TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3)

by Steve Windsor

  Fury kicked their weapons away from them and then she knelt down. She picked up one of her glowing orange feathers from the floor, held it by the cool end, eyeing the glowing tip for what must have seemed like eternity to the screaming interrogators. Then she blew hard on the pointed end for a few seconds, heating the tip back up.

  In the meantime, the six little purgatories she’d had in tow since leaving the hell of the dungeons, gathered around behind her. They squawked and chirped and hopped around like … well, like little humping hatchlings on their first training mission to the garden. With an archangel from Hell, Jump thought. He almost smiled. Trial by fire-feather—only way to train.

  Whatever trouble they were all in now—and the clock was ticking on that—it was satisfying to take a break and watch Fury work. Jump could see that she had learned a little more since the great cleansing. The only angel he figured a Man-monkey might want to have pay him a visit less, would be the devil, Jump, himself.

  Fury turned and whispered something to her flock of fledglings, and then each one of them blew on her burning feather. It alternated glowing brighter and then cooling down slightly between each of their turns stoking it.

  When Fury looked like she was finally satisfied that they understood how a fire-feather worked, she spun back toward the first screaming interrogator and rammed the hot steel feather into the bloody stump where his leg used to be.

  And the screaming got insane for a couple of seconds, and smoke wafted into the air, flesh sizzled, and blood vessels and arteries seared shut, stopping his loss of blood. Then the first one passed out. Jump knew that would happen.

  A Man-monkey’s body had a delicate threshold for handling excruciating pain. Jump taught interrogators to take a protectant right up to the edge of it, but not over. Too much and it would take forever waking them back up. And a good dose of Judgment only lasted about a day—there was no use wasting the effects of it on unconsciousness. Because once someone recovered from the first one, if they had to judge someone up again? Second trip was always worse than the first.

  Protection interrogators had proven time and time again, the best case after a second full dose of “J” would be blinding headaches and insomnia that drove a protectant nearly insane. Worst case, it would produce a hallucinating, rage-filled, whack-job whose only mission in life would be to kill whomever they believed had wronged them. And at the Fifty there were plenty of people walking around that fit that bill. The only use for a monkey like that would be to scare inmates into submission at a Protection prison.

  At first, it looked like Fury didn’t understand that, but when she shoved the blazing-hot quill into the second man’s severed arm socket as hard as she could, Jump knew what she was doing. His screaming was pretty brief—she wanted them out cold.

  Once the interrogators were both unconscious, Fury turned and ran right at the observation room’s one-way window. Then she spread her wings as wide as they would go—probably shielding her little flock of trainees from the blast, Jump figured—and she let out a huge screech. Then any delusion that the PAIC and Frank King had about their safety behind the bulletproof glass shattered in at them, showering the floor of the room and them with flying chards of razor-sharp guilt.

  The two fell backward onto the floor. When they recovered, they both looked up at Fury—the PAIC with his hand still halfway into one of his pockets, and Frank with a look on his face that screamed fear and panic. Neither made a sound.

  “Keep your filthy Man-monkey mouths shut,” Fury screeched at them, “and you might get to enjoy a few more minutes alive. Say one word, and I’ll send you to a place you can’t even imagine.”

  Jump almost sprang from the nothingness to stop her, but at the final instant, Fury jerked her head behind her.

  Jump sensed them a split second later.

  And the door burst open and six black-armored Protection sentries with MP7’s stormed into the interrogation room.

  Fury cawed at the little purgatory cherubs behind her, still busy hovering over the two passed-out stumps on the floor. As soon as the little angels heard her scream at them, every one of them flapped and wrapped their wings in a cone around themselves. They looked like a nest full of huge dinosaur eggs.

  It was actually one of the first things newly-hatched angels were taught after being condemned. “Shield then wing-wrap,” Fury had told them. “Learn to protect yourselves … then you’ll learn to fight back.”

  Fury leapt at Mercedes, still taped to the chair, and she slammed her wings around her, wing-wrapping them both. Then she screamed at the two Man-monkeys in the observation room, “Get your stupid monkey asses down!”

  Jump figured she was wasting her breath, because as soon as the sentries burst into the room he—the Jake PAIC version of himself—jumped on top of Frank and shoved him down onto the floor of the observation room, behind the ballistic barrier.

  The hot lead flew like stingers from a hornet’s nest, pelting anything and everything in the room. And glass flew and bullets ricocheted off of the purgatories—now screeching from inside their “eggs.” Fury and Mercedes’ egg got sprayed too, and then bullets pelted the ballistic barrier in front of the observation seating until the six sentries were all out of ammunition.

  Then the clicking and clacking of clips being changed, joined the echoes of gunshots and the plinking sound of brass hitting the concrete floor. Then the whole thing started over—Brrrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrrrt!—long bursts of suppressed gunfire and smoke swept back and forth through the whole room, filling the air with the sweet smoking smell of burning gunpowder.

  Clean crew, Jump thought. He knew a clean crew’s job was to kill everyone in a room and then mop up like nothing ever happened. When they finally ended their second hail of hate, the room felt to Jump like a thick foggy morning on a Puget Sound ferry, furiously plowing ahead at full speed, bow slicing its way to a destination that only radar or bats could see.

  An archangel’s senses might as well have been both, because the clicking and clacking sounds of reloading barely started before Fury screeched at the purgatories. And then all six of them burst out of their wing-wrapped shells, and they each hopped onto a dark figure in the smoke. And then they clawed and cawed, and ripped and rammed, using talons and teeth and wings and feathers to tear at the black-clad men until there wasn’t much left but black uniforms and blood.

  Ferocious fear would do that. Flying around and hiding from danger in the Man-monkey world was stressful, not to mention having your trainer yell and berate you every time you were confused or asked a question. So for a pissing-scared purgatory, still in the process of earning their wings, it was hard to control all that pent-up fear. And Jump figured that from the looks of it, these purgies had been scared angel-shitless since they got there.

  Fury unwrapped her wings from around Mercedes’ quivering body, checked her over a little, and then she walked back to the observation room.

  The little hatchlings tore guts and plucked eyeballs behind her. They clucked and squawked and cawed like eager little eagles fighting over a fresh fish their mother just brought.

  “Now,” Fury said when she got to the edge of the blown-out observation window, “what should we do about you two? Because those cocksuckers just like… They cheated me out of pounding those two pussies on the floor.” Fury looked behind her at the two interrogators’ limb-severed bodies, freshly bleeding and riddled with bullets from their buddies. “I guess that only leaves you two pussies to pound.”

  Jump clucked a little when Fury said that—it was something he might have said. With the absence of Rain… To attempt to replace his little Amy with a daughter figure he could mentor in his Hell, Jump had found Fury—a raging archangel after his own vengeful heart. They had enjoyed an evening chat or two beside the lake a few times, and he would tease her and joke that she was too “serious-angry” and she should enjoy her work a little more by sprinkling in some colorful commentary every once in a while—get more “sarcasti
c-angry.” Otherwise the job of ripping apart souls—games at the arena or gutting souls in the garden—would get boring.

  It appeared that Fury had taken his words to heart, because taunting someone before gutting them wasn’t her style. All the same, Jump could smell that was what she was about to do next.

  The consequences of allowing Fury to get her revenge were bigger than her. Not to mention that Jump didn’t really want the memory of her gutting him as the PAIC in the past indelibly burned into his memory, regardless of what repercussions that might have in altering all of their futures.

  He looked into the nothingness, back at everyone watching her fall. The sands of that day-long dream were quickly running down. Revenge or redemption—she didn’t have long left to choose.

  But Fury had chosen. Jump could see that. A poor decision in his opinion, given the consequences. However, probably one which she hadn’t thought out. He couldn’t blame her, he rarely got past his pissed-off stage in making decisions in a battle. But on this one, he had taken more time to ponder.

  If Fury took revenge on her raping father—probably killing the PAIC in the process—it would be a lose-lose … lose-lose scenario. In fact, the only ones who would get what they wanted out of that were the lying bastard and his benevolent sex-slave in the dungeon. Life back in charge of the garden? Jump thought. Not today.

  Jump sprang from the nothingness, just as Fury was readying her combat spin. And he spread his wings wide between her and the observation room, just as she spun and unleashed as many glowing fire-feathers as she could.

  And glowing-hot, steel feathers ripped into Jump’s wings and chest and legs—he barely got his steel plumage out, as the bulk of them hit him and ricocheted away. It wasn’t quick enough. Some of them pierced him before his armor could stop them.

  When Fury spun down, she looked down at Jump, lying on the floor of the interrogation cell. Her feathers were burning out to cold steel, sticking out of his breast and body. And her friend from Hell—Jump—was dead.

  — CXVII —

  SALVATION AND RAIN had finally succumbed to the fact that they would have to watch the falls just like everyone else. Rain convinced her mother that they should worry about their “discussion” later. Three missing angels and the debacle in the dungeon… Her father’s delayed “angels and demons” conversation could wait.

  Rain wasn’t powerless to help a fallen, but the cost of her intervention had been high enough already—three falling archangels, Salvation convinced her, would have to be enough. The consequences of the third lay bloody and beaten, bathed back in glowing darkness, slowly repairing themselves, in the depths of the dungeon.

  Even if Salvation hadn’t been adamant about staying out of it, Rain knew that the “benefit of all” would have to start being respected. Otherwise, what type of Protector would she become? Breaking and trampling her very own words and those of her predecessors? She would be no better than Life.

  And yet despite all of that, Rain had an overwhelming urge to reach into the fall and pluck Fury back from the depths of her resurrection and redemption. Because if her friend didn’t hurry—if the dark night of resurrection turned into a day full of failed redemption—the dawn of revenge would burn her soul to ashes.

  They sat on the steps up to Rain’s throne and stared past the nothingness at Fury’s fall. Rain worried that Fury had descended too far, and Salvation wondered if her husband had fallen far enough. That is, until she saw Fury kill him.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Salvation yelled on impulse. But she was beyond blasphemy charges by now. “She killed him!” And Salvation stood up, looking like she was about to go to war. “He’s—he’s like a father to her! … I’ll kill that little shit!” And she leaned in, preparing to jump into the nothingness.

  Rain stood up quickly and grabbed her mother by the arm. “She didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. Hasty decisions at this point would not help anyone. She stared back into the fall at her father and her … her … she had no idea what her feelings for Fury meant. But watching the girl who had helped save her from Life’s clutches… A young lady who had endured so much and harbored such hatred, yet somehow found a place in her right heart to help Rain understand “the real world you lived in,” as Fury liked to put it. And how to protect herself and others from harm in the one she now ruled. To Rain, Fury was more than a friend when she needed one the most. She did love her as her mother suggested, but what did that mean?

  One of the best lessons Fury taught Rain—a lesson that was too difficult to grasp from her father—“Things are not always as they seem,” she said to Salvation. “You do not believe that the Great Dragon of Judgment is so frail, do you? This angel of man is your husband, remember?”

  — CXVIII —

  THE BRIGHT LIGHTS pounded Jump’s eyes. He blinked and squinted and tried to open them twice. Then he moaned at the sharp pains in his chest and the fire in his legs. He tried to reach for them, but something held his arms and legs down.

  “Aaaah!” he yelled out in agony and his eyes opened wide, just as Fury ripped the last burning feather from his thigh. “Goddammit, that is—I’m gonna kill you!” He tried to move, but was still pinned down.

  When he finally opened his eyes all the way, Jump looked up at Fury.

  She smiled back at him. “Welcome to my little nightmare,” she said. “Now, what the fuck are you doing in here?” she asked. “I almost killed your old ass.”

  Jump tried to move his arms again—he might not kill her, but at least he could give her a good smack in the jaw. “That’s the second time today that one of my friends has shot me,” he said.

  Then he turned and looked at the six little purgatories, wide-eyed and shitting themselves, concentrating hard on holding down his arms and legs, like he was sure that Fury had told them to.

  “Oh, you better get these little shits off my wings or Salvation help me, I’ll gut every one of them!”

  And the purgies screeched and all of them let go at once, and they ran behind Fury to try and escape.

  Jump stretched his arms and wings rubbed his chest, then worked his legs up and down to his belly, groaning and moaning a little as he did it. Fire-feathers were nothing to scoff at. Salvation pulling one of the feathers out of his back hurt pretty badly, but almost a dozen, plucked out and then the wounds cauterized by one of his own faithless fairies—that stung worse. He sat up and leaned to the side to look at all of Fury’s “trainees.”

  Fury was busy handling it. “What did I tell you?” she said. “You don’t ever let go of someone once you got them down on the ground. Jesus Christ on a cross, I should let him rip out your tail feathers!”

  All the little hatchlings shivered in fear, as she turned back to Jump.

  “What am I gonna do with these whiny little bitches?” Fury said. “Like, every class, whinier than the last one. Where do you dig these purgies up, Jump? And like, why is it always me who has to train them?”

  Jump looked at Fury and smiled. He spoke without his filter, “You’re the best one I got, little girl,” he said. “You think I can just hand them over to Salvation? She’s way too easy on ’em. They’d be blathering basket-babies by the end of it. All them being so humping hot… I figure gotta match ’em with a cold-hearted bitch.”

  “You’re such an asshole,” Fury frowned and said. “Like it matters.” She looked back at her flock of purgatories, busy clucking and bobbing their heads. “What, like, you think this is over? Hah, we aren’t even to the redemption part yet.”

  Some of the smiles left their faces and the clucking laughter died down.

  “Yeah,” Fury said, “you better shut your beaks. You keep acting like that, you won’t make it. Guarantee that. Right now, I wouldn’t even jack an old lady at the Mike with you flock of flying… Look, we got about—I don’t even know. How much…?” She glanced at the observation room—at the two heads peaking back over the barrier, and the one little pistol barrel pointing right at her. “You thin
k I forgot about you two monkeys? Whatever, pitch that gun down or I’ll stick it up your ass and pull the trigger. See how you like the view from the other side of that window.” She frowned at them as they ducked back down. “Old cocksucking assholes,” she muttered. “And you better lube up, Daddy, because I’m making this last. Bet that.”

  Jump turned to look behind him and caught the last glimpse of the two heads, ducking back below the barrier. Then he turned back to Fury and opened his mouth to speak.

  But Fury was pumped up on the rage and the piss-smell of fear that lingered in the air from everywhere. “There, how’s that for like, trash-talking while I work?” she asked. “You are such a drama queen. Can’t you just like, kill someone and be done with it?” She reached her hand down.

  Jump hung his head and he clucked and chuckled a little. Then he reached his hand up and grabbed onto Fury at her wrist.

  As Fury pretended to help Jump to his feet, she said, “I’m talking to Salvation. Between all your chirp-chirp and the fashion with the sunshields”—she put her nose to the air and sniffed in a couple of times—“I think I’m like, smelling … yep, there it is! You got a little bitch in you. I can smell some tinkerbell.” Then she laughed out loud.

  Jump stood up, rubbed his chest, and then looked at all the half-smiling little hatchlings behind Fury. “Don’t any of you get any bright ideas about talking right now,” he said to them. “She’s earned the right to that.” And four billion reaped souls in the garden later, Jump was telling them the truth. He towered over little Fury, and he turned back and looked down at her—into her eyes. “And you, young lady,” he said, “you’re in deep dolphin-shit here. And you got about six clicks to fix it.”

  — CXIX —

  GETTING BABETTE UNSTRAPPED from the gurney had been painful. For her more than Father Benito, but his heart hurt almost as much as her wounds hurt her.

  Babette had screamed and cried for Benito to leave her and go get her daughter, but he wasn’t abandoning her again.