by Peter Roman
THE LAST SUPPER
When Gabriel had said his goodbyes and I’d recovered enough that I could sit up without vomiting from the pain, I propped myself against one of the castle walls and reviewed what I had learned.
Sometime in the past Morgana had managed to add Mona Lisa to her collection of fey. Then she’d given her to the Royal Family as tribute, but Edwards had broken Mona Lisa out in order to turn her into a secret weapon to break the stalemate in the war of angels. Although his liberation seemed to be more of an abduction. He was pretending to be Judas in Mona Lisa’s presence because Judas and Mona Lisa obviously had some sort of relationship in the past. A relationship she thought they still had. A relationship I wasn’t even going to try to understand. Not right now, anyway. I couldn’t bear to think about that. Besides, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Judas had already forgotten her. He didn’t strike me as the sentimental type.
And now Edwards was trying to sway her to his side in the battle by using me—well, Christ, anyway—and promises of a heavenly reward she’d never see. That is, she wouldn’t see it if Aigra was telling the truth about the Risen wiping out everything that didn’t come from the divine. And it looked like Edwards thought maybe he could turn me into a secret weapon as well.
I still couldn’t figure out how Cassiel played into all of this. Maybe he still had feelings for her, even though she was obviously hung up on Judas. Or maybe he and the rest of the faithful had their own plan for a secret weapon. Or maybe there was something I wasn’t seeing here at all.
Yeah, it was just another day at the office.
And there were the other unknowns. I had no idea why the faerie was helping Edwards. I supposed it didn’t really matter—the loss of his finger meant Edwards had found some way to bind him, just like Sut—but I’d have to find a way to deal with him to rescue Mona Lisa. Because yes, I did still plan to rescue her.
And that was the other unknown. Just what was Mona Lisa’s power? Victory had called her the most powerful of the gorgons, and all those fire and brimstone feelings around her hinted at something. I didn’t even want to know what apocalyptic time she’d come from. I wondered how the hell Da Vinci had managed to imprison her in the first place. But he was a cagey soul, especially given that he was mortal. Well, had been mortal. Who knows what he was now. Wherever he was now.
I rested a bit more and then decided I’d better get on with things before Gabriel came back to offer me more encouragement to join their cause.
Edwards was right: I would make a good secret weapon. But he’d overlooked the fact that I had secret weapons of my own.
I pushed myself up to my feet and turned to face the castle wall. I read the Keats passage I’d started with. I read the Margaret Atwood poem. I went down the wall and read a few choice lines of Rosencrantz from the Stoppard play, not the Shakespeare one. I read a passage from Ecclesiastes. I wandered the ruins, reading everything I’d carved into those walls until I turned a corner and found Alice smiling at a little bit of Dr. Seuss I’d added to the other side of the wall.
She was wearing combat fatigues and a monocle, and she was spinning a yo-yo up and down on one hand.
“I like the cat in the hat,” she said, “but not as much as I like the stories about the hat going off on adventures without the cat.”
I let out a long sigh of relief. I hadn’t known if my homemade library would work or not.
Alice kept spinning the yo-yo as she looked around. “I’ve never seen this library before,” she said.
“I made it for you,” I said.
“For me?” She did a pirouette of joy.
“I have a favour to ask,” I added.
“What kind of favour?” she said. “I think I may have some party favours here somewhere.” She began checking her pockets.
“Alice,” I said. “I need you to take me with you.”
“With me where?” she said.
“To Jonathan Edwards’s library,” I said.
She looked at me, and for the first time I noticed her eye behind the monocle was green while the other one was blue. Or maybe it had just turned green. You never know with Alice.
“Sometimes I lose people in libraries,” she whispered, like it was a secret. “And I can’t find them again.”
“I’m going to have to take that chance,” I said.
She spun her yo-yo a few more times and then smiled. “I know how to keep you,” she said and now flicked the yo-yo toward me. I caught it and looked down at it.
“Hang on to it and you won’t get lost,” she said.
“I think I’m already lost,” I said, “but all right.”
She giggled. “You sound just like the hatter,” she said.
She went around the wall, tugging me after her with the yo-yo’s string, and I followed her. We went around to the other side and then she continued on, circling the wall again. By the third time, the view hadn’t changed any.
“Alice?” I said. “Where are we going?”
“I can’t remember where I came in,” she said. “But I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds at that. I hoped I hadn’t trapped her here as well. Who knew what Edwards would do with her.
But when I opened my eyes again Alice was leading us through a hole in one of the walls I hadn’t noticed before, into a courtyard surrounded by more crumbling walls. I’d never seen this place, but the stone here was covered in more writing. Passages from Edgar Allan Poe and Angela Carter and Emily Dickinson, all written in my hand even though I had no memory of writing them. I looked up at the sky overhead and saw it was the same rolling clouds as before.
Alice pulled me to an open doorway in one of the walls, and now we were in a stone tunnel. There was no writing in here, but after a while wooden doors started to appear. Alice skipped along past them, so I restrained my natural curiosity and didn’t open any of them.
Which was just as well, because after a few minutes of this the doors were replaced by open doorways that looked into libraries. But not your normal sort of libraries.
There was one in ruins, the roof blown off and the shelves collapsed. Men in overcoats and hats stood in the ruins and browsed the books. It looked like England during the war years, but I couldn’t say for sure.
The next one was a library in flames, the books burning on their shelves. I looked inside but didn’t see anyone in there, but I did feel the heat from the flames.
Another one was a flooded library, water pouring in through windows up near the ceiling. The books were handbound leather. Water flowed out into the tunnel, carrying books with it, and we splashed through them.
We climbed stairs, past a pile of scrolls in a cave and a van with boxes of books parked in the desert. We went down another tunnel, this one lined with wood-panelled walls, past what looked like the reading room in the New York Public Library, and a library on a cruise ship somewhere. We stepped onto an escalator that took us up through a bookstore, with people browsing the aisles, and then the escalator ended in the stacks of a university library.
Alice led me through the books, and after a couple of turns the metal shelves turned to wood. I looked behind us but I couldn’t see the university library at all anymore. Now we were in a used bookstore, and then we were in what looked like a home library, and then we were standing in Edwards’s living room again, the fire and scotch welcoming us.
I looked around. The room looked the same as the last time I’d been here, only minus Edwards and his gun. I didn’t see any secret entrance or anything to indicate how we’d got here.
“I can see why you like this place,” Alice said, running her fingers along a row of books on a shelf. “There are some interesting editions here.”
I went over to the Hadleigh Castle painting and studied it. It looked the same as before. There was no sign I’d ever been in it.
“You’re going to hav
e to teach me how you do that someday,” I told Alice.
“Do what?” she asked. She blew a gum bubble at me.
“Travel between libraries,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t go to them,” she said. “They come to me.”
I should have known better than to bring it up.
“All right,” I said and stepped over to her. “What do you want for payment?”
She cocked her head at me. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“What’s your payment for rescuing me from that place?” I asked.
“But you’ve already paid me,” she said.
Now it was my turn to cock my head. I didn’t feel any different. Had she taken a memory without me noticing?
“You gave me a new library, silly,” she said and pulled the yo-yo from my hand.
I nodded. “I guess I did,” I said. “But if I were you, I’d leave it alone for a while. It’s not safe right now.”
Alice frowned. “How long?” she asked.
“I’ll contact you when it’s okay to go there again,” I said. “And if I don’t contact you, then it’s never safe.”
I left her there and went down the hall, to the kitchen. I could have just gone out the front door instead, back to the car and far away from here. To hell with Cassiel and Mona Lisa and the war between angels and whatever else I didn’t know about.
But I couldn’t. I felt honour-bound to try to save Mona Lisa now. Not for her sake or even Cassiel’s, but for Victory. I’d grown fond of Victory, and yeah, maybe even thought of her as a friend. I guess this is the sort of thing friends did for each other.
Yeah, that’s what I told myself. But the real truth is I still wanted Judas. I’d deliver Mona Lisa to Cassiel, for whatever reason he wanted her for, and then he’d deliver me Judas. Or I’d get the information out of Edwards somehow.
Fair exchange.
I went through the kitchen drawers until I found a knife with a suitably strong and long blade. Then I went upstairs. It was still empty, just the sleeping faerie still on his bed. I shoved the knife into his heart to see if I could break the glamour he was casting, but he didn’t react, didn’t even stop breathing. Well, no harm in trying. I was going to have to go in after him and kill him in the glamour.
I went back downstairs to the living room. Alice was gone now. I hoped she heeded my advice and stayed away from the library I’d made in the ruins.
I poured myself another glass of the Macallan and studied the other paintings. I figured Edwards was hiding out in one of them. I just wasn’t sure which one. I couldn’t see any signs. I doubted he’d chosen Turner’s Shipwreck of the Minotaur or Lorrain’s Seaport. Maybe Rembrandt’s The Night Watch? I shook my head. Didn’t seem his style. In fact, none of the paintings looked like the sort of place rogue angels would hide out with Mona Lisa and a faerie. I was missing something.
I wandered the library until I found it. Some scrape marks on the floor where the bookshelf had been pulled out. Well, while in Rome . . .
I put down the glass on a table and pulled the bookshelf out a few feet. The wall behind it was covered in a painting. Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. It was on the wall itself, and stretched away into the shadows behind the other shelves. The paint was faded and cracking, and it looked like the real thing, given what I recalled of it the last time I’d seen it. And given what I knew of Edwards, I was willing to bet it was the real thing, although how he’d got it here and what he’d replaced it with, I had no idea.
No matter. I winked at my portrait in the painting and then got down to it before Edwards and his group could make another appearance.
I reached into my pocket and took out the ring Morgana had given me. I took a deep breath and then, before I could think twice about what I was doing, I put it on my ring finger. For a second nothing happened. Then the bone sank into my skin, merging with it, and I felt the change start inside me. It was like the neverending hunger I had for grace, only far worse. I had a sudden yearning to see Morgana again. The yearning grew, filling me, until every cell of my body screamed with desire, until I screamed with desire too—and it was desire, not love, and the difference between the two is the difference between me and the real Christ. I stumbled in what I imagined was her direction, and I wept at being so far from her.
I knew all I had to do was think about her, like she’d said. If I focused on her, the ring would lead me to her. Instead, I forced myself to concentrate on the faerie lying on the bed upstairs, even though thinking of anything other than Morgana made me feel so hollow inside I felt like collapsing in on myself.
It was a hunch, but it was the only thing I had.
I told myself the longing I had for Morgana was no different than the hunger I’d had for grace so many times. I’d learn to endure it. I had no choice. I told myself that, but I didn’t believe it.
I couldn’t see because of the tears. When I reached up and wiped them away, I was inside The Last Supper.
It was different than the painting. The walls in the background and the table at the centre of the painting were the same, but Christ and the disciples were gone. They’d been replaced by Edwards and Mona Lisa and Gabriel and the other angels. The table was covered in a feast of fresh fruit and chunks of raw, bloody meat. Edwards and Mona Lisa sipped wine from goblets. The air was smoky, and the landscape outside the windows blazed with fire. The faerie stood off to the side of the table, staring at the scene and concentrating. He didn’t even look away when the others turned to me. I glanced down at myself and saw I was outfitted in stained breeches and a torn shirt. The knife in my hand was a rapier now. I nodded at the faerie. That was a nice touch.
Then Edwards, who still looked like Judas, put down his wine goblet and applauded me.
“I was wondering where you’d run off to,” he said. “I didn’t think it would be here.”
The other angels got to their feet and came around the table for me. Things were about to get ugly.
I tried to take off the ring, but it wouldn’t move. Not good. But there was no time to deal with that now.
“Sorry to ruin such a lovely dream,” I told Mona Lisa, who was looking back and forth between Edwards and me with obvious confusion. Then I threw myself at the faerie and skewered him through the heart with the rapier.
For a moment, everyone froze, or at least that’s the way I remember it. The angels paused to stare at what I’d done. Edwards stopped his hands in mid-clap. Mona Lisa looked at the faerie as if noticing him for the first time. And the faerie? Well, he kept concentrating on the scene for another few seconds. Then a violet bubble burst from his lips, and a stain spread around the rapier. I pulled it from his chest in a smooth motion—I’d had lots of practice over the years—and the stain spread even more.
“Thank you,” he said to me, and then he fell to the ground, skipping the whole slumping to the knees part and opting instead to melt into the floor, seeping through the cracks in the wooden planks. Then he was gone, like mist in the sun.
Another nice touch. I would have appreciated it more if I didn’t feel so damned miserable. Once I settled things with Judas, I was really going to have to do something about Morgana.
With the faerie dead, the glamour he’d been maintaining started to die as well. The fires outside the window flared once and then fell out of sight. The smell of smoke in the air faded away. The banquet turned to mouldy mounds of food swarming with flies. The angels’ finery drifted apart into spider webs that broke as they moved, leaving them naked. I glanced down at myself and saw I was holding the kitchen knife again, and once more wearing the clothes I’d been killed in. To clarify: the clothes I’d been killed in most recently.
“What’s happening?” Mona Lisa asked, looking around her, at the tapestries fading into the walls, at the goblets turning to plastic cups, at her dress turning into rags, at Judas turning into Edwards.
“You’ve been deceived,” I said, b
ut that’s all I had time for before Grumpy and Dopey spread their wings wide to block her view of me. And then Gabriel leapt over them and descended upon me.
Sure, there were three of them, but I had once been Jesus Christ, their lord and saviour—their master.
Yeah, they kicked my ass.
I tried to impale Gabriel with my blade like I’d impaled the faerie—oh, Morgana!—but he just held up a hand to catch the blade. By “catch” I mean he let me stab him through the hand. Then he swung his arm back, taking the knife with it, only to punch me in the head with the same hand. He didn’t even bother to pull the knife out.
Everyone had impressive tricks today.
While I was still trying to figure out whether the white lights I saw were imaginary or from the faerie’s fading glamour, Grumpy and Dopey grabbed my arms and slammed me against the wall. I looked past them and Gabriel to see Edwards make a motion with one of his hands, and just like that he was Judas again.
“Look at me,” he told Mona Lisa and she did and paused.
“Judas,” she said. “What is this place?”
I wanted to shout at her that it was her prison, but I was taken aback by her appearance. Her skin was marked with what looked like the scars of branding irons. Her eyes were empty sockets, just black holes in her drawn face. Her smile was the worst of all. Loose pieces of wire hung from her mangled lips, and the holes still gaped in them where she’d been stitched shut.
Then it was all gone again as Edwards replaced the faded glamour with a sleight. It wouldn’t be as good as the glamour, and he wouldn’t be able to keep it up, but it might do the trick long enough to cloud her mind with some other enchantment he had waiting as a backup. Maybe he even had another faerie in reserve in one of the other paintings. I knew I had to do something. But Gabriel complicated my efforts when he pulled the knife from his hand and then stabbed me in the stomach with it. Maybe that was ironic. I’ve never been quite clear on the definition of irony.
It hurt like hell, but it didn’t hurt any worse than my new longing for Morgana. If it were just Gabriel and me, I probably could have dealt with the pain and made a fight of it. But unfortunately it wasn’t just Gabriel and me—it was Gabriel and me and the other two angels and Edwards.
