by R. E. Vance
Yara-Uno looked over at me as we made our way down the street, and in a downtrodden voice said, “I did not win this night.”
“Hey, you’re still breathing. That means you didn’t lose either,” I said.
Yara-Uno shook his head. “I failed to avenge the Unicorn.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Maybe revenge isn’t what the Unicorn would have wanted. Maybe he was after something else altogether. He came to Paradise Lot to make things better for everyone. Maybe that’s how you can honor him.”
“As the one who was by his side as he died, tell me the truth. Is that truly what he would have wanted?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking back to the brief moments I had spent with Joseph. He was all about peace. About feeling good and taking care of others. “Yes,” I repeated.
Yara-Uno considered my reply. “Then I shall honor the Unicorn as he wished to be honored. I shall make this place better for everyone.” Looking over at me, he said in a triumphant voice, “And Yara-Uno never loses.”
Our procession of doom and gloom eventually ended at St. Mercy Hospital, where Miral divided the wounded that needed treatment from the dying that needed comfort.
Miral was Paradise Lot’s true angel that night, and for as long as I live, I will be grateful to her for all she did.
↔
The fairy receptionist took me to my own room, courtesy of Michael, who insisted that we have a private place to speak. The receptionist gave me some painkillers—finally!—and a towel, reminding me that I was still covered with now-dried sewage. “Try to flush the solid pieces down the toilet,” she said, pointing at the shower.
Fine by me. I peeled off CaCa’s cast, though my ankle immediately ached with the desire to get back into its warm embrace. I stripped off my clothes, setting my collarless jacket, with Hermes’s parting gift of wax safe inside it, on the counter, and hopped in the shower. The warm water felt good. As it cascaded over me, I had time to clear my head and think.
This Grinner guy wasn’t going down easily, if at all. Half of Paradise Lot had attacked him with swords and magic, and they barely got any licks in.
“No more time,” I said to the tiles on the bathroom wall. “Burning time isn’t going to kill him.” Trouble was, if a whole army burning time didn’t hurt him, then what would? It was then I made a resolution that I wouldn’t let another Other waste a minute of time on Grinner. Whatever the solution was going to be, it would have to be done without magic.
I was still in the shower when Miral burst in. “How long have you been dreaming of her?”
“Hey!” I screamed, “I’m naked!”
“Oh, please, I’ve seen your kind naked before. Now answer me—how long?”
“Shouldn’t you be taking care of the wounded?” I said, wrapping a towel around myself while trying to turn off the water.
“I have stabilized those who needed it, and there are nurses and other doctors. And don’t change the subject!”
“How do you know about Bella?” I started, while I tried to shimmy into my underwear under my towel.
“The Avatar of Gravity told me all,” Michael said as he walked in. “Of all the humans to be crucial for the restarting of the world, I would never have thought—you? As for the end of the world … that I would have wholeheartedly predicted.” Michael smirked. He was making a joke, or at least trying to. Michael had many strengths. Humor was not one of them.
“How long?” Miral repeated, pacing the room.
“Six years,” I said, managing to put on my pants. My shirt, however, was behind Miral. It would have to wait.
“And you never thought to tell me?” she asked.
“Tell you? Tell you! Why is everyone suddenly interested in my dreams? OK, yes, I’ve dreamt of her every night since I went AWOL. But I thought she was just a dream. My dream. A hallucination of someone barely holding it together. I thought I was crazy, but you know what, if being crazy meant seeing her, I just figured sanity was overrated. You know?”
“Human Jean-Luc, if you think that excuses—”
“I don’t care! Bella is alive,” I said, lifting my hand. “She’s alive,” I repeated, the sound draining out of me as I said the words out loud. “That means we can be together again.” My heart contracted with each word, like it was trying to push out every drop of blood. Bella is alive and we can be together again.
Miral stopped pacing and gave me a look that would melt a puppy’s heart. I swear, these angels and their expressions. But she said nothing, the words failing to leave her lips. We stared at each other for a long time before Michael finally broke the silence with words that came out uncharacteristically soft.
“I am afraid not. She is dead.”
“But in the Void. She’s alive in the Void.”
“No, it is not her that lives, but her soul. Once the soul leaves the body …” He sighed, shaking his head. “Death is a one-way valve. Once you cross the threshold, there is no way back.”
“But there has to be a way to bring her back.”
“No, Human Jean, there is none.”
“Then send me to her,” I said. “Please.”
Again the angels gave me that look of sympathy, only this time it was more like that of a mother trying to fix her child’s first real boo-boo. How do they do that?
“No, Jean,” Miral said, her voice infinitely soft. “When the gods left, they took with them the path for souls to follow. Whereas death to Others means the ceasing of existence, death to your kind now means that your soul wanders aimlessly until the nothing of Beyond erases it. I am sorry, but your death will not reunite you with her.”
“But,” I said, “there has to be a way.”
“Perhaps,” Miral said. “We would need time to consult other Others to find a way. But with the Avatar of Gravity desperate to have you, I fear that time is not on our side.”
“That is why we must hide the human,” Michael said to Miral, and I got the impression he was recalling a recent conversation of theirs. “While the Avatar is occupied, we must use this opportunity to run.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, looking up at the archangel, “why didn’t you kill him? I mean, your hands were around his neck.”
“I already told you—”
“ ‘I vowed never to harm a First Law,’ ” I said in a mocking baritone. “OK, fine—but what did you say to him to make him go away?”
My sarcasm was either missed or ignored, because Michael nodded with pride, walked over to the room’s window and pulled back the curtains, revealing the night sky. Even with the light of the room and the lights of Paradise Lot, I could still see stars floating above. Michael looked out at them and said, “After God and the gods left, many of the stars’ orbits changed. This galaxy does not follow the same paths as it once did.”
This I already knew. Hell, everyone knew it, with whole new sciences popping up to explain what happened. AstroMetaPhysics, they called it, and some of humanity and Others’ top minds were working on the reason why—and getting nowhere, I might add. I never much cared for the new science. What was the point? The oceans still had tides, the world still had seasons. So what if the stars didn’t follow the same orbits they once did? In truth, the only practical effect this change had on my life was that the Sunday paper’s Astrology Fortune Telling page no longer printed the typical “Fortune finds you” or “Ask and the answer will be yes,” but rather essays on what the new GoneGod World had in store for me. And it was rarely good.
Michael sighed and continued. “I asked him to explain to me the Natural Law that would allow for such a difference. In other words, I bought us time.”
“For what?”
“To hide you.”
“Do you know how many Others died today because of that—that creature? I’m not hiding.”
Michael leaned over, looking straight down at me, and said, “Yes, you are. Do you understand how many more are at risk because of you? He will level this city to find you. The only way
to save Paradise Lot is for you to not be here. That, or …” He drew a finger across his neck.
“There will be none of that,” Miral cut in. “We will do what we have always done. Protect humans. Protect that human.” She pointed at me.
Michael grunted, shrugging his shoulders. “Very well, then … it is settled. You run. You hide,” his voice drummed, giving me a look that, I swear, said, Like all cowardly humans do. But then again, I might have been oversensitive.
I shook my head. “No.”
“He will come for you again.”
“Then keep sending him away with riddle after riddle. I bet you we could come up with thousands of them. What has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Michael said calmly.
“Man. What is black and white and red all over?”
“I said—” Michael was speaking a bit more slowly now, pronouncing each word “—it doesn’t work like that.”
“A newspaper … How about this one? Thirty white horses on a red hill: first they champ—”
“I said!”
“—then they stamp—”
“It doesn’t!”
“—then they stand still.”
“Work that way!” Michael bellowed. The room shook. Not in the metaphorical sense. It actually shook. “I am the Archangel Michael, Captain of the Host, Guardian of the Faith and First amongst all angels. I am the Angel of Mercy and Bringer of Rain. I am the Slayer of Heretics and the Protector of Nations. And despite my lofty position in the angelic hierarchy, I am allowed to formally request anything from a First Law once and only once.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You mean to say, with all your power you can only speak to him once?”
“No, that is not what I said. I can only formally address them once, be it a request or a question. With Time, I asked him not to touch the divine. With Death, I requested that God and gods have dominion over souls. With Energy, I asked that she never cease to flourish in the celestial domains. But with Gravity, God spoke to Gravity directly and what He asked of the First Law, none of us know.” Michael stood up and took a sip of his coffee, looked at the cup and grimaced. I guess they didn’t have homebrew in Heaven. He looked down at me and said, “And I wasted the only question that Gravity’s Avatar was divinely bound to answer, in order to save you. I would think that after such a sacrifice, you would owe me a little respect.”
That did it—this angel thought I owed him my life because he’d used up some once-upon-a-time favor for me. To Hell with that! He’d been willing to let me die to end this little problem. And now he wanted my gratitude? “Owe you? Owe you! I owe you nothing! You would have gladly let him kill me.”
“A means to an end.”
“A means to an end? A means to an end! Is that how the gods saw us? Little mortal pawns, a means to get what they wanted? And what exactly did they want from us? What? You don’t know, do you? You were never privy to their private little plans … Maybe, just maybe, if we were not treated like stepping stones to get to some unknown ends, we would have been more grateful and had a little bit more … what was the word you used? Respect?”
I expected Michael to lose his temper, bellow at me in that mind-thumping voice of his or take me for another flight in the sky, but instead the archangel just nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Truly, you have earned that from me.” And with that, he put a fist over his heart and took a step back.
I fought the urge to say, Now that’s more like it, opting for the less confrontational, “Even if I run, won’t he level the city anyway, believing that I am hiding?”
“I will tell him you are gone,” Michael said.
“So?” I asked, but I knew the answer. This celestial Boy Scout couldn’t lie. If he told Grinner I’m gone, it would be because I’m gone. “Fine,” I said, “but there has to be another way. He might leave Paradise Lot alone, but won’t he just go from city to city, looking for me? Isn’t running just transferring the problem to somewhere else?”
Miral nodded. “Indeed, Jean-Luc. But the alternative is worse. He must not find you. Have faith that we will hide you well, and pray that when the Avatar of Gravity tears this world apart to find you, he leaves enough of it intact for us to survive. That is the best any of us can hope for.”
“That can’t be the solution,” I said. “There has to be another way!”
But even Miral’s eyes were downcast, and I could see that two of the oldest and strongest creatures to walk this world agreed—the only hope for humanity and Others to survive was for me to run. Or die.
“Then kill me,” I said. “Kill me and be done with it. Show my carcass to Grinner and he’ll have to stop.”
Michael and Miral exchanged a glance. “Yes,” Michael agreed. “That would be a cleaner solution, and one we have considered. But Bella lives in the Void, which means there is a way back. To kill you now without—”
“Without trying to find it yourself,” I hissed. “You’re just as bad as he is.”
“No, Human Jean-Luc,” Miral said, coming to my side and taking my hand in hers. “No—we do not wish to become gods or God. We do not seek dominion over humanity or Others. We merely want life to be better for all. I want to fulfill Bella’s destiny, save my friend and see her again. Imagine, Jean-Luc, if we could connect again with the Void, turn on the lights to our Father’s mansion—then we would be whole again and the worlds would be safe. That is all we seek. I swear it on the very essence of my being. Michael and I only want to go home. And in going home, we wish to reunite you with Bella.”
“Is … is there a way back?”
Miral shook her head. “I don’t know. We do not have the power—not at the level that Gravity’s Avatar possesses. But there are beings out there whom we may consult, and other items that may be available to us … We both have faith that, in time, a way home will be revealed.”
“Faith.” I shook my head. In the past, I never had much faith, but it was all I had right now.
“Here,” Michael said, handing me the photo of Bella. “I took this from Evidence.”
“But the case isn’t closed yet,” I said.
“We know who the murderer is. That is enough.”
I looked at the picture. There I was again, looking down at Bella as she smiled and shook the hand of the Other that would betray her. I wondered whether, if she had known his plan, she would have told the Ambassador to fuck off. Probably not. Knowing Bella, she would have held out for some hope that he’d change his mind or that things would go differently. Or maybe she would have had faith that he would succeed. Damn you, Bella. Your optimism is a real pain in my ass.
I stepped to the counter and slipped the photo into my jacket pocket, the breast opposite the one holding the candle. Didn’t want to get wax on my Bella.
“OK,” I whispered. “OK. How long do I have?”
Michael stepped back to the window and looked to the heavens above. “He will need to observe the night sky for a full cycle to fully be able to answer my question. We have until dawn.”
It was eight in the evening, which meant I had roughly nine hours until sunrise. “Good,” I said. “I have enough time.”
“For what?”
“To say goodbye.”
Chapter 6
Putting Affairs in Order
It took some convincing to get Miral and Michael to give me a few hours to put my affairs in order. What eventually won me my freedom was pointing out that a chief of police and a head of St. Mercy Hospital would have to make a few phone calls before going on the lam. It was, after all, protocol. That was something that neither Michael nor Miral had considered. In Heaven, they acted only when under direct order by You-Know-Who. Here on Earth there were no direct commands, booming voices or divine inspiration—only protocols and rules.
Angels understand rules. They get order. But what they don’t understand is bureaucracy. That is something uniquely human. There were p
apers to fill out, requests to be made, people to be informed before they could leave. And I, being a human hotel owner, would have similar, albeit less demanding, requirements. They saw the wisdom in that and, in the end, settled on meeting up three hours before dawn. The minimum amount of time necessary to get a head start on Grinner. And just enough time for all three of us to locate and fill out all the necessary paperwork.
↔
I could no longer protect my guests, but I could make things a little bit better, if only by a single degree.
First up—settle my debt with the fairies. At the “Coping with Mortality” seminar, I had asked them for a favor, which they’d agreed to do for the lofty price of seven vials of glitter and two bottles of Elmer’s Glue. Since I had neither on me, I asked Miral if I could raid the children’s ward. Glue they had, but sadly no glitter—so eight clown noses and a rainbow afro wig later, the fairies agreed to my revised payment terms and handed me what they found.
Now on to the next thing … Fun, fun, fun!
↔
Over the arched door of the Palisade hung a crudely drawn picture of a creature with pointy ears and dull fangs. The face had an X over it, and poor, nearly illegible letters read, No Others Allowed.
From the phone booth across the street I called the arcade.
“Whaaat?” answered a vile voice I recognized as the HuMan kid who had hit me with the baseball bat.
OK, Jean-Luc, it was now or never. In an uneven, gruff voice I said, “EightBall. Now!”
“Yeah, who the hell is this?” BallSack asked.
“This is the shit-kicker that’s gonna make an example out of you if you don’t get me that shit-ball leader of yours on the phone. Now!” The words flowed awkwardly out of me and I finally understood what it felt like to be Steve from the Billy Goats Gruff. Difference was, I got my tough-guy vernacular from CSI, whereas he got his from old Dick Tracy comics. I vowed that if I survived this, I’d buy him all the seasons of CSI.
