A Mystery of Light

by Brian Fuller

“Nope. It’s Mom’s. She’s turning twenty—”

  “No, no, no!” Lacey said loudly from the kitchen. “Too much information for our guest, Jeremy”

  Jeremy glanced at the kitchen and leaned forward and whispered. “She’s turning twenty-nine.”

  “I heard that!” Lacey said.

  “It’s no big deal, Mom!”

  “It is to me, dear!”

  Helo smiled and leaned back, chair creaking. “You got school today?”

  “Canceled,” Jeremy said, doing a little dance in his seat.

  A chunk of syrupy pancake dropped from his fork onto the floor. He grabbed it, but Helo could tell the carpet had been no stranger to milk, soda, and spaghetti sauce. Who put carpet in dining rooms, anyway?

  “So what do angels do all day?” Jeremy asked. “Good deeds and stuff?”

  “Mostly,” Helo said.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Lacey said, coming in from the kitchen and plopping a plate with three pancakes and three slices of bacon in front of him. “He says he sees angels all the time. I’ll get you some milk.”

  “She doesn’t believe me,” Jeremy whispered. “I think she’s going to end up in H-E-L-L.”

  “I heard that!”

  A man entered the dining room from the other side and pulled up short. He wore tan khakis, a blue shirt, and a red tie. He was skinny and tall, with a veritable dome of black hair and a pair of glasses. This had to be Torey, Lacey’s husband.

  “Hi,” Helo said.

  “Hi,” he replied. “Um, Lacey! Who’s the jacked-up guy eating my breakfast?”

  “I’m Jason,” Helo said.

  “That’s Jason,” Lacey confirmed.

  “Yeah,” Jeremy jumped in. “He shoveled our driveway, and he’s an angel.”

  Torey pinched his eyes under his glasses. “Jeremy, this has got to stop! People are going to think you’re crazy, son!”

  “It’s true!” Jeremy protested, tone flirting with sass. “He’ll prove it. He knows where Aunt Daley is.”

  The name rang a bell. Helo put a piece of bacon in his mouth and chewed it. Where had he heard that name before?

  “Jeremy,” Lacey said, coming into the dining room with the glass of milk. She set it down by Helo’s plate. “She’s been gone over a year now. She’s probably dead. I’ve had to move on, okay. We all do.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, mister,” Torey said.

  Then Helo remembered. “Daley Pickering?”

  Lacey and Torey stopped and stared at him. Jeremy put on his “I told you so” face. It was Daley Pickering. The boy had some explaining to do.

  “How . . . ?” Lacey said.

  “She was at a women’s shelter in Bozeman, Montana,” he explained. “It was a month or so ago. She was going into rehab and said she was going to call her sister on her birthday.” The phone rang. He couldn’t say how, but he knew. “That’s her.”

  Lacey’s face scrunched in disbelief. Another ring. She and Torey raced into the kitchen. Helo shoved a thick chunk of pancakes into his mouth, Jeremy following suit. Lacey picked up, and for the first minute there was more crying than talking.

  “How’d you know I’d know that?” Helo asked. Jeremy was clearly an Attuned, a strong one.

  “The other angel said you would know, the one I saw in my dream.”

  Helo nodded. “What’d the angel say?”

  “She said you would know,” he answered. “Oh! And she said, ‘Tell Jarhead it’s time to open his long-closed eyes and turn his gaze to the blue, blue sky—whatever that means. That was it.”

  Cassandra quoting Tela’s lyrics from “Never Low.” “So it was a female angel with long blonde hair.”

  “Yep,” Jeremy said. “She was pretty. Is she one of your angel friends?”

  “Yeah,” Helo said.

  Jeremy nodded, and they both plowed into their food again, the happy conversation ringing into the dining room in fits and starts.

  He couldn’t settle his mind. Cassandra was pushing his buttons, hinting that he should perform the Awakening ritual on Tela. He didn’t want to do it. People acted like being an Ash Angel was a gift, and maybe it had been at some point in the past. But right now, with Avadan out there, awakening someone was little more than drafting them for a war they might not want to fight.

  It wouldn’t be fair to Tela. She was a singer, a sweet girl who’d probably never held a gun or said a mean word to anyone in her life. Just the thought of her in one of Avadan’s prisons or getting torched sickened him. Why in the world would Cassandra or any other kind, celestial being risk exposing someone as innocent as Tela to the threat of Dreads and Shedim?

  “Who are you going to help next?” Jeremy asked.

  He shoved the last piece of bacon into his mouth. “Don’t know.”

  He had to get moving. Torey turned the corner, eyes full of wonder.

  “How? How did you know?” Torey asked.

  “He’s an angel, Dad. Duh!” Jeremy answered. “Told you so.”

  Helo stood. “Tell your wife happy birthday for me. Take care, Jeremy.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Torey said, following him through the kitchen. “Did Daley set you up to this?”

  Why couldn’t people just enjoy a good thing? He smiled and worked at getting his boots back on.

  “Who’d you say you were again?” Torey asked.

  “Jason,” Helo answered. “Look, I’ve got to get going. Can you grab my coat out of the office?”

  Torey left and returned just as Helo tied the last lace. Lacey’s happy conversation with Daley still chirped in the background. Torey scratched his head.

  “Sure you can’t stay around until Lacey’s done?” Torey asked.

  Helo patted him on the back. “Nope. Gotta get moving. Thanks again for breakfast. And listen to Jeremy. He’s a special kid.”

  He left the house and walked down the street whose driveways he’d cleared, feeling Torey’s eyes on his back until he’d angled far enough away from the window. Tela’s song kept ringing through his mind.

  Falling with my wings on fire

  Falling like someone

  Clipped a wire

  Used to soar so high, you know

  Above the clouds

  Never low

  She’d written that song for him, a song inspired by the darkest moments of Cain’s thorough and cruel revenge upon him. While the horror and sadness of those days were fading from his memory, losing Aclima stung. While not as dark, perhaps, as when Cain had killed his family, the frustration and despair of his separation from the woman to whom he had dedicated the rest of his afterlife had sunk into his soul. And now Cassandra was reminding him of Tela through an attuned.

  I lift my long-closed eyes

  And turn my gaze

  To the blue, blue sky

  Wings once charred and undone

  Unfurled and ablaze

  In the rising sun

  Whatever glorious transformation Tela had envisioned for him, it hadn’t unfolded. He’d been hiding since the night she had died. He’d been chased. Imprisoned. Lost. And he was now wandering and wondering. What should he do?

  With help from his phone, he found the nearest bus terminal and hitched his way there. The polished concrete floors were a mess of dirty slush and dirty, damp papers crushed underfoot and suitcase rollers. He sat on a bench, the people slashing back and forth in his vision. He stared at the departures board until it got dark. Outside, the snow had kicked up again. He had enough in his wallet for one more ride.

  South to Nashville to find Tela’s grave so he could dig her up to get part of her body to burn to ash? Sounded awful. The Sanctus usually did that kind of stuff. But more than that, his heart wasn’t in it. Every time he’d seen Tela last year, she had been fragile and in pain. Still, Cassandra was steering him that way.

  Should he take a short ride north to Denver and keep up his search for Aclima? It didn’t seem right either. He had hunted for weeks witho
ut a clue. The visions had come relentlessly in the heart of the city, putting him in the path of Ghostpackers and their intended kidnap victims. City dwelling would keep him busy but no closer to Aclima. The Ash Angel Organization probably had a better bead on Aclima than he did now, but going back to the AAO would probably get him tossed in a cell somewhere with Sparks holding a gun to his head.

  He had five months before his ascension. Five short months. The more he thought, the more elusive the answer felt. The later it got, the more desolate and hollow the bus terminal became and the more he realized he’d probably sit on that bench for a week with Aclima’s and Tela’s faces swirling around in his head.

  He checked the board. One last bus departure to go, a late-night ride to Salt Lake City. A group of three college-aged women gathered by the glass doors leading outside, each absorbed in her phone, bags at their feet. A few minutes later, the door banged open, and four Ghostpackers entered. They didn’t even have suitcases. They eyed the three women and sat on nearby benches like patient vultures, the red glow in their eyes both hungry and dead at the same time.

  Helo stood. He had no idea what to do for the next five months, but he had a very clear idea of what he needed to do in the next few hours.

  Chapter 14

  Performance Review

  Helo checked the time on his phone. Evening at the Malad Pass rest stop in Idaho still held a bit of a late-spring chill that hurried people to and from the restrooms and back to running cars. The warm evening light and blushing clouds soothed him. Not a bad way to spend the last day of his earthly afterlife. He would ascend tomorrow and head into the great unknown.

  For nearly five months he had wandered from city to city, burning whatever Dreads he could find and rescuing people from Legion’s army of ghostpacking kidnappers. The odd thing was, they would hold their victims for a few days and then let the people go after giving them a beating and a scare.

  At first it made no sense. Many of the Ghostpackers were ending up in prison. Others ran afoul of Ash Angels. But since they couldn’t be Exorcised, it was just a revolving door. Some of them might deserve to be killed, but Helo didn’t want to judge. He’d come to favor kicking in their knees. The long rehab ensured they couldn’t get out and continue their terror anytime soon.

  But as the months dragged on and the kidnappings continued, a fog of fear descended upon the world. People were afraid to go out and changed their locks and bought security systems if they could. Gun sales soared. To every investigator and government agency it seemed like random, disconnected people had decided to go on a kidnapping and home-invasion spree. The only connection the police could make: all those who had been caught were addicts of some kind. But why some addicts and not others?

  But it was out of his hands now. His visions had planted him facedown on the pavement so many times he couldn’t keep track. But for all the Dreads and Shedim and Possessed he had put down over his short time as an Ash Angel, he felt like a failure. He was Angel Born, and it seemed like he had something he was supposed to have done. The thought that he should have stayed with the AAO or awakened Tela nagged at him constantly, but he couldn’t fault any of the reasons he had not done either of those things. But another part of him pointed a finger at his face and called him faithless.

  Aclima still burned in his mind, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the AAO had already hunted her down and burned her. It had seemed like destiny that he would help her, but maybe this was Cain’s last laugh, his final revenge. He’d changed her back to a Dread so she could join him in hell, and there was nothing anyone could do. Losing her was the biggest failure of Helo’s short afterlife.

  Two weeks ago his phone had rung for only the third time since Grail had given it to him. The first two times had been Grail with no news of Aclima but with a lot of chatter about the AAO being dismantled by Avadan and his mega-weather Sheid. That had stabbed him with guilt too, but he had burned that bridge pretty thoroughly. Shujaa might let him back in. Just about everyone else would blow his head off.

  The third call was Goliath. She had found him through the Old Masters network. At first he was afraid the AAO would try to grab him one last time, but she assured him she just wanted to ascend with him. She would pick him up. They would drive to Zion National Park in the darkness, hike to the top of Angels Landing, and ascend from there. It was a popular ascension spot, and neither one of them had ever done the hike before.

  She arrived a few minutes before the sun went down, driving an old forest-green Jeep Wrangler with a little mud on it. She was just as he remembered her, pixie cut and all. But for a woman about to ascend into the light, her face seemed troubled. Probably like his own. She hugged him, and then they got in and got underway.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said. “How have you been?”

  “Okay,” he answered, sounding more glum than he intended. “You?”

  She exhaled and squeezed the steering wheel. “Fine, I guess.” She sounded about as convincing as he did.

  “The AAO throw you a retirement party?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s bad. There’s barely an AAO left, Helo, if you want to know the truth. Ramis gave Avadan everything he needed to destroy us. And that Sheid has torn us up from one end to the other. They’re losing. Imagine this: Grand Archus Mars was thinking of reaching out to the Old Masters for help.”

  “Grand Archus Mars?”

  “You hadn’t heard?” she said. “Yeah. The only members of the Archai you would know now are Archus Magdelene and Archus Ebenezer. The rest are gone. Everyone is in the field now. There’s no more hiding in underground bases.”

  That was bad. His stomach sank. A sudden desire to get back in the fight washed over him, but it was impossible.

  “No word on catching any of the Loremasters?” he asked.

  She smirked. “You mean Aclima. Not that I’ve heard, but I’ve been out of the war for the last while. Been doing training, mostly. The next generation will win this war. Not us. You and I get to go sing in the heavenly choirs.”

  Helo leaned his head against the window. He hoped there was something more to do besides sing. There was a lot of unfinished business. He asked after Magdelene, Lear, Corinth, and even Terissa, but Goliath just shrugged her shoulders. Sicarius Nox was apparently still around, but she hadn’t been in contact with them and wasn’t sure who was in charge anymore.

  “Sucks going out like this,” she said after a long pause.

  “Yep.”

  They filled the dark stretches of Utah highway with fits of silence and conversation. Toward the end, Helo turned his eyes to the heavens and watched the stars winking in the lonely sky above them. In a small way he was glad it was over, but in a big way he wished it wasn’t. His time as an Ash Angel had been so short he felt a little robbed.

  They arrived at the gate to Zion National Park in the dead of night, and Helo was surprised to see an Ash Angel dressed as a park ranger in the booth. Now that would be a cushy afterlife. She welcomed them and gave them a special tag for the car that would allow them to drive it on the park roads.

  “Thanks for your service!” she said as they pulled away.

  “I called ahead,” Goliath explained.

  The canyon was utterly dark, headlights tracking along the winding road up. Helo rolled the window down to take in the cool air and vibrant smells. If only he’d had time to actually enjoy the world as an Ash Angel. That reminded him of Aclima’s offer to run away with her, to disappear into parts unknown and just live. If he knew then what he knew now, he would have done it and never looked back.

  Goliath edged the car into the Grotto and parked it, and a few minutes later they were on the trail with the help of the lights on their phones. The massive walls of stone were dark shadows against the backdrop of stars, but as they neared the final, steep ascent to the top, the sky had lightened enough to give them a sense of the drop. It was a long way down, and the wind seemed to have every intention of shoving them off the na
rrow ledges.

  Snow still clung to the ground in spots, joining the wind in its murderous intent, but after some close calls and fervent chain grabbing, they emerged onto the narrow fin of rock at the very top with an hour to spare. The wind still wasn’t happy with them, whipping over their sandstone perch like it was trying to scrub it clean.

  They lay down on their backs, faces to stars already fading on the eastern horizon.

  “Anything you’d do different?” Goliath asked.

  And how. “Not get so many Bestowals so fast. You?”

  She was silent for a moment. “I wish I would have spent less time in the Michaels. I’ve spent most of my afterlife taking it to the Dreads. Just feels a bit empty now, though I’ve got stories.”

  In his mind, Helo could hear Dolorem reminding him that Ash Angels weren’t created to hunt down Dreads but to do good to God’s children. He’d spent time fighting and time serving. Fighting was certainly more exciting, but despite his pathetic sermons, he felt a lot of satisfaction about his time at the Redemption Motorcycle Club.

  About ten minutes before dawn, he heard voices and the scraping of boots on the sandstone behind them. Absentmindedly he wondered what mortals would even see when an Ash Angel ascended, but when he cocked his head to see who was joining them, he saw several angelic auras coming their way.

  He and Goliath stood, and she craned her head around. “Just a few people I invited to see us off.”

  Some of the faces Helo didn’t recognize—Goliath’s friends from the Michaels. But there were Corinth and Scarlet, holding hands. There was Lear. Hulking up behind them was Shujaa. Helo could only imagine his disappointment. The Angel Born had turned out to be a useless dud in the war against evil.

  But behind them all, biting her lip, was Tela Mirren. Someone had awakened her, and she was a Blank. His mouth dropped, and he almost fell over when Lear crashed into him and gave him a fierce hug. Who had awakened her? Who could do such a thing to such an innocent girl? She didn’t deserve to get dragged into this war! He could barely remember what pleasantries were said as Corinth laid a man hug on him and Scarlet sank into his arms.