by J. R. Rain
“Maybe your own angel might know where this is?” said Fang. “Ishi or something.”
“Ishmael,” I said, and nearly grinned. Fang had always been jealous of the angel. I said, “And the old guy said that the initiate would know what to do with this drawing?”
“Yes—hey, what’s with that look in your eye?”
“I think I know just what to do with the picture,” I said.
Chapter Twelve
I told Fang about it, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Now, alone in his creepy murder office—well, plus two or three ghosts and me—I summoned the necessary nerves for what I was about to do. Yes, I knew what to do with the picture, and it scared the shit out of me.
I’d done blind teleportation before. I’d teleported to an Alaskan mountain based on a picture, and to the red planet based on another. Not to mention the moon. Turned out, I needed only the image of a landing spot. In the past, I had used photographs. This would be my first time using a drawing.
Crazy, I thought. Just nuts. Not to mention, it probably wouldn’t work.
It was, after all, just a drawing. Nothing real. I had a brief image of me landing in a music video, like that waitress did in the “Take On Me” video by A-ha. God, I hoped not. Although that singer was damn cute, drawing or not.
I studied the drawing, 99% certain it was the same majestic hall I had seen with Maximus. Except this was from ground level, and contained no archangel, although a light shone from above. It also contained, I was certain, a clear a landing spot for me.
Fang had been very much against this idea of teleporting. Tough shit. It was my choice, and my problem, and he wasn’t the one dealing with the devil.
Luckily, he had a bar to run, and didn’t stand around trying to talk me out of it for too long, although he had tried. What if the temple had been demolished? he had asked. Or what if it was filled with, say, furniture? Or with people and pews? Hell, what if it was in another dimension? A parallel world? The last two didn’t concern me as much. As I’d proven with my jaunt to the land of Dur, I had learned that I could teleport back easily enough. Not to mention, I didn’t need air, and the cold never bothered me anyway. At least, not for the last decade. Yes, I should be fine if it was another world or, as Fang had suggested earlier, between worlds. Whatever that meant. Although his point about the temple being destroyed concerned me. If I teleported into, say, a pile of rubble, I was pretty sure that would be the end of Samantha Moon and her story.
Then why do it? Fang had asked. Why take the risk?
A good question, and I had thought about it for a few minutes. The mysterious circumstances of the drawing’s arrival intrigued me to no end, although it wasn’t enough for me to make such a dangerous jump in and of itself. No, I was willing to risk everything because I was pretty damn sure I would find the Angel of Death there, the one entity who could purportedly help me.
I didn’t have time to explain all of this to Fang, not with my daughter locked inside a tiny corner of her mind, doing all she could to resist the entity who had inserted himself into our lives.
All to get to me.
All to flush me out.
Before Fang had left me in his office at my request, he’d said, “Just be careful, Moon Dance. You happen to be one of my favorite people in the world.”
I’d smiled at him, and felt what could only be love for him. I’d thought he felt it too, and we had a nice moment—and if his loving face was the last thing I saw in this world, I would take it.
Now that I was alone, it was time to kick the fucking devil out of my life for good. I looked at the old drawing, studied it closely...
And summoned the single flame.
Chapter Thirteen
She is in a safe place. She can reach out beyond the room any time she wants, but in doing so, she opens herself up to that which she knows is nearby.
Indeed, even now she can hear it sniffing, searching, scouring her mind.
She is safe here. But she can’t do much. Nope. Sleep would be good. She could sleep right here in this corner of her mind, and she could forget that the devil is just outside her door, so to speak, waiting to get in, desperate to get in, hungry to get in.
Her physical body is curled up on her bed, and she can hear the others in the house, hear her brother laughing with Kingsley, hear the heavy-footed monsters lumbering down the hallway, hear Allison talking on her cell phone.
Sleep, she thinks.
Yes, sleep.
And just as she feels herself slipping away, safe in her little room, and safe from the outside world, too, thanks to Kingsley and the monsters—and her own brother, who might be the most bad-ass of them all—she senses the thing stopping just outside the door into her mind.
She hears it sniff.
Then scratch.
She waits for it to move on, but it doesn’t.
The devil is here, and he’s found her.
Chapter Fourteen
I stumbled and nearly tripped.
And when I found my balance, the first thing I heard was my own gasps echoing all around me. And the first thing I saw was a long row of massive Corinthian columns, made from highly polished marble, each topped with beautiful, floral motifs. They continued on as far as the eye could see.
Above was an arched ceiling decorated in what appeared to be stone reliefs that depicted a battle with men on horses, wielding swords and spears and bows and arrows. As far as I could tell, I was alone. Where I was, I didn’t know. But it seemed real enough, as in, not a drawing. And I didn’t seem stuck in an 80’s music video, either. So far, so good.
A bright luminance appeared high above about halfway down the hallway. In the drawing, the light had been the Archangel Azrael. Here, it seemed to be just that—a light. Either way, like a moth to the flame, I set off in the direction of the light source.
Each footfall echoed a dozen times over in seemingly every direction. Had I been breathing, I was sure my breathing would have been echoing too. As I walked, and as I passed column after column, each more ornate and beautiful than the last, I had the very distinct feeling that I wasn’t anywhere on Earth. At least, nowhere that I had heard of or been before. I knew there were beautiful palaces on our planet, some of which were not on display to the general public, but this was unlike anything I had ever seen—or imagined.
It could have been God’s house. Like his real house. Except there was a very good chance I had met God, and he’d been a homeless man. In fact, the God I had met didn’t need this... palace, or whatever this was.
The air seemed different, too. I inhaled, held it, tasted it. It was denser. I could almost taste it. Indeed, it seemed to be a static charge on my tongue.
Nope, I was definitely not in Kansas anymore, nor California, for that matter.
Or even Earth itself.
Just a few days ago, I had taken a similar off-world trip. And not just off-world, but straight into the imagination of another man. A Creator.
No, I thought. It wasn’t his imagination. I mean, it had started off as his imagination, but it had come to life with real people, real concerns, real hope and real love… and real fear.
I shook my head at all of it. That had been less than a week ago, and I was still processing it. Now, I was processing this, too.
Yes, the World of Dur had to take a back seat with my concern for my daughter. The devil had locked on to her, dug in deep, and wasn’t going anywhere. Not until I forced him to go. I was up for the challenge. I had to be. Indeed, the devil had made it a point to bring the fight home. This was happening, one way or another.
Whatever this was.
A fight, I thought. A fight for my daughter. For me. For all of us.
I continued walking. Yes, now the air around me genuinely crackled with energy. Interestingly, I saw no spirit activity here, no curious ghosts flitting in and out of existence, no old haunts wandering this way and that. Indeed, the light energy that passed through here, passed through clea
nly, unhindered, smooth wave after smooth wave.
The hall was longer than I had thought, too, but at least the light source was getting closer and brighter.
Elizabeth was not happy. She did not like such bright light. I heard her protesting. Hell, I sensed her burrowing deeper into my mind, far away from the light.
But to me, it felt comforting. I think my own soul—which I now knew to be fully contained within me—was reacting positively to the light. I felt a sense of joy, of going home. That this was what heaven might be like. Or as close to heaven as I would get.
It wasn’t heaven, of course. I had seen heaven. I had walked its golden streets, even if briefly. No, this place had real air and gravity and density. Heaven had been ethereal. Heaven had been without boundaries, without weight, without effort, or worry.
And I was worried here. Hella worried, as my daughter used to say. I was worried for my daughter. I was worried about the devil. I wasn’t too worried about getting back home, but I kind of was, too. I knew I was far from home. Really, really far. And, yes, in the back of my mind, I always worried that the teleportation might not work here. That I might never get home again.
Just a big worrywart.
Mostly, though, I was spellbound. The openness was on par with a major league baseball stadium... that dizzying, vast, wide-open space where men ran around in long johns and slapped each other’s asses. This hall had that same ability of making me feel small and insignificant. I was a wandering mote in God’s eye, flitting from one column to the next.
The light grew closer still. Mercifully, it wasn’t a mirage that kept bobbing in the near distance.
Most definitely not a mirage, because it was also getting so very much brighter, so much so that I could hear Elizabeth whimpering.
There was no denying this light. I almost felt sorry for the pathetic, dark, evil bitch. Almost.
I picked up my pace a little. Not hard to do when I thought of my daughter hiding in her own mind, curled into a tiny ball in her guest room. Now, I was jogging, then running faster. I passed column after column, and still, the light grew brighter and now, warmer.
So warm. And so close.
And then I stopped and shielded my eyes and felt the glorious warmth radiate from somewhere high above...
Chapter Fifteen
He looks up and frowns.
There’s not much that can pull Archibald Maximus from one of his deeper meditations, but this does.
He cocks his head a little, wondering what it was that had alerted him, but soon recognizes that it is, in fact, his own intuition, which he has long since come to trust. The question is: why had the image of The Book of All Known Beings floated into his consciousness?
He doesn’t know, but he has long since learned not to ignore such impulses—or even random-seeming thoughts.
And so, the Alchemist—as he thinks of himself—rolls to his knees and then smoothly onto his feet. The movement used to be easier, in centuries past. Now he can feel the small pain in his knees, the wobble of his legs. He is feeling his age in this moment. His considerable age. He knows that he has, at best, only a few centuries left, and then, even his incantations won’t save him, and he must train another.
An image appears in his thoughts as he walks through the darkened room. The image is of a familiar young man, Anthony Moon. The Alchemist nods to himself. Anthony Moon, yes.
He opens the portal door, waits for the sense of disorientation to pass, and steps out into the hallway. His darkened room would have been considered very far from the Occult Reading Room. Very far indeed.
He moves down the gloomy hallway, and hears the forlorn cries from the adjoining room, the library adjacent. They call to him, beg him, beseech him. They want release. They want help. They want redemption. They want to bargain. Little does Samantha Moon know just how many entities are trapped in these many books. She only hears a small fraction. He hears them all. After all, he is responsible for their imprisonment.
He steps into the small library and the eternal light awaits. Earlier, he had, of course, shown The Book of All Known Beings to Samantha Moon. Had the vision of the book bubbled up from his subconscious because it had been fresh in his mind? He didn’t know. But he didn’t think that was it, either. He knew the difference between memory and prescience.
He finds the book and takes it to a reading table, sits and opens it. He makes short work of flipping through it this time; having done so just hours earlier, he knows exactly where he is going.
Yes, there is Angel of Death, blond hair wavering ever so lightly, ruling over his marble hall. But nothing about this image stands out to him now. He continues scanning the page... until his gaze falls on the page opposite, to the Angel of Death’s shadow, the amorphous shadow he had shown Samantha Moon earlier.
Except, of course, it isn’t amorphous anymore. Granted, it’s not exactly clear either, but he can see a shape coming into focus, a shape coming through...
A shape he knows well.
Chapter Sixteen
I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting to see—a burning orb, perhaps, a mini-sun, maybe—but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting to see a winged man dropping down from above, a winged man who emanated light like the sun.
No, not a man, I thought, shielding my eyes. Anything but a man.
Wind rushed around me, blew back my hair and slapped my clothing. Had there been dust to speak of, I was sure it would have gotten in my eyes. The entity hovered a few dozen feet off the ground, his wings as wide as two school buses. Okay, maybe the short buses. They undulated the way a hummingbird’s wings might, a bird famous for hovering in space. And now he drifted down, wings at full sail, his body long and muscular, and his torso bare and perfect. He wore loose white trousers tied with a thick cord around his narrow waist. I took in all of this as he settled before me. His wings folded in on themselves—halving smaller and smaller—until they disappeared. I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open.
He smiled at my amazement. His smile was radiant and perfect. I was reminded of Ishmael, my one-time guardian angel, but this entity was bigger still. Not by much, but definitely by a foot or two.
“If that impressed you,” he said, “then have a look at this.”
He turned and there upon his bare, muscular back glowed two beautiful and iridescent tattoos of wings. He smiled again at what must have surely been wonder on my face. “Only an illusion. The wings are there, but they are hidden in—how should I say it?—another dimension.”
“I...” I began, then closed my mouth, since I didn’t know what to say.
“You don’t understand. Not surprising. I barely understand the concept myself.” He faced me again, and all I could see was his abdomen that rippled up into a muscular, square chest, a chest that wasn’t just for show. There was real power there, as well as in his arms, which were surely as big as Kingsley’s. No mean feat.
Keeping his eyes on me, and surprisingly, smiling warmly for someone who I assumed was the Angel of Death, he opened his hands before me, wiggled his fingers, then slipped them into something invisible, all the way down to his wrists, all of which disappeared from my view. For all intents and purposes, his hands were gone. But out they came again, along with what appeared to be a tunic. He shook it out, grinned at me again, and then tossed it over his shoulders, his arms smoothly finding the sleeves. And just like that, the muscular, knotted torso was gone. And so was that chest. Mercifully, the tunic’s sleeves were short, revealing most of his arms.
“Am I dreaming?” I asked.
“Very few vampires dream, Samantha Moon.”
“You know me?”
“Of course. I’ve been waiting for you. Whether or not you showed up was another story. But here you are.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but words failed me.
He smiled. “Although I go by many names, you can call me Azrael.”
“The Angel of Death,” I said.
He bowed deeply, and his long, golden
hair dropped down off his shoulders and hung nearly to the floor. “At your service.”
I didn’t recall having someone bow so formally to me, and I was taken aback. If I could have blushed, I was sure my cheeks would have been crimson. To hide my embarrassment, I said, “Where are we?”
“My home, of sorts. Truth is, I’m rarely here. There is, after all, too much to do.”
“Too many dead to take care of?”
“Yes and no, Samantha. My role as the Angel of Death is a temporary one. I am, first and foremost, an angel.”
“An archangel,” I said.
He gave me a lopsided grin. “I didn’t want to boast, but yes.”
“Are all archangels so informal?”
“Most are pretty uptight. Take your one-time guardian angel, Ishmael.”
I nodded, agreeing. “He kinda takes himself too seriously.”
“There is that,” said Azrael. “Truth be known, your angel hasn’t been exposed to human interaction. He doesn’t know how to act any different.”
“But he’s been watching over me, he claims, for eons.”
“And so he has, from afar. Remember, I am not a guardian angel. I do not keep in the shadows. I am among men, and among the immortals, too.”
“And you speak perfect English.”
“I speak every language perfectly, Sam. And someday, so will you.”
I frowned at that but let it slide. “Can you read my mind?”
“No. Only one’s own guardian angel can do that.”
I nodded. “So where are we, exactly?”
“We are between worlds, between realities. We are in a place very similar to where your dark masters venture off to when you sleep.”
“You know of them?”
“Of course, Sam. Like your devil, I seek them as well.”
“Why?”
“Unlike your devil, I do not seek to entrap them in their personal hells. I seek to liberate them into the light.”
“Return them to the Creator.”
