A Mystery of Light

by Brian Fuller

  Tela came next. She was crying, wiping at her tears. “Helo,” she said and then buried herself in his arms and wept, saying “I’m too late. I’m too late” over and over.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “They should have left you in heaven where you belong. I’m sorry.”

  She pulled away. “Why weren’t you there when Goliath awakened me?”

  So it was Goliath. He wanted to go pull her away from her friends and give her a piece of his mind. “I didn’t want to awaken you,” he said, and she frowned and looked away. “It’s not safe here. I didn’t want to drag you into this war.”

  She wiped her eyes again and nodded.

  “It is good to see you,” he said, which brought a smile back to her lips. “What did you choose for your Ash Angel name?”

  “Melody,” she said.

  He chuckled. “That’s perfect.”

  “I’m sorry about Aclima,” she said after a pause. “It’s awful to think about her being . . . that way.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Messed up.”

  “You loved her,” she added, eyes searching.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t exactly work out.”

  “Hey!” Lear said, coming over. “It’s about go time. One last tradition to honor.”

  Helo squeezed Tela’s arm and walked toward the far end of Angels Landing, the crimson canyon yawning out beyond them. Goliath’s friends had already corralled her out in front of them. He stood beside her, biting back a few choice words he wanted to say to her about awakening Tela.

  “Friends!” Lear said in his rich voice. “It is with great sadness that we come to watch these two warriors against evil take their leave of this mortal plane and head to the great reward that awaits them above. It is said that those who witness the ascension of an Ash Angel have a wish granted if they have the courage to speak it out loud. I’ll begin. I wish I had more time with my white son so I could teach him to appreciate Broadway musicals!”

  Everyone chuckled politely, and Corinth stepped forward. “I wish I had that cool Angel Fire Bestowal.”

  Murmurs of agreement. “I wish,” Scarlet said, thinking for a moment, “that heaven will give Helo peace.”

  Helo smiled at her, and then Shujaa spoke, voice rumbling over the wind. “I wish that every Dread was burning in hell.”

  Silence fell, and Goliath’s friends said their peace. At the last, Tela stepped forward, face resolute, like she fully expected her wish to come true.

  “I wish that Helo did not have to go,” she said.

  Helo’s eyes stung. He’d wandered alone for months, and to have these people with him at the last filled him with a warmth he hadn’t felt in so long. Several phone alarms when off, indicating ten seconds until dawn.

  Tela walked right up to him and put her hand on his chest, her green eyes burning with some emotional fire. “Never low, Helo. Never again.”

  Rapture.

  His soul brimmed with that welcome fire. His feet lifted from the ground, the people below him fading to white. It was glorious. Sublime.

  It was Cassandra—Fleuramere—standing beside a desk, face severe.

  He stood in a field of all white, the dark walnut executive desk and black leather chair behind it an island in the nothingness. His first trainer’s hair was pinned back, and she wore dark-rimmed glasses and a black pencil skirt. Her blouse was so white he almost couldn’t look at it.

  “Cassandra!” he said excitedly. Maybe she would be his guide in this new plane of existence.

  “It’s Fleuramere. Please have a seat,” she said formally.

  A crappy metal fold-out chair appeared in front of the desk, and he took a seat. It listed to one side, and he put his feet down to keep it from rocking.

  “Come on, Fleuramere,” he said. She couldn’t help teasing him when she got the chance.

  A file folder appeared on her desk, and then a pencil summoned out of light materialized in her hand.

  “Let’s see here,” she said. “We have one Trace Daniel Evans, aka Helo, aka Jarhead. Been an Ash Angel for about eighteen months, got all six Bestowals, so it’s time for your official performance review. Let’s take a look at the notes the angels have been taking . . .”

  Helo rolled his eyes and put his hands behind his head. If Cassandra wanted to play a little game, so be it. He certainly had time.

  “Okay,” she said after perusing the files. “On the plus side, it looks like you’ve got real initiative. We like that in an Ash Angel. Smart fighter. Real gung-ho attitude. We’d expect that from a Marine, of course. Quite a few Sheid and Dread kills for someone with such a short time in the service. Impressive.”

  She shuffled through the papers and then pulled her glasses off and set them on the desk. They disappeared into light. “Now, Mr. Evans, we want you to know that we really do appreciate everything you have done, but there are a few things we feel like you can improve on going forward. So, first, your ‘Plays well with others’ score is really quite abysmal. Much lower than we would like, actually. Anything you want to say about that?”

  “Look,” Helo said. “Can we cut the cr—”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said. “Your contrition is wonderful to see. Let’s see, ‘Listens to authority.’ Wow. Now that’s a bad score. Really bad. I mean, it seems like when, say, a heavenly messenger tells you to do something—like awaken a certain young lady—that maybe you should do it!” Her eyes flashed briefly with celestial fire. “Well, I’m not even going to entertain your excuses on that one.”

  She leaned back in the chair. “I just don’t know what I should do with you. I’d better get another perspective or two.” An ivory-colored office phone appeared on the desk, and she pressed a button. “Could you send Lumina and that other one in here.”

  Lumina—whom Helo knew as Rachel the Unascended—entered through a door that materialized out of the light. She smiled broadly at him.

  “There’s that boy I’m hearing so much about,” she said. “How you been, Helo?”

  “I’ve be—”

  Cassandra cleared her throat. “This is a performance review, Lumina. I’m afraid there are some troubling things on Helo’s record.”

  “Is that so?” Lumina said, sitting on a puffy leather chair conjured beneath her. “Do tell.”

  Then Dolorem walked through the same door. He had on a white suit and no tie, his biker gut straining the shirt buttons and his beard proudly displayed. “Helo! Ascension time, huh?”

  “Hey, Dolorem! It’s—”

  “Dolorem is no longer his name,” Cassandra said. “But you don’t get to know his angel name quite yet. So, angel whose name I can’t say, you spent a great deal of time with the accused.”

  “Accused?” Helo said. “What is this?”

  “Sorry. I meant valued team member,” Cassandra said, then turned back to Dolorem. “So how would you rate Helo, here?”

  “Can’t give a sermon worth a . . . darn,” Dolorem said, taking a seat in a beat-up brown leather recliner. He thought for a moment. “Yep. Bad sermons. That’s about it. Other than that, a good guy, I would say.”

  Cassandra’s eyebrows raised. “Bad sermons? I think you’re being kind. They were like listening to a sloth talk about soil erosion. How about you, Lumina?”

  Lumina bobbed her head back and forth. “He’s real bad at the love thing, too. You remember all those lame pickup lines he was throwing at Aclima? Like to make me weep with the sadness of all the saints, it did.”

  “Yes,” Cassandra said. “Total dumpster fire on the romance front. Well, Helo, do you have anything you would like to add to convince us?”

  Helo cocked his head. “Convince you of what?”

  “To give you a promotion, of course,” Cassandra said.

  “Um, I—”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t think so. We’re sorry, Helo. In light of these glaring issues, we can’t in good conscience go forward with your request.” A rubber stamp appeared in her hand,
and she slammed it down on one of the papers. She looked up at him, smiled, and winked. “Request for promotion denied. We’re sorry. Better luck next time. Oh, and say hi to Maggie for me. You are free to go.”

  “Go?” he said. “Go where?”

  All the celestial furniture disappeared as the three angels before him stood and turned around, filing out the door. He had to scramble not to fall down as his skiwampus metal chair evaporated.

  “I get to be the vanguard, right?” Dolorem said to Cassandra as the three walked away.

  “Seriously?” Cassandra said. “No, Mister Angel-Come-Lately. I’m vanguard. You’re on the left. Lumina on the right.”

  “What about the rearguard?” Lumina asked, their three forms fading into the light.

  “Having a bit of trouble there,” Cassandra said.

  Then they were gone. For a moment he stood alone in the emptiness of the endless light. Then it too slowly dissolved into a brilliant morning sky. It felt as if someone had set his feet gently down upon sandstone, and when the brilliance surrounding him had faded completely, he stood on Angels Landing in front of a line of awed faces.

  Tela pressed into him with a ferocious hug.

  “The Angel Born has returned,” Shujaa intoned reverentially, like a priest before his congregation. “Heaven has bathed its weapon in celestial light and returned it into our hands. It is Helo, the Angel Born Unascended. Let Shedim and Dreads tremble at his coming.”

  Chapter 15

  Unascended

  Camp Zion. Now Helo knew why Goliath had driven a Jeep Wrangler to pick him up. The Ash Angel Organization was worse off than he had imagined when Goliath had told him of the all-out destruction Avadan and his Sheid had laid on the Ash Angels. What was left of the AAO had retreated deep into the woods of nowhere southern Missouri. The road carving its way to the camp was little more than two ruts winding around pockets of dense trees. They bounced over roots and rocks, driving into the deep green of a forest in the emerald throes of late spring.

  Shujaa drove. After Angels Landing, the man had followed Helo everywhere he went like he was a personal herald, ready to drop the name Angel Born Unascended at every opportunity. Melody sat in the back, happily humming a tune to herself, Lear next to her enjoying it. The girl had followed him around almost as diligently as Shujaa. And she was happy. While he was still mad at Goliath for dragging her into such a miserable afterlife, it was nice to see her free of her torturous dreams about him and all the sleepless nights that came with them.

  The overcast afternoon drizzled fitfully outside the window, slicking the muddy track. The auras of several sentries slipped by as they passed. Tents popped up back in the trees, gaining in frequency the deeper they drove into the enshrouding foliage. Ash Angels milled about, talking in groups, sitting in the tree branches, or erecting more tents. Camp Zion looked more like a refugee camp than a military headquarters.

  “How long have they been here?” Helo asked.

  “Four weeks,” Lear answered from the back. “It was just after Zion Beta got erased from the map. There are still a few hideouts left, but all the good ones are gone. Ramis was thorough when he sang his song to Avadan.”

  “Is there a plan, or are we just hiding?” Helo asked.

  “I’m sure there’s a plan,” Lear said, “though I bet right now it’s little more than licking the wounds and stopping the bleeding. You might boost morale a bit. There’s never been a Blank Unascended in the history of the Ash Angels. At least not that anyone knows about.”

  Helo still had a hard time processing it. Most Unascended had auras so bright they were hidden away to keep them from attracting every Dread in the vicinity. His aura was just as absent now as it was before. An aura had briefly enveloped him as he’d meditated before Rapture and let the light fill him. And now that he was Unascended, the reservoir of light within him was deeper. It was like an extra reserve tank had opened within him somewhere. But the best part: all the Bestowals awaited his command. He hoped the Ash Angels could trust him enough to let him back in the action. Lear and Shujaa assured him they would have to. How could they turn down an Angel Born Unascended, after all?

  Shujaa pulled the Wrangler off the track at a tight cluster of tents. “These are the tents of Sicarius Nox,” he said. “You will have a place here.”

  Helo nodded, already looking out for Sparks. The man wasn’t the forgiving type and would probably put a bullet in his head, Unascended or no. Crane had apparently gotten turned to ash in their last battle against the wind-and-lightning-slinging Sheid that had been instrumental in the downfall of so many of the Ash Angel Organization’s installations. The bigger surprise: Argyle had returned and retaken command of Sicarius Nox.

  “The command tents are down the road about a hundred yards,” Shujaa said. “I will take you to Grand Archus Mars. I cannot wait to see their faces.”

  “They don’t know?” Helo asked.

  “No,” Shujaa said. “They know we went to see your ascension. They do not know what happened. I thought it best to keep it secret. The fewer people who know, the less likely the Dreads will know you are coming. It will be a glorious battle.”

  Helo nodded. Made sense. He reached for the door handle.

  “My tent is down that trail over there,” Melody said, leaning forward and pointing out the windshield. “It’s the third one, kind of by a flat rock. I’ve got an extra space now that Goliath is gone.”

  Lear chuckled. “Melody and I will find you later, my boy. We’ve been organizing entertainment. Trying to lift morale and all.”

  Helo smiled. Now that was something he could agree with. That was Melody’s gift. She had excitedly told him how Goliath and Shujaa had been teaching her weapons, fighting, and tactics. He’d tried to act happy about it for her sake, but, really, it made him sick to think about it. Her place was not in the field. Let her stay back and play songs and bring comfort. That fit who she was.

  “Can’t wait to see it,” Helo said.

  Melody smiled and touched his shoulder. “I’ll be looking for you.”

  They piled out of the Wrangler. Lear and Melody disappeared down the trail, and he and Shujaa hiked down the road, water droplets slipping from tree leaves and plunking down on their heads and shoulders as they walked between the ruts to avoid the mud.

  The command tents were clumped together in a clearing of tall, damp grass, most of it smashed down and bent by the passing of boots. Shujaa led him down the most worn path to a wide, khaki-colored tent about the length of a semi trailer, its flaps open on both sides. Maps and tablets were strewn across a long table, LED lamps providing illumination. Magdelene—a Blank like him—was there with Grand Archus Mars and Archus Ebenezer. Other Ash Angels he didn’t recognize grouped around them, but they all possessed a military air.

  “Grand Archus,” Shujaa said. “We have returned.”

  Mars glanced up briefly, then back down at a map. “Great. Get—”

  “Mars,” Magdelene said, a grin coming to her lips. “You’ll want to take a closer look.”

  Mars turned to her. “At what?”

  She pointed at Helo, and Ebenezer and Mars finally took him in.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mars said, straightening.

  “He is Helo the Angel Born Unascended,” Shujaa said. “He has come to us in our hour of need.”

  “A Blank Unascended?” Ebenezer said, face questioning. “Are you sure?”

  “Do you want my help?” Helo asked. Ebenezer had always doubted him.

  “Are you sure?” Ebenezer said, walking toward him, eyes running over him like he would be able to tell just by looking.

  “Yeah,” Helo said. “I’m sure. Do you want my help?”

  “Are you here to fight,” Mars said, brown eyes hard, “or are you here to chase after Aclima?”

  So they hadn’t burned her! He kept his face in check. He would search for her, but fighting with the Ash Angels was his best chance to track her down. “I’m here to fight.”
>
  “Good,” Mars said, but his voice had none of the friendliness it used to. “You’ll work with Sicarius Nox. That Sheid Avadan’s got is first priority. Report to your unit now. In two days, we’re going after Avadan with everything we have. Sicarius Nox will be the tip of the spear. Dismissed.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Thank you for coming back,” Magdelene said.

  Helo nodded to her, and he and Shujaa marched back to the forested road.

  “They do not see your worth yet,” Shujaa said. “They will see it.”

  Helo didn’t want or need their approval. Rachel had told him that Unascended were people who had unfinished missions, and he had to think that his was to save Aclima. And he was happy to destroy Shedim and Dreads along the way. Avadan, too.

  They kept to the road until they reached Sicarius Nox’s deserted campsite. A tent to the side was stacked with crates, ammo boxes, and weapon racks, all neat and orderly. The tents themselves were lined up with an engineer’s precision, every tent stake, rope, and tent top in perfect alignment. This was Argyle’s unit, for sure.

  “We’ll need another tent for you,” Shujaa said. “Finny and Sparks bunk together. Faramir and me are there. Argyle has his own tent, as does Andromeda. Andromeda would probably let you bunk with her, but Argyle is old-fashioned when it comes to men and women in the same tent.”

  “Who’s Andromeda?” Fancy name.

  “She’s Argyle’s second,” Shujaa said. “Mars forced him to take her. She kills Dreads good. I like her. Let’s go find you a tent.”

  In half an hour they had it erected next to a mature maple, though he was sure Argyle would make him adjust something if not move the tent altogether. He found a pad he could sit on for the floor and went into the supply tent to gear up. Holding a BBR felt natural, like coming home. It would be good to get to work again. He took a backpack, Stingers, a BBG, Kevlar vest, and a comms unit and put them inside his tent to the side of the mat.

  The pounding of boots nearby pulled him back outside, and there, jogging single file, came Sicarius Nox, Argyle and his trademark red-haired flattop in command. They had packs on, geared heavy. Clothes, packs, and hair were damp from the rain. Faramir brought up the rear, looking doubly wet for some reason.