by J. R. Mabry
95
Kat stepped out of the Void and into chaos. The march across the Bay Bridge had overtaken her, and her heart fell as she stared eastward toward the advancing line of Wiccans, their candles held up defiantly against the darkness. “No,” she managed as she saw Kitty Moon’s arms open wide to embrace the first of the Oaklanders she encountered, her candle guttering in the wind. The Oakland woman could have been one of their own—maybe was—her face curled up in a smile just as she slashed at Kitty’s belly with a long blade that glinted in the candle light.
Kat couldn’t see how badly Kitty was hurt. Time stood still as Kitty looked down at herself then crumpled to the deck of the bridge. The Oaklanders howled with glee, raised their weapons in anticipation, and then brought them down as the true slaughter began. Kat’s mouth dropped open as she watched in horror. A large Oakland man decapitated a younger Wiccan man with the shiny edge of a chrome fender, beaten flat and sharpened. He swung it with both hands, and the younger man’s head had sailed into the air, a banner of blood following behind it, looking like a gush of black ink in the moonlight.
Others saw it, too, and it caused the Wiccans to falter. They stopped advancing and just stood for several seconds, not moving forward or back, even while the Oakland army carved their way through their front line with an accelerating frenzy. Shotgun blasts tore through the air, ripping through the thick bodies of three crones standing defiantly arm-in-arm. They wavered, clutched at one another, and then they went down.
That was the moment the Wiccans faltered. As if the cooling corpse of Kitty Moon had called out an order, they all turned as one, dropped their candles, and ran full-out for the safety of the bridge.
But the Oakland army was faster, and they had the taste of bloodlust on their lips. The Wiccans were just as easy to fell from behind, and the demon-ridden army had no scruples about slaying the fleeing Wiccans. In fact, it seemed their joy and their zeal increased exponentially as the scent of fear ripened the air.
“No, no, no, no,” Kat kept repeating. She tried to stand still against the tide of fleeing Wiccans, but the current was too strong and she was swept along in their retreat. Her face was still set toward Oakland, and tears began to brim in her eyes as she watched the army pick away at the slowest Wiccans—the old, the sick, the very young. She watched them as they were overcome. She saw the light leave their eyes when the violence caught them, saw their bodies tumble to the pavement.
Surrendering to the flow of the people carrying her backwards, Kat stepped again into the Void. The Sandalphon were still there, ringed around her in a way that was both protective and oppositional. It’s as if they are trying to protect me from myself, she thought. And perhaps it wasn’t far from truth. But she didn’t have time to ponder it. The Sandalphon were a distraction. “Angel of the Air!” she yelled, “Come to me!”
It wasn’t an entreaty. It was a demand. She half expected to be ignored, but half a second later, she saw the whirlwind ripple at the air around her, and the angel materialized, flashing lightning from its nether regions, a thousand eyes blinking and a thousand swords flashing.
“I have given you my answer,” the angel’s voice boomed in her head. “I will not kill those whose will is not their own. Why do you persist?”
What could she say? Kat didn’t have an argument. It was sheer terror that drove her—that and helplessness. The Angel was the most powerful being she knew. If the angel could not or would not help people at their greatest moment of distress, she despaired of serving the wrong God. She feared she was—
“That’s it,” she said, feeling almost faint with the force of her revelation. “I don’t wish violence against them,” she said with defiance. “I wish wisdom for them.”
The Angel spat lightning and fire as it hovered in the air just in front of her eyes. It was waiting for more. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt them. But some appropriate fear? That’s right and good, don’t you think?”
The Angel’s swords flashed and its eyes blinked. Perhaps it was thinking? Kat flashed on a memory of a recent Bible study at the Abbey. “You’ve done it before,” she argued. “When Adam and Even were driven out, who was posted at the Eastern gate of Eden? You were. You didn’t want to kill them, but you were there to frighten them, to warn them away, to instill in them the proper fear of the Lord.”
The Angel did not respond, unless Kat was to interpret a fart of lighting as a response.
Kat continued. “When Balaam went to curse the Israelites, who was it that stood with your flaming sword to frighten his donkey from going forward? I know that was you. Instilling the fear of the Lord is your job.” She took a breath and stamped her foot. “God damn it. Do your fucking job!”
“You may enter,” the Angel said.
“Thank God,” Kat said as she closed her eyes and stepped forward into the angel, possessing it and being possessed by it, assuming its mantle and its power. When she opened her eyes, her vision was kaleidoscopic—for it was a thousand eyes she saw through, in every direction. When she raised her gauntlet feet, they were the size of King Cabs. She looked down at her body, five stories high, the brightest thing for miles around, for she was flashing fire, and when she raised her arm, the flaming sword lit up the bridge like a beacon.
She knew she could will it to blaze forth, and so she did. A bonfire sprung up from her fist, punching back the night so brightly that her two human eyes would have had to close against its ferocity. She looked below her at the Wiccans as they skittered past her feet.
Harm none, the angel thought—she thought—and it seemed an out-of-place statement of the Wiccan rede. But perhaps not out of place, after all. The rest of the rede spooled out in her mind, An it hurt none, do what thou wilt.
Yes. She couldn’t hurt anyone, but short of that she could do as she chose. She found a spot of the bridge pavement momentarily free of people, and brought down her foot on it. The sound of thunder overwhelmed the cries of bloodlust and frenzy. The resulting earthquake caused the bridge to shudder and sway.
The Wiccans did not falter in their flight, but the last of them sped past her feet in an all-out scramble for Treasure Island. Kat caused the sword in her right hand to blaze forth again and brought it low, parallel to the ground, creating a great, flaming barrier across the bridge. One or two of the Oakland army had pushed past her in time, but she couldn’t worry about them. Presumably they would pursue the Wiccans far enough to be out of range of the sigils’ influence soon enough.
It was the rest of them, the hordes of them and the thousands of them before her, that concerned her. She wondered if they could see her, but that question was answered soon enough when the advancing line of them reared back before being consumed by the heat of her sword. She saw that their numbers pushed at them from behind and that they couldn’t stop, even as they scrambled backwards, tumbling over their fellows in a frenzied attempt to avoid the sword. She took a step back and retreated the sword a bit to give them room to stop before meeting their doom on its fiery edge.
For a few moments it was like watching waves as they swept up on the sand and then tumbled over themselves rushing back into the sea. The Oaklanders in front rushed backwards even as the reserve troops pushed forward, creating an angry melee among their own. Weapons flashed, and Kat felt the angel’s ire rise within her.
“Enough!” her voice boomed with the urgency of thunder. She liked the sound of it. It was the sound of Power.
It also did what she hoped to do—the Oakland army stopped what it was doing. It stopped marching, stopped surging, stopped fighting. It just stopped, and she had the satisfaction of watching thousands upon thousands of eyes upon her, frozen in terror. She caught a hint of the thrill that bullies and killers are addicted to—the ability to cause fear. It was delicious in the same way that whiskey was delicious—it was savory with danger. She loved it and at the same time it frightened her, for she saw just how enticing it could be.
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br /> She raised the sword, held it over her head, and watched the armies of Oakland cower before her. She flashed it down again and watched it cut through the tar and concrete paving the bridge. She jerked it back, not wanting to do unnecessary damage to the infrastructure. No one seemed to notice her gaffe. The Oaklanders were backing up now. With a flood of relief, she saw their farthest ranks fleeing toward the hills. Others followed. Finally, those in front turned their backs on her and retreated toward the shore.
She stood sentinel for some time afterwards, until she was sure that none would return. None would escape her thousand eyes. None would get past her sword.
96
Dylan finished fixing the duct tape to Bett’s wrists, finally taping him to a workbench affixed to one wall. He then spread a large piece of the silver tape over the mayor’s mouth. “Now, Ah don’t expect you’ll behave exactly, and you’ll prob’ly try to escape, and Ah ken hardly blame you fer that. But Mayor, Ah do hope you’ll be on yore best behavior and try to be less of an assbag in the future.”
“Are you giving him a good talking to?” Susan asked.
“Ah am,” Dylan said, standing up.
Susan kissed his cheek. Dylan handed the duct tape to Chicken. “Yesee, here’s what Ah see. Betts here thinks he’s the good guy. He thinks he’s doing a good thing to help the people of Alameda. In his mind, kidnapping and demon-rustling are justified by the ends. So he doesn’t even know that he’s evil. That’s a form of diminished capacity as far as Ah can tell, and that just makes mah heart bleed.”
“This is what I love about you,” she said. “Your soft spot for lost causes.”
“Ah figure God hasn’t given up on ’im yet, so Ah shouldn’t.”
“Did you tape him up good?”
“He ain’t goin’ nowhere until the cavalry come over the hill, dress his pecker up like the pope, an’ fall down and worship it singin’ ‘Hail Barry.’”
“Are you through?”
“Ah am decidedly through.”
Betts’ eyes flashed wildly from one to the other, and he jerked against his restraints.
“Take a good look, Goggles,” Susan said, jutting out one curvaceous hip. “This is what the good guys look like.”
“That sounds like one o’ them exit lines,” Dylan said.
“I’m ready to go.”
“You gonna take the shotgun?”
“Chicken took all the shells out of it and put them in her pocket—”
“What a clever girl,” Dylan said, lifting her up and planting a kiss on her cheek. Chicken giggled.
“—so it’s useless. I think it’ll attract too much attention if we carry it around. I got Milo’s pistol, though.”
“We just gonna let Milo rot here?”
“I don’t know what else we should do,” Susan said.
“Waal, his presence will provide a poignant object lesson fer Mr. Goggles here. ‘The wages of sin is death,’ the apostle tells us. It ain’t gonna hurt ’im none to meditate on his wages.”
“Then I think our work is done here,” Susan held her hand out to Chicken. They walked out the way they had come in, since that direction was known to them. In a few minutes, they were at the outer door, and Susan drew the pistol, holding it at the ready. Dylan peeked out the door, but the pavement was deserted. The only thing they saw was the moon hanging heavy over the water, creating silver ripples that danced as if there were still joy and hope in the world.
“Where to?” Susan asked as they stepped into the moonlight.
“Ah haven’t got a clue,” Dylan answered. “Ah—oh, looks like you had a bit o’ trouble.” He motioned toward the headless corpse of the guard Susan had shot earlier.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“Gotta love a 12-guage,” Dylan shook his head and started off across the parking lot. “Uh…where were we? Oh yeah, where to? Ah’ve been kinda tied up fer a while, so Ah haven’t had much time to explore the island.”
“I have, and I can’t think of any place where Betts’ folks won’t find us.”
“I know,” Chicken said, tugging on Susan’s hand. “This way.”
Susan looked at her husband. “She hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Dylan shrugged and they followed the little girl.
In silence the three of them walked along the quiet, nearly deserted streets of the west end of the island. They walked past the mothballed USS Hornet then turned left and passed Encinal Junior and Senior High School. Fancy condos along the docks stretched out on their right, and old tiny houses and quaint apartment buildings from the naval shipyard’s heyday stretched out to their left. At the Tasty Freeze, Chicken turned toward the water. They found themselves walking beneath a dark canopy of trees, toward a small outbuilding. They followed Chicken to the back door, where she reached up to the doorknob and let herself in.
“Honey, Ah think we’re home,” Dylan said.
97
Richard was applying epoxy to a thing with feathers under the watchful gaze of his dead father when he heard a thump. He looked up as the feathered thing morphed into a leopard-like beast covered not with fur but with the kind of pull tabs Richard hadn’t seen since childhood. The beast jumped down from the table, making a great roaring rattle as it did so. The rattling continued as it slunk off, sounding like a thousand African percussion instruments, all shaking in unison. The rattling was almost like sleigh bells, but heavier, duller, accentuated every now and then by a thump. The thumping was rhythmic, too. As the great cat faded, the thumping remained.
Richard sat upright in his automobile prison, blinking back to consciousness. Thump, thump, thump. The moon was high in the sky and cast a calm, blue light over the Marina. Richard couldn’t see the water from where he was, but he could see the tops of the masts over some hedges. He turned to look behind him and saw the lights of San Francisco to the west, and another sort of light to the south.
Squinting, he sat up on his knees and tried to figure out what he was seeing. The lights were in motion—some of them waving wildly. It seemed to be a candlelight procession, albeit a frenetic one. But where was it? “The bridge,” he said aloud, although he couldn’t see it. “I wonder what that’s all about?”
When no one answered, he sat back down and looked over at the bodies of Sophie and Mike. They looked like they were sleeping peacefully. Only the dark stain running down the leg of Mike’s jeans gave any indication that something was amiss. Looks like he found a place to pee, Richard thought. He smiled, sadly.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Richard had heard the thumping before—he realized it was probably what woke him up. Snatches of the feathered thing and the percussive cat wisped through his mind, but he couldn’t snatch any context from the fleeting images.
Thump, thump, thump.
It seemed to be coming from beneath him, as if someone were striking the bottom of the car with some cloth-covered mallet. As strange and unexpected as it was, the sound was also familiar. Richard frowned and sank back into his seat as he tried to place it.
Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be a source of any danger. Sleep pulled at Richard’s eyes again, and he found random images and scenes interjecting themselves into his mind. As he sank deeper, they resolved into a bedroom—Richard’s own, at the Abbey. In the dream, Richard felt like shit and coughed, hacking up a lungful of phlegm. His dream-self turned over, trying to sleep, but was interrupted by a loud thump, thump, thump.
In the dream, Richard opened his eyes, seeing his bedspread adorned by the crumpled white carnations of spent tissues. Peering over the side of his bed he saw…Tobias.
“Toby,” Richard sat up, fully awake now, feeling the cold vinyl of the car seat against his forearm.
Thump, thump, thump.
Tears welled in Richard’s eyes. Tobias was right beneath him, his tail thumping against the bottom of the car. It was like getting a Morse code signal from a trusted friend telling you that all would be well. He longed to touch t
he dog’s fur, to bury his face in Toby’s mane, to breathe in his dusty warmth and goodness.
Raising his foot, he tapped back, mimicking the dog’s rhythm. Tobias’ thumping stopped momentarily, then resumed again with greater fervor. Richard’s mind raced, wanting to tell Toby to run, to get to someplace safe, to be anywhere but here. And at the same time he was profoundly grateful for his friend’s presence. Richard wracked his brain for the Enochian word for “run,” but he couldn’t pull it up, if there even was one.
“If only Terry were here,” he said, but he didn’t want that, either. Wherever Terry was, he hoped it was safer than here—if his friend was still alive at all, of course. It did no good to think about Terry, but he did pray for him, and for all of his friends and order-mates. And as he began to drift into sleep again, a part of him let go of his need to tell Toby to go away and accepted the simple gift of him.
Friday
You, my child, shall be called
the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go ahead to prepare God’s way,
To give the people of God knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet
into the way of peace.
—Luke 1:76-79
98
“Rise and shine, dear. The world will either end today or it won’t.”
The Netzach Maggie hovered over him, moving a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. He sat up, groaning. It had been a long night. Brian had no sooner fallen asleep in Netzach when he had been awakened in Malkuth. At first he was angry, but as soon as he cleared the sleep from his eyes, he became aware of the pain in his bladder and how thirsty he was. He had mustered a “thanks” to Chava and dove for the bathroom. His next stop was the kitchen for water. He’d noticed how much his muscles ached, and it reminded him of a time he’d been bed-ridden for several days. He knew what he was doing was hard on his body. He also knew it needed to be done. He’d fended off Chava’s questions and ascended again. And, apparently, slept. But had he slept there or here? Both, probably. He had a body in each place, after all. He shook his head to clear it, but the vagaries of inter-sephirotic travel still eluded him.