We never do find the two raping, murdering interrogators’ boss. Sometimes the eagle gets the rat, and sometimes the rat slinks away.
Does Salvation feel any better having quenched her thirst for vengeance with blood? Does judgment feel worse that we didn’t find the bastard? Well, if you’re asking if I think it was worth it—did we get what we came for?
When Salvation’s done thinking whatever she has to, she sniffs a little and wipes her face. Then she says, “Does any of this matter?”
I look around the bloodstained, concrete graveyard of limbs, and then I breathe in a great big whiff of gunsmoke and guts. “Not to them.”
— LV —
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, six and seven billion souls go out kinda like they came in—one minute there were five billion souls on the earth, begging the State to feed, clothe and protect them, and in the blink of an eye … there were seven. And eight, nine and ten aren’t a whole helluva lot different.
Then, before the three of us know it, the journey to judgment and justice for the earth’s ten billion souls is almost complete. I say almost, because before we started I was crystal-clear on where we would end the day.
I gotta tell ya, for three angels from the rain-drenched streets of Seattle, talon-tuckered at the end of a tough day of delivering God’s will of the Word, there is no place quite like the sun-soaked sands of the Middle East.
And perched at the pinnacle of the Burj Khalifa—the highest man-made structure on Earth—it feels like the breeze is the breath of angels, warming and fluttering our feathers with gusts of hot air from the desert below.
The Burj makes the scrapers in Seattle look like scrub brush under a towering pine tree. It was built by over seven thousand skilled workers trucked, flown, or billy-club-kidnapped in from South Asia. They were paid around six credits a day. The back-busted laborers got about half that much. Yes, the world has come a long way from the slaves at the pyramids on the great Giza Plateau.
“Makes you wonder,” I say.
“Wonder what?” Salvation asks.
And for a girl that spent most of her mortal life sucking on her mommy’s silicone tits, living in a dream world bought with her daddy’s raped and pillaged credits, this sight is as real as it gets for Fury. She gives me a look and says, “Don’t go fucking this up. Come on, look at this shit, it’s awesome.”
And I have to admit that the view is incredible—no wonder birds like to sit on top of buildings. But I know this place is just filled with more rats. I can smell them inside, waiting for their credits to save them, because by now there is no doubt that this day is their last.
“Just…” Fury says. “Look, I’m wiped. Can we just enjoy the view for a minute? South America sucked. And Africa? Why the fuck did that have to be me? So don’t fuck up Dubai for me, okay? I always wanted to go here with my—”
And then I think she gets it. For richer or rougher, this is her new family. And revenge-filled, angry heart or not, we’re the only ones who give a fuck what happens to her now. We might be the only ones who ever did. She stares at the sun setting across the ocean—crimson and red—the colors of the day. “Motherfucking Dubai…” she mumbles.
Dubai. Where the wealthy and wonderful go to get away from it all. All the lawsuits, all the molestation charges, all the taxes, all of the rest of us cretins of civilization. Highest building on Earth? Not anymore. We level the whole place—send it back to the sand as the sun dips below the sea and the world turns to darkness. The whole thing would have crumbled anyway, crushed beneath the weight of the wealthy’s thirst for more.
— LVI —
MILLIONS OF FAITHFUL and fallen angels rested and wondered about the Word of the two heavens, rustling their feathers and watching in anticipation from the grandstands of the arena. Seventh days were always long, but as seventh days went, this had been longer than most.
Building it or breaking it apart—it really didn’t matter—a tough day transporting souls in or out of the garden was exhausting work. But this time had been different, there was the smell of revolution in the air—an unholy discontent, worming its way from the husk of the eternal sameness of the faithful and faithless snowflakes. And a tremor rumbled through their beliefs as they watched the darkness—the great black nothing—descend upon the garden.
Their Dark Angel of Light stood at the center of the huge arena. Only he and Life truly knew what was coming. He watched the black nothing descend, just as it had before.
The Protectors had played this godly game since time was created, and he longed for it to be his turn atop The Great Mountain of the Eternities. A lion to replace the lamb and then the lamb to replace the lion. Back and forth, upside down to downside up—such was the Word.
But somewhere along the way, the Protectors had all become drunk on their own thirst for power. The dark more than the light, but the call to stay on top of the mountain had touched them all. He felt that when they joined. So Dal looked for an edge—something he could use to tip the scales of judgment in evil’s favor. Something to anchor him at the peak … and then allow him to stay there for all the eternities to come. Then one day—another boring, soul-sucking day—a priest lost his faith … and then wrote a book. And Dal knew when the next Fallen appeared, it was his chance.
Men had written books about their experiences with her since she had taken her throne back at the dawn of this eternity. But none had written a book that spoke to him. So this priest’s unholy word against humanity and its destruction caught his eye, and he summoned its word and took it in for his own. And their own seed, Jump, became his pathway to dominating and enslaving Life for all eternity. She would be his queen. Not that she wasn’t already, but now she would be his slave.
— LVII —
AS LIFE ENTERED and fluttered to the center of the great hall, the cooing and clucking wasn’t as loud as it had been. As the faithful grew nervous, she paused to find the words that would calm her children.
The road had been long on this current eternity. The sands slipped slowly through the hourglass, but now her time—her reign—drew near to a close.
To a being of the light and a deity of the first truth, the Word had been all that she had to maintain control. But the faithful and the fallen began to question that word. They searched for meaning in it and fell into disbelief.
When it started, she had little concern. It had happened before and she had dealt with it harshly, swiftly, with fear and punishment. But whipping a slave was only effective so long as the slave minded being whipped. So when the misery of daily life in the garden surpassed the punishments she sent, the power she drew from the faithful slipped into decline.
Now she could feel him, hot and hateful, impatiently waiting for his time. Her Dark Angel—she could scarcely think of Dal that way any longer—would soon rule over her with the flaming fist of a master, once slave. It was the ordained order of all the eternities, that the Protectors should trade role for role, but she had grown to believe it an unacceptable fate.
She had sent word to her children, over and over again, commanding them to worship her words, and condemning them for the mere thought of his. It had not been enough. Try as they might, the children of the garden had not been able to rid her of his impending rule. And now, in the final hour of her reign, she grew more desperate. He would not know her as she had allowed before.
It was directly from the Word, specifically to this purpose, and of him that she spoke to the gallery, “My children…”
The roar of feathers, ruffling steel wings, cut her speech. She waited impatiently for the clucking and the cawing of the angels in the gallery to settle. Once it did, she continued, “…as my time draws to an end, be sober-minded—be watchful. For your new ruler prowls like a roaring lion, seeking only to devour. For even he disguises himself in darkness as an angel of light.”
She kept him in the corner of her eye as she spoke. If he came at her, she would unleash her wrath, but it would be far better for him to fall back into
his pit at the hands of his own followers … and hers. Cast down at the hands of his faithless would be worse than when she did it herself. She smiled.
Another term—remain in power. It was all a ruler ever wanted.
— LVIII —
DAL COULD SEE that Life was coming at him sideways, but that was his way, not hers. Slithering through the garden on his belly was a trick he had mastered. He had done it time and time again, sneaking in and out of humanity’s dream, convincing them that he did not exist, and better, that she did not either.
But the author of the book was his hole card, his ace of faith. The dark, blasphemous Book of Blood sealed that one’s fate, and the father became one of the Dark Angel’s faithless flock. Not even the Chosen One’s champion of light could change that. She had tried and failed to ferry his soul in and out of the great hall unnoticed, but once the father got his wings, she was captured.
“Bring out our Faith!” Dal yelled to his followers. “Bring me the priest.”
And two golden angels flew from the side of the arena. Each held an arm of the newly minted angel of the Dark Word of the Book of Blood—Faith, bonded and chained around the neck. They dropped Father Faith at the feet of their master and pinned him to the ground with their talons.
Dal would give them the show first—let them see his power over the Dark Word’s author. Then he would kill the only one that could alter his future. It was a simple plan.
He slithered next to Faith, knelt beside him, and snarled. His wings spit fire and his tongue lashed at Faith’s face. “Speak, priest,” he said. Then he looked at the Chosen One. “Tell us our fates.”
The father coughed and yelled and squinted at the pain in his back and arms—talons pierced his newly grown plumage as his captors’ claws squeezed past his steel feathers into his flesh and bones. But he spoke from his own faith, not hers or his. He said, “The judgment of my world is now the judgment of this world … and the rulers of this world will be cast out from it.”
And a roar went through the gallery—the faithless and the faithful cawed and clucked loudly.
And Dal roared at Faith and cawed violently. And flames flew from his wings and rage filled his eyes. He could kill their Faith if he had to, but it would be better for his followers, and hers, to choose to follow. “It is she who shall be cast from the shadow of the great mountain, and I shall put claim on your soul for the next! None can save you, or her, from this fate, for such is the power of the Two Words.”
Faith looked up at the grandstands. The awesome sight of a million angels and what he was about to do made him smile. They were not the only ones who could bend and twist the Word to suit their own purposes. But all his life he had waited to feel the Word—see Heaven. Now that he had arrived, they had both lost their luster.
Faith spoke calmly, loudly, so all could hear. “My brothers and sisters of the Words of the two heavens, you have been deceived … but not by this dark angel alone. For I know your tribulation and your poverty … and the slander of those who say that they are gods and are not, but are truly deities of arrogance and jealousy.”
And Dal raised his wing, preparing to end Faith’s speech—splay out the guts of the father of the book, the new law. The law that was soon to be hers, as well.
Life would be his slave of the flesh and he would know her again and again. And he smiled and he swung at Faith—
— LIX —
RAIN COULD NOT remember her own judgment in the arena, but the judgment of the father seemed to last forever. The Dark Angel, Dal, tormented and tortured his soul, for hours it seemed, before giving him his wings. Then they took him from her and imprisoned him beneath the arena—put him in the Dungeon of the Damned, where the Chosen One and the Dark Angel kept the darkest and the brightest souls. Holding them until they forced them to fight for the sport of the crowd.
Rain knew that, she had been imprisoned there herself—caged behind iron bars covered with Rosary beads and crosses, unable to break free despite her newly bestowed power.
She could barely remember her own soul now—an archangel forced to fight others in the arena. But none had defeated her—none had come close. She cowered in her cage between matches, wondering and wishing that she could remember. But when she finally did, she was deep in the fall with her own father.
It was tougher for angels—they were not programmed like man—but she finally found her own free will and removed the yoke from her neck. Yet once she challenged authority, questioned Life, she was sent to the dungeons and chained for annihilation—the only way to destroy an angel.
Rain looked down at the Rosary beads and cross around her neck. It seemed like a privilege when they put them on her the first time—Life had told her it was a medal. That’s the last thing she remembered before the fall with her father. But when she brought the priest’s soul to get his wings in the arena, two golden angels had attacked her and put the Rosary yoke back on.
Yet after the church, Rain wasn’t the same innocent soul turned angel of bright. She would not be put under the spell again. She would not sleep through The End.
Rain waited in her sweltering dark cage as the golden guardian angel jailers stood watch just outside. She listened to the lust of the crowd in the arena, and then to the dark angel’s speech. Then she heard the father—Faith—give his own.
Rain’s light flickered despair in her cell, for she had failed the only thing that her father had entrusted to her—the safe return of Faith to the garden. It didn’t seem right—punishing the father like she had been punished with headaches in her life. After all, the dark angel himself had told the crowd—her brothers and sisters of light and darkness—that the priest was the author of the new Word. Would he kill the author? How could he?
She was afraid of Dal, but now she was afraid of Life more. When they dragged her from the arena, she could hear him, snarling and barking like a vicious dog at the father. The priest was laid low in the center of the field of diamonds and rubies. She knew now that they both intimidated all into following their rule. Dark angel or Life… They would kill Faith? Kill the father? She would not let them.
— LX —
I LOOK AT Salvation and Fury. I don’t think they understand, but I know what’s coming now. Hell, the father and I planned it. I couldn’t tell Salvation—she would have never let Rain go up there.
I didn’t tell either of them, but I knew neither the father nor Rain were coming back. Those two wouldn’t let them come back. Arrogant, oppressive and angry doesn’t mean stupid. Them or me, though, is a toss-up.
And by now, the father’s soul is an angel and the only thing that the dark bastard could do to him… I try not to think about it.
I hope this all works, because if it doesn’t… Let’s hope it does, because otherwise, ten billion souls… The father? What a waste.
And Salvation says to me, “She’s not coming back, is she.”
She’s not asking. It’s more like, “You better know what the fuck you are doing, because if my baby…” Or some scary shit like that.
“She’ll be okay,” I say. “She’s not our little girl anymore.” And I rub all of the healed holes that the bright angel of light—Rain—punched into me during the last few days. “Trust me, she can take care of herself.”
“For your sake,” Salvation says, “you better hope you’re right.”
— LXI —
WHEN LIFE LET her loose back in the Arena of Reckoning, Rain knew what her master wanted. It was hard for her to resist with the beads around her neck. She blasted Dal with her brightest light yet, before he had a chance to behead the father.
She watched him recoil from the truth of her light. Though he was fire itself—spat from the dark pit of the burning lake of oil—her light burned at his feathers and beat down their flames. And he took flight away to the shadows of the hall and landed on the other side of the arena.
The Chosen One watched, standing next to Rain, hands on her shoulders, grinning as her finest fighte
r yet sent Dal flying for cover. She smiled and then addressed the gallery, “Oh, how you are fallen from Heaven, my Day Star, my sweet son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground… . You who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to Heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the North; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to the far reaches of the pit by my light and my truth.”
Dal snarled at her. Life’s bright champion of light was becoming a nuisance. He had known the warmth of the Chosen One’s grace and favor before. It was fleeting and always ended the same way—cast from her side to rule in the bottomless pit of desperation and death. He knew Rain—her newest lapdog—would suffer the same fate. But for now, she needed to wait her turn.
Dal flew and the great flapping sound of his flaming wings burned through the air above the arena. He swooped at them both and spat a huge stream of fire. The two bright angels split and flew in different directions. Dal followed Rain, shooting fire and trailing black smoke.
With each blast, Rain flitted to avoid it, but Dal flapped his great wings to fan the orange flames and he shot another and another, chasing her around the arena, flying behind her bright shining light.
When she turned and slammed into him, Dal went crashing to the floor in a huge ball of orange fire and black smoke. When the black cloud of soot cleared, he sprang up and flew at her and shot fire from his wings and it engulfed her, and he fired all the feathers he could and Rain crashed to the floor of the arena, losing feathers and blood. And then she was back up and Dal flew at her again.
The Chosen One motioned toward the dungeons—she would not lose her champion this easily. Though she had never been bested since she arrived, Dal might be too much for Life’s unseasoned archangel. She would get more practice.
As quickly as Rain entered, two of the golden guardian angels from the dungeon snatched her from the floor of the arena and dragged her flickering body back through the tunnel, flying her to her cell below.
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