by Brian Fuller
“Any brownies around here?” he asked. They were the second or third best thing he’d found in the afterlife.
“This early in the morning?” Martha said.
“And lemonade?” Melody added.
Martha pursed her lips. “You know, I think I’ll make an exception for you two, just this once. Spade will want his eggs and sausage when he’s done plowing. You want some?”
“Yes, please,” he answered.
When Martha’s back was turned, Helo pulled on the clothes, a pair of jeans and a blue flannel shirt just a little small on him. Probably belonged to Spade.
“Martha,” Helo said, “what was the mystery we needed to figure out? The one you knew?”
Martha glanced over her shoulder and returned her attention to the mixing bowl. “Just that trick where both of you appear near the other one’s heart. Until yesterday, we had no idea it would work after one of you was turned to Ash. Or about the power the other can get when the partner passes into the light. We’re delighted. We need to start teaching the meditation again. We’ve been living way below our potential for a long time.”
Melody put the guitar down and snuggled into Helo. For a long while he cradled her and listened to Martha hum absentmindedly in the kitchen. After a while, the room filled with the smoke and smell of sausage with an undercurrent of baking brownies.
“So, where is everybody?” Helo asked Melody.
“Lots of cleanup to do in Detroit and Kansas City,” she said. Archus Magdelene and Ebenezer are coordinating everything. Ramis too.”
“He’s an Ash Angel again?” Helo asked.
Melody’s face turned somber. “He turned about the same time King was bound. I’ve only heard stories about him from before, but he’s not the same man.”
Helo felt a surge of hope. “Shujaa?”
“No,” she said. “Not under the influence of Avadan anymore, but still a Dread. They let him out. He’s wandering around somewhere. Not sure who is worse off, Ramis or Shujaa. Sparks and Faramir are off helping in the cities, which we should be too.”
Helo nodded. “Yeah. It’ll be nice to do some good that doesn’t involve Angel Fire and hallowing. I’m actually sick of hallowing.”
“Ugh, me too,” Melody said. “Wonder what my new Bestowal will be.”
“I think I know,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s a surprise.”
A timer dinged, and Martha pulled the brownies out of the oven, then placed the lemonade, eggs, and sausage on the table. No sooner had the sausage plate tapped the wood than the tractor noise outside died. A dusty Spade wandered in.
“Get cleaned up,” Martha said. “Breakfast is on.”
“I know,” Spade said. “Brownies for breakfast, huh? Lowering your standards?”
“It’s for them,” Martha explained, her eyes guiding Spade’s to the living room.
“Oh, right,” Sparks said. “Well, nice to have you two for breakfast. Usually can’t stand company until dinner time, but you two apparently aren’t idiots, so I’ll make an exception.”
“Thank you,” Melody said sweetly.
A little while later they gathered around the rectangular dinner table. Melody said grace while they held hands. And then they dove into their unorthodox breakfast, and if Spade or Martha had any scruples about brownies, lemonade, and sausage for breakfast, they didn’t show it.
About halfway through the meal, the door banged open and Magdelene, Ebenezer, and Ramis walked into the room. Spade threw Ramis a sour look and went back to his plate.
“Come on in,” Martha said, standing. “Let me get you all a plate. Probably not enough eggs to go around, but I’ll whip up more if anyone’s interested.”
Ramis was changed, and from what Magdelene had told him, his transformation had coincided with Rapture the morning after Avadan had been defeated. While Ramis’s aura had returned, his shoulders were still slumped as if carrying a great weight. Magdelene and Ebenezer joined them at the table, but Ramis wordlessly walked to the living room and stared out the window like none of them existed. Helo knew the look. Self-loathing. His very presence brought weight to the room. Everyone made mistakes, but his arrogance in putting on Cain’s pendant had cost thousands of lives, something he probably hadn’t even found out about until a day ago.
They made small talk while they ate, and Helo reported everything that had happened during the mission and the exorcism. He learned that Spade and Martha had only partially cleared the desecration in Detroit before it and the evil spirits had disappeared. The abilities of the truly bonded couples astonished both Archuses.
Ebenezer shook his head. “That such powerful lore was lost is strange. How did it become so secret that it died out? Anyway, I’ll want to record every step you took in this meditation. It needs to be disseminated as—”
“It’s sacred,” Spade said. “You don’t get to record it. And that’s all we should say about that. The meditation needs to be taught, though. If you aren’t a selfish moron, you’ll figure it out.”
“But—” Ebenezer started.
Spade stabbed a sausage. “But nothing.”
Martha grabbed Spade’s hand. “It took us decades. Melody and Helo figured it out a bit quicker.” She winked.
“The big question,” Ebenezer said, looking a bit annoyed, “is what to do with the diamond that is now the most important physical object in the world. We’ve got to find some way it can never be found and never be damaged. I’ve had some ideas.”
“It’s Ramis’s,” Helo said. “Cassandra strictly told me to give it to him in that I’ll-fry-you-if-you-don’t-obey-me angel voice of hers. She’s already ticked at me for not awakening Melody.”
“So is Melody,” said Melody.
Helo glanced at Ramis, who regarded him with dead eyes. “Ramis, Cassandra said she would visit you.”
His expression brightened a little. “I’ll do whatever she told you. I will take this thing, and no one will ever see me or it again.”
Helo nodded, heart heavy. Ramis’s words hung in the air like ghosts. He wondered if anyone had tried Inspire on him. Helo had never liked the guy, but to see him so badly hurt . . . Melody scooted her chair out and went to him. The former Archus watched dully as Melody used her kitchen knife to pry the diamond out of her palm.
“Put your hand above mine,” Melody said. “It jumps a lot. Close your palm around it.”
The busy diamond rattled against the knife until Ramis got his hand around it. In moments, it had vibrated its way into the flesh of his hand and was still. “Is that it?” he said.
“Yes,” Melody answered, rubbing his shoulder. “It just sits there.”
He nodded. “I’ll take my leave, then,” he said.
Magdelene frowned. “Where will you go?”
Ramis cracked open the door. “That’s the point, Magdelene—not to know.”
He walked out and closed the door softly behind him. Through the window, Helo watched him walk down the road a few paces and then veer off into the woods. Melody returned to the table, face troubled, and launched into another brownie.
“The walk will do him good,” Spade said. “Always helps me clear my head.”
Martha wiped her mouth with a napkin and stood, grabbing her plate. “I don’t think it’s quite the same thing, dear.”
Magdelene wiped her mouth and leaned back. “So, what’s next for you two? We can use all the help we can get, but no one would blame you if you wanted to disappear for a while before getting back to work. You are Helo, the new Archus of the Michaels.”
He almost choked on his lemonade. He’d forgotten all about that. “No,” he said. “As my first act as Archus, I dissolve the Michaels. We don’t need them anymore. And I resign, effective immediately.”
“You can’t do that,” Ebenezer said. “We still need the Michaels. We still need to find the rest of Avadan’s prisons. There are still some Dreads wandering around, especially overseas.”
�
��You need investigators, not soldiers,” Helo said. Then he had an idea. “Take Shujaa with you. He’ll be happy to squash Dreads even though he is one. If he’s to be an Ash Angel again, he’s going to need a purpose. But Melody and I have a mission. Rachel said it would come today.”
“How?” Magdelene said.
“When Melody gets her last Bestowal,” Helo answered.
“Helo,” Magdelene said, “we could really use the two of you. There’s a lot of work to be done. The Ash Angel Organization is in ruins. Rebuilding will take years.”
“The world doesn’t need Dread hunters anymore,” Helo said. “There doesn’t need to be some huge organization. Just make the world better. Melody and I are going to try to enjoy the rest of this afterlife. We don’t know how long we have left, but we want what Spade and Martha have for as long as we can get it.”
“Amen,” Spade said, getting up from the table. “Well, got work to do out in the fields. Helo, Melody, it’s been a pleasure.”
He grabbed his hat and went out the back.
Magdelene looked at them. “Good for you. If you ever do want to come back, we’ll be here, picking ourselves up.”
“Thanks.”
Magdelene stood. “Ebenezer and I have got work to do. Oh, and do you know why Sparks wants to date me all of a sudden? I hardly know the guy, and he keeps sending me all these texts asking me out for coffee.”
Helo shrugged. “He’s a hunter at heart. I guess you’re in his sights.”
Magdelene shook her head. “Like I’ve got time to date.”
“Find time, dear,” Martha said from where she was rinsing dishes in the sink.
They left, and Helo and Melody helped clean the kitchen. Martha thanked them and then went upstairs.
“Should we meditate?” Melody asked, face bright.
“I want to see Shujaa, then—”
She raised her eyebrows and gave him “the look.”
“Um, Shujaa can wait.”
They found Shujaa an hour later sitting cross-legged in the loft of the barn where they had tried to Exorcise Legion. He had an array of weapons spread out around him in various states of disassembly. The red aura surrounding him was still foreign to Helo, like seeing someone with a radically new haircut that took time to get used to.
He stood as they approached. Like Ramis, his somber countenance conveyed everything Helo needed to know about how he felt. To be what he hated, to be left out of the final battle against evil tortured Shujaa probably as much as Ramis’s failures tortured him.
“Angel Borns,” he said. “You have accomplished your destiny, as I knew you would. I have failed you, and for that I am sorry.”
“Thank you for believing in us,” Melody said, face sad. “There is still hope, Shujaa, still a chance for redemption.”
He breathed out heavily and sat down, eyes and hands back down on his weapons. “The battle is done.”
“It’s not,” Helo said. “I have a mission for you, Shujaa.”
Shujaa froze, raising his head, a little fire in his eyes. “What mission, Angel Born?”
“It’s Avadan and his prisons,” Helo said. “When he knew I was going to kill him, Avadan tried to bargain for his life by offering to tell me where more of his hidden prisons are. I couldn’t let him live. But I can’t get it out of my head that by killing him I’ve probably stranded Ash Angels and even some normals in some dark hole somewhere. There may even still be Dreads guarding them. I need you to find them. I need you to save them. This is how you will find your Ash Angel aura again.”
Shujaa’s brown eyes lit again with the hungry fire Helo had seen so often before. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes. I will do it. This will be my purpose, my task until I am clean again. Thank you, Angel Born, for entrusting this to me.”
“Magdelene will be forming a team to do the same,” Helo said. “You could join them—”
“No,” Shujaa said, snapping a BBG together with blinding speed. “This is my task. My path. God will guide me. I will leave immediately. I will not fail you.”
Helo put his fist out, and Shujaa bumped it with his. The 3:24 that was normally scrawled on his knuckles wasn’t there anymore.
“Maybe we’ll see you around,” Melody said.
“Maybe,” Shujaa said, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, already running down streets and alleys and buildings in search of Avadan’s lost prisoners.
They climbed down from the loft and walked back out to the road, wandering on the sunny summer morning, listening to the river flow by. Melody told him about all the improvements she had in store for their campsite, including a barbecue pit and a modest outdoor kitchen. Helo was sure that what began as a simple tent would turn into a full-fledged resort before too long. He didn’t care. Her creative energy pulled him to her, and he couldn’t imagine life without her tireless imagination.
They had just turned a bend in the river when she collapsed to the ground. The vision had come. He scooped her up in his arms and waited until she came to again, eyes wide.
“Wow,” she said, eyes darting around but gaze inward. “I . . . well . . . this is not what I was thinking it was. Not even close.”
“What is it?” Helo asked, setting her back on her feet.
Melody grabbed his hand and stood there, bewildered. Helo waved his hand in front of her face. She was practically in shock.
“You in there?” Helo asked, starting to get worried.
“Oh. Yeah. Look, do you remember that girl Avadan turned into a Sheid? Yoletzi?”
“Yeah, the Hispanic girl, right?”
“Yes,” Melody said. “You remember how she said she didn’t want to go home, said she wanted to stay with the angels?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“A lot. We’ve got to get her out of her house. Like, now.”
“Okay,” Helo said. “Let’s go see if we can borrow a car.”
They turned back toward the farmhouse. There were still a handful of cars around. While he’d hoped for a little time with Melody before the mission began, saving a kid from a bad home sounded like something he could dig his teeth into.
Melody took his hand again, eyes tight, as if she still saw the vision in her mind. But it was time to see if his guess was right.
“Hey,” Helo said, “what’s the new Bestowal?”
Epilogue
Yoletzi
Yoletzi sat in the Redemption Motorcycle Club next to Uncle Lear and surrounded by bikers. Everyone seemed hot, fanning themselves with the fliers Father Storm had handed out announcing the barbecue next week. The tattoo on the man’s neck in front of her mesmerized her. It was the vertebrae of the neck needled into his skin like an X-ray showing his insides. It took her a moment to realize it led up to a tattoo on the back of his head that his hair covered up. It was probably a skull. She could barely see the lower part of a jaw.
Being the adopted daughter of angel parents was a bit weird. Her dad was preaching about David and Goliath up front. She always thought it was funny when he made his belly big and grew his beard. He would shake it around at her and chase her through the garage saying it was hungry. And her mom. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was sure of it. The biker sitting next to her had whispered to one of his friends how it made no sense that such a smoke show was married to Father Storm. Yoletzi didn’t know what a smoke show was, but she guessed it meant her mom was hot, something other men said about her all the time.
She loved her angel parents, though she couldn’t tell anyone who they really were. She had promised. So far, no one had asked how two white people had a brown daughter and how that brown daughter had a black uncle. But no one in the RMC seemed to care, and that was why she loved it. Besides, she knew Uncle Lear was an angel too. Her mom and dad had never told her, but she knew anyway. A few angels had come to visit over the last year, and she could pick them out with ease. It was just a feeling, really.
“And so,” Father Storm said, “wh
o are the Goliaths in your life, brothers and sisters? What is the obstacle so high you cannot see over it, the problem so strong you don’t think you can break it? If you can name your Goliath, then pull your faith together, and God will give you the stone and the strength to drop even the most fearsome foe with a single shot between the eyes. This I witness to you, my brothers and sisters.”
Yoletzi said amen with everyone else. The man in front of her raised his hand. His name was Dallin. Mom said to cover her ears if he started saying naughty words.
“Father Storm,” Dallin said. “Did you go to preacher school? That sermon sucked way less than usual.”
The congregation chuckled, and her dad smiled. “Something like that, yeah. Now, to finish up, Mrs. Storm will bless us with a rendition of Amazing Grace.”
Everyone gasped with delight. Mom sang a solo every so often, and more than anything her parents did, her mom’s voice gave her away as an angel. Nobody sang like she did. Nobody. Even the scariest looking biker in the RMC stared at her when she sang. And they cried, even the really big ones. Yoletzi could understand. She cried too. It was her mother’s songs that erased the memory of her real mother and her boyfriend, even if just for a while.
It had been less than a year, but the memory was fuzzy in her brain. Her mother’s boyfriend had killed her mother, that she knew. Her new father—Father Storm—had put a fist in his face. She could still remember the sound of his nose breaking. But the strongest memory of that day was her new mom singing to her for what must have been hours in the back of the car. She had loved her new mother from the beginning. She had come to love Helo just the same.
Melody’s song fell from her lips like leaves of gold on the air, and the place went perfectly still. The song called to Yoletzi, but that tattoo on the man in front of her kept dragging her attention to it too. Her parents told her not to stare at all the crazy tattoos and piercings and clothes, but she couldn’t help herself. She loved the designs, the characters, the words on skin she knew had stories a mile long behind them. One biker had a naughty picture of a topless woman Melody made him cover up when he came into the chapel.
