The Wrong Goodbye

by Chris F. Holm

  Though Dumas's words were conversational enough, Psoglav's eye widened in sudden fear, and faster than my own eyes could even register, he recoiled. The blade gone, I raised a sleeve to my bleeding chin and resisted the urge to collapse into a puddle on the floor.

  "My apologies," Psoglav said – to Dumas, though, not to me.

  "Think nothing of it," Dumas replied, the tone of levity in his voice restored.

  "With your permission, boss, I think maybe I should return to my work."

  "Of course, of course," Dumas replied. "The machinery of capitalism stops for no one – not even me."

  We took our leave of Psoglav, and Dumas shut the door behind us. I heard the diesel engine cough and sputter, and then roar to life once more. Soon, the awful racket of the lathe's turning resumed.

  "That Psoglav's a real charmer," I said, dabbing at my chin.

  "Oh, he's a tad excitable, I'll admit, but he's damn good at his job."

  "Not a fan of Danny's, huh?"

  "Seems there's a lot of that going around lately. Although in Psoglav's case, I'm not surprised. Most of the Collectors in my employ can't stay far enough away from him, but Danny? Danny pestered poor Psoglav any chance that he could get. Always asking questions, bugging him to watch the skimming process, and generally following him around like some yippy little toy dog. Maybe Psoglav worries you'll pick up where Daniel left off."

  "He's got nothing to worry about. I'm never going to come work for you" – again, I added mentally – "and what's more, I'm pretty sure you know it. So you wanna tell me what that little dog-and-pony show was really all about?"

  "I just need you to understand the skill required to maintain an operation such as this, and the consequences of any lapse in said skill, so that you can begin to understand the severity of the situation in which we find ourselves."

  I thought back to my showdown with the bugmonster, and let out a single, barking laugh. "I'm pretty sure I understand the severity of my situation."

  "And I'm just as sure you don't. See, Psoglav is a rare breed – a creature of such speed and singleminded focus that you'd think he'd been conjured for the sole purpose of extracting skim from souls."

  "Yeah? And?"

  "And he's the fourth such beast to hold that post."

  "I don't follow."

  "What I'm saying, Sam, is that human souls are as volatile as they are fragile, and that for all of his talent, Psoglav, like his predecessors, is not infallible. Sooner or later, he will slip. Perhaps he'll simply tire of his task, and his attention will wane. Perhaps one of the thousand tiny shards kicked off during the skimming process will find its way around his leather armor and send him on an unintended little trip. Perhaps he'll simply sneeze. It doesn't much matter what winds up causing Psoglav to slip; what matters is that when he does, he'll take this cave and maybe half the canyon with him. Just as his predecessor did to my operation in Nepal, and as his predecessor's predecessor did to the house I ran in Cook, Australia. It's why I'll only ever put a skim-joint at the ass-end of nowhere; I learned my lesson back in San Fran in '06."

  I thought back. "What the hell happened in '06?"

  Dumas laughed. "Sorry, Sammy – sometimes I forget how pathetically short a span you monkeys get to live. I meant 1906. My skimmer cracked that one but good; between the shockwaves and the subsequent fire, over three thousand of your kind perished. Of course, they figured it was an earthquake, and I guess it was, at that – the buffoon cracked that soul so bad he disturbed the very plates beneath the ground, and leveled a city in the process. Since then, I've made it a policy to steer clear of urban centers, and to never, ever start a skim-joint on a fault line."

  "Big of you," I said.

  "Just good business," he replied, oblivious to my biting tone.

  A thought occurred to me. "You said three thousand of my kind were killed that day, but what about your kind? What happens to Psoglav, and to your customers, if this place blows?"

  "You mean do they die? Why, Samuel, are you concerned my little tale might dent your rep as the first to kill a member of the Fallen in millennia?"

  "Hardly. Just didn't square, is all."

  "Oh, come now, you're a resident of hell – what's the harm of copping to the sin of pride? And anyways, your reputation is intact; a cracked soul has never, to my knowledge, killed one of my kind. It does sting like a mother, though, I'll tell you that – the blast can strip flesh from bone and limbs from bodies, and those closest to it usually slink off to a quiet corner of the Depths for a century or so to nurse their wounds and try to grow back what they've lost. Even still, some of them never come back quite right; my San Fran skimmer's blind for good, and the poor bastard's now got the reflexes of a tree sloth."

  "A real heartbreaker, that."

  Something tickled at the back of my mind, and I found myself thinking back to the mess that was last year's Manhattan job. See, what happened was a bigwig seraph by the name of So'enel decided to go rogue and incite a war between heaven and hell. To do so, he conspired to mark an innocent soul for col lection – a major no-no according to the Great Truce – and since it was my handler the shitweasel was conspiring with, I was the one dispatched to do the deed. Lucky, no?

  But even less lucky was Mu'an, the messengerdemon who served as go-between for Lilith and So'enel. Once their plan went south, So'enel endeavored to eliminate any evidence of his involvement – and since Mu'an fell solidly into that category, the seraph sent a cadre of his angelic lackeys to shut him up for good. They caught up to Mu'an at Grand Central, and unleashed a holy fury the likes of which the modern world had never seen. Mu'an escaped with his life – barely – but the force of the angels' attack nearly wiped the terminal off the map. To this day, the government considers the blast an act of terror, and no fewer than three dozen extremist groups took credit for it. I wondered how many would take credit for the ferry boat in Maine that foundered a couple days back after an explosion ripped a hole in the hull and killed half the passengers on board; just the latest in a growing list of angel-on-demon violence.

  "The blast that results from cracking a soul," I said, "it sounds a lot like an angel's wrath to me."

  At that, Dumas cocked his head, and then he smiled. "I suppose you would have some experience in that regard, wouldn't you? Quite the bit of business you got mixed up with in New York. Yes, I suppose they aren't dissimilar – both unleash the power of the Maker's might, His grace, His wrath. In many respects, the human soul is a far greater font of power than even the greatest seraph can tap into – after all, you monkeys are, for reasons that to this day escape me, the Maker's most favored little playthings. But humans lack the capacity to channel such power, and even the best of you are touched by sin, which blunts the damage to my kind. An angel's wrath," he said, as if trying on the word for size, "is more directed, more controlled… and because it's not occluded by darkness, far more deadly to their Fallen brothers."

  "Why are you telling me all this? I don't believe for a second you've even the slightest affection for me, and yet here you are, pulling back the curtain when you probably should've sent me packing. So what gives? What's your angle?"

  Dumas sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. For the first time since I'd arrived, he looked concerned. "My angle? Same as it ever was, Sammy. I'm a businessman, pure and simple, and as such, I have to protect my interests. And right now, Interest Numero Uno is keeping my ass off the white-hat's hit-list. I don't know if you've been keeping score, but it's open season on the Fallen out there. Our Chosen brothers are spoiling for a fight, and they'll jump on any excuse to send a little wrath our way. Normally, that's no concern a mine. I run a quiet operation here – keep my head down and my profile low. Only all the sudden here comes Danny Young with a yen to misbehave, and the more ruckus he makes, the worse things're gonna get for me. See, whether or not he's operating on my behalf, the fact remains he was once in my employ, and as such was privy to all manner of sensitive information – informatio
n that, left uncontained, could lead the feather-and-harp brigade right back to me. So when you wandered in from the desert asking questions about all things Danny, I figured shit – why not point Sammy in the right direction, see if maybe he can catch him? He does, and that's two problems off my plate. Problem Two is you, in case you ain't been keeping up."

  "Hold up a sec. You say you wanna point me in the right direction – does that mean you know where Danny is?"

  "Would that I did, Sammy; it'd save us both a hell of a lot of trouble. But I'm pretty sure I do know what he's planning, and more importantly, what'll happen if he succeeds. If that happens, the stupid bastard's gonna unleash a disaster of Biblical proportions – one that'll make my skimmer's slip in San Francisco and the subsequent destruction look like a goddamn kitten sneezing."

  "OK then, spill: what the hell is Danny playing at?"

  Dumas answered my question with one of his own: "Tell me, Sammy – what do you know about the Brethren?"

  25.

  "The Brethren?" I repeated. "Not much. I mean, I've heard the stories. A group of Collectors who, centuries ago, banded together and found a way to break hell's bond of servitude. Of course, they're nothing but a fairy tale – a Collector's pipe dream."

  "A fairy tale," Dumas said, smiling. "Right."

  "I miss something funny?"

  "Funny? No, not too," he said. "Come on – this little tour of ours ain't done."

  Dumas led me deeper into the cavern. The corridor, so broad at its outset, dwindled until it was more fissure than tunnel, and could no longer accommodate the intermittent torches that had marked the way thus far. Dumas snatched the last of them from the wall – a concession to my human eyes, no doubt – and took me by the elbow, dragging me reluctantly into the narrow, winding pass.

  The walls pressed close as, sideways, we squeezed through. A time or two, stone outcrops dug into my back and chest as I forced myself through a particularly narrow spot or around a tricky corner, Dumas's light all but disappearing ahead of me as, despite his apparent girth, he pressed onward without incident. When that happened, I was left alone with my thoughts, my fears, my shallow hitching breath – all three of them threatening to spiral out of control and leave me panicked, trapped, damned to be stuck here in the darkness until the clock ran out and the bugbeast came to claim me. But that thought alone was enough to keep me moving, and eventually, the passage widened. Not much, mind you – the walls in this new, smaller chamber were maybe three feet across, and the ceiling here was low enough I had to stoop – but after the sidewalk-crack we'd slipped through to get here, it may as well have been Montana.

  As I cleared the fissure, brushing filth from my lapels, Dumas turned to me and smiled. For a moment, with the torchlight glinting off his eyes and yellowed teeth, he looked every bit the demon that he was. "Welcome to the monkey house," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "The monkey house. This is where I stash the Collectors in my employ. Out of the way, so they can fling their poo or whatever it is they do without troubling my Fallen employees or bothering the clientele."

  I looked around. By the torchlight, it looked like the cavern continued on another seven feet or so and then terminated. Three low openings, each shored up with rotted four-by-fours, extended outward from the room on either side – two left, one right. I ducked my head to see inside the one beside me. It was no larger than a coat closet, and apart from a heap of blankets in one corner, it was empty.

  "They're rarely occupied," called Dumas, his stentorian voice echoing off the close stone walls. "Save for Danny, none of my Collectors ever had much interest in sticking 'round once the job was done. Not all of them are as eager as Danny was to sample the product, so most of them are outta here as soon as the soul they brought's done processing. But Danny was another matter. Danny liked to stick around. I always figured he came back here to fix, that the ramblings on the wall were nothing more than skiminduced delusion. Stuff's awful to come off of – for your kind in particular – and it'll fill your head with all manner of wacky shit you'd be hard-pressed to explain once you finally touch down. Truth is, I never thought much of it. But you factor in these ramblings with his interest in watching Psoglav ply his trade and his theft of the Varela soul, and a pattern emerges." He gestured toward the doorway furthest back. "That's the one you want. That's where Danny staked his claim."

  Once I crawled inside, I could see why. It was bigger by half than the other I'd seen, and set a little ways apart, providing some small measure of privacy. At first, of course, the room was black as pitch, but as Dumas shimmied in behind me, his torch's light crawled up the walls – first illuminating the bare military cot that took up much of the chamber's floor, and then the tattered photo of two strangers I presumed were he and Ana that rested on the framework of the door. And as the light climbed toward the ceiling, I realized the walls of Danny's chamber were covered with writing – writing of all shapes and sizes, in a dozen alphabets and at least twice that many languages. I recognized Arabic and Hebrew, Sanskrit and Akkadian – all scratched onto the wall with charred bits of wood or pointed rock – but most of the tongues were foreign to me. They looked to be the work of a crazy person, with no rhyme or reason to their placement – some scrawled over older snippets, some halted halfway through; some flecked with blood as if the scribe's hand had split at the effort required to mark the stone. It was hard for me to imagine Danny had done all this. It was hard to imagine anyone could have.

  "What is all this?" I muttered.

  "Folklore, mostly. Tales transcribed centuries ago from the oral tradition. Or, more accurately, fragments of tales. See, these stories were thought lost to your kind, and for good reason – the forces of heaven and hell aligned to purge them from this Earth, for fear of the damage they could cause."

  "And these stories," I said, "they're about the Brethren?"

  "Yes. Most of it's nonsense, of course – an oblique passing reference, a half-heard conversation written down a hundred years after the fact. But some of them are quite specific. Dates. Places. Descriptions of rites the likes of which I've never seen. And it's the latter, of course, that our Daniel seemed most interested in – they're the ones writ large across the wall."

  My eyes settled on one black char inscription scrawled atop all the others, and wrapping around three quarters of the room. The script itself was crude and angular, though if that was Danny's doing, or the appearance of the language itself, I didn't know.

  "What is this," I asked, "Phoenician?"

  "Close," Dumas replied. "It's Ancient Aramaic. Predates Biblical Aramaic by nearly five hundred years."

  "Can you read it?"

  The look he gave me, you'd think I just insulted his mother. "It says: 'As the worlds drew thin, the unclean spirit was cleaved, which in turn summoned forth a Deluge that purged the Nine of sin, and cast their bonds of slavery aside.' Or, you know, something to that effect."

  "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

  Another look, this one like I'm the kid in class who eats the paste. "What does it sound like it means?"

  "It sounds like Danny aims to crack Varela's soul and wind up a normal boy," I replied – glib, dismissive.

  Only Dumas didn't take it that way, which, truth be told, kind of freaked me out. "Yeah, that's what it sounded like to me, too. Only it don't say 'crack,' it says 'cleave.' As in fucking rend asunder."

  "The hell's the difference?"

  "The difference, Sam, is all the difference. That shit that went down in San Fran? That was on account of a 'crack.' A mean one, yeah – the worst I've ever seen – but the soul we cracked was only damaged, not destroyed. I think that Danny's aiming to destroy Varela's soul, and that's a whole other ball of wax. We're talking split-the-atom bad. Worse, in fact. 'Cause 'cleave' ain't the scariest word up on that wall."

  "OK, I'll bite – what is?"

  "Deluge."

  "Deluge." Me, playing parrot; skeptical.

  "Yep."
r />   "Like, the Deluge? As in Noah and a giant fucking boat?"

  "The very same," he said. "Well, more or less."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning I don't know crap about some bearded jackass collecting zebras or whatever, but there ain't a civilization worth a damn that doesn't have a flood myth of some kind. To this day, Hindus tell the tale of Manu, who saved Mankind from the rising waters of an apocalyptic flood. Ancient Mesopotamians had Utnapishtim, a man who survived the Deluge only to be granted eternal life. You people got that Noah deal. Point is, the particulars may not agree, but when you add up everything that does agree, it looks to be that once upon a time there was a bigass flood."

  "And you're telling me it was the Brethren and some weird-ass soul-cleaving mojo that caused it? What about the whole 'God sent the flood to purge the Earth of Man's wickedness' thing?"

  "Hey, I ain't sayin' for sure that's not how it went down. Like I said, this shit's been buried deep by the good guys and the bad guys both, and the only folks who've got the juice to answer that are like a mile above my pay grade. But it seems to me if your precious God sent the flood to wash away Man's wickedness, he did a pretty fucking lousy job. And as far as the whole soul-mojo angle, it's not as crazy as it sounds. All magic worth a damn requires sacrifice – an infusion of life's essence to get the gears a-turnin'. That's why the mystics of your species always use blood to kick-start their little parlor tricks. Sometimes, sure, animal sacrifice will do, but you and I both know human blood is where it's at if you really wanna get anything done. And a feat of the kind we're talking about – breaking the bonds of eternal damnation, dropping off the radar of heaven and hell both – that'd require more juice than even a genocide's worth of blood could muster. That'd require real power. Power like what'd be unleashed if you destroyed a human soul."