Messiah of Burbank - An Urban Fantasy

by Paul Neuhaus

  “The builders have asked me to allow them to reconstruct that courtyard. I haven’t granted my permission. I will never grant my permission.”

  Quinn and Aisling’s eyes met. “I understand,” Henaghan said.

  “You understand that victory often has a price.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Good because that broken courtyard isn’t the only reason I brought you here.” The elder Aja backed up several steps and again extended her hand.

  Without hesitation, Henaghan walked over to Aisling and took the offered palm.

  Right away, the two women were in a downward-sloping tunnel of rock. Aisling was now dressed differently. She wore leather armor over chainmail. As the two descended, the walls became less rough-hewn, more decorative. “I’ve seen this place before,” Quinn said. “In a dream.”

  Aisling nodded. “Dreams haunt us both, don’t they?” At last, they came to the huge circular chamber Quinn had seen once before. The Womb of the World. Aisling let go of her guest’s hand and said, “Wait here. On the edge of the light where you won’t be seen.”

  Quinn did as she was told. She stood on the edge of the light and watched as a familiar scenario unspooled.

  But only familiar to a point.

  In time, Nisha, the tall woman made of glowing white light spoke to Aisling, “Aja. You have come to barter.”

  Though she was seated and looking up, Aisling’s voice was not tinged with supplication. Instead, she was tired and resolute. “You know that I have. You know what the terms of that barter must be.”

  Nisha cocked her head. “I do know. I know all of that and more. Still, I take this form so rarely. Indulge me in conversation. Let us be as two beings in communication. In your way, instead of mine.”

  The Aja of ancient times sighed, not at all keen to do the steps when both she and Nisha knew the dance. She persisted because she had to. “Tomorrow, my armies and I will attack Devālaya.”

  Nisha smiled. “Yes. Home to the blasphemers. You understand that’s what this is about, don’t you? Channeling maya is for… creatures higher than yourself. The Asura who live in Devālaya, they had no right to indoctrinate your kind. Blasphemy must be rooted out at its source and burned away.”

  “Yes, but you cannot be the one to conduct the purge. I understand the dynamic between Asura and Deva.” Interesting, Quinn thought. Nisha is a Deva.

  “You are correct,” Nisha said.

  “So, tomorrow, my armies and I will attack Devālaya.”

  “And you will suffer and die, and you will fail. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

  Aisling nodded.

  “If I loan you my power—to defeat your enemies, what will you give me in return?”

  “Wait,” Aisling said. “I am not a fool. If you loan me your power, you must also give me and my people the time to enjoy our victory. Otherwise, the victory will lack meaning.”

  Nisha smiled. “And how much time do you require, little Aja?”

  “Eons from now, another one such as me will be born. That should be the time of your coming.”

  The Deva shrugged. “Your eons are nothing to me. But there is one more thing you must offer…”

  Aisling took a deep breath. “After we’ve won, my advisors will suggest the creation of an overlay onto the membrane separating our two planes. To keep the Earth safe from the anger of the Asura. I will design that mesh so that it protects us from the Asura and the Asura alone.”

  “So,” Nisha said with another small smile. “You are willing to barter your future in exchange for your present?”

  “I am.”

  “Then tomorrow you will have your victory, little Aja.”

  Aisling stood, turned her back to the Deva and walked back to where Quinn was standing. “I will not apologize,” she said to Henaghan, her expression defiant.

  Quinn’s head swam. Before she fell in step behind Aisling (who was moving toward the exit), she looked at Nisha.

  Nisha looked back and gave a barely perceptible nod.

  As soon as her eyes locked with Nisha’s, Quinn felt herself pulled away again, but she didn’t return immediately to her bed. Instead, she hovered above the balcony on the high tower in the city of Iarmailt. Standing on that balcony was a woman, but it wasn’t Aisling. The world had turned. Time had moved on. Henaghan knew instinctively the sad woman by the railing was Aisling’s daughter. She had no trace of her mother’s vast power. The gene inside her that harbored that vast power was locked.

  Henaghan had a thought. A need to know. She steeled herself and fused her consciousness with that of Aisling’s offspring. The girl’s name was Betrys and she was a prisoner in the tower. The patriarchy had reasserted its dominance. Betrys was nothing more than a symbol to be trotted out when her mother’s memory needed invoking. She had no deep human contacts. She did not know love. But Quinn hadn’t entered her to experience her melancholy. She had a deeper purpose. She directed herself at the girl’s biological essence and attuned herself to it. She didn’t know if what she was attempting was even possible. She wanted to see how Aisling’s seed had spread. Would she be able to extrapolate from Betrys through the history of the bloodline? She closed her eyes and tried to attune herself to very beginnings of her own family.

  All at once, she found herself jumping from head to head, through history in a whirlwind ride that took her breath away.

  Betrys had a daughter named Ceana. Ceana had a son named Diarmad and a daughter named Doirin. Both Diarmad and Doirin had children of their own. The line returned, in time, to its roots in what would become Great Britain. The pace became quicker. Head to head. Spirit to spirit. Soon, Quinn could not keep track of the names.

  The cataclysm came. The lands moved away from one another. Still Aisling’s line persisted. Across thousands of years and hundreds and hundreds of genetic messengers. All of them carried the recessive gene. None of them ever had that gene activated. That would have to wait for the first half of the twenty-first century. It would have to wait for Quinn.

  Soon, Quinn saw people she recognized. Great grandmothers and aunts, their faces given solidity beyond what Henaghan had seen in photo albums. Finally, there was Martha Henaghan, her grandmother. Then Olivia, her mother. Then herself.

  But that was only one branch in a mighty tree. Men and women carrying Aisling’s genetic code existed all across Europe and America. One such person was a naive young lady in the wilds of Los Angeles. In the middle nineteen-forties.

  That person was named Eleanor Wasowska.

  Still in the dream space, Quinn's new discoveries excited her. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. A tingle went down her whole body. The tingle gave birth to a new thought. Closing her eyes, hanging in the air, she said, “Ciara”.

  Ciara came to her without delay. Her dress billowed like before, but this time the tendrils of fabric did not reach out toward Quinn. After a moment of confusion and disappointment, Quinn did the only logical thing: she raised her arms and drifted toward the White Lady. She placed a hand on either side of the beautiful woman’s face and hungrily kissed her lips. Ciara returned the kiss, then she pulled her face away and moaned. She took Henaghan’s right hand and shoved it inside of her dress so that Quinn was grasping an ample breast. Quinn squeezed, working her fingers so she could stroke and pinch Ciara’s nipple. Ciara gasped and pulled at her own clothing. Quinn helped her undress and the white garment flew away, carried by an unseen wind. Henaghan looked at the prize in front of her. Ciara’s alabaster skin was pristine, unmarked either by time or by defect. Henaghan leaned in, sucking first one breast and then the other. The White Lady arched her back and brought up her knees. Quinn took the cue, sliding her tongue down Ciara’s perfect belly and into the warmness beneath it.

  Ciara came again and again.

  Quinn awoke with a start, and an orgasm. Bringing the White Lady to climax in her vision brought Quinn to climax in the real world.

  Once she’s caught her breath,
she remembered what she needed to do next. She fumbled on her nightstand for her iPhone. She picked it up and dialed David Olkin’s number. It took him a while to answer but he finally did. Behind him, strange sounds echoed. Voices? Muffled explosions? “David!” she said. “I know something! Can you come to me?”

  Olkin said, “Ummm. Now’s maybe not a good time.” Henaghan could tell by his tone he was obfuscating. He didn’t want to say why now wasn’t a good time.

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “This is important. I’ll come to you.”

  “No! Quinn, don’t come here! Don’t—”

  But Quinn hung up her phone and sat in bed. She didn’t realize until that moment Molly was lying beside her. The brunette stirred. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Nothing,” Quinn said. “I have to run an errand. I’ll be right back.” Then she closed her eyes and did another thing she wasn’t sure would work—although she was aware it was possible. Darren Taft had tracked her to a motel between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Ephraim Zilberschlag had tracked her to San Francisco. Tracking other Channelers was a thing you could do. She closed her eyes and willed her essence up over the house. She pointed herself toward the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu. The location of the Celestial Pictures Ranch. She squinted her eyes and, after a moment, saw many brightly-colored dots moving to and fro across the landscape. Each being had its own colors and its own rhythms. Each being was unique. She willed herself to recognize specific color signatures and, soon, she did. The first one she recognized was Brad’s. The young man who’d taken over Taft’s Books after Darren’s unfortunate demise. Not who she was looking for, but it was a good sign. She was figuring out how the trick was done.

  The next person she recognized was Ferley. Near him was Olkin. Perfect! Quinn thought. She was pleased with herself for homing in on her former boss’ exact location.

  A moment later, she dropped back down into her body and summoned a portal.

  The sun woke Josie on her bed and, as soon as her eyes opened, she began to cry. Heavy, smash-inducing grief. The girl had had a dream where she relieved the events of the Tuesday morning breakfast. She saw Cam’s death again in vivid detail. She watched her uncle disintegrate away to nothing. Through it all, she was a non-entity. The others were there, but they did not hear her voice or feel her touch. She was a specter in her own life. Nothing she did had an impact and all of her cries were ignored. In the dream, she became what she most feared she’d become in real life.

  Nothing.

  Taft cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. Until her body was sore. She listened for the sound of activity in the house and heard none. She wanted to leave the room and seek out other people. Not to talk with them or to share her pain, but to be in the presence of other humans. To shake off the crushing loneliness the dream induced. She wanted to talk to Quinn. She wanted to apologize without reservation. To clear the air.

  She listened again and heard nothing.

  Eventually, she got up and reached under her bed for the cigar box Lailah had given her.

  Quinn reappeared in a world of total chaos. Ferley and Olkin were on a rise of land overlooking a huge clearing in the forested lands of the Celestial Ranch. In that clearing, two small armies clashed. One Resolute, one Tilted. Amidst the spells and pyrotechnics, one would expect in a battle between wizards, Hexenjäger countermeasures were in full effect. Quinn immediately had a synaptic misfire—for two reasons. Number one: she recognized the terrain. Celestial had used this very clearing in two of its better-known pictures—Into the Ardennes (1949) and Blue Coat, Gray Coat (1953). Number two: she hadn’t expected to wind up looking down on a battlefield. Ferley and David had gone to the Ranch to broker peace with Adam Johns. Now, here they were in a virtual machine-gun nest surrounded by exploding fireballs. Eight or ten men stood around them, either prepping materials of war or firing magic into the crowds below.

  Olkin grabbed Quinn by the hem of her shirt and yanked her down. He was very angry. “I told you not to come! What the fuck’re you doing?!”

  “I thought you’d be talking to Johns. I didn’t expect… this.”

  Nearby, Ferley was shouting orders to groups of Jihma. His demeanor surprised Henaghan. He seemed like a practiced field commander. David looked up at him. “Pat. Can you spare me for a minute?”

  Ferley (whose name, apparently was Patrick) was annoyed. “Yeah, but no more than that.”

  Quinn and her former boss crawled backward away from the fighting. Their attention was drawn back to Ferley who left them with a parting shot. “If she’s not here to fight, get her the fuck out. If she’s not a combatant, she’s a target. A big target.”

  Olkin nodded and summoned a portal. He pushed Quinn through none too gently.

  Quinn landed with a thud, mostly due to the momentum from Olkin’s shove. She looked up and saw they were on a concrete slab next to a plain building. A sign in front of the building read “Landscaping”. Behind the building were a few acres of fields planted with trees and shrubs. Henaghan understood right away that the greenery was kept at this location and moved around by Celestial personnel as set dressing.

  Now it was Quinn’s turn to be annoyed. She didn’t appreciate the push. “What the hell?! Why’re you knocking me around?”

  “Because I don’t want you anywhere near this place. We talked about it.”

  “What’s going on? Why is everyone fighting? I thought you came up here to negotiate.”

  David sighed and closed his eyes. “You can’t negotiate with someone who has no honor. Johns invited us in then he ambushed us. We got away, but he killed our escort. Ferley’s personal guard. Ferley is… not taking it well.”

  “Okay, well. Maybe I should go.” Quinn suddenly felt sheepish.

  “Ya think?” Olkin said, exasperated. “But first, why don’t you tell me what was so all-fired important, you just had to come?”

  Henaghan was feeling chastened. When she spoke, it wasn’t at full volume. “It’s about Eleanor Wasowska. She was like me. She had Aisling’s blood in her.”

  David stopped short. “Okay, well, that’s interesting. It’s gotta be a piece of the puzzle, but fer crissakes, Quinn. It could’ve waited. If you would’ve—” he was interrupted by a strange sight. Ferley’s head and chest appeared out of thin air. A “hologram” made of protoplasm. “Get your ass back here, David! We’ve got a—” The Tilted chieftain was surrounded then by what looked like fire and he screamed. The apparition disappeared as quickly as it’d appeared. “Fuck,” Olkin said and he cast a portal in front of himself. “I gotta get back up there. You go home and—”

  Quinn cut him off. “I’m coming with you.” She pushed him into his own portal and followed close on his heels.

  When they got back to the overlook, the overlook was mostly gone. The piece of terrain was still there, but all its manmade trappings had been burned away. Scorched bodies littered the ground and fires raged. The agent coughed and waved smoke away from his eyes. No one was left alive. Olkin yelled for Ferley but got no answer.

  Henaghan stood behind David, scanning the battlefield below and the skies above. She saw a black form against the darkening sky. It was the deamhan and it had something in its talons. The unconscious body of Patrick Ferley. “Wait here,” the girl said. She rocketed into the sky in pursuit of the flaming beast. She knew exactly what it would do when she got close and she was prepared.

  When the creature saw her, it gave a keening cry, shot higher and then dropped Ferley. The intention was, of course, to shatter the unconscious Tilted captain on the ground below. Quinn opened a portal underneath Ferley and Ferley dropped into it. Another portal appeared above the outcropping and Ferley landed next to Olkin. The wind was knocked from his body, but he was otherwise undamaged by the fall.

  The redhead then turned her attention to the ancient monster. She had no tricks to play this time, so she couldn’t afford to let it find its bearing. She shot a massive fire ball which caught the deamhan square in the
chest and propelled it backward. With the creature off-balance, Quinn went higher and shot again, this time diagonally downward. Her plan was to get the bat-thing out of the sky and onto the ground. Though she was good in the air, Henaghan preferred to fight on land, in two dimensions rather than three.

  The deamhan crashed into the Earth and tried to stand but the girl was there with yet a third blast. This one sent it sliding backward along the muddy ground. Its clawed feet dug a deep trench. On either side of it, fighting men scrambled to get out its way. A few of them were crushed. The deamhan screamed. It was tired of Quinn’s repeated attacks. Its frustration was plain. Again, Henaghan decided that her best strategy was speed. The quicker she could put the monster down, the less able it would be to do her serious harm.

  She fell back on a tested tactic.

  Like the Deva and the Asura, the deamhan was a creature of the Astral Plane. That meant that it was made up, in large part, of astral energies. Channeling maya was, to such creatures, as breathing air is to humans. What was good enough for Chuck Sato was good enough for this filthy beast. Quinn snapped a bubble of force around the deamhan and began drawing the maya out of the sphere.

  She approached the bubble and looked in upon the monster. When she was close, the deamhan blinked, caught between sudden recognition and the pain of suffocation. It spoke, and its voice was deep, guttural. “Aisling?” it said.

  That gave Henaghan pause. The monster thought she was Aisling. Did that mean that this was the very creature that’d pursued the first Aja from Europe to North Africa? Was this Mhalbog, the creature that had killed Morfran, Aisling’s great love?