One Plus One (The Millionth Trilogy Book 3)

by Tony Faggioli

  No, Kyle, you have that a bit backwards.

  Kyle looked at The Gray Man in annoyance. “I’d forgotten how much I disliked having you bouncing around inside my head.”

  “I’m sorry. The truth is, it’s part of the process of you and me growing closer. I have so much to teach you before you’re done.”

  “Done?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought I was done? Shit! Haven’t I done enough?”

  The Gray Man glanced out over the horizon with a pained look on his face and sighed.

  “What?” Kyle asked with irritation.

  “I told you, in the beginning, at the diner, right after the event.”

  “What event? What did you tell me?”

  “The death of Caitlyn Hall. That event,” The Gray Man answered deliberately, looking at Kyle. He continued, “I told you that you had a mission.”

  “Yes. And I guess I achieved it, right? As best I could, anyway. I stopped Victoria from killing that guy.”

  “You did something far more important than that: you prevented her from taking his soul.”

  Kicking at the desert sand, Kyle put his hands on his hips and replied, “Same difference.”

  “No. It’s not. There’s a huge difference. This world is crawling with people who have saved their lives and yet surrendered their souls.”

  “And what does that have to do with me?”

  “You’re a millionth, Kyle.” The Gray Man paused for a long while before adding, “Like me.”

  The morning was long gone and now the sun, having made its menacing ascent, was so intense that it felt like it could penetrate the sand. The cacti and Joshua trees around them seemed to be held in suspended animation, sleepy in their stillness, their quills and branches unwilling to move.

  Overcoming his shock, Kyle looked The Gray Man in the eye. “You’re a millionth too?”

  The Gray Man nodded. “I was. A long, long time ago. Then came my training and first assignment. As it will with you.”

  Kyle turned away from him. “No. Man. I told you. I’m not sure I’m made for this job.”

  “Yes, you are. You were created to be special, to live your life and then go on to great things.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yes, Kyle. After death. You were destined for great things. All of you are created that way: with a destiny. Sadly, you assume from nearly the very moment you realize you have free will that your destiny is here, on this planet.”

  “And it’s not?”

  “No. You will have a temporary existence of sorts, a life in which you will live and learn and evolve. You may call that a destiny of a kind, I suppose, but in truth it’s merely training for what comes next. All of it.”

  Kyle swallowed hard. “Training?”

  “Yes. For how to love and transcend; for how to be more than conquerors. Sadly, you all get stuck conquering something here. And more often than not, that something conquers you.”

  The Gray Man’s face had gone soft. Kyle studied him but said nothing.

  “You, Kyle, decided to conquer yourself by sleeping with a woman who was not your wife. A destiny in heaven traded for a carnal indulgence.”

  “She was just as much to blame as me.”

  “She was fighting the same demons you were, Kyle. She was. Yes, before she met you they took up residence within her, where they tortured her and toyed with her mind, using her past against her like a blunt instrument, but it was you, Kyle, you who let them out.”

  Kyle shook his head. “No. That can’t be right. My free will. Her free will. We’re all accountable for our own actions.”

  In reply, The Gray Man did the oddest thing: he smiled. Looking up to the sky he said, “Now I know, Father, in your wisdom, why I was given him. He reminds me so much of myself.”

  Perplexed, Kyle ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “What are you talking about, Gray?”

  Looking back at him, The Gray Man nodded with sympathy. “I made the same mistake you did, Kyle.”

  There were small lizard tracks in the sand, crisscross patterns of claws and tails that snaked back and forth between a group of large bushes nearby. After a while Kyle could only manage a weak reply. “Unbelievable.”

  “Yes and no. Who better to aid the man with a weakness for whiskey than the man who has himself swam in the bottom of a bottle? God is always at work, Kyle. Often, He uses those who have been down a certain path to help those stumbling right along behind them.”

  “That’s all well and good, but we need to find my wife, Gray.”

  “In a way, we already have.”

  “How?”

  “You noticed her essence. You thought she had affected this place. I told you no, because that is counter to your training. You’re in training now, like it or not, so listen carefully. When she left she took this place with her. She took it in the form of memories, which are harder to trace, and in the form of ashes, from this fire, unique with the wood and plants used to fuel it. Now, put your hand in the ashes.”

  Kyle looked at The Gray Man as if he were crazy, but then did as he was told, tentatively at first. The ashes were gray and black on top, but there was no saying that there wasn’t red hot embers just below the surface. Yet, as his fingers divided the ash and penetrated its depths, he felt nothing but cold.

  “Further,” The Gray Man ordered.

  Finally, as he pushed nearly all the way to the ground, he felt a small remnant of heat.

  “It’s been a while since they were here. So they’re still quite a way ahead of us,” The Gray Man concluded.

  “Yeah. It looks that way.”

  “Please note that I have shown you now two different instances of using the physical elements of this world to your advantage.”

  Kyle stood up and brushed the ash off his hands.

  “First the dust, now the ash. One to determine distance, the other to determine time.”

  “Okay,” Kyle said with a nod.

  “That’s how it works here, on this plane of existence. You know that: time and space. On other planes, other rules apply.”

  “What about her prayers? The ones you heard?”

  “That’s a different plane entirely, but you’ve visited it before. Prematurely, but visited it still.”

  “When?”

  “When we were in Monterey and you were healing; when you listened to my companions and I speaking, when you saw the veil of stars around us and realized that you’d been transported somewhere else. Also, when you manifested ‘the blue’ so early and so powerfully. Those are forms of hearing, seeing and knowing that you should be cycles away from. But you’re not.”

  “So? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, except that I have to accelerate your training as a result.”

  A bank of clouds had moved in from the west, partially obscuring the sun and leaving a dull, flat glare of weak light and discounted warmth. Turning and walking around the area, The Gray Man continued, “Don’t forget, you’ve also done something that no one before you ever has.”

  “Which is?”

  “Gone to hell and returned,” The Gray Man said in a tone of near disbelief. “Villa and I may have helped, but I have an odd feeling you would’ve gotten out regardless.”

  Kyle chuckled grimly. “Yeah. Uh. No. I don’t think so.”

  “Michiko came to you, Kyle. She wanders those lands in search of love, lands that would be the last place in any of the universes you could hope to find it. She wanders in the name of love. She is a legend in heaven, Kyle. And she found you.”

  “She said that you sent her.”

  “I prayed for her help, yes. But that’s all. I had no way of knowing if a prayer could ever stand a chance of surviving in that place, much less reach its intended recipient.”

  “I couldn’t have made it without her,” Kyle said.

  The Gray Man paused, bent down and picked something up off the ground. “Funny,” he muttered softly. “She told m
e that you hardly needed her.”

  “No way,” Kyle replied.

  “She said that you carried within you a love that left her in awe.”

  Then, The Gray Man took what was in his hand, dusted it off, and raised it up for Kyle to see. It was an earring; a small gold hoop with pale green stones.

  Kyle recognized it immediately. It was part of a set that he’d given Tamara a few years ago for Christmas.

  The Gray Man stepped towards Kyle, then added, “She said you had a desire to seek forgiveness from the one you loved that was so strong, even the devil himself couldn’t stop you.”

  The sky around them began to change, and as The Gray Man dropped the earring into his palm, Kyle thought of Tamara. Of her beautiful face and soft laugh and gentle touch.

  And how, whenever she used to hold his hand, he never felt stronger.

  IT WAS SUPPOSED to be simple: get his ass to Union Station as soon as possible and make a phone call to Parker, who was with the Fasano kids, and limit any more collateral damage.

  Instead, it had become a visit to a child-murdering psychopath’s old apartment and now this, a kindergarten game of follow the detective, with a damn crow of all things.

  But he knew that wasn’t correct. The crow was obviously more than just a bird by the way it abandoned any attempt whatsoever to hide that it was following Napoleon, hopping from tree branch to tree branch, mostly behind him, occasionally in front of him, and sometimes squawking a few times, as if mocking him.

  Napoleon turned and went one way, then the other and then back again, just to make sure, and without fail the crow shadowed him.

  For a second Napoleon had déjà vu: hadn’t it been like this when he’d first entered hell with The Gray Man? When they’d been chased by that wave of crows that had peeled off that wall of dead souls at the entrance? If this was a member of that same flock, where were the rest?

  Trying to calm down, he reminded himself of something: I’ve already survived hell. What could possibly be worse than—

  They arrived almost instantly; the world around him began to flicker in torn images. Of here. Now. And here from another time, maybe long ago, or in the future.

  Reality wasn’t supposed to work this way. But maybe this was the real reality. Maybe what he’d called reality all his life was the unreality, the clouded image, the distorted view.

  The place that flickered into his vision felt like doom… and the bodies only cemented the feeling.

  “Oh my God,” Napoleon said.

  The picture of the world around him was peeled back, in strips, to reveal another world entirely.

  Around him was a field of dead angels, wings torn asunder, eyes ripped out, mouths agape in horror. They were everywhere; to the right, the left, cast in various poses of death. Back and forth the images flickered. One second a series of altars with broken-winged bodies over them, the next the image was gone, replaced with a line of parked cars.

  What’s going on?

  And then it struck him: the crow was doing this.

  He’d never felt so hopeless in all his life. If he drew his gun and tried to shoot it then he would no doubt cause panic, and he couldn’t be dragged in to the station now. Trying to explain all that had happened to him would only lead to a visit to the psych ward, and far worse, it would leave Parker without any help. But if this wasn’t a hallucination of some kind, what was he to do?

  The images kept splicing. A tipped-over Rubbermaid trash can next to a patch of brown grass near the curb turned slowly into a lava flow on which the body of a demon floated by, its head rolled back and the tips of its horns melting like wax.

  Whatever happened there, in the other world that had overlaid his own, it was a bloodbath. Open combat. Napoleon’s brain began to get that feeling of complete overload, as if once more he was seeing things not meant for a human being to see, comprehending things not yet meant to be comprehended.

  Then he noticed that each time his world came back into view, the shadows of the trees and cars and nearby stop sign grew darker.

  And were moving… coming alive.

  Shit.

  He was in a mental fog, feeling around for focus, when he finally saw that the distance between the creatures in the shadows and him was narrowing by the second; they were taking on more solid form, and moving towards him.

  He looked for a way out, seeing only one: a small gap between a blue Honda and white, late model Lincoln to his left, which led to a brick wall and long alley beyond.

  He was beginning to shuffle his feet in that direction when he felt the crow slam into the side of his head and neck. Instinctively he reached up to slap it away, but it was fast and pecked hard at his hands. It managed to grab hold of his index finger, then planted its talons into his wrist and began pulling as hard as it could at it, as if to sever his finger completely.

  Napoleon balled up his other hand and punched the crow three times before he finally dislodged it. He grabbed at it, almost catching it by a wing, before it retreated backwards and up out of reach, where it hovered for a second, cawing angrily, its wings flapping wickedly as it moved in semicircles, first left, then right, as if probing for another chance to attack.

  The shadows were still shifting around him. It was now or never. The crow was like the trucker back in Barstow: present in this world and physical. But the shadows were game changers from that other world, intent on dragging him there.

  Without Kyle or The Gray Man he was a goner, for sure, if they came completely to life.

  He bolted for the gap between the cars and made it just as the crow swooped in for another shot, missing him as he skittered to the sidewalk and cut hard to his right, towards the alley, where it missed him again, its beak clipping at his ear as Napoleon cut hard left and began running full speed down the alley, dodging piles of discarded trash, water puddles and oil slicks along the way. There was one good thing about crows: they were slow.

  Its wings flapped laboriously behind him as he pushed on, knocking over some metal trash cans and instinctively grabbing one of the lids so he’d have a shield of some kind. When he slowed to negotiate a street corner up ahead his idea worked, the crow came at him again. It pecked at the back of his scalp a few times before Napoleon brought the trash can lid up and over his head, hitting the bird in the process.

  There were shadows everywhere, in the alley and the street beyond. But they were fixed. Normal. The moving shadows had been left behind.

  It was just him and the crow again, which was a good thing.

  He slowed to a walk as the crow flew off, up ahead a good fifty feet. In front of Napoleon, on the sidewalk, a small group of old ladies were walking in jogging suits. “¿Es loco?” the fattest one of them said to him as she looked at the trash can lid in his hand.

  He remembered that he didn’t want to attract any more attention than he already had. Thinking quickly, Napoleon answered in Spanish, telling the ladies that there was a nasty dog in the alley behind him and he’d used the lid to protect himself. It was a racial stereotype of his people, sure, but it was a true one; most of the older generation Mexicans did not like dogs. At all. Heeding his warning, they crossed instantly over to the other side of the street, their eyes looking warily at the alley the whole time, as if they expected a Stephen King monster to come trotting from its depths.

  If only they knew, Napoleon mused. He tossed the trash can lid aside and marched down the street.

  The crow went back to tree branch hops with short duration flights, methodically trailing him. That’s when the idea occurred to Napoleon that something, or someone, was telling it what to do.

  Great.

  He’d thought he was free and clear. Back to the land of sinners and the saved, to help rescue a family and then get back to his life. What a fool.

  His life would never be the same.

  CHAPTER 13

  TAMARA HAD GIVEN UP trying to figure out where they were headed. There was a left turn, then a right turn. They’d gone st
raight for a long while and then at some point she’d nodded off, exhausted, only to awaken as they made a U-turn.

  Her head and face were throbbing in pain from her wounds. She was lucky that she didn’t have a concussion, but she was pretty sure she’d give just about anything right about now for a handful of Advil.

  Or Percocet. A handful of those and this whole nightmare could be over.

  The worst part about her predicament was her vacillating mood swings: from defiant to defeated, from depressed to hopeful, from brave to terrified. Her mind was a spilled box of toys, her emotions like playthings, some broken, some running low on batteries, others offering the fantasy of escape.

  Right now it was surrender that was the doll of choice, and suicide was the pretty outfit she was dressing it up in.

  Was there a way she could just kill herself? She could provoke him, but that would be a horrible death, ultimately inflicted upon her by a man she already despised. Wasn’t suicide supposed to be about going on your own terms? Maybe at the next stop there’d be traffic. Running was a more viable option when the idea wasn’t to get away, but instead just about getting to a certain point.

  Like the middle of the road.

  In front of a rolling semi.

  She could close her eyes and picture the kids in her mind, and before the monster got to her, it would be over. Who knew. Maybe in trying to get to her he’d get hit too and she could leave this earth with some small satisfaction.

  Then another thought occurred to her: what if he didn’t chase her? Or what if he did but didn’t get hit too?

  That would mean he’d still be left behind. Angry. Defeated. Bitter.

  Vengeful.

  She sighed heavily, her breath bouncing back into her face from the trunk lid. He’d go after the kids. She was almost sure of it. And she was sure of something else too: this all had something to do with Kyle. The phantom that had visited her in her sleep, the horrid mother and daughter in that rest stop bathroom, the creatures under Janie’s bed and then later at the park and in the market, and even this man driving the car now? All of it was tied to Kyle somehow, by what he’d done here on earth or was doing in hell.