Angel Falls

by Michael Paul Gonzalez

  “You should totally talk to Ninja Gal.”

  Cain looked at Abel. “Next time I get to pick the vessel.” Turning his attention back to Aspen, “And who, pray tell, is the Ninja Gal?”

  “He hooked me up with all of these spirit balls, you know? He could totally get you like whatever you need and stuff? I gotta go, seriously, ‘cause I’m s’posed to get across the desert.”

  “You’ll get there. Sooner than you think. Ninja Gal indeed…” Aspen pushed back in her seat, unable to move as the two beings approached looking every bit like the blazing eyes of a nightmare dragon approaching from his dark cave. She could smell flesh burning, hear the sizzle of muscle and sinew as it was scorched, regenerated, and scorched again.

  Aspen tried to let her mind wander to happier things: shopping, cars, Yappy. But there was only the danger in front of her, the all-consuming fire. And besides, thinking of Yappy now only made her sad. She could still hear his faint whine as he went under the waves for the final time.

  “What’s that noise?” Cain asked. Apparently, he heard Yappy’s whine too.

  With a roar like thunder, the spear of the Requiter struck the ground between Aspen’s legs, crackling with blue energy. Aspen reached out to grasp it as Cain and Abel took a step back.

  “Well, I’d say it bonded with her like it was supposed to. Do we run now?”

  “It’s okay,” Cain said to his brother. “It’s not like she knows how to use it.”

  Abel slid into the space between Aspen and the spear. The smoke wafting from his chest was like incense to her, drowsing her senses. He laid a hand gently on her lower jaw and pressed his chest into her face. Aspen gasped in fear, precisely as Abel had hoped. Her eyes fluttered backwards as she inhaled his smoke.

  She could see his ribs, see his heart pulsing, feel her heart exploding in fear. But all she could do was breathe him in, and with each breath, her vision clouded. She began to float, upwards, out of the cave, into the clouds, beyond the stratosphere and towards the neon lights and open walkways of the most beautiful shopping mall she’d ever seen.

  In reality, she hadn’t moved an inch. A thin stream of fire poured from Abel’s heart into her mouth and nostrils. Her face remained unburned.

  “No, let’s not give her the chance to discover she can wield the spear. At least, not until she knows us a little better. Let her see things from our side.”

  Abel relaxed his grip on her jaw. Aspen remained slack, swallowing Hellfire and dreaming of shopping.

  Chapter Eleven

  I heard Cain’s last words echoing in my head: “I think we’re being watched.”

  It felt like I’d been harpooned in the gut. Something ripped me away from the scene and sent me crashing back into my body. “I know where we need to go,” I blurted, sitting up straight. “What’s that noise?”

  It was dark. The only shapes I could make out were a chair and a swatch of silks against the far wall. I tried to sit up and almost retched.

  “Sit still,” a voice, familiar. Caring yet surly. Eve.

  I blinked a couple of times and she was next to me, touching her cool palm to my forehead.

  “You got ambushed. I was worried we were going to lose you.”

  My eyes were adjusting to the light. I could see Eve had changed again. The twin shocks of white hair she’d earned saving Goliath had some new neighbors.

  “Ahh shit, did I die?”

  “Not even close. You’re fine,” she said, directing her gaze to the far wall. The low noise began again, like a broken church organ emitting a horrid low note, followed by a wet squelching of ancient bellows. Breath that was ragged around the edges. Those weren’t silks on the wall.

  “sssss…sorry…”

  Hecate was leaning back against the wall at an improbable angle. She reached a hand towards me. “Held her back as long as I could…Ghost Queen is strong…maybe dead now…”

  One of the many candelabras that had been decorating the room was now protruding from her stomach. She wrapped a hand around it. She tried to tug on it and let out a sharp squeal of pain. There was no blood.

  “I healed her, but she’s going to be in pain for a while,” Eve said.

  “Let her down!” I started to move towards Hecate.

  “…leave me be…it’s not safe…”

  “She asked us to leave her up there. Goliath is outside. He feels terrible about the whole thing. Thinks he stabbed the wrong personality.”

  “How’s Monkey taking it?”

  “He’s working on the car, trying to keep his mind off of it. She’ll be okay, I’ve seen to that. But…” Eve’s eyes teared up. I moved to comfort her, but she pulled away. “We have to leave her.”

  “We never planned to bring her with us.”

  “No. We have to leave her there. On the wall. I found some life in the roots in the wall. They’ve wrapped around the other end of the candelabra, and Goliath put it in deep. We have to leave her hanging. Maybe when we come back. If we come back this way…” Eve broke off and ran from the room.

  I knew this would be hard on her. She needed nature to thrive, living things, flora and fauna. There was nothing out here for her. To top it off, she’d probably used a lot of her reserves to keep Catie alive and keep her pinned to the wall. She was near exhaustion, and her best wasn’t good enough. She had to leave another being suffering. I knew how she felt. I used to have the same guilt pangs when I started running this place. It’s half the reason I stopped playing by His rules. It was eating me alive.

  “MmmmMorningstar?” Hecate asked. She drew a breath, a sharp whistle came from her throat.

  I turned to face her, keeping a respectful distance. If Catie told us to stay back, there had to be good reason. “Catie, what the Hell happened?”

  Hecate drew a deep breath. Her cheeks were stained blue from her tears, glowing in the dim light. Her right eye was a gradient of purple and blue and her left eye was solid green.

  “I alllmost had you,” her voice was suddenly stronger, deeper. “You have to die.” She gripped the candelabra with both hands and tried to pull herself up to the edge. She made it less than an inch before Catie began to scream, forcing her to let go. “The barrier is down,” this was Catie now, barely a whisper, “the line of un/reality is blurred and broken in spots. Jaguar found the Ghost Queen…had his way. He owns her. And he’s coming through now. You can’t stop it. You can’t drive him out.

  Have to race him to the Gates and stop him.”

  “Do you know where we can find Nin-Agal?”

  “The Metalsmith? Why?”

  “The girl mentioned him. Well, she said Ninja Gal, but she’s pretty stupid. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “He’s sent delivery minions through here a few times to collect discarded anima crystals and to barter with the wanderers. He’s built up quite a collection of crystals from what I’ve heard…Aaagh,” Hecate grimaced and wrapped a hand around the candelabra. She started to thrash and scream. “Find him, find him and beg him to kill you, Morningstar. Your sun has set, your time is done, Yaotl has returned.”

  This multiple personality thing was getting difficult to handle. Should I wait for the Ghost Queen to slip back, should I try to drive her back? Hecate screamed again and her legs twitched once, twice.

  “….ooohGodI’mSorryScratchI’mSoSorry,” she panted. She seemed on the verge of passing out, but I knew what she was made of, and I knew she wouldn’t get such a luxury. “Nin-Agal is not the force he once was. But his minions are strong. Be careful as you deal with him. He tends towards extortion, not bargaining.”

  Hecate screamed and brought a fist down on the candelabra hard enough to crack it and move about an inch from the wall. She opened her mouth wide, speaking in two voices simultaneously. Catie’s voice was weak, frightened, and only repeated one word: “RunRunRun!” and the Ghost Queen chanted “DieDieDie!”

  I wasn’t going to get much more useful information from Hecate, and from the looks of things, t
he Ghost Queen was going to stage a breakout sooner rather than later. We needed to get some distance between her and us.

  I burst from the tent. Monkey’s rump protruded from the Cinquecento, his tail swishing briskly as he chanted a litany of curse words punctuated by blows from his tools. There was only one way out of the grove now, a rough path torn by the giant through the grove and back to the road. Eve was standing near Goliath by the fresh opening in the trees. I couldn’t tell if she was comforting him or if he was comforting her.

  “All right, everybody in the car, let’s hit the road!” I said. “Monkey said it’s going to be a few more minutes,” Goliath answered.

  “Monkey!” I shouted.

  “Ten minutes, almost got her where I want her!” he replied, before a loud snap sent him tumbling deeper into the engine compartment. The hood slammed shut on top of him, drowning out his verbal barrage.

  “You’ve got three! We have to run,” I said.

  “Up yours!” The hood of the car bounced as he shouted, making it seem as if the vehicle was yelling at me. “I’ll do it in two.”

  Good man. Monkey might have a lot of backtalk in him, but he knew when it was time to get the job done.

  “What’s happening?” Eve asked.

  “I’ll explain as soon as we’re on the road.”

  “I mean, to me . What’s happening to me, Morningstar?” Eve was trembling, her eyes darting from side to side. “Look at me! I’m pouring my life force out and we’re not getting anywhere! What’s the point of all this? Why are we out here?”

  Crap. I was hoping this wouldn’t have happened, or at least taken longer. For all of her divine aspects, Eve is regrettably human, one hundred percent. Meaning this deep into the wastes, she was starting to experience the despair that all humans do on the Long Walk. It wasn’t going to get any better the further we got. Any contact with nature would help her recover a little, but we had a ways to go before we’d be approaching anything resembling vegetation.

  Goliath moved to lay a hand on her shoulder when the ground started to vibrate. The earth started to crack near the trees, and Hecate’s tent began to billow up and collapse, as if it was breathing.

  “Monkey!”

  I don’t know how he did it, but after a few seconds more of clanging under the hood, he appeared inside the car, popping up behind the steering wheel. He hadn’t bothered to reattach the door Goliath ripped off, which would make our escape easier. “Ready to roll!”

  I hustled everyone towards the Cinquecento. Monkey gunned the engine twice and spun the rear wheels out. We ripped into the path between the trees, kicking up a trail of dust behind us. The ground shook harder, the trees swaying and cracking in our path.

  “We’re gonna make it. We’re all gonna be okay.”

  “Where are we going?” Monkey asked.

  “Once we clear these trees, I need you to floor it for Copperopolis. Nin-Agal has something to do with this.”

  “I hate that guy,” Monkey growled. “And Copperopolis is behind us. We can’t drive back through there.”

  “There’s a way around. There’s always a way around. Lenny, if you have any way to sense ahead and get an idea of what’s coming, you know, help Monkey steer—”

  “I thought Lenny was back there with you,” Monkey said. The car fell eerily silent.

  “Oh, Hell’s Bells!” Monkey slammed the brakes and the car screeched to a halt.

  “We have to go back.” I said. As much as I had come to be irritated by Lenny’s very presence, I couldn’t leave him back there. If Catie couldn’t keep the Ghost Queen down, then Lenny would be right in her path, and that was only a step away from Yaotl. Who knew what he’d be able to do with a Heavenly Host. “I hate you,” Monkey said, looking over his shoulder and accelerating in reverse. “You know, when I’m on my own, I do things right. Stylish. I get the job done, and I make it look good. Every time I hang out with you, every time ,” he paused talking long enough to crank hard on the wheel and send us into a spin. “I end up doing shit like this, in crappy cars like this, and who gets all of the credit, huh?” He floored the gas pedal again and sent us catapulting towards Hecate’s tent at the crossroads.

  The tent was a rag flapping on a stick as torrents of ghostly blue energy poured out of the ground and into the sky. Hecate was trying to break the barrier between my world and the grey plains, pouring her essence into the clearing. It would be the perfect hallway for Yaotl. Monkey hit the brakes and sent up a torrent of rocks and dust.

  “Sshhhhh,” I said.

  “What, you don’t think she heard us coming?” Monkey said. He laid on the horn, three long blasts intended to get Lenny’s attention. Instead, true to its clunky heritage, the horn issued a feeble warbling sound, like a duck dying while mating with a manatee.

  “LENNY!” Goliath shouted.

  The ground rippled twice as an explosion tore the ground further, doubling the purple light that stabbed into the sky. A faint scream drifted down to us from the sky. There was a blink of shadow riding the crescent near the top of the light. Lenny.

  “How are we s’posed ta get him down? Should I try to spear ‘im?” Goliath was already eyeing one of the fallen trees.

  “Stay in the damn car!” Monkey shouted. He turned to me.

  “Okay. Okay,” he paused. Then added, “Okay.”

  I waited for the brilliant observation to follow, but Monkey was just sitting there, biting his bottom lip and drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  “Okay what?” I shrieked.

  “We have to get to Copperopolis, and we have to get Lenny. Right? Okay.”

  Monkey disappeared down into the footwell and crawled behind the dashboard and into the engine compartment. He began banging around under the hood. “Okay. Okay. Maybe…” The air around us pulsed to a neon white and then dulled out to grey before returning to a normal, overcast sky. “Any day now.”

  Monkey clambered back behind the wheel. “Does that look like plasmic energy or dark matter to you?”

  “Can’t really tell,” I replied. “Why?”

  “Well, I’m going to drive into it. If it’s dark matter, we should be able to surf it straight up to Lenny, and it’ll catapult us away from here. Hundreds of miles in just under a minute.”

  “To where?!” I shrieked.

  “Does it matter?” Monkey asked. “We stay here and we have to face The Ghost Queen and Yaotl and who knows what else, and I don’t think you’re down for that right now, do you, Lefty? Now. The car should hold together if that’s dark matter. I ride shit like that for fun on weekends. If it’s plasmic energy, we’ll scream and melt and die.”

  “That’s your plan? Think about this for a second.”

  Monkey pointed to the clouds forming above the rift in the ground. They were coalescing into the smooth shapes of Hecate’s hips, her feet, her waist. “We’re about to have Catie in the Sky with Daggers. This is no time to think! Now think ! Is that dark matter?”

  I swallowed. If we waited much longer, we were dead anyway. “Sure.” I said.

  I didn’t have time to breathe. Monkey floored it and sent us barreling towards the spire of what I hoped was dark matter. The car rattled and rumbled across the dirt before smoothing out and speeding at an impossible rate.

  “Hey, nice job under the hood.”

  “Not my doing,” Monkey replied. “We’re getting pulled in. As soon as we hit that tower, we’re either going to fly or fry. Goliath! Get ready to grab Lenny.”

  The car swayed before really grabbing the wave. The seats were creaking with the g-forces pressing our bodies back. Rivets were popping. Rich vinyl interiors were melting. We were going up in about ten seconds. Fly or fry.

  “Monkey,” Eve asked. “What happens when we reach the top?”

  “What?” I screeched. I hadn’t thought about that.

  “What happens after we fly up to the top of this thing?” Monkey started to answer, then shrugged, gripped the wheel hard, and started screaming. Bef
ore we could draw breath to join him, the car tipped back hard and sailed straight up the column of dark energy. The window before us showed an expanse of stained sky, blue at the edges. The hood suddenly burst into flames. Goliath gave a yell. I assumed that meant he’d either caught Lenny, caught on fire, or both. Monkey gritted his teeth and yelled.

  “LEAN LEFT!”

  We all tried to do as we were told. The car broke left and began turning end over end through the air. Monkey was trying to get the car into a lower gear, his feet gripping the steering wheel while he pushed hard on the gearshift.

  I wasn’t worried about Goliath – if he was still alive, he’d probably survive the fall. Monkey, being doubly immortal, would come out just fine. Me? I was less than godly at the moment, and Eve was all too human. Even if we landed right side up, the impact might be enough to crush her. You can get hurt in the land of the dead. And you can definitely die. I wanted neither for Eve.

  The nose of the car tipped down, offering us a sickening panoramic view of the waste lands below us. I could actually see a few small specks out in the sands, lonely souls making their final walk. We tipped slightly lower and a city spread out before us. A trio of buildings connected by bridges that towered over the center of the city.

  “Is that Copperopolis?”

  Monkey banged the horn on the steering wheel, producing few more feeble whonks. “Oh, should I hit the brakes?”

  The ledge of the closest tower erupted into activity. A line of what I thought were steel gargoyles suddenly sprang into action, taking flight and accelerating for the car. The first one struck the hood and flew over our heads. A second one shattered the windshield, followed by a third and fourth bouncing off the fenders. A heavy staccato of metal on metal rang beneath our feet on the bottom of the car. The creatures were throwing themselves at the car.

  “What are they doing?” Eve yelled.

  “Trying to catch us?” I wondered.

  “…or kill us.” Monkey said.

  The sky grew dim to our sides, as immense flocks of the winged creatures poured from the tops of the other two buildings. We were definitely slowing down. And going down. The top of the tower was so close now. The crashing birds obscured my view. Our world turned into black noise for an eternity of seconds before the impact knocked us all senseless. Had we hit the building? The ground? Were we dead?