A Mystery of Light

by Brian Fuller

  “Your heart,” he said, lifting her black shirt.

  “Gone,” she said, letting her weapons clunk to the floor.

  There it was, the knife slit beneath her sternum. Curse Avadan. He took her in his arms, feeling cold even though he couldn’t feel cold.

  “I’m going to find you,” he said. “Just tell me where you’re going.”

  “We came in on train cars,” she said. “We’re supposed to return to the train when we’re done.”

  “Where are we?” Helo asked. “I’ve been in Deep 7.”

  “Missouri. Near Kansas City. Listen,” she said, pulling away and grabbing his wrists. “I don’t know a lot about what Avadan is trying to do, but he needed Archus Simeon so he could keep him from telling the AAO some secret. I don’t understand what it means. And he’s gathering Vexus. Not sure where he’s putting it, but he’s getting it from another prison of his somewhere. You’ve got to warn the Ash Angels. After tonight, there may not be much left of the organization.”

  “Tell me where the train is,” he said. “I can get there.”

  She shook her head. “You’d be destroyed, Helo. There’s another Sheid out there besides that one, just as powerful. There are more Dreads than you can count. You’ve got to let me go. You can’t keep up this hallow for much longer.”

  She was right. He could feel it. Hallowing was one of the more draining Bestowals, but he wanted to keep her for as long as he could.

  “Are there times when you are not being controlled?”

  “Not really,” she said. “He’s up to something big. I just don’t know what. He’s much harder to read than Cain. You’ve got to forget about me now, Helo. The second I get my free will, I will burn my heart. I will not be used like this.”

  His heart sank. “Don’t. Give me time.”

  Her eyes drilled into his. “Get Avadan. That’s the only way I can be free. Now let me go. Save your strength.”

  Helo gritted his teeth. This sucked. He pulled her in close again, and then she picked up her weapons and nodded. He led her back toward the opening. The gunfire had stopped, and the wind had fallen to a shade of its former strength.

  “I’m going to get you back, Aclima,” he said. “You will be an Ash Angel again.”

  She smiled wistfully. “Let me go, Helo.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. He would find her and fix it.

  After one last squeeze on her arm, he extended his hallow, the exhaustion overtaking him like the flu. Aclima raced to the edge of the hallow, looked back, and then crossed out into the black. He extinguished the hallow and shrank back into the dark hall, half expecting her to turn and finish him off. The Sheid’s maelstrom had moved farther forward, and she leapt toward it, red aura shrinking into the night until it disappeared over a sodden mound of dirt and refuse.

  White and red auras littered the ground as far as he could see, most unmoving, some writhing slowly in the mud like worms stranded above ground. The Sheid’s storm dissipated, clouds hurrying away and fading, lightning and thunder ending their dramatic performance. All around him the sodden garbage the whirlwind had given wings plopped down to the earth. Somewhere to his left, a pair of car alarms wailed into the night.

  He was free. All the Ash Angels who wanted him imprisoned lay broken on the field or were buried within the ruins of Deep 7. All the Dreads who’d sought his death had moved with Aclima and the Sheid to an unknown destination. He could stay and help the Ash Angels with recovery, or he could try to track Aclima, the Dreads, and the Shedim.

  Not a hard decision. Low on Virtus, he settled for slogging his way through the muck, clawing his way over the same garbage mound where Aclima had disappeared moments before. At the top he met a rough-plowed road leading up to the edge of the mound. The landfill and its buildings were an island of darkness surrounded by trees gently rustling in what was left of the breeze. An airliner’s blinking lights signaled in the sky as it rushed away toward scattered clouds blushed by Kansas City’s nighttime glare.

  Which way had they gone? There was no sign of red auras or Vexus. The ground was a quagmire of confusion. A battalion of tanks could have moved through and he wouldn’t have known the difference. Would they take to the roads or push through the foliage?

  As he looked down toward the landfill’s buildings and gate and then toward the dark woods ahead, he remembered he had other senses than just the five. Sheid auras could be sensed, and the Sheid that had attacked them was one of the most powerful ever created. He closed his eyes and felt.

  The trees. Just down the other side of the mound and past a squat, cinder-block building hunched in the gloom. He plowed forward. Running was impossible. Anything more dignified than a slipping, flailing, half slide, half out-of-control run was impossible. A metallic shred of a water heater gashed his left leg once he got to lower ground, but the mud was relentless. The ground finally firmed up as he approached the chain-link fence surrounding the compound. Some Dread or Sheid must have ripped it open. A ragged gap led into the thick darkness.

  There was no moon. Without the lightning or stars or city glare to guide him, Helo plunged into a mess of unseen branches and saplings. While the ground was more solid, it was also a tangled mess. He went by feel, both of the Sheid’s general direction and of the woods around him, his good arm out in front of him like a blind man hunting for a wall to guide him.

  The Sheid was outpacing him, the strength of its presence dwindling. Helo chanced a healthier stride only to shin his way into a fallen tree and take a header into the soft, leafy ground. Cursing his luck, he got upright and tried it again, stride after long stride, until the ground disappeared beneath his feet and he tumbled down a short hill and into a rock. He righted himself, splashing across a soggy puddle.

  There was road noise ahead. Relief flooded over him. He had to be close. A road he could deal with, maybe make up some time.

  A bullet drilled him right in the sternum, and he landed hard on his back, a flock of roosting birds scattering above him. He couldn’t control anything below his midback. He probed his wound with his good hand and found a capacious hole. Dread weaponry for sure. They had left a trailer to make sure they weren’t followed. Smart.

  Helo lay perfectly still on the damp leaves and poking sticks. The Dread had the drop on him, probably some sort of night-vision equipment. Helo had no doubt there was a stream or pond somewhere out in the woods deep enough to drown him in. If he could make the Dread come to him, he had enough Virtus for a blast or two of Angel Fire. There was no catching Aclima or the Sheid now, but there had to be a way to track them. That many people couldn’t just move around undetected, especially when accompanied by freak storms and out-of-place earthquakes near a major city.

  Senses alive, he waited perfectly still, drops from leaves plopping onto his face and body. The dripping slowed and stopped. Whoever had shot him hadn’t made a move either. How much time had passed, he couldn’t tell. The frightened night birds returned and warbled mournfully in the darkness. He wanted to retreat into his meditation to prepare for Rapture, to soak in every bit of Virtus he could, but he didn’t dare let his guard down.

  It wasn’t until the patches of sky between the leaves lightened that he heard footsteps crunching through the foliage from behind him. He turned his palm up, ready to blast Angel Fire, but instead of a red aura, a white one hovered over him, a flashlight beam momentarily blinding him.

  “Over here,” the Ash Angel said. Argyle. Of all the bad luck.

  Chapter 7

  Legion Stone

  Helo stared at the ceiling in the predawn light. After dragging him back to the landfill complex, Argyle had dumped him in a mustard-colored utility building. His mind still had trouble accepting that the Ash Angel’s most important and technologically advanced command and control facility sat beneath mounds of garbage. It was brilliant, just for being so unexpected.

  The lights still weren’t on, so the ceiling wasn’t much to look at—just exposed two-by-four tru
sses and dead fluorescent tubes. Beat-up metallic shelves holding what he supposed were tools and parts rendered nothing but incoherent lumps in what light made it through three thin rectangular windows with privacy glass like you would put in a bathroom to keep people from seeing in.

  Dawn had to be close. He thought about meditating, but his mind couldn’t settle. He was sure they had stationed a guard outside the door to keep him from one-arm crawling away. And he wanted to be gone. Aclima’s trail grew colder every hour they detained him. As soon as he could run, he would run. Nobody was going to stop him. They had no right to.

  Door hinges squealed, Argyle’s outline silhouetted in the opening for a moment. Helo groaned inwardly. He’d almost rather have an interview with Avadan. Goliath had told him how Argyle’s guilt over his past screwups was what drove him. The man dotted every i, crossed every t, and had a penchant for keeping every j dotted, too. Worse, he was an Ash Angel Organization company man through and through.

  “I need to ask you some questions,” Argyle said, leaning against a metal shelf and folding his arms.

  “Sure thing, Argyle,” Helo said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Where did the Dreads and the Shedim go?”

  “I don’t know,” Helo said. “I was tracking them east when someone blew a hole through me.”

  “You see who?” Argyle asked.

  “No, sir.”

  Argyle straightened and crouched down next to him. “Now answer this next question very carefully. Did you help the Dreads find this place?”

  Helo tensed. Really? He was about to take Argyle down a notch but found he had a question of his own to ask instead. “You don’t know about Ramis, do you?”

  Argyle frowned. “I know he is missing.”

  “Not just missing. Captured,” Helo said. “The Archai’s known they’ve been compromised for a while now. So, no, Argyle, I didn’t help anyone find Deep 7. You know, maybe you should get out of my face and go figure out what they want with Archus Simeon.”

  “What are you talking about?” Argyle said.

  “The Sheid or one of the Dreads stole the hearts of the entire Archai. Aclima said Avadan wanted Simeon’s heart.”

  “Aclima was here?”

  “Yeah. She said Avadan wanted Simeon because he knew some secret.”

  Argyle’s jaw came unhinged, and he stood abruptly, eyes wandering away with his brain.

  “What?” Helo said.

  “Simeon is one of two Ash Angels who know the location of the Pit—he and the Archon of the Sanctus. It’s to keep its location from . . . dammit!”

  Argyle banged out the door like the building was falling in on him. The Pit. Goliath had told him the Pit was where they took all the objects into which they Exorcised evil spirits. If someone could de-form or damage those objects, the evil spirits inside them would be set free. From what Goliath had told him, their imprisonment drove them insane, and evil spirits were bad enough as it was.

  Cain had used evil spirits and the people they possessed to wage a war against the Ash Angels. The Possessed were perfect soldiers to use—the Ash Angels had a policy against killing them. Looked like Avadan wanted to take a page out of Cain’s playbook and make it bigger and crazier—which sounded exactly like something the deranged Loremaster would do.

  The door banged open again, Shujaa and Sparks coming in, each armed with a Big Blessed Rifle.

  “Who put a slug through you, mate? Your Dread girlfriend?” Sparks asked, standing at Helo’s feet and staring down at him.

  “Didn’t see who it was,” Helo said.

  “Got the drop on ya, huh?” Sparks said.

  “What do you want?”

  Shujaa lumbered up. “Just here to make sure the Angel Born doesn’t leave.”

  “Quit calling him that,” Sparks said. “Really. It’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s who he is,” Shujaa countered, deep voice filling the small building with ease. “He is a weapon forged against the evil one.”

  Sparks’s eyebrows raised. “Is there anyone else who’s a member of your little Helo the Angel Born cult, or is it just you?”

  “You will see, faithless one,” Shujaa said.

  Rapture intervened in the argument, and while refreshing and healing, its power paled in comparison to what he was used to. His mind was too full of what needed to be done, starting with getting away from the Ash Angels so he could track down Aclima. The soothing radiance suffused him for what seemed but a moment, a divine caress given and then gone.

  Body put back together, Helo got to his feet, the cloth flaps from the bullet hole in his jumpsuit flopping around. Shujaa and Sparks backed up a couple of steps, rifles up. Helo raised his hands. The front door was the only way out of the building, and with Sparks and Shujaa at the ready, he wouldn’t make it two steps before they crippled him. If only he had Speed!

  “So what’s the plan here, guys?” Helo asked. “We just going to sit here in this shed while the Shedim dance around? Seems like Sicarius Nox should be out hunting instead of babysitting me.”

  “What we do is no concern of yours,” Sparks said, jaw tight. But Helo could tell he was itching to get out and fight something. Did he care about doing good, or was he the Ash Angel equivalent of an adrenaline junkie?

  “So who is Argyle’s second in Sicarius Nox?” Helo asked.

  “It is him,” Shujaa said, nodding toward Sparks. “The faithless one.”

  “Faithless one?” Helo said.

  “He does not believe in God,” Shujaa explained.

  Helo chuckled, thinking for half a second that it was a joke, but Sparks stared him down, eyes unblinking. An Ash Angel atheist?

  Sparks’s rifle dipped. “Don’t give me that bloody look. Just because we’re living in some sort of new state of existence doesn’t mean all that religious tripe is suddenly true.”

  Helo squinted. He was serious. “But you fight Shedim. There’re white auras for the good guys, red for the bad.”

  Sparks shrugged. “There’s good and evil and creatures we don’t understand, but have you seen God yet? Because I haven’t. You know how Shedim are made, right? That Dread woman you’ve got a flame for made one, you know. Killed someone to do it. Your loving God sleep through that? Of course not, because he isn’t real.”

  “I’ve seen the devil,” Helo said. “He’s real.”

  “Devil is just a name for something we don’t understand,” Sparks said.

  Helo opened his mouth, not sure what would come out.

  Shujaa raised a hand. “It is no use, Angel Born. We must only be happy he is on our side for now. You will help him find his faith.”

  Sparks rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  “Look,” Helo said. “There a pack of Dreads and Shedim just a few hours ahead. Why aren’t you guys tracking them?”

  “None of your business, Dread lover,” Sparks said.

  Shujaa lowered his rifle. “We are to make sure the Archai are extracted safely and provide support in case the Shedim return for them.”

  The door cracked open, and Argyle stuck his head in. “Bring Helo to the main building. Now.”

  The door clacked shut.

  Sparks waved Helo toward the door with his gun. “Please try to run,” he said. “I’m getting really bored with all this standing around.”

  There wasn’t any malice in his words, more of a statement of fact. Helo crossed to the door and into a humid, garbage-strewn morning. The gray-blue sky felt heavy, like a cast-iron lid over the world, the sun hiding behind a stray wedge of cloud hovering over the top of the line of trees on the horizon. And mud. Argyle tromped through it some fifty feet ahead.

  Helo glanced at Shujaa. “Argyle still like his sitreps?”

  Shujaa grinned. “Early and often, though Sparks and Finny have, well, made them a bit more fun.”

  Sparks lit a cigarette. “And by making them more fun, we have made them less frequent. Because if it’s fun, Argyle doesn’t like it. If you want Argyle
to leave you alone, which is what most of us want, then just have fun. It’s his kryptonite.”

  The main building waited a long slog from the shed where they had held him. It sat near the gated entrance to the dump, a tall, grungy cinderblock and metal-roof affair the same color as the dull sky. On the right side of the building, three tall garage doors covered entrances to what Helo assumed was a dumping area for the garbage. The top of one of the beat-up doors gapped at a bad angle. A cop car sat outside the first utility door. A set of two windows bracketed a scuffed white door with a sign announcing business hours.

  Shujaa pulled open the door, and they followed several sets of muddy footprints through a drab office with computers from fifteen years ago and into a break room equally as depressing. A couple of Ash Angels dressed as cops stood outside a door to a utility closet, which expectedly turned out to be a disguised elevator that dropped into a complex beneath the building.

  When the utility closet wall slid aside, they stepped into a hallway stretching some fifty feet in either direction. Ash Angels in standard-issue jumpsuits hustled by with flashlights to help illuminate a corridor bathed in the familiar red emergency lighting.

  Argyle stepped out. “This way.”

  They turned right down the hall. This was a utilitarian space that reminded him of the raw concrete-and-steel construction of Zion Alpha. Cracks zigzagged through the floor and walls, puddles of water cropping up in low spots.

  “What is this place?” Sparks asked.

  “Mechanical for Deep 7,” Argyle said. “Power station, mainly. The Sheid hit here first. Almost had a reactor meltdown. The Archai is through here.”

  The hall ended in a gray metal door with the designation 1C painted on it in black letters. Argyle knocked, and someone from inside pulled it open. The entire Archai sat around what was probably a break room, furnished with couches, a TV, and an open space occupied by a pool table and a ping-pong table. Three lanterns sat on the ping-pong table at the center of the room, the light cutting harsh shadows against the wall. The Archai occupied the couches, all wrapped in blankets, expressions dark.