“Reaper, is that … is that him?” Sparks’ stammered. “He’s beautiful. I-I’ve never seen a man so beautiful in my life.”
Before us stood a figure clothed in gold and feathers so white I had to resist the urge to put on sunglasses. I shielded my eyes to gaze upon him and all around us the air hummed with Holy power. His eyes were clear blue, as blue as a mountain lake, and they bore into me with a sense of wonder and purpose that stirred the ancient energy inside me.
“You’re not Ezekiel,” I said, feeling utterly unworthy to be in the angel’s presence. “You’re His herald, aren’t you?”
“I am what He requires me to be, death-dealer. And in you He is well pleased,” the archangel Gabriel said. His voice was clear and commanding and yet was filled with compassion. I glanced at Sparks through the corner of my eye and was surprised to see that even she was kneeling before him.
“I don’t know why the big guy would be pleased with me. I’ve broken every one of the Ten Commandments more times than I can remember and I’ve stumbled into something I have no business dealing with. I haven’t stopped the killer and someone I care about … someone I l- “
He smiled warmly and gestured toward Sparks. “Love is the word that you’re looking for, spirit. It might do you some good to say it from time to time for it is because of love that she kneels before me, alongside you. Carol Elizabeth Sparks, know that He watches over you and with you, He is also well pleased.”
Sparks opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out. Instead, she simply bowed her head, stunned by her first face-to-face encounter with the divine.
“Where is Ezekiel?” I asked in a near whisper.
The angel pointed beyond the Citadel and said, “Atop the Basilica of the Holy Mother, the Angel of Death and Transformation prepares to confront the being you seek. The tenth general from the war for heaven is the gatekeeper for that place where the Prince of Lies bides his time. You have done well in discovering the one who has plotted against Him. If falls on you now, tonight, to save your former master.”
Ezekiel was the Tenth General … holy shit.
It sure as hell would have been nice if he’d frigging told that from the get-go.
I stood up, a torrent of anger surging in my veins because I knew what saving Ezekiel meant. The time of choices that both Ezekiel and Abraxas had spoken of was staring me straight in the face, and it was an impossible choice. I was too damned stupid, too cocky and too proud to realize it until now and it was my fault that I’d have to make that choice. It was my fault for having taken on this case in the first place, and I cursed the day I ever picked up that envelope containing the dead angel’s feather.
I glared at Gabriel, my eyes blazing. “But you know who the killer is … you probably knew from the start. Your people can stop Jael. I’m a death spirit, so why me? Why do I have to choose?”
The angel’s warm smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed only slightly. “You are stronger than you know – strong enough to destroy one of Jael’s fallen allies. This is your task, death-dealer, appointed to you by the hand of God. You have chosen to live among His most treasured creation when you could have easily spent an eternity looking on as a passive observer. You chose to involve yourself in the affairs of humanity. You chose to question your place in the hierarchy of existence and now you must choose again. I can only pray that you make the right choice.”
“So this is punishment?” I barked. “I thought He was a loving God who forgives people for their sins!”
And what Gabriel said next sent me reeling.
“But you are not a person, death-dealer,” the angel said sharply. “You never were a person and no matter how hard you try to touch the human soul; you are still an elemental as old as the stars above. But the Creator of All Things sees a purpose to that desire stirring inside you and He is not without compassion because to be human means that you are a pilgrim wandering through life’s journey.
Each day, each breath a human being draws into his or her lungs is a gift for God. What humanity does on its life journey is that of individual choice – for good or naught, right or wrong that choice was freely given by the Creator and in you He sees that among all things, you are searching for the meaning of the humanity you wish so much was your own.”
I felt a small tear dribble down my right cheek because for the first time since I crossed over, my existence had been put to me in a way that finally made sense to me. But it didn’t take away from the anger and hurt burning through my chest like battery acid.
“And Amy … my choice that I was warned about. She’s just punishment to teach me some kind of lesson, I take it.”
The angel shook his head. “No, this is not punishment for what you’ve done. This is a matter of becoming human. In order to live as one of them you must also experience life as one of them. These trials and tribulations test the faith of all humanity. The joy of hope and the pain of loss shape mankind for good or ill. This moment in time, death-dealer, is your moment in time. It will determine the kind of man you might yet become.”
Sparks quickly stood up and positioned herself between Gabriel and me. She placed a calming hand on my chest and gazed into my eyes, her face a mask of worry. “What’s he talking about, Reaper? What choice?”
I dug my fingers into the handle of the sword and fought back the urge to lash out at Gabriel. To strike him down with every ounce of energy in my body, but I couldn’t. Jael had Amy and I had to save her. I had to save Ezekiel too even though I knew deep inside what my choice had to be. And it ripped at my insides to say it.
“Amy,” I said, barely containing the bitterness in my voice. “In order to save Ezekiel and stop war in the Heavens, I have to kill Amy. That’s my choice.”
25
I’d never counted on anyone but myself since the day I crossed over. Throughout the ages, I’d seen what humanity could do it itself. From wars to genocide – there was a laundry list of man-made horror that stretched back before recorded history. I had a ringside seat to the end of life regardless of how it manifested. I knew that I’d have to be hard as nails if I was going to serve some kind of purpose in the world of the living. If I didn’t keep a sharp edge about me, my essence would simply linger on as a formless, faceless entity bearing witness to the passage of time.
This had been about choices since the day I crossed over. It had taken a conspiracy of biblical proportions to show me that humanity was something more than jumping into a person’s body at the moment of a human being’s death. And despite what Gabriel said about becoming human, I felt more than ever that I was an imposter in the world of man. An amalgam of all the people whose bodies I had taken over when they met their end. I wasn’t real and there had never been any consequences to any of my actions.
Until now.
I arrived at the Basilica of the Holy Mother and looked up to see a solitary figure hunched over the edge the copper plated rooftop like a gargoyle come to life. Whether Ezekiel was holding vigil for his inevitable confrontation with Jael or waiting for a message from on high was beyond me. The only way I’d be able to find out was to get him down from there and ask. But he was three hundred feet above street level and I’d yell myself hoarse trying to shout him down, assuming that he actually had any interest in talking with me.
Sparks tried the main doors which, of course, were locked tighter than a bank vault on a Sunday. She trotted back to the Crown Victoria and sat back down in the driver’s seat, her brow stitched into a tight knot.
“Does he know you’re here?” she asked. “Do you guys communicate on some kind of psychic level or something?”
“He knows,” I said flatly. “And he doesn’t give a shit about it. He’s got his mind fixed on whatever is supposed to happen next.”
“So how are you going to get him down from there?” she asked. “We can’t exactly scale the wall and drag him by his feet.”
I patted the hilt of the golden sword with my left hand. “You’re right. Bu
t I have his sword. Maybe if he sees it he’ll come to me. And remember, if he’s figured out that Jael is the killer, then he’s probably expecting her to show up in her true form. He doesn’t have a clue that Jael is in possession of Amy’s soul and wearing the girl’s skin.”
“And your choice? You figured out how to save her and how to stop this Jael, right?”
I avoided her gaze and clasped the door latch tightly. “I’m still working on it. Let’s go.”
Ezekiel’s feet dangled precariously off the edge of the roof as Sparks and I craned our necks and looked skyward. Together we stood in front of the wrought-iron fence that formed the perimeter of the basilica’s cemetery. All around us were granite and stone grave markers dating back to the early 1700’s. I glanced at Sparks through the corner of my eye and noticed her right hand clutching the pistol grip of her holstered Glock.
“You’re probably not going to need that, Carol” I said as I looked up at Ezekiel.
“Maybe not,” she said firmly. “But it makes me feel better knowing it’s at my side … he doesn’t seem to be moving very much.”
“He looks like he’s in a trance,” I said, reaching into my shoulder holster and pulling out my silenced Beretta. “Time to wake him up.”
I raised my gun and took aim down the iron sight. I squeezed of a pair of rounds that landed to the right of Ezekiel’s feet and he flinched as he glared down below to see me holding the sword in front of me like a beacon. The angel stood up and simply shook his head disapprovingly as his wings unfurled. They flapped a few times and even a hundred feet below, we could hear the thump, thump, thump as his wings cut through the cold night air. He stepped forward, his wings now extended to a full fifteen-foot wingspan and he glided gently down to the ground, his arms folded firmly across his chest the entire time.
“Nice entry,” I said, deliberately trying to sound unimpressed as his wings folded back behind his shoulders once more. “If you’d have teleported or something, now that … that would be an entrance!”
“You should not be here, death-dealer,” he said, his eyes panning menacingly over to Sparks. “Neither should Detective Sparks be here. You’ve placed your friend in great peril.”
“All of human kind is in peril,” I said, as I fished a cigarette out from my trench coat. “But Sparks is a big girl … you’re a big girl, aren’t you, Carol.”
“A big girl who is armed to the teeth,” she said, patting her Glock.
I took a deep drag on my cigarette and gripped the sword tightly in my right hand. “See, I thought that you were the guy responsible for the killings. I tapped into an angel named Sariel and I caught a glimpse of a much younger Ezekiel, filled with resentment in the aftermath of the first great battle for heaven. The fact that you tried to tempt me when I was about to shoot that asshole Abraxis sewed up my suspicion tighter than a nun’s- “
“Reaper!” Sparks snapped. “Language!”
I grunted as I took another haul on my cigarette and dropped it onto the damp grass. I stubbed it out with my boot, never taking my eyes off Ezekiel. “Thank you, word police!” I said sourly. “Anyway, The Archangel Gabriel, God’s freaking herald informs me that you’ve figured out that you’re next on the hit list and that you intend to stop the killer here, tonight. We’re told that you’re the gatekeeper to the abyss and that if Jael strikes you down, she can draw out old Lucifer himself. You do know that all this is about some bonehead idea of replacing the big guy upstairs, right? And you know about angelic possession.”
Ezekiel blinked hard. “Pardon me?”
I exhaled heavily. “Seriously, Ezekiel, for a guy who is older than the cosmos, you’re dumb as a post sometimes. Jael has been wearing human skin when she’s killing you assholes. She’s possessing whack jobs – that’s how the victims all died – they thought they were dealing with another soul waiting to be saved or damned. Why the fact that God’s generals were being targeted escaped you guys at the start of this thing is beyond me, frankly.”
“Because we are no longer His generals,” he shot back. “The war for heaven ended and the Lord didn’t need soldiers anymore. We were all given a job to do, to save His most precious creation or in my case, to claim their souls for the next stage in their journey. It is one of the reasons why I hold the keys to the abyss.”
No sooner had the words left the angel’s lips when a brilliant flash of light lit up the sky. The ground shook beneath my feet as an explosion of sparks blew out every single street light on Grafton Street. I spun around on my heels to see all the office building lights on Spring Garden Road extinguished one after the other. Ezekiel quickly unfurled his wings and took to the sky, his heavenly aura glowing like beacon. Sparks immediately pulled out her Glock and got herself into the ready position as the ground shook violently, rumbling into the distance like enormous waves crashing into a sea wall.
I staggered for a moment. The earthquake pitched and rolled as large chunks of stone began falling from the rooftop of the Basilica of The Holy Mother, crashing onto the ground like artillery shells. I caught a glimpse of a statue the size of a small car teetering over the edge of the roof. It toppled over, carrying with it a number of smaller pieces of carved stone and I instinctively dove at Sparks, sweeping her over my shoulder and landing a few feet away, the statue hitting the ground head-first on the spot where she had been standing.
“Sweet Jesus, Reaper,” she shouted. “What the hell is happening?”
I rolled off Sparks and quickly got back to my feet. “I think Jael just decided to make her presence known.”
She quickly brushed herself off and I helped her back to her feet with a sharp tug of her arm. Darkness had fallen over the downtown core of the city. Not a single light shone in any of the buildings surrounding the old Basilica and in the distance was the sound thousands of automobile alarms cutting through the silence of the night in a chaotic symphony of electronic noise. I gazed up at the sky to see the glow of Ezekiel’s heavenly aura race across the blackness like a comet. It dashed back and forth at breakneck speed, and then headed straight down to Grafton Street like a meteor screaming to earth. The angel landed effortlessly, his aura extinguishing itself as his wings beat at the air, sending a mixture of dirt and litter blowing out in all directions.
“A large swath of the city has gone dark,” he called out. “Jael has felt it necessary to give us a small display of her power!”
“This is a small display?” I shouted back. “Look – we need to find that psycho angel and end this, we just have to draw her out somehow.”
“Um, Reaper?” said Sparks pointing up to the sky. “What the hell is that? Are those angels?”
I gazed up at see the black canvas of the night lit ablaze by hundreds of streaks of light, each one burning with a near blinding intensity. They flashed northward across the heavens as if beckoned by some unseen force. My ears filled with the sound of angry voices, each one filled with cold, blind fury, and all speaking in an ancient tongue I’d rarely spoken during my century-long stint as a wannabe human.
“Jumping dyin’ Moses!” I gasped, nearly spitting out the words. “They’re reapers – thousands of them!”
“Shouldn’t I be dead then?” asked Sparks. “I’ve just seen their true form.”
“No you haven’t – they’re moving too fast.”
Another tremor rolled through the earth as more pieces of the basilica started crashing to the ground. I grabbed Sparks by the wrist and dashed out to the street in case the cemetery itself decided to open up and swallow us whole.
“Ezekiel,” I panted. “There are about a jillion freaking reapers zooming past us at Mach One! What have you done?”
The colour drained from his face as he gazed up at the sky. “This is not of my doing, death-dealer. I command the forces that govern the passing of souls. I am calling out to them but they pay no attention to my command. Something has seized them!”
My former brethren had somehow become enlisted in Jael’s plot. This was
about payback. They had front row seats to my comeuppance and they weren’t going to miss it for the world.
“If they aren’t listening to you there has to be a hell of reason. I imagine it has to do with watching me get my ass handed to me somehow. Where are they going?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have a clue but wherever it is Jael is waiting for them. And while they’re waiting for you to get your ass handed to you as you put it, the cycle of life and death ceases.”
“What does that mean?” said Sparks.
Ezekiel glanced at Sparks and cocked an eyebrow. “It means, Detective Sparks that babies can’t be born when the dying won’t die. It means the cycle of life and death is seized up and when a large machine becomes seized what generally happens as a result?”
“It fucking explodes,” I said grimly. “Are you saying this is world-ending stuff?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying! Into my arms, the both of you!”
Sparks gave me an uneasy look and I didn’t blame her one bit. “We don’t have a lot of choices here, Sparks. We need to find out where they’re going. Don’t worry, if Ezekiel drops you, I’ll hold him personally responsible!”
“Gee thanks, Reaper,” she said as she wrapped her arms around the angel’s waist. Ezekiel pulled both of us tightly against his chest and in seconds we were soaring above the rooftops, the angel’s powerful wings pushing us through the air currents with ease.
“They’re heading out to sea!” I shouted. “What the hell for?”
“No they aren’t!” Ezekiel replied. “My eyes see them gathering at an empty beach … and there is a woman. A young woman.”
“Amy!” I shouted in a mad panic.
“Hold on tight,” Ezekiel growled as he grated his teeth together, the cold wind scraping against my face like a skinner’s knife. Sparks buried her face into the angel’s chest as we rocketed across the sky. I tried to look down so that I could get my bearings but our speed was so intense that my eyes filled with water, blurring my vision.
Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 21
