by S. J. West
When I look along the sandy beach, I spot my mother sitting on a black rock jetty holding my tracking device loosely in her right hand. As she stares out across the ocean toward the setting sun, a heady breeze blows over the water and lifts her long blonde hair away from her face. With her still being dressed in her white suit and the wind blowing around her, she is the picture-perfect representation of an angel.
“Can you give me a few minutes alone with my mom?” I ask Ethan. “I would like to talk to her in private.”
“That’s fine,” Ethan says readily, surprising me with his willingness to delay our search for Helena in order to give me a personal moment with my mother.
“Thank you,” I reply, sincerely grateful that he isn’t pushing matters to satisfy his own agenda.
As I walk along the beach, I keep my gaze fixed on my mother. I witness her hand tighten around the handle of the tracking device, ensuring a firmer grip. It’s a sure sign that she knows I’m here without even having to confirm it by looking over at me. She continues to stare out toward the sunset, even as I climb up the rocks and take a seat beside her.
“I didn’t realize you had this stupid thing fitted with a biometric sensor,” she says, flexing her wrist slightly to indicate the tracker.
“I couldn’t very well have someone waltz in and take credit for all my hard work,” I tell her in a joking manner. “It seems like you can’t trust people to keep their hands off your personal property these days.”
My mother smiles wanly and tilts her head down slightly as she takes my jab at her invasion of my privacy good-naturedly.
“Here,” she says, handing me the small black handheld device. “I thought about throwing it into the ocean, but I knew you would just jump in there and fish it out. Sorry about breaking the fingerprint lock for your apartment. I thought it might buy me some time by making you believe a regular burglar broke into your home. I should have known you wouldn’t be fooled by something so simple.”
I accept the tracker from her and simply hold it in my hands, giving her the opportunity to say her piece. I know she’ll want to caution me to be careful as we search for Helena. She’ll tell me the job is too dangerous and that I should just let the War Angels handle things from here on out, but she also knows that I’m not someone who leaves a job half finished. I need to see this through. I need to know how the story ends.
“Just be careful, Jules,” she says in a resigned voice, averting her gaze from the spectacle of this planet’s sunset to look into my eyes. “Helena was unstable before; now she’s completely unhinged. She isn’t in complete control of her emotions, and that’s dangerous for anyone who gets around her. Promise me that you’ll let the War Angels handle her. Don’t try to be a hero, because it might just cost you your life.”
“I’m always careful,” I remind her. “You know that.”
“Yes, but you’ve never had to deal with someone as powerful as Helena either.”
“Uncle Enis told me and Ethan what she did to that planet your friend used to live on. I wish you had told me that story before.”
“Would it have stopped you from searching for her?” she asks doubtfully.
I shake my head. “No. I guess it wouldn’t have, but it tells me how much Helena still loves Cade. That information might be useful when the time comes to ask her to give up the baby. She might do it if she believes it will protect his child.”
“You can’t reason with a creature like her, Jules. She isn’t rational like most normal people. The fact that she was able to find a way to love someone other than herself is still something I can’t quite fathom. Hell wasn’t meant to become a living, sentient being. It was only supposed to be a repository of power for Lucifer to use as he saw fit. Sure, she was able to decimate that planet with just the power of her grief, but what will she be able to do if she consciously focuses all of her energy on purpose? She has the potential to obliterate entire solar systems.”
“You really believe she’s that powerful?”
“I think she has the potential to be, yes. Right now, she’s too distraught and hormonal to concentrate on such an endeavor, but after the birth, I fear she may doom us all. The more worlds she destroys, the more powerful she will become. I think that was proven after she killed all of those people in Virga, and that was just one cloud city. She’s probably thought about the destruction she can cause now, but her grief has been keeping her at bay. Once the baby is born, there won’t be anything to stop her from gaining more power for herself.”
“To what end?”
“To end the universe and all life in it. That was Lucifer’s goal in the beginning. I’m sure that remains Helena’s goal now.”
“But won’t destroying the universe destroy her too?”
“Do you honestly think she cares about that anymore? She might even welcome obliteration.”
“But what about her child? She can’t wipe out the universe without ending his life too.”
“I think her love for the baby may be our only hope. Either that or the final nail in all of our coffins.”
Well, that seemed like an odd thing for my mother to say.
“What makes you think his birth might end up dooming us?” I ask her.
“If the War Angels take the child away from her by force, why should she care what happens to him? They’ll never let her see him again. That’s not something she will be able to handle emotionally. I think it would simply drive her deeper into madness and cause her to act out violently.”
“Ethan’s pretty determined to take the baby away from her,” I say, looking back over to where he stands watching us from afar. The distance is too great for him to hear what we’re saying, but even if he could, I’m not sure he would change his mind about taking Cade’s son away from Helena. Odds are he and the others have discussed the possible outcomes of forcing Helena to give up her child. They obviously believe what they’re doing is still the best course of action.
“I don’t really care about them or anyone else in the universe, Jules,” my mother says, reaching out one of her hands for me to take. “All I care about is you.”
As I twine the fingers of my hand with hers, I say, “You know I’ll be careful, and after hearing what you think might happen, I’ll see what I can do to help the situation. I’m not sure any of them will listen to me, but I’ll at least give them my thoughts on the matter.”
“Just try to stay away from Helena if at all possible, Jules. Stay safe, if not for yourself, then for me.”
I see my mother look at my hair and my clothes with a critical eye, like all mothers do to their daughters.
“You might want to rethink the grunge look you have going on though,” she advises me. “No one is going to take you seriously looking like someone who just spent the night on the street.”
Self-consciously, I use both of my hands to tuck the sides of my long hair behind my ears.
“I might be able to talk Ethan into taking me back home to shower and change clothes,” I say.
“I’m sure he would appreciate that,” my mother replies with a little scrunch of her nose as if to say I stink to high heaven.
I know I’m not lemony fresh, but come on, I can’t possibly smell that bad.
“Okay, Mom. I get the hint,” I say.
It seems like it doesn’t matter how old I get, a part of me will always want to please my mother.
There’s one more thing I need to do before I leave this world. I hold the tracking device up to look at the blank screen. Involuntarily, I hesitate before turning it on and allowing it to scan the iris of my eye to activate. What are the odds of finding Helena on the first planet I search? I’m thinking they’re slim to none, but you never know. Stranger things have happened in the universe.
I take a deep breath in a vain attempt to ease my tenseness and help steady my nerves. I squeeze the handle on the tracking device to switch it on while holding the screen up to my right eye so the scanner can unlock my security measures. Once
I’m in, I watch as three little red dots light up sequentially on the screen, letting me know the device is scanning the planet for the tracer’s unique signal. If Helena is here, they’ll all blink green at the same time before giving me the direction and exact distance of my target. I find myself holding my breath, awaiting the results of the search.
When the words “no signal” pop up on the screen, I feel my body instantly relax. After the talk I just had with my mother, I don’t feel like I’m ready to come face to face with Helena just yet.
“She’s not here,” I tell my mother, unable to hide the relief I feel.
“A small blessing, I suppose. Just remember what I’ve told you and be careful,” she begs me. “I love you, Jules. You’re my heart. I can’t live without you.”
“I love you too, Mom,” I say, leaning in and giving her a hug around the shoulders. “I promise to be careful when we run into Helena.”
“I guess that’s all that I can ask from you,” my mom replies, sounding resigned to the fact that she won’t be able to change my mind.
I step off the rocks to walk back over to Ethan.
As soon as he sees me heading toward him, he begins to walk too in order to shorten the distance more quickly.
“Hey! I’m not getting a signal for Helena here,” I say once I’m within shouting distance of him. “Before we go to another planet, would you mind making a small detour and taking me back to my apartment for a little while?”
“Can I ask why?”
I stop just a couple of feet away from Ethan, because now I’m paranoid my body odor might offend his sense of smell.
“My mother suggested that I go tidy up before I travel around the universe with you,” I say. “I haven’t showered in a couple of days, and apparently it’s showing … and smelling.”
Ethan grins, looking rather amused by my frankness but refrains from outright laughing at my predicament.
“I think we can spare a few minutes for personal hygiene purposes,” he replies diplomatically.
He closes the distance between us and takes hold of one of my arms, phasing us directly to the living room of my apartment.
“I would tell you to make yourself at home, but I think the best I can offer right now is find yourself somewhere clean to sit while you wait.”
“Actually,” he says hesitantly, “I would like to return to Cirrus before we leave. Will you be all right here by yourself since the lock on your door is broken?”
“Oh yeah, I’ll be fine,” I assure him with an unworried wave of my hand. “The people in this building are nice. They won’t just barge in on me. Go do what you need to do. I should be ready in about thirty minutes. Is that enough time for you?”
“Plenty. I’ll be back before then,” he promises.
Ethan phases, and I head directly to my bedroom. I quickly shed my clothes and walk into the connecting bathroom. While I wait for the water in the shower to warm up, I look at my reflection in the mirror above the vanity and physically cringe at what I see. My hair is as limp as a noodle, and my normally clear blue eyes are bloodshot red. With all that going for me and my normally pale skin, I remind myself of a zombie. I bare my teeth in the mirror like a fiend on the prowl and quickly discover I need to brush my teeth too. I’m pretty sure I have a piece of ham from breakfast stuck in between my top front teeth.
“Snap out of it, Jules,” I berate my reflection. “You can do better than this.”
After properly chastising myself for my unkempt appearance, I step into the warmth of a welcoming shower and begin the disinfection process of my hair and skin.
It takes me about twenty minutes to shower, put some makeup on to conjure the illusion that I’m a real girl, and find a clean pair of jeans and a gray three-quarter sleeve shirt in the pile my mother left on the floor when she demolished my closet. I really don’t have time to do anything about the mess my apartment is in though. Right now, I have to help a handsome War Angel go steal Hell’s baby away from her.
Who in the world thought that this would be how my day turned out? Oh well, at least I’m officially filthy rich. There’s an orphanage downtown that will definitely reap a financial reward from all my hard work.
I grab my cell phone and call Uncle Enis to ask him to come over sometime during the day and replace the fingerprint scanner my mother broke earlier. I would rather leave my apartment locked up while I’m gallivanting across the universe with my angelic escort. He promises to take care of it for me within the next hour and lock it up once he’s finished. After that, I walk back into the living room and discover miracles really can happen in modern times.
As if by magic, all of my possessions have been put back in their original place. In fact, the room looks cleaner now than when I left it yesterday.
Ethan is just setting down a framed photograph of me and Timothy on the glass end table by the couch when I enter. It’s a picture of the two of us when we were in kindergarten together. When he hears me enter the room, Ethan turns around and looks me up and down.
“You look refreshed,” he says, obviously pleased to know that I can in fact groom myself properly.
“And not like the walking dead?” I joke, knowing his response was meant to be complimentary without sounding rude about the state of my appearance earlier.
I let my gaze slowly travel around the living room and can’t help but smile at how nice it looks.
“Thank you for doing all of this,” I say, truly impressed by his act of kindness. I’m sort of at a loss for words on how to tell Ethan how happy he’s made me. Then my inner devil whispers in my ear that all may not be what it seems. “Do you mind me asking if you had an ulterior motive for being so nice? Is there something that you want from me?”
“I didn’t clean to soften you up, if that’s what you’re implying,” Ethan is quick to say, looking somewhat miffed that I questioned his motives for being nice. “But there is a request I’m supposed to relay to you from Empress Anna.”
“Does this have to do with my money?” I ask, crossing my arms in front of me, waiting for his response. “Because if she’s reneging on the deal …”
“She has no intentions of backing out of the agreement you made with Malcolm,” Ethan tells me, sounding slightly annoyed that my thoughts were immediately negative ones. “You’ll get your money. All she wants is for you to come to the palace and meet with her so she can give it to you in person.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling stupid for accusing the empress of something that probably never even crossed her mind. Add in the fact that I just proved to Ethan that I am the money-grubbing mongrel he believes me to be and you have the makings of an awkward situation. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that. I’m just not used to people doing nice things for me without wanting me to reciprocate the favor. I apologize.”
“That’s all right,” Ethan says hesitantly, but I can tell he’s not sure what to think of me now, and for some reason, I care about the way he sees me.
“I plan to give most of the money away,” I blurt out. The sentence sounded a lot better in my head. Spoken out loud, it makes me sound like I’m trying to justify my earlier outburst. I think a better explanation is required to smooth out this situation. “There’s an orphanage not far from here that I plan to donate most of my earnings to. It’s the one I probably would have ended up in if Mom and Uncle Enis hadn’t taken on the responsibility of raising me.”
“Did it ever feel awkward to be raised by angels?” Ethan asks sincerely.
I shake my head. “No. They’ve just always been my guardians. I’ve never known anything else.”
“It’s nice that you want to give your money to the orphanage,” he says with an understanding grin, “but it really wasn’t necessary for you to tell me.”
I sigh. “I know. As soon as I said it, I realized how lame it sounded, but I didn’t want you to think that I was doing all of this just for myself. I do plan to keep some of the money but not a lot. As you ca
n see,” I say, taking a cursory glance around my apartment, “I don’t need that much to get by.”
“I don’t either,” he tells me. “Sometimes I wish I lived in the down-world on Earth instead of Cirrus. Things just seem so much simpler there. Whenever I get the chance to take some time for myself, I like to go to the surface and camp out underneath the stars. I’m always amazed by how many different worlds my father made. I have access to all of the inhabitable planets through the Nexus, but I still haven’t been able to visit them all.”
“Speaking of planets,” I say, “which ones will we be going to first?”
“I have a few in mind.” Ethan looks me up and down. “Some of them are rather cold though. I would advise bringing along a jacket.”
“Okay, I’ll go grab one,” I say, heading to my bedroom again. While I’m in there, I retrieve not only my black jacket from off the floor but also the tracking device from my bed before heading back into the living room. When I return, I ask, “When exactly does Empress Anna want to meet with me?”
“She said anytime tomorrow would be fine. Her schedule will be free.”
“Should I take something there when I go see her?” I ask.
“Like a gift of some kind?” Ethan inquires uncertainly.
“Yeah. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with royalty? Bring them a tribute when you visit them?”
“Considering the fact that she’ll be giving you fifty gold bars, I believe anything you give her in return would automatically seem a bit trivial in comparison.”
“Ah, you make a good point there,” I admit as I put on my jacket. “So what’s the name of the first planet we’re going to?”
“It’s called Laed-i. All of the planets I want to visit today have humanoid populations who are either involved in a world war or on the brink of one.”
“And why exactly would we want to go to planets like that first?” I ask. The idea of walking into a potential battle zone doesn’t sound too smart to me.
