Mercury Falls

by Robert Kroese

  “Yeah,” said Mercury. “I know all about your plan. You’re blackmailing Lucifer. He needs everyone to think that the Antichrist was killed by agents of Heaven so that he can withdraw from the Apocalypse Accord and launch a sneak attack. So you threaten to go public with the fact that Karl is still alive if he doesn’t release you from this plane and give you authority over the invasion.”

  “Nice deduction,” said Tiamat, nodding with approval.

  Mercury said, “It was actually Christine here who figured most of it out.”

  Tiamat cocked her head at Christine, who remained in defiant silence. “A mortal? Deciphering the plans of demons? You always were a joker, Mercury.”

  “Not this time,” said Mercury. “This time I’m dead serious. I can’t let you take Karl alive.” He tightened his grip on the Bowie knife.

  Tiamat laughed. “What are you going to do, kill him?”

  In a flash, Mercury moved behind Karl, putting the blade of the knife to his neck.

  “What the hell?” gasped Karl.

  Christine’s face contorted in horror. “Mercury, what are you –”

  “No choice, Christine,” said Mercury. “I have to kill him. He’s no use to Tiamat dead.”

  “Mercury,” said Tiamat angrily, “Drop this charade. You don’t actually expect me to believe you’re going to kill Karl.”

  Karl was terrified. “Don’t kill Karl!” was all he could think to say.

  “Believe it, babe,” Mercury said. “I can’t let you take him alive.”

  Tiamat’s minions were creeping toward him, their guns at the ready. Gamaliel remained still, waiting for Mercury to make a move.

  “Easy, boys,” said Tiamat. “Mercury, let’s think about this rationally. If you kill Karl, then Lucifer can go ahead with his plan. He’s going to wipe out this entire plane. Is that what you want?”

  “Lucifer’s plan is doomed to fail,” said Mercury. “Uzziel has already been informed of his intentions.”

  “Uzziel!” laughed Tiamat. “What’s Uzziel going to do, send an army of bureaucrats armed with staplers? It would take weeks for Uzziel to get authorization for any kind of military deployment. By then, this plane will be finished. Uzziel is powerless to stop the invasion.”

  “He doesn’t need to stop it,” said Mercury. “All he has to do is redirect it. I won’t bore you with the details, but thanks to a little interplanar jujitsu, the threat from Lucifer has been negated. In fact, the biggest danger right now is that Lucifer will figure out that he’s been had, and call off his surprise attack. If he does that, his forces will remain intact and he may still be able to wreak a fair amount of havoc on this plane before Michael can put a stop to it. But if I can deliver Karl – dead or alive – then Lucifer will go forward with his plan, and Uzziel will take care of the rest.

  “So you see,” Mercury went on, “I can’t risk you throwing a wrench into Lucifer’s plan. And frankly, you’ve always been a bigger threat to this plane than Lucifer and his petty schemes. You’re the one Heaven should be worried about. If you manage to return to power… well, I can’t let that happen. Which is why I have to kill Karl.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Christine pleaded. “If you do this, you’re just like them. Playing one side against the other, doing something you know is wrong in the interest of some greater plan you don’t even fully understand.”

  “I understand enough,” said Mercury grimly. “There’s no other way to stop her. And to stop Lucifer. I have to kill him.”

  “No!” howled Karl. “I’m sorry I ate all the fries!”

  “It’s going to be okay, Karl,” cooed Mercury.

  “Please,” said Tiamat. “I know you, Mercury. You don’t have it in you.”

  “Karl, you have to trust me,” said Mercury quietly. “Sometimes one of the good guys has to die for the greater good. You understand?”

  Karl shook his head as vigorously as he could, given the proximity of the Bowie knife.

  Christine urged, “Mercury, don’t. Please don’t.”

  “It’s like Book Three,” said Mercury. “Where the Urlock queen forces Charlie Nyx to kill his friend Simon with the Sword of the Seven Truths.”

  Karl looked confused for a moment. “But Charlie used his –”

  “That’s right, Karl,” said Mercury. “Charlie used his sword to kill Simon. You understand? Because the evil queen forced him to.”

  A look of understanding began to penetrate Karl’s face. “So I have to –”

  “Yes, Karl. You have to die. Just like in the book. Just like in your favorite book.”

  “Actually I thought Book Two was more –”

  Mercury clutched Karl’s collar and spun him around so they were face to face.

  “I’m sorry, Karl. I have no choice.”

  “I thought you were my friend!” wailed Karl.

  “I am your friend, Karl. I will always be your friend.”

  “And I… yours,” said Karl.

  Mercury plunged the knife into Karl’s heart. Karl screamed, a terrified, blood-curdling, wake-the-dead sort of scream.

  Mercury stabbed him again and again until Karl crumpled into a ball on the ground. Blood was everywhere.

  Mercury sank limply to the ground. The blood-covered knife fell to the ground. He cradled Karl’s head in his hands. “It’s okay, Karl,” he said gently. “You can sleep now.”

  Karl’s body went limp.

  Christine regarded this horrific scene in disbelief. Quite literally – she did not believe what she had just seen. The blood certainly looked real, and she had a hard time imagining that Mercury had been carrying a trick Bowie knife up his sleeve. But she also didn’t believe Mercury had killed Karl. Partly because she didn’t think he had it in him, but mostly because Karl had used the phrase “And I… yours.” Something was off.

  The demonic minions certainly looked convinced, but Tiamat was skeptical. “Is this one of your tricks, Mercury?”

  “Does it look like a trick?” he demanded, still cradling Karl in his arms. Vast quantities of what looked very much like real blood continued to pour onto the ground beneath Karl. Christine still didn’t believe it, but she had to admit that Mercury was a better actor than she would have expected. He looked like he was in real anguish, and his face was as white as chalk.

  “No fluctuations in the energy channels,” said Gamaliel. “He’s not using miracles.”

  “A trick knife then,” said Tiamat, sounding almost desperate to believe that Mercury hadn’t had it in him to kill Karl.

  “It’s a real knife,” said Christine, bending over to pick it up.

  “Take it easy,” warned a minion, gripping his rifle.

  “Would you like me to demonstrate?” Christine said bitterly. “I happen to know a pretty good test to determine whether a knife is real. I just cut the head off a demon. If the demon screams like hell, it’s a real knife.”

  Neither demon volunteered for the test. Karl’s body remained limp. He did not appear to be breathing.

  Tiamat approached Christine, holding out her hand. Christine handed her the knife. She regarded it suspiciously, running her thumb along the edge. A gasp escaped her lips. Blood dripped from her thumb, joining the growing puddle on the ground. The knife, it seemed, was quite real. She let it fall to the ground.

  The fire had by this time enveloped the cottage and was moving briskly toward them. The smoke was getting thicker and the heat pouring off it was getting uncomfortable.

  “We should get out of here,” said one of the minions. “Not just anybody can send a Class Five. Whoever sent that pillar is probably working on opening a portal to this plane right now, and we do not want to be around when they get here.”

  Tiamat knelt down next to Karl.

  “No!” gasped Mercury weakly. “I won’t allow you to desecrate his body. It’s bad enough that you made me…” But he didn’t have the energy to resist.

  Tiamat felt Karl’s neck for a pulse. After a few seconds, she
stood up.

  “No pulse,” she said, sounding like someone who had just finished a jigsaw puzzle only to find she had one piece left over.

  Christine didn’t know whether to be relieved or appalled. Karl really was dead?

  Tiamat, however, still seemed unconvinced. Incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, something wasn’t right, and she knew it. She turned to squint into the oncoming inferno, weighing her options.

  “Please,” begged the minion who had spoken earlier. “If we don’t leave now….”

  “I’m well aware of the nuances of the situation!” snapped Tiamat. She turned to Mercury. “You realize the kind of trouble you’re in, don’t you? You can’t just kill the Antichrist. They’ll exile you for all eternity.”

  Mercury shrugged. “Extenuating circumstances,” he said. “I’ll argue that Lucifer selected Karl in bad faith. Once I get him posthumously disqualified as the Antichrist, he’s just another unlucky mortal who got caught in the crossfire. And we both know that Heaven doesn’t give a damn about the death of one mortal in the scheme of things.”

  Christine was suddenly overcome with rage. Mercury, it seemed, was no different from all the other callous, bureaucratic angels. “You bastard!” she screamed, leaping upon Mercury and pummeling him with her fists. “You killed him! You really killed him!”

  Tiamat turned away in disgust. “Let’s go,” she said her minions.

  She fled through the woods, away from the quickly advancing forest fire, with Gamaliel and her minions in tow. The valley was enshrouded in darkness save for the orange glow of the burgeoning inferno.

  FORTY-TWO

  Christine continued to pummel at Mercury for another good minute before collapsing in exhaustion.

  Mercury said, in a strained whisper, “That was really good. I think it may have been your performance toward the end there that really sold it.”

  “Performance!” snapped Christine furiously. “Karl is dead. He’s really dead!”

  “Yes,” said Mercury, “That was a lucky turn of events, wasn’t it?”

  “Lucky? You killed him!”

  “Hang on,” said Mercury. “That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? Just because he’s dead, that doesn’t mean I killed him. Now drag him over there a ways, would you? I need him further away from the M.E.F.”

  “The what?”

  “The Mundanity Enhancement Field. It interferes with my ability to do miracles. And Karl needs a miracle, pretty darn quick, if we’re going to prevent damage to that unique brain of his.”

  Bewildered beyond the capacity to resist, she began to drag Karl by his feet further away from the cottage. “Are you going to help?” she said.

  Mercury shook his head slowly. “Not feeling so good. Give me a minute.” He crawled slowly after them on his hands and knees.

  “That’s far enough,” he finally said.

  “Now would you mind telling me what the hell is going on?” Christine demanded. “If you didn’t kill him, then who did?”

  “Act of God,” said Mercury, taking a deep breath. Some of the color was coming back into his face. “Although I’d wager cholesterol had a little something to do with it as well.” He put his hand on Karl’s blood-soaked chest and closed his eyes. After several breathless seconds, Karl’s eyes opened. He clutched his chest. “Ow,” he said. “What the hell….”

  “You did great, Karl,” said Mercury. “We fooled her, just like in the book.”

  Karl smiled. “Why does my chest hurt?”

  “You had a bit of a heart attack back there, which was a nice touch, by the way. Thank God for all those Charlie’s Grill cheeseburgers. I’m repairing some damage to your aorta now. In a few seconds you’ll have the circulatory system of a forty-year-old.”

  “I’m only 37,” Karl said.

  “Yeah,” replied Mercury. “There is a limit to what I can accomplish with minor miracles. You may want to check out the salad bar next time.”

  Karl nodded. Charlie’s Grill had a salad bar?

  “Wait,” said Christine. “So did you actually stab him or not?”

  “Of course not,” said Mercury.

  “So it was a trick knife?”

  “No, it was a very real knife. The trick is to let the knife slide alongside your wrist so that it looks like you’re really stabbing him.”

  “But isn’t that dangerous, if you’re using a real knife? You could cut your wrist open.”

  “Yeah,” said Mercury. “That’s where all the blood comes from.”

  “So that was your blood?”

  Mercury nodded. “It’s alright, I can make more. Hurts like a son of a bitch, though.”

  “So you stabbed yourself to make it look like Karl was bleeding?”

  “Yes,” said Mercury. “Kind of stupid, I know. Okay, Karl. Feeling better?”

  “,” said Karl.

  “Good. We have a little trip to take. I have a surprise for you.”

  “Really?” said Karl. “Cool.”

  “So this was your plan all along?” asked Christine incredulously. “To pretend to kill Karl so that Katie… Tiamat would leave him alone?”

  “Certainly not,” said Mercury. “My plan went sideways about five minutes in. I didn’t really have anything figured out beyond getting Uzziel to incinerate Izbazel. The rest was pure improv. Fortunately, I ran across a stray guard in the woods and managed to tie him up against a tree inside the M.E.F. and appropriate his weapons.”

  “That sounds more like the Mercury I know,” said Christine. “Always planning five minutes ahead.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s still four and a half minutes ahead of just about everyone else, so it works out.”

  “But if you can bring people back from the dead, why not really stab him? Make it convincing. No offense, Karl.”

  “I can’t bring people back from the dead,” Mercury said. “I mean, I can restart someone’s heart, but I can’t resurrect someone who has bled to death. Tiamat knows that.”

  Something was still troubling Christine. “Hang on, if you two were acting out a scene from one of the Charlie Nyx books, why didn’t Tiamat figure it out? She would have known if Charlie didn’t really kill his friend, what’s-his-name.”

  “Simon,” said Karl. “Charlie and Simon have been best friends since they met in the lair of the Lizard King in chapter six of Book One, Charlie Nyx and the Flaming Cup. You see, Simon’s parents

  were –”

  “She would have known,” Mercury said, “if she had ever read any of the books.”

  “Read them?” said Christine, “I thought she wrote them.”

  “No way,” said Mercury. “She doesn’t have the patience to sit down and write an entire book. Hell, she got bored halfway through the construction of the Tower of Babel. She can blame outsourcing all she wants, but the real problem was the management.”

  “And you knew the whole time that she didn’t write them?”

  Mercury shrugged. “I always figured she had a ghost writer.”

  “Wow,” said Christine. “And you knew all along that Katie Midford and Tiamat were one and the same?”

  “I suspected. The parts in the books about the tunnels under Anaheim stadium were too accurate. I figured that Lucifer had put that part in as sort of a joke. It was meant to remind Katie Midford, bestselling author of the Charlie Nyx books, who was really in charge. She got to take credit for the books, but Lucifer was the one holding the strings.”

  Christine thought for a moment, trying to process all of this information. “So we did it? We stopped her? And the plan to smuggle the anti-bombs through my condo?”

  “Almost,” said Mercury. “First we have to pay a quick visit to Lucifer.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Meanwhile, in an unremarkable two bedroom condominium in Glendale with shiny new linoleum in the breakfast nook, Uzziel the seraph tried to get Christine’s DVD player to work.

  He was sitting on the couch, randomly pressing buttons with names like PROG and IN
PUT, and quietly cursing whatever demonic entity was behind the creation of this device. He had it in his head to watch something from Christine’s impressive Hugh Grant collection, but thus far had had little success changing the channel from something called “World’s Ugliest Pets.”

  Just when his frustration with Christine’s audio-visual components – not to mention his horror at a particularly ghastly hairless border collie – was beginning to make him doubt the existence of intelligent design in the cosmos, another angel shimmered into existence in the breakfast nook.

  “Hey,” said Uzziel. “Do you know how to work this thing?”

  “What in the hell….” said the newcomer, a hulking gray figure.

  “I’m trying to watch Two Weeks’ Notice, but I can’t get it to – good heavens, what is that? Some kind of dwarf albino pig?”

  “Uzziel. What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask you the same thing, Malphas. I believe we had you assigned to Krakow.”

  “Ah yes, the hotbed of intrigue and kielbasa,” said Malphas. “Can’t imagine why anyone would want to leave that post.”

  “You were given that assignment because we thought it was the most we could trust you with. Evidently we overestimated you.”

  “Or perhaps you short-sighted bureaucratic fools don’t recognize real talent when you see it.”

  “Tell me,” Uzziel said, trying to avert his eyes from some sort of malformed flightless bird, “Is this your talent on display now? Skulking through a secret portal in some poor woman’s condo in Glendale?”

  Malphas smiled, an ugly gray smile in the middle of his ugly gray face. “You want talent? Here’s your talent.” He held a glass apple in his outstretched palm, his thumb on the trigger.

  “A housewarming gift?” said Uzziel. “How thoughtful. I brought something for you as well.”

  Uzziel continued to press buttons on the remote control. “Oh for Heaven’s sake, if I could at least get this thing to change the channel…”

  “I’m waiting,” said Malphas.