I have never murdered. Instead, I felt . . . hungry.
Judas chuckled. “Sorry, Cross,” he said, “but when Sut didn’t check in I contacted him and found out what you did. You may as well stop wasting your grace.”
So I did. I dropped the sleight and let myself look like myself again. I watched him closely to see how he’d react. He just smiled and blinked a couple of times as my appearance changed.
“You look like hell,” he said. “Almost as bad as the last time I saw you.”
“Remind me when that was again,” I said.
“The crucifixion,” he said. “But I wouldn’t expect you to remember such a minor event as that.”
Yeah. All right. Things were starting to come together.
“Well, that’s where I have a problem,” I said. “Because you look like Judas, but I know I’ve seen Judas since the crucifixion.”
“Oh, of course—the disguise,” he said, and chuckled. And then he changed appearance in front of me, becoming a thin, skeletal man. He looked almost identical to the man in the book Alice had given me in the library, once you factored in artistic licence. Unfortunately, he still held the gun. I guess it wasn’t part of his disguise. “I’ve become so used to wearing him that I forgot,” he said.
“Jonathan Edwards, I presume,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And you’re Jesus Christ.”
“Not really,” I said.
“No, not really,” he said.
That was why I felt the way I did. He was an angel, not Judas. And I could sense his grace, which is why I felt hungry instead of angry. So that cleared some things up. Although not why he was pretending to be Judas.
