Robert met Peter Levy in the hall outside Adam’s office. Peter was a founding member of the IAI and its chief government liaison. A veteran lobbyist and old hand at understanding how things really got done in Washington, Peter had undoubtedly been instrumental in helping Adam work out this deal with the HSA. He was now taking it on himself to escort Robert from The Burrow to the parking garage, where HSA agents would be waiting to drive him home, secure his apartment, and fit him with monitor bracelets, anklets, and a collar.
Robert had never spoken with Peter much. There’d never really been an opportunity or reason. Peter’s realm was politics; Robert, his respect and admiration for President Jenifer Sagan notwithstanding, had never cared much for the subject. Today, however, he thanked Peter for his efforts and, during the elevator ride up, grilled him for information Adam hadn’t bothered to give out.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about Darryl,” Peter said. “They took him to a very secure, private hospital in Reston. Sam and I spoke to one of his doctors while you were in with Adam. It turns out his injuries aren’t that severe. He should recover in a couple of days.”
“Good,” Robert said. “I guess he’s also going to need take a little time off from the Institution.”
“The vacation may be longer than you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“We had a briefing meeting with the HSA this morning,” Peter said. “They want to see Darryl for a final round of interviews.”
“For the Peacemakers?”
“So they said. But I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Agency is creating a special operations force, pending authorization from the President. My gut tells me Darryl will find a new home there.”
Well. It looked like Darryl might have a shot at his dream after all. Robert wasn’t sure he truly deserved it, but what the hell. It was time to give the guy a break.
“I can’t wait to congratulate him.”
Peter chuckled. “Well, you won’t be making any calls for a while.”
“Yeah,” Robert said, “don’t remind me.”
“You’ll be fine. We had to pull a lot of strings, but there was no way we could convince anyone to let you off with just a warning.”
“I understand,” Robert said. “And thanks again for what you were able to do. But for the record, what Ava and I did was nowhere near the heinous level of what those other two have done. Veronica and Vanessa, or whatever the hell their real names are.”
“We know all about it,” Peter said. “Adam is sharing the footage he found with the HSA. Guaranteed those two are never going to see the light of day again.”
They stepped off The Burrow’s elevator and waited for the one to the parking garage to arrive.
“And what about Marie-Lydia McGillis?” Robert was worried about her most of all. She was in a dangerous state. Her mind was clearly warped. They couldn’t just give her a bath, a new dress, and send her home.
“That’s a trickier subject,” Peter said. “The HSA has a lot of questions about her disappearance, her alleged abductors, and a whole host of other things. And she’s certainly in no condition to give straight answers right now. But that’ll change, with the proper care and treatment. Regardless, from what I’ve been told, she’s going to be kept in a special facility until they’re sure she’s fit to reenter society. Her parents will be notified she’s been found, but they won’t be allowed to visit her just yet.”
That was probably for the best. Robert considered if he were in her situation. If he’d committed the acts she had, had subsequently been forced into XynKroma, and then had gone through whatever-the-hell for more than a year, would he want his parents to come see him? Could he face them? He laughed a short, bitter laugh as the elevator door opened. Yeah, he could face them. That wasn’t the right question. What else did he want to do before the Virus or a bullet or whatever else made him breathe his last? His mom was dead, but he’d almost kill to be able to see his dad again—if he was alive.
“Don’t worry,” Peter said. “Brighter days are ahead for Marie-Lydia. There are some experimental drugs that came on the market in June that may help her better cope with the Virus and help her readjust to the world relatively quickly. Whatever the case, she’s going to be a lot happier than she possibly could’ve been over the past year. There’s no reason to have anything but a positive outlook. Remember, things could always be worse, for any of us.”
True enough. Robert had kissed death, he’d kissed the heart of it, and he’d come back to himself. But it was only now, now that he and Darryl were no longer officially together, that he felt it was time, it was safe, to let him go. Let Darryl spread his wings, whether metaphorical or real, and let him find his true happiness while Robert moved on to find the something else that may hurry up and kill him, or make him stronger.
Love…fuck it. Maybe it really was just a dangerous myth, the product of a multitude of diseased brains, a sick hive-mind producing a mass delusion—at least in this world.
Don’t worry, be happy.
The elevator door opened on the fifth level of the parking garage. Robert followed Peter toward a black SUV parked at the far end, straight ahead, against the low wall. Two men in suits were standing near the vehicle. One of them was looking out over the wall’s ledge, probably at all the morning rush-hour traffic on the street below. Peter greeted the men when they were within nonshouting distance and shook hands when closer.
“Before you take Mister Goldner here,” he said, “I wanted to ask you…”
The three men began to discuss something that had nothing to do with Robert, so he moved closer to the ledge, looking out and all around as he took deep breaths. Polluted as it was, he wanted his fill of outdoor air before being shut away. He spent a minute taking in all he could before he felt a scratching at the back of his neck, inside the skin. The sensation simultaneously ran down his spine and crawled all over his scalp. He shuddered, then instinctively looked up into the sky. He had to squint and concentrate to telescope his vision, making its range travel much farther than usual, but it didn’t take him long to spot them. A whole flock of them.
They were arranged in a hexagonal formation, flying in a zigzag fashion. Not in the manner of birds, or even in the manner of bats, but in the manner of creatures made up from the constituent parts of other creatures, some of whom were adapted to the sea, some of whom were adapted to the sky, and some of whom were adapted to an entirely different environment altogether.
Chimeras. Denizens of Xyn. There’d been a dimensional breach.
The creatures had left their old habitat and entered a new realm, Reality’s surface. It appeared they were becoming adapted to their new environment in fits and starts.
Robert watched as the flock flew into a cloud and disappeared. He shuddered again and backed away from the ledge.
“What’s the matter?” Peter asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Robert said as he got into the backseat of the SUV. “I just saw a dark cloud in the sky. I think it’s about to rain.”
POSTSCRIPT
“Why so disturbed?” the girl asked. “Isn’t this the beginning of the Happily-Ever-After you wanted? The one you agreed to?”
Darryl’s soul stood next to hers on the giant’s left shoulder. He was gazing down at the two other souls tilling the Ground of Xyn near the giant’s feet, far below. The giant had walked away from its lake to stand in a stranger terrain of gloppy, inhospitable soil. Darryl had been wondering what kind of seeds would work here, and just where they’d come from. Yes, he knew they were only to be metaphorical seeds, but it and similar questions nagged him. Unlike his companion, the angel formerly known as Marie-Lydia McGillis, he hadn’t spent enough time in XynKroma so that the answers to all questions, riddles, and arts were clear to him, or easily discovered. But now he and she were a couple. Inseparable. One. He trusted her to give him everything he needed. She’d certainly trusted him well enough to reveal her secret name when his soul had retu
rned to hers after their first meeting. “St. Alva,” she’d said, “because I am nothing if not a martyr.” But so much still remained a mystery.
“I’ll tell you my opinion on the beginning,” Darryl said, “once we’ve reached the end.”
He focused again on the souls below them. Veronica Blake and Vanessa Blight. VanJill and its assembled crew of pole-pets were overseeing the two souls and their work. No need for Darryl or St. Alva to go anywhere near them. They could keep their distance. But they couldn’t rely on just two souls to complete the work that had to be done. They needed more. A whole town’s worth. Maybe a whole city’s, or a country’s. The mother and father of the latest and greatest Miracle had to do their parts to ensure a perfect End.
“Any idea what happened to their bodies?” Darryl asked.
“Yes,” St. Alva said. “I have an idea. And so should you. Heartland Security agents took them and shut them away.”
“I only just started there,” Darryl said. “I’m lucky I know where the bathroom is. Info on captured terrorists isn’t something they’d give to someone like me.”
“Do you think they gave it to me?” St. Alva asked. “Here in XynKroma, knowledge of the entire world is open to us, potentially. Learn to manipulate the bits and pieces to find out what you want.”
Inside and outside of XynKroma, his so-called Perfect Memory Recollection ability wasn’t working as well as he’d imagined it should. Instead of an accessible ability, so far it seemed to be operating more like a trick—a trick elbow or a trick knee—acting up only when it wanted to, giving him only imperfect pictures of others’ pasts and secrets. Maybe it would work better in time.
“You’ll have to teach me your arts,” Darryl said.
“Of course, honey.”
“And maybe tell me just where in the world you’re hiding your body on Reality’s surface,” he said. “Since we’ve become so close, it would be nice to be able to see you face-to-face. Under better circumstances than last time.”
Only a few days had passed since Darryl’s first meeting with Marie-Lydia McGillis. During that time, Darryl had been hospitalized, released, interviewed by the HSA, and hired on the spot as one of their agents. During the same time, the girl had been examined at a hospital, taken to a high security center that specialized in caring for dangerous Virus-carriers, and held for two days before disappearing. This was their fourth meeting in Xyn.
“You can’t see me now,” St. Alva said. “It’s too dangerous. Rest assured I’m being kept safe. The fewer people who know where, the better.”
“Having trust issues?” Darryl asked. “After all I’ve been through for you? For Us—honey?”
“You know the answer to that. Our relationship is stronger here, at the fundamental realm. Our bodies will be transformed anyway in the Afterbath. The surface doesn’t matter. Paying too much attention to skin is one of the primary faults of humanity, leading to so many other ills.”
She had him there. It was a good point. But Darryl wasn’t dissuaded. During his first visit back to XynKroma after accepting her “modest proposal,” she’d insisted all the activity needed to make their child a body-and-soul reality could be performed in Xyn. Darryl still insisted on seeing her in the flesh. He wanted to get a good look to make sure it was healthy enough, fit enough to gestate their child. The child would be like no other, but its body would still be carried in the body of its mother, if not necessarily for nine months.
“I need to stay hidden until our child is born,” St. Alva said. “I need to maintain that wall of security. If my body is returned too soon to Mister and Missus McGillis, they’d force an abortion.”
“What?” Darryl expressed disbelief even though he knew exactly where she was coming from. A fifteen-year-old daughter returned to her parents after missing from the face of the earth for a year and a half ? A fifteen-year-old pregnant daughter? Even the most religious parents would question the tenets of their faith and wrestle with the very concept of morality in such a situation.
“Evil adults,” St. Alva said. “Thankfully we’re no longer related. I’d love to tell them to their big wicked faces their little girl Marie-Lydia is dead.”
They both fell silent. Below, the pole-pets were allowing Vanessa and Veronica to take a break. The two humanoid-shaped souls stood knee-deep in the oatmeal-like soil while VanJill lectured them on their necessary duties and the final Reality to come. The two may’ve heard the pole-pet’s words, but neither was reading the text in its bubbles. Both were glaring, staring all the way up at Darryl and St. Alva.
Darryl had delivered Veronica’s soul directly to the giant’s feet. The diamond ring had worked as promised. Someone unknown to him had sent Vanessa’s soul to Xyn and, as a result, it had landed far from where St. Alva and Darryl needed it to be. St. Alva had found the soul wandering in a maze and captured it, brought it to the giant.
Both Vanessa and Veronica could’ve met far worse fates in Xyn. Neither seemed to appreciate that fact. But there was nothing to fear from either of them. Superior angels on Reality’s surface, they were now inferior souls at its base. Veronica’s and Vanessa’s souls couldn’t fly. They couldn’t change their souls’ shapes or compositions. They could only manipulate the polluted light of Xyn within a tiny radius of their soul’s figures, and only for the few purposes allowed.
Darryl could still feel their hatred. VanJill’s words had been ineffective. If they’d been listening to the pole-pet, if they’d taken a moment to try to understand, they would’ve been thankful for the opportunity Darryl and St. Alva had given them.
“It was a struggle,” St. Alva said. “Such a struggle. The tug of war between me and those two…”
The first time Darryl returned to Xyn after accepting her proposal, bringing Veronica Blake’s soul with him, St. Alva had praised his wise decision, then she’d told him the whole story of her soul’s imprisonment. She’d told him how, shortly after Ava Darden, her would-be mentor, had brought her to Xyn against her will, the dirty-pool-dipping souls of Veronica and Vanessa had found her. Veronica had suggested and Vanessa had agreed to take her soul and make it their plaything. The two attacked the hundreds of teacher-guardians in whose care Ava had left her and captured eighty or so with the intent of converting them into prison guards. They then took her soul to another section of Xyn and stirred up the storm that would prevent anyone from locating her. They began molesting their new plaything immediately, siphoning what energy they could from the soul to make themselves stronger, smarter, more powerful. The two became more and more ambitious.
St. Alva’s true mentor, the one who’d originally inverted her and had shown St. Alva her full potential, had kept her body safe on Reality’s surface while trying to find a way to free her soul and reunite her mind and body. The Killer Vees were the acolytes of this mentor and, by default, loyal to St. Alva; Veronica and Vanessa were loyal only to themselves. After some time, St. Alva had managed to establish periodic physic links with her mentor. Together, bit by bit, piece by piece, they’d devised a plan that would allow them to not only gain temporary mastery over the minds and bodies of Veronica and Vanessa but to also steer a liberator to St. Alva’s soul. Through a vast network of contacts, they’d learned of the name and reputation of Darryl Ridley. He had the near-perfect psychological makeup for the task. All they had to do was lure him and cleanse him before outfitting him in white to be St. Alva’s shining knight.
Darryl had wondered about the coincidence of the women’s names, all them starting with the letter “v.”
“It’s no coincidence,” St. Alva had told him. “It’s HyperVersism, otherwise known as ‘Word Magick.’” Her mentor had come up with a verbal concoction, a charm whereby, to match Veronica and Vanessa, the ladies would adopt pseudonyms beginning with the same letter to better effect the primary charm they were using on the pair. It would tighten the circle, help ensure the two wouldn’t deviate from the grand plan.
Veronica and Vanessa had been useful artist
s. St. Alva had manipulated them into performing all sorts of neutral, good, and great deeds—steering the course of a band of artists, capturing the interest of Darryl Ridley, and keeping Ava from recovering St. Alva’s body before Darryl could recover her soul. Now the former Infinite-Definite terrorists served in another useful role.
A full understanding of magick of any kind was beyond Darryl, at least at this point. Whatever the women had done, it had worked. But Darryl wondered more and more about this mentor, more and more about this mystery woman. If Stavan “Ava” Darden wasn’t her true mentor, why had the girl formally known as Marie-Lydia McGillis adopted—or been given—a name so similar to hers? More so-called Word Magick? And if Darryl and St. Alva were to be the parents of this child, this great Artist of The End, what role would the true mentor play? Critic? Editor? Questions, questions—a vast number of them…
St. Alva grabbed the hand of Darryl’s soul and tugged.
“Come,” she said. “Before we return to the surface this time, I want to show you what VanJill and I have done with the chamber since your last visit. I need your opinion on a few things.”
“My opinion?” Darryl asked. “What do you expect me to have to say about it?”
“Plenty, I hope. We are One now, honey. And the chamber has to be perfect if it’s where our child will guide the unfolding of A Beautiful Creation.”
They lifted their souls from the giant’s shoulder and floated gently into its left ear. As they traveled through the canal toward the chamber, Darryl considered the giant’s ear, its head, its face, and the fact it already had its own vineyard wrapped around its body, threading in and out, stitched to its skin. What did it mean that the souls they brought to Xyn were to grow a vineyard from nothing while the giant was already outfitted in one? In XynKroma, symbols weren’t merely harmless symbols; they had stark translations to hard facts. This giant heard. This giant saw. And if its face wasn’t blurred to him, Darryl would know exactly for whom to search on Reality’s surface, exactly whom to confront, exactly whom to accuse of being the near-future abductor of his and St. Alva’s child.
Broken Angels Page 30
