“I just know, okay?” she said. “I never know these things until I know them. I was made to create life. Sustain it, nourish it, save it. If I was doing this for fun I’d be stabbing you in the heart. Goliath died for you—”
“Oh, Christ. Really? Not another one. No. Bad enough I have to hear about the kid dying for everyone on Earth,” I held my hand out. “A tiny cut, right?” Here I was, ready to bleed for Eve, and what was it going to get me? She’d probably say “thanks” and leave it at that. Somehow, for me, even that would be a reward.
“You think anyone’s going to write books about this? I’m about to lay down my body for someone, but I guarantee you this will get twisted up in Heaven, they’ll just say I was—”
“Would you… please …shut up and lay your hand on his chest,” Eve said. “This has to happen fast. Lenny’s essence will keep your blood fresh for a few seconds, if we’re lucky.” She reached out and took my hand, her thumb resting inside of my palm. Her pulse was strong, life-giving, the beat of Genesis.
“Just a pinprick, right?”
“ Baby .” She gently laid my hand into Lenny’s muck, resting over Goliath’s heart. “Thank you, Morningstar. I can’t – is that Monkey?”
I turned to look and she hammered the dagger down, through my hand, through Lenny’s sweat, and into Goliath’s chest. The result was instantaneous, the giant leapt to his feet with my hand pinned to his chest like a butterfly, the faint gurgle of Lenny’s essence gushing around his chest muffled only by his renewed heartbeat.
Did I mention that I was screaming like a wee small boy who discovered a spider in his knickers as I was whipped around by Goliath’s frantic motions?
Goliath closed a trembling hand around my forearm to hold me still. “Hold still. Gonna hurt yerself,” he grumbled. He plucked the dagger from his chest, my hand still impaled, and set me on the ground.
I tried to pull the dagger free, but even the slightest tap on the handle sent waves of unbelievable pain through my hand. I managed to clutch my wrist and scream at Eve. “Oh…you…LIAR!”
“I’m sorry! I’m unable to inflict pain on purpose, you know that!” Eve shouted.
“Well you could have well and truly fucking fooled me! Jeeeeeeeyeeeeeesus Heavenly—”
“Please don’t use His name in vain!” Lenny shrieked.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve got a filthy witch’s dagger stuck through my good angelic Heavenly damned hand and I’m bleeding all over the God-shitting ground and you’re worried about my cocking language?! Pull it out, you wanker!”
Eve tiptoed to my side, trying to reach for the dagger. I wouldn’t let her touch it. “You could have just warned me, you know! Count of three, something like that?”
“I’m so sorry, if I thought about it, I couldn’t have gone through with it!” She looked over my shoulder. “Oh, is that Monkey?”
Before I could retort, my arm was seized in a crushing grip. With a snap, Goliath yanked the dagger free. Unfortunately, he took my hand with it. “Um,” Goliath said, proffering my hand like a cocktail wiener on a toothpick. “Guess I pulled a little too hard. Oopsy-daisy.”
I was gushing like a fountain now. I prepared a scream of agony that would rattle the very depths of Hell. Before I could unleash it, Eve grasped the stump of my wrist with both hands and breathed onto my flesh.
And it all stopped. Aside from a weird tingly phantom-feeling of fingers that weren’t there, I was free from pain. I stared at my left hand impaled by the dagger, writhing in Goliath’s fingers like some mutant scorpion trying to fight for its life. Now would have been a perfect time to faint. Just take a few minutes off, let my system regroup, start all over again. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. This is Hell, after all. Even I must suffer for my sins.
Goliath carefully pulled the dagger free and held the hand towards Eve. “Think ya can save it?”
The hand was already draining of color, veins standing out like thin spreading ink stains. I looked towards Eve hopefully. Surely if she could fix a post-amputation wrist by breathing on it, she could do something as simple as re-attach a severed hand.
She shook her head. “You’re divine. We’d need the blood of someone at your level, or someone greater.”
I looked at Lenny. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“What do you mean?” he was laying on his side, one cheek in the dirt, definitely looking spent.
“Part of your essence helped bring that big palooka back. Did you have him rip off my hand to get back at me?”
“You ungrateful son of a bitch!”
“Me?! You’ve been waiting for a chance to strike, biding your time, you Heavenly snake. Oh, sure nobody suspects the angels, but I’m on to you! I invented these dirty tricks!”
As Lenny and I argued, Eve picked up my hand. It went limp, but appeared to have a little life left in it. She approached Lenny. “Eve, be a dear and set me upright so I can properly deal with this…this…”
Before he could finish, she yanked him up by the hair, licked the stump of my hand, and jammed it into the bottom of his neck.
“Hey!” I shouted.
“Hey!” Lenny concurred.
“Hey!” Eve cut us both off, wiping my blood from her chin. “Your hand stays alive this way. Lenny, you get some mobility back. And we get to continue our mission, and I can get back to my husband and the hell away from all of you. The sooner the better!”
“Oh, God, I can feel it working into my neck,” Lenny goggled at me. “It’s like I’ve touched everything you’ve ever touched. I’m going to be sick.”
“No, you’re not. Now excuse me while I go puke my guts out.” Eve tossed Lenny to the ground as she wandered off behind some nearby trees. My fingers sprang into action, cushioning his landing. He began to scurry around the dirt.
“I just got a manicure,” I moaned.
Lenny rolled onto the top of his head and extended my middle finger at me. “Here’s what I think of your manicure!”
“What the Hell is all that noise?” Monkey approached, wearing a ladies’ silk robe and little else. Hecate was behind him, her arms folded, clothes disheveled.
“This better be good,” Monkey growled as he drew close to me, “Her personalities are all over the place, and I was busy keeping one in place, if you catch my drift. I don’t get Heavenly tail like this just any day, and I’m Monkey ! A few more minutes and I could have had her too tired to – Holy Shit, where’s your hand?”
“A botched resurrection attempt,” I grumbled.
Monkey’s gaze bounced from me, to Eve, to Goliath. “Looks to me like it worked.”
Lenny scrambled forward in the dust and made a low curtsy to Hecate. “Your Majesty,” he began.
Hecate burst out laughing, a lusty, growling peal that would probably turn most men on like nothing else. “Come inside, guys. I’m so sorry about what happened. I’ll make you some tea!” She winked a shining green eye at me and skipped towards her tent.
“The Ghost Queen’s gone for now?” I asked Monkey. “Sleeping off the effects of the legendary magic of the Seven Hands Technique. You know how I roll.”
“Whatever.”
We made our way to the tent.
* * *
Hecate’s tiny tent was one of my better creations. You think she’d remember and appreciate that I made such an amazing place for her. Shabby on the outside, yes. Once you lifted back the muslin flaps at the entrance, a wide, palatial staircase led upwards to a marble landing. High vaulted ceilings, silks and carpets everywhere. Fireflies lighting the rooms, candles, incense, you name it. It almost – almost – made me jealous of Monkey for getting the girl.
“These are dark times,” Hecate said, leading us into a large sitting room, “I don’t know how long I can stay before one of the others arrives, so we should be quick about this.”
“Pardon me for asking, but what are you talking about?” Lenny asked, hopping down the stairs on my fingers. He refused to be carried, and had no rega
rd for the calluses he was probably going to leave on me. “The whole time we’ve been here, it’s only been us and you. You attacked us.”
“No, that was the Ghost Queen. She walks the line between the living world and the land of the dead. She is but one of many residing here,” she rested a hand on her heart. “You may call me Catie. I’m the nice one.”
“Riiiiight,” Lenny skittered a few steps further back from Hecate. I couldn’t blame him. We were dealing with a very fragile situation here.
“Here we are.” We turned the corner and we were in a large den, all pillows and veils. There was some kind of ambient light in the room, but I couldn’t see where it came from. “I’ll start some water for tea,” Hecate said. “All of you get comfortable and we’ll begin.”
We gathered around a small glowing heater. Goliath harrumphed and leaned against a corner of the room. His face was hidden by the hanging silks. His fingers were busy gathering some of the loose draping and braiding it into a noose. I saw a glint in his eyes; he was weighing his odds on repaying Hecate for the killing blow. I raised an eyebrow at him and gently shook my head. He got my signal, let out a sigh and slumped further down. There’d be no payback. Not yet.
“I owe you an apology, Philistine,” Hecate came back into the space with a tray of cups.
“ Him you owe an apology? Him ?” I shouted. “Weren’t you in the process of trying to kill me when you killed him?”
“He’s not dead. And neither are you.”
Goliath looked on the verge of rage. His arm bore an angry, starfish-shaped scar from the dagger. Eve was still a little shaky from her ordeal of raising the dead. Her hair was streaked with shocks of white. Like Goliath, she would be marked for eternity by the experience.
“You could just as easily have stayed outside and helped me save him,” Eve snapped. “What happened to you? Not five nights ago you were over at the diner for late night tea and we were talking like old times.”
“Five cycles ago, Catie was on your hallowed ground. Now, you are on mine,” Hecate said. Her skin grew a shade darker. “Eve. The Spring of Life, the essence. The fates have conspired to remind you of your strength, to hone your core, to prepare you for the way. If you’re too weak to—” Hecate paused for a moment. Her skin lightened and she shook her head. “Whoa! Whoa…sorry about that. Hey, guys, I know you’re pissed with the Ghost Queen, but it would be better if we just didn’t think about her for the moment, okay? Speak of the Devil and he’ll appear…well, you know.”
Hecate reached behind her and produced a wooden bowl. The inside was scorched black, streaked with dried bits of gore, saliva, and who knows what else. She slid it between Eve and I, giving us a self-satisfied smile. Monkey raised an eyebrow at me. I returned the gesture and refocused on the bowl. Then I looked at Hecate, hoping for some clarity. She mistook my look for one of complete understanding. “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?”
“Sure!” I said. “It’s not every day you’re presented with a bowl of dried vomit.”
She snatched the bowl back from the table. “There’s a lot more than vomit in there. I thought you were sensitive.”
“Bah.”
“Sensitive as in perceptively aware . This is a divination bowl. You’ve heard of them, I assume?”
“I thought all that stuff was make-believe. You know, P.R. for the humans, keep ‘em scared straight.”
“That’s how you work, not me,” Hecate sneered.
“So. What does your magic bowl of dried excrement actually say?”
Hecate lifted the bowl and tipped it towards me. “There’s been a massive amount of killing in some of the Asian subcontinent lately. I was trying to find ways to make my job a little easier. I was walking as the Ghost Queen, straddling the line of un/reality, when a shockwave ripped through the entire fabric of being. It was strong enough to break the bonds that hold me together, the bonds that make me who I am. Artemis…I haven’t spoken with her since it happened. The Ghost Queen is in a fury, convinced that everyone is a threat to the security of her line. I’ve been in control a lot more since the incident, when the Queen lets me. The first thing I did, after gathering as many of my selves back to me as I could, was to read the entrails and see what happened. I found some answers in that bowl. Are you aware that the murderous Brothers have returned?”
“Yes. I hope you saw more than that.”
“There’s a girl, she hasn’t been here for long. But they’re trying to use her. Someone is directing them. I saw her pass by here.”
“When?”
“I’ll get to that. She’s long gone. I need to tell you about why I wanted to meet with you.”
“They’re trying to resurrect one of the oldest gods. One of the meanest. I saw his face. I think they were supposed to kill me. That breaking the line of un/reality would give him an easier point to cross back into the Land of the Dead.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Yaotl,” Hecate whispered. “Don’t repeat it. Don’t even think it. Don’t give him the power. He is the adversary, the destroyer.”
“Yeah, so am I, depending on who you ask.”
“In the beginning, He was the universe. He still is, in some aspects. He has so many names. The Aztecs called him Tezcatlipoca or Jaguar. He was the controlling force of the planets, the stars, every living being. Eventually, he got bored. He split into twins and went to war with himself. Quetzlcoatl, the light half, eventually emerged victorious.”
“Oh, that guy? I don’t think we ever met.”
“Sometimes I would see him sleeping as I walked the borders of the Ghostlands. I’d spoken to him a time or two. Jaguar ’s consciousness has been elevated so high that he’s been content to watch the universe and all of Creation expanding. Frankly, even the biggest of cosmic events bore him. He’s simply too smart, too aware, to care about existence. When I saw him last time, right on the edge of un/reality, he was changed. Cursed somehow. He was all rage, all anger, and he was thrashing, looking for a way through. Perhaps it was Artemis’ last act to redirect him, to hold the line and stop him from breaking through. She bought you some time. But you have to stop him. Someone’s working to let him in.”
“So if we find out what’s got him so angry, there’s a chance we can avoid all of this?” I asked.
“If you had the power to take control of everything, would someone be able to talk you out of it?” Eve said.
She had me there. “Any suggestions where to start?”
“We should ask the Tarot,” Hecate replied. She produced a tall deck of cards and set them next to the divination bowl on the table. Something shifted in the tone of her skin, the color of her eyes, and she became irresistible. Everyone wanted to sit next to her. Eve and Monkey nudged closer to Hecate and tried to read the mess inside the bowl. She lifted the deck of cards from the table and passed them around the rim of the bowl, once, twice, then reversed direction and drew a line in the air over the center of the bowl. She smiled and cocked her head to one side, as if the cards had given her permission to continue. She nodded curtly and set the deck on the table.
“Each of you must touch the deck,” she said.
Lenny sprang onto the table as if shot out of a cannon. He scuttled to the deck of cards and stood with my middle finger on the deck. Hecate shook her head. “No, Angel-Head. You must make contact with the deck.”
Lenny reverently removed his finger and bowed until his nose touched the deck. The back of the top card shimmered. Monkey hopped onto the table’s edge and bent to examine the deck, sniffing for any kind of spell or hex that might come back to bite him. Satisfied that it was safe, he swished his tail over the cards. The top card began to pulse, and the intricate design on the back began to move.
Eve and Goliath touched the deck at the same time, and the picture on the back became a swirling sea of mists, the silhouette of a woman dancing somewhere within. All eyes were on me now.
“God, you know I’m going to regret this,” I muttered, and t
apped the top of the deck.
The room vanished. We sat in a formless space before a raised pedestal, a blue void surrounding us. Hecate stood atop the pedestal and occasionally blinked out of existence only to reappear above us in the void, floating and looking down on us. “Thank you, Morningstar,” she said, flickering back to human-size before us. “Give me a moment to prepare for the reading.” She closed her eyes and vanished again. When she reappeared, she was incredibly huge. Her face was the sky, her eyes the size of gigantic orbiting moons. Goliath sprang to his feet and tried to reach for a weapon, but we’d all been disarmed. “Physical violence is not an option on this plane, Philistine,” Hecate said. Her voice was astoundingly quiet coming from a face so large. Her breath stirred the mist around us, filled the space with the scent of lavender. “Were we to battle in this place, we’d be attacking with our souls. That is something I do not wish to do, and something you could never handle. Only one among you could stand it.”
I thought back to the last time I was in this space with Hecate, gliding through these same Heavens. Our souls were active then, but there was no violence or fighting.
“Behold, the deck of your fate,” she said.
The pedestal shrank down into a large table, with a tarot deck standing next to five cards laid out in an all-too familiar fashion. “Oh come on! An upside-down cross? Is that really necessary?” I asked. “It’s things like that that get me associated with your inferior arts.”
“Change your perspective. It’s sideways,” Hecate said. “Sideways. Leaning, broken, collapsed, I still take the blame.”
“A simple reading: one card for each person to touch the deck, and a drawing of one to tell your unified future. The tarot knows many things. I begin by drawing a card for myself.”
Hecate’s face disappeared and the sky was filled with a Victorian painting of a tarot card. It was a man on a raft, heading downriver. A woman sat in front of him, shrouded in blue. The lady had a baby leaning against her. Six swords stood on their tips, surrounding her.
Angel Falls Page 10
