by M. K. Gibson
I listened to Riggs explain it. Truthfully, I’d never been sure angels existed. Demons, yeah. I saw them every day for almost a hundred years. But until I met Vali and Vidar, I didn’t know angels even existed. Not real ones.
“What makes these angels different from the gods?”
“Oh, you know about them, huh?” Riggs asked, sounding impressed, and I nodded.
“I know a couple.”
“Well, the difference is, these angels never decided to leave God’s grace. They remained loyal, by his side, doing his will. And this was their reward: abandonment. When He left, the walls went up. Anything not in Heaven was left behind. Since these bastards never became lesser gods, cultivating worshipers, they have no incoming power from faithful believers. All they have left in the tank is what they had when God left. Once that’s gone, it’s gone.”
At first I thought that didn’t make any sense. If they wanted more power, even if they were never gods, then they just needed people to believe in them. Have faith in them. But then again, what were they supposed to do? Go out into a world that never really had faith in them to begin with? Start doing good work in this cesspool of a world? People wouldn’t welcome them, and the demon masters would kill them.
They were refugees. Cosmic transients.
“But why the temples? Why come here? Why not join the other gods?”
“Lots of reasons, I guess. The other gods weren’t in much better shape. People stopped worshiping the big ones long ago. And there’s always been something of a rift among the family. Those angels that left God’s presence to become gods were looked down on by the ‘faithful’ angels. The children they created, the demi-gods, the nephilim, were an abomination as far as they were concerned. So, if you spent eons mocking and hating someone, could you go hat in hand, looking for handouts from them?”
“I guess not.”
“I think the reason they came to the temples was because of the latent power of The Well of Souls. Once the True Temple became the final resting place for the Tears of God—well, it was like flies on shit after that.”
“What does the Well of Souls do? I mean, I always thought it was just a tomb. A resting place Solomon had built for the relics of the God of Abraham.”
“You want the truth?” Riggs asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s a central power repository. A battery booster for my magic. I used my ring to force powerful demon princes and angelic hosts to reveal their knowledge. Then, I bent them to my will and forced them to construct it. The shamir did the rest, creating the temples around the wells.”
“Why? For what purpose?”
“So I could rip a hole in the fabric of reality and force God to destroy all of creation. And when that didn’t work, I turned the Well on the Earth itself and tried to awaken the Heralds of the Deep Ones.”
What. The. Fuck?
I stopped walking and just stood there dumbstruck.
“Don’t stand there with your mouth open.”
“You’re a monster,” I said in awe.
“I had my reasons, kid. It wasn’t the first time I tried something like that and it wasn’t the last.” Riggs approached a domed shrine in what I guessed was the center of the temple. “Ahh, here we are.”
The shrine was high atop a set of stairs that went all the way around it in concentric circles. Built similar to the old Jefferson Memorial, the shrine had white stone columns forming a perimeter and a domed top. Even from this distance, I could feel the power.
“Come on, kid. Time’s wasting,” Riggs said, making his way upward to the shrine.
“How am I supposed to follow you now, after what you said?”
“You put one foot in front of the other, preferably with your mouth shut.”
“Go to Hell.”
“I tried once or twice. They wouldn’t let me in,” Riggs laughed.
When I said nothing, Riggs stopped and sighed. “Look, I don’t give a shit what you think of me. I’ve lived too long to be burdened by morality or the judgments of others. But I do understand doing what’s right for your people and your family.”
I refused to move.
Riggs turned on me and squared up. He lit a smoke and collected his thoughts. “You’re part right. I was a monster. I hated God. I hated him for the curse he laid on me. I hated him for the benevolence and forgiveness he showed others, but never me. Reborn over and over and over. I saw The Gates of Heaven. I saw the Pit of Hell. And each time, in each location, I was turned away. I was forced back to earth, in another form, another life. Another baby being born with all my knowledge intact. And when I spoke upon birth, my head was crushed by fearful fathers and mothers who thought their newborn was possessed by a demon. And thus the cycle repeated.”
Riggs turned away and continued the march upwards. “Oh, I hated the world and its God. I hated that my only love and passion was stripped away from me. The growing of the earth turned to salt. My children were taken too young. My descendants were all cursed in some way. So we abandoned tilling the earth and became the smiths. Forever cursed to shape what the earth gave, but never able to grow from it again.
“I hated that God sent his son for forgiveness, but my sons and their sons, all innocent, forever carried my curse. I cursed Jesus on the day he died, when I was crucified next to him. I was a simple thief then, but I knew he was telling the truth. That if I believed in him I would go up to Heaven. But I rebuked him.”
Riggs rubbed his hand over his face, then lit another smoke. “Now, can you comprehend the vastness of all that, or should I spell it all out again with smaller words?”
Riggs turned and walked forward up the stairs of the shrine. I followed in silence, processing what he said.
“What changed?” I asked, unsure of what to make of this man.
“Hmm?”
“You said you were a monster. You’re not anymore? What changed?”
“Fair enough. No, I’m not a monster now. You see way back when, I decided I could no longer go on like that, living life after life, century after century. So I decided, stupidly, to unmake creation. Each new life I entered, I sought a way to bring this whole thing down. And each time I failed. And that last time I tried, man, things really went Tango Uniform. So, in this new world, I took the opportunity to return to my first love, growing things. The Curse still applies, and the earth bears no yield to my touch. But I provide the infrastructure and technology for those who can.”
Riggs reached the top of the shrine and lit another smoke “Man, I need to quit. These stairs really take it out of ya. Bring the kid inside.”
Pushing the mag-lev past the columns, I followed Riggs inside. The shrine was a circular room made of white stone and glowing crystal. From the domed ceiling down, pulsing veins of energy moved through the crystal. It appeared the power emanated from a glowing hole in the center of the shrine’s floor.
The Well of Souls.
“Bring him here,” Riggs asked as he knelt beside the hole, laying his right hand, the one with the Key of Solomon, along the well’s lip. His cigarette dangled from his mouth as he prepared to do whatever it was he was planning. Once again, there was something about his manner that tickled hazy memories.
Damn, who was this guy?
Obeying, I picked TJ up and carried him to Riggs, laying the boy down beside the well. Riggs laid a hand on TJ’s chest and instantly the hair of my arms stood on end from the amount of power flowing through the air.
“Will this work?” I asked.
“Best shot we have,” Riggs said with his eyes closed.
I stared in awe of the shrine, unsure of what I was seeing. “How does it work?”
“This place exists in a quantum state, existing in all the temples and none of them at the same time. Because of which, each of the ley-line intersections the respective temples are built on pour their energy here. This shrine, in this tiny dimension, is a focal point for that power.”
The shrine began to glow with an intense whit
e light. Amid the glowing crystal, I briefly saw inky black tendrils of darkness, flowing like a stain inside the pure energy. The air began to swirl in random patterns of color and light. Around me, I heard voices. Whispers of the dead. They asked for guidance. They asked for forgiveness. They were cold, they were lost, they hurt, and they were hungry.
A nimbus of ethereal power hovered above TJ, while around it, the room swam in a sea of motion. The little cloud of energy seemed to be tethered to TJ and it sparkled with a simple, earnest light. Slowly, the sparkling light lowered itself, merging with TJ’s form. As it did, I swear I heard TJ say “Thank you.”
The lights of the shrine stopped flashing. The voices of the dead ceased speaking. In the briefest of moments, we were once again standing in quiet, save for the slow, rhythmic breathing of the thirteen-year-old boy on the floor with a smile on his face.
I looked down at TJ and wiped at the corner of my eye.
“Thank you,” I told Riggs, who only nodded his head and lit two smokes, handing me one.
“You’re welcome.”
“It’s hard to see you as some sort of monster after all . . . that.”
“Like I said, I was one, right up until my last attempt to end this damn world.”
“What did you do?”
Riggs turned his head towards me, looking me in the eye. “Do you really wanna know?”
“Yes?”
“Remember, you asked,” Riggs said, taking a puff from his smoke as he seemed to collect his thoughts. “I had a plan, once technology had caught up to my ambitions. It was before G-Day, back when I was known as Ken.”
“What?” I asked, refusing to allow my mind to process the information.
“Kenneth McMillan, to be exact. CEO and co-founder of Kurasawa-McMillan.”
“You, you were … Ken McMillan. You were my . . . my . . .”
“You got it, kid. I was . . . once. That’s why I know everything about you. Why I know about The Collective. I wrote part of the code my son Abraham, your father, used to create you. I used Kurasawa’s advanced cloning technique to bring about the coming of the Anti-Christ. I knew that would be what brought about the end of the world. Sadly, instead of ending the world, it only brought more pain for all of us as He left. Pain and a shit-load of demons.”
Ho … Lee … Shit
“Granddad?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Room With No Doors
“You . . . I . . . you’re lying,” I stammered.
Millions of questions flooded my brain. But for the life of me, I couldn’t even ask one. I just stared at him like an idiot.
“For the sake of your soul, I wish I was.”
In that moment, I knew. I knew he was telling the truth. Little nuances all came flooding back to me. The looks he gave, the way he moved, the way he stood, his humor and inflection.
Memories came crashing back in vivid detail. Of the wood and tools in his basement workshop with the ever-present smell of mildew. Memories of sitting on the counter while he tinkered on something and we listened to his Johnny Cash records. The Zippo lighter with the lighthouse engraving in my pocket . . . was his.
I remember my grandmother telling me it was Granddad’s good luck charm from WWII. He bought the lighter in Nova Scotia, Canada before he shipped out to the European front.
This man was, or had been, my grandfather. Not in this form, but it was him. His spirit. I knew it was him. Granddad Kenny. The man who held me and loved me when I was young. The man who fostered my tinkering, helping me take apart old TVs to see how they worked. The man who taught me about death at six years old when he died of a heart attack.
The same man who was the genesis for the end of the world.
I drew my blaster and aimed it at his head. One squeeze, and that would be it. Riggs—for I refused to call him Granddad—turned away, looking instead at Chael, who’d remained quiet during the exchange, watching us with gleeful intent.
My hand trembled on the trigger.
“Make it count, kid,” he said with his back to me.
This . . . person tried killing the world. This person tried to end everything that was or would be because he was angry that he got a bum deal however long ago. And he then spoke so cavalierly about redemption, as if a person could just change his nature as easy as changing his mind.
Then, for whatever reason, Gh’aliss came to mind. I saw her in my memories. Powerful and beautiful. Corrupt and decadent. And I walked beside her for decades while I sold out humanity to demons because I decided to back the winning team.
I helped enslave my fellow man and turned a profit while doing it. I told myself it was for nobler causes, to hasten the inevitable. But how many people did I turn my back on because I too felt like I’d received a bum deal in life?
I thumbed the safety back on and holstered the blaster. Like a child, I looked at my feet, because I felt like I couldn’t look up. Because looking up meant I had to accept the situation. Accept his—and my—reality.
“Not wanting something to be won’t make it so,” Riggs said. “Once the kid is awake, we have to finish this.”
“But why me? Why you? Here, now?”
“It means there are things in play you don’t know about yet. And the fact that I was the one picked to finish you off hasn’t escaped me.”
“No shit,” I said. “It feels like I was set up . . . again.”
“Welcome to the deep end, kid. You just jumped in.”
Chael stepped towards us with a crazed smile on his face. “The boy lives. Now is the time for darkness to spread its dominion over the waning joy in the hearts of men. The plunder within the Room With No Doors awaits. We take The Tears of God and blight the world.”
“The Tears!” a voice called out. A previously unseen angel materialized outside of the shrine and leaped skyward, its voice calling out like a vengeful bird of prey. “They’ve come to remove The Tears of God! Kill them!”
“I take it that’s not good?” I asked.
Riggs gave me a dumb look. “When has anyone ever screamed ‘kill them’ at you and it turned out to be good?”
Hmm . . . he had a point. It looked like my bittersweet family reunion was cut short as the last of the Heavenly Host descended on us. From atop the shrine’s stairs, I looked down and saw the angels, swarming. They came from all directions, moving across the white stone pathways and through the garden’s vegetation.
They didn’t move like I expected—not that I had a really great idea how an angel fought to begin with. I decided right then and there that if I survived this, I was going to do everything I could to never have to fight an angel again. Because—let me just say this up front—it’s really hard.
They were savage. Berserk. Bestial. Like wild silverback gorillas. Some moved on all fours while others moved easily on two legs, scrambling and insane with only one goal—to kill you. Those with wings moved through the air of the garden as easily as those on the ground. They came at us with terrifying ferocity and complete abandonment of fear.
“Do we . . . kill them?” I asked, drawing my guns.
“Well, they aren’t gonna try and tickle us,” Riggs responded, quickly ditching his brown leather coat. He wore metallic bracers that were made of a smoky gray-black material and extended from his wrists to his elbows.
“What are those?” I asked, looking at my own tech bracers.
Riggs looked at mine and smirked. “Cute.”
A Riggs clanged his bracers together, the gray-black material suddenly flowed over his skin, moving like liquid metal. In seconds, Riggs was encased head to toe in his armor, with stylized ram horns along his head and fists.
“Damn,” I whispered. “Cool.”
“Nano-bot technology in programmable matter,” Riggs’s altered voice said through his armor. “Don’t worry. One day you can play with the big boys.”
“I hope you get shot,” I said, turning my weapons towards the oncoming choir. I kept TJ shielded behind me as best as I cou
ld while I popped round after round at the angels. But they kept coming.
Even with my cybernetic enhancements, I had a hard time tracking them. They were just too damn fast and moved too damn erratically. I guess I assumed they would be more . . . cordial? If there was such a thing in a fight. More organized, perhaps? Like a cohort of Roman soldiers—disciplined, methodical, proficient.
No. Angels were none of those things. Once upon a time they might have been God’s messengers and emissaries, but they were also the ones who were sent to lay waste to whatever He pointed at. And right now, that pointing was a big-ass middle finger at us.
I saw exactly why they were God’s assassins. They came in with everything from bare hands to blades. I had to fire up my energy shield in my left bracer and try and pick my shots with my right-handed blaster. When the semi-auto blasters weren’t cutting it, I switched them to sawed-off shotgun mode. The hardlight cameras in my bracers supplied the additional required modifications. New barrels and energy capacitors glowed around my weapons.
BOOM! Click-clack BOOM!
I fired off round after round of condensed and powerful energy. The additional firepower was a bit more effective, as I sent the furious angels airborne, tumbling down the shrine’s stairs, only for other to swarm over their fallen allies. Their wounds were severe, but they were closing fast and they kept coming.
Chael at least held his own against the angels. As they swarmed him, he would fling them like children back into the thick garden.
Riggs, in his armored form, blended martial arts attacks with unseen kinetic energy I assumed was magic. I had to admit, learning a touch of magic would be pretty keen. But the way Grimm described it, one needed to come as close to death as possible in order to gain a higher level of understanding of the universe.
Screw that. If that’s what it took, I preferred to live well and be ignorant.
After only a few minutes of fighting, I was breathing hard. The fight was futile. It was only a matter of time before they got us. At least I got a chuckle from seeing a bunch of feathers flying when I blasted them through the air.
